After some dallying to allow Selina to arrive first, Jonny reaches the station.

Jonny stood there on the street corner by Lisa’s house. He wanted to make sure that Selina arrived at the police station first—it would not work unless she did. So Jonny decided to walk, figuring that Jack’s body should stay in good shape, so exercise was good. He concentrated for a moment, and his host’s eyes glowed red again. His suit disappeared, and a twirl of black smoke replaced his outfit with a simple t-shirt and jeans. With that, he set of on foot toward the police station. Jonny walked through the pleasant suburbs and past the big, beautiful houses and the expensive cars and the well-kept lawns. Eventually, these scenes gave way to city streets. Car horns and rock music blared. Random passers-by sometimes ignored Jonny, sometimes bumped into him, and sometimes said hello—all of them totally unaware of the power of the raw demonic power swirling about inside his temporary human meat suit, that he could make them all his obedient playthings in mere moments if he so desired.

After about forty-five minutes of walking, Jonny was within sight of the station, a grand, multi-storied building that, today, had a throng of reporters outside it as people eagerly awaited any announcement of leads in the investigation of the shooting from the last evening. Being fairly small, Jonny wedged his way past the crowds and into the front door of the place, and he stepped into a sea of confusion and panic. People ran to and fro; papers flew everywhere, and phones rang off the hook. A big banner hung over the chaotic scene—“Welcome New Recruits!” it proclaimed. Jonny had an idea. He walked up to the front desk of the police station and grabbed the attention of the heavy-set older woman plopped pleasantly upon a chair. She wore a police uniform that her girth had almost defeated, and she wore her hair like a grandmother . . . probably in her mid-60s. “Hello,” Jonny said, “I’m from the Mayor’s office, and she would like to wish our new officers a hardy thanks for their service and best of luck on the job. Could you point me in their direction, please?”

The woman’s face changed from a pleasant smile to one of laughter. “Son,” she said, motioning for you to come closer with her finger, “turns our I know the mayor’s assistant. His name is Russ, and he’s about forty-five years older than you, bald, and he’s got himself a set of man-boobs that even my biggest bra would struggle to hold back, so why don’t you get your cute little pre-pubescent ass out of here, and I’ll forget you ever came in here and impersonated someone from the mayor’s office,” she said with a gotcha smile. Jonny paused for a moment. He motioned for the woman to lean in closer with his finger. “All right, Alice, is it?” he asked, looking to her name tag. “Yes, Alice, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Mayor’s been busy. See, it seems that some whack-job from, well, this very office tried to kill the Mayor just ten or twelve hours ago. So she’s a bit frazzled. We can handle this one of a couple ways. One is that you can spend valuable police time and resources calling the Mayor and consuming the valuable resources of her office just to confirm that I am her new assistant because the whack-job from this office charged with protecting her actually killed her old assistant just last evening. I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to take time out of her schedule to listen to someone from the office that failed to protect her last night in the same incident that took Russ’s life just so that she can confirm what is, let’s be honest, the fairly trivial fact that I am her assistant.” Alice looked blind-sided, her eyes darting about in panic as she grasped the magnitude of the shit-storm that would ensue if she did such a thing. “Or, Alice,” Jonny said, “you can avoid all that unpleasantness by just pointing my cute little pre-pubescent ass in the direction of the new recruits, and I will forget this ever happened. Sound peachy?” Jonny said with a fake smile. Alice was speechless. Without a word, the pointed in the direction of a hallway off to the right. “You’re a doll,” Jonny said as he headed off in that direction.

Jonny walked down the hallway past the people milling about and talking frantically into cell phones. The hallway was a long white corridor with pictures of slain officers on the walls. Jonny walked through the door at the end of the hallway and came upon a gathering spot filled with the bright young faces of new officers. All the uniforms were crisp, and the badges and shoes were shined. The ideals were riding high. Jonny looked at the bright group of men and women, and then his mood soured. “Publicity,” he said, “that won’t do,” and he looked about some more. A few feet away was a door labeled “Women’s Locker.” Jonny smiled.