I wasn't one to follow many news stories closely, as I had more important things to do at the time, but there was one series of stories in particular that I was following. Related? Definitely. But no one had any idea how.

---

"Looks like there's another case, James."

My uncle was reading through the newspaper. It was early in the morning and I was eating cereal before heading off to school. It was back to the normal school schedule. I was a junior and Chris was a senior at this time.

My uncle showed me the paper.

"Another one?!"

I read the headline: "Cop Dies in Car Crash". The article read:

---

Authorities have confirmed the death of Officer Daniel Randall.

The forty-year old officer was found yesterday crashed into a telephone pole. The black box in the car that reveals how fast the driver was going within five seconds of the impact revealed that the car was going about eighty miles-per-hour in a forty mile-per-hour zone. Death was nearly instantaneous, even though the officer had his seat belt on and the airbags were deployed.

"I don't believe he would so something like that," said police officer Christine Nakamura. "I was his partner for a while, and, though he had his vices, as he did smoke in the car sometimes, he always took it safe, especially around school zones where children were prone to jay-walk. He also would never drink and drive."

Police believe that the officer may have been intoxicated, but inspection of the car revealed no alcohol, and there were no tests that came positive for the presence of alcohol.

---

It was a short, poorly written article, like the others. There had been a number of accidents regarding police officers crashing into telephone poles, and they all involved being around a forty mile-per-hour zone, which I found odd. Additionally, one of the officers was one of our own at school.

Obviously, there must have been some kind of connection among these cases besides the forty mile-per-hour zone thing, but I had no idea at this point. Besides, I had to get ready for school...

---

"So how much do you know about the officers?"

It was passing time, and I happened to see Chris walking along.

"What officers?"

"The officers who all got into similar accidents?"

"Do I know anything about them? No..." Chris looked at me as if I were an idiot for asking, which, I suppose, I was.

Chris and I walked outside. Our next classes were in a different building.

"Speaking about officers..."

Chris started coughing. We had hardly noticed that we were passing by Ed Harvey, the heaviest smoker I personally knew.

"Why doesn't he just do it in the bathroom like everyone else," I asked Chris.

"Never mind. There's an officer going to see him anyway."

We already passed by and sure enough, Officer Elle was walking toward Smokin' Ed to give him a talking-to and take away his cigarettes, as usual.

"Ironic. Doesn't Officer Elle smoke, too?" she asked.

It was true... Though Officer Elle was a good person at heart. There were instances when he found illegal substances on people. The boys paid heavy prices for that... And times he stopped people from making graffiti all over the walls. He was a hated officer, but he had to be tough. The school we were at wasn't exactly a nice one...

---

I was at lunch with a few friends, sitting outside in the shade.

"So do you guys happen to know anything about the officers?" I asked.

I was sitting with my friends Rick Mouri and Hector Carlyle. They were munching on sandwiches and shook their heads. Of course they didn't know anything either. I pulled out the paper from this morning and looked over the photo enclosed. There wasn't much in it of interest. Sure enough, there was no alcohol. I noticed that there were a lot of things scattered about in the car, however. There were CDs all over the place, a bunch of papers, the stereo looked damaged, the cigeratte lighter was popped out, blood on everything, glass all over the place... it looked as if the airbags had done nothing for the crash anyway...

I continued studyinng it when I saw people running off to the parking lot. I looked for Rick and Hector, but they had already run off as well. I followed the crowd...

Everyone ended up running just off campus, across the street. There was a large group of people already surrounding something and I pushed my way through only to find myself at the scene of an accident. Blood and glass... and inside the car was Officer Elle himself.

"Everyone, stay back! Don't touch anything!!"

It was Chris. She broke through the crowd and attempted to keep people away from the car. There were about a thousand pictures being taken with camera phones, and 9-1-1 must have gotten about a hundred calls within a ten minute time span. I did a quick search, but found no signs of sabotage and no signs of alcohol. No pulse. I smelled the mouth. No alcohol.

Meanwhile, Chris did all she could to keep everyone back. There was no use trying CPR. He was gone.