This Neverending Nightmare (Arnisha)

[patrick ray kensington]

Patrick Kensington had never suspected he would ever be forced to live out of a cramped office and not making any money due to a lie that was believed to be truth by everyone but a select few. If it wasn't for his trusty bottle of Scotch and his dependable pack of cigarettes, he would almost confuse himself with truly being alone. He'd been off the LAPD homicide desk for a few weeks and hadn't had a single phone call for work or even so much as one of the men of the department coming in to make fun of him for his fall from grace. Despite his trying to uncover information about The Cannibal killer, all roads turned up nothing and he found himself drinking into a groggy stupor the night before. It hadn't taken much due to his lack of sleep in going to every crime scene involving a death for the past week and the fatigue had finally caught up to the former Marine causing him to pass out at his desk, lying his head on the papers strewn across the mahogany desktop and knocking over the bottle of Scotch all over the files and into the floor.

In any other office, the spilled liquor and strewn papers would stick out like a sore thumb but they were hidden as neatly as a needle in a haystack in the small 8 foot by 8 foot office that he'd managed to rent in the basement of the run-down apartment building downtown. Only his desk, chair, two filing cabinets and one other chair would fit into the room with it being smaller than a jail cell. There were still unpacked boxes sitting atop the desk, floor beside the desk and on the filing cabinets which hung open with files pouring out. The only organized portion of the room was the bulletin board behind the sleeping private eye that had newspaper clippings from The Cannibal killer that he'd hunted when on homicide and the recently discovered Zenith killer named after the watch who, in many ways, was considered more brutal and dangerous than the Cannibal.

The former detective, dressed in a white dress shirt and black tie with matching slacks, slept peacefully with his head in whiskey snoring loudly and, even if he had expected a call, he wouldn't have gotten one with the phone off the hook telling him to hang up and try again. His black coat was tossed atop a few boxes next to his desk and his shoes were kicked off near the water pipe running along the base of the floor as was his shoulder holster he kept his weapon secured in.