Free Sleepwalker by Michael Laimo

view of the guard. Two figures were in the front seat. Richard twisted his body and watched as the car reached the corner of Alister and Caulfield, then turned left, heading in the opposite direction of the bus.
    Peeking back down Alister , he saw that the guard had vanished.
    You’re just being paranoid. Relax.
    “Voice of reason…right.”
    This little outburst earned him the gaze of a female passenger.
    Richard settled back in his seat, a total of four other riders mindfully going about their business with no worries in the world, it seemed.
    He blew out a slow deep breath. Delaney will have a field day with today’s events. Wonder what words of wisdom he’ll come up with next?

Moldofsky
     
    Forty-seven year-old Leonard Moldofsky had never once questioned his decision to become a cop. His life’s career had provided a fairly smooth ride in Fairview where the biggest problems were petty crimes, teenagers scribbling graffiti on the high school’s walls, or random domestic disputes that either climaxed to a point of violence or ended up as a family counseling session that Moldofsky himself had to bequeath. Twenty-three years on the force. One murder, a fair share of bar fights (and of course those spousal brawls, sometimes ending up more bloody and violent than your average tavern dispute, thank you Mr Sparke for contributing), and countless fender-benders. Speeding tickets, parking tickets, parentless teenage get-togethers that got too loud and too messy, forcing the neighbors to summon the strong arm of Fairview’s law to cool the adolescent engines. Hundreds of common incidences--all adding up to quite a career in law enforcement for Len Moldofsky , earning him a lengthy resume perhaps not so rich in color but nonetheless rewarding and satisfying to a man who simply had to provide for his wife and teenage son.
    “Turn left here,” Kevin Hughes said, pointing. “It’s quicker.”
    Moldofsky shuddered. Kid means well, but you think he’d realize that I already know how to get downtown after living my entire life in this not-so-grand town. Moldofsky took a left on Indian Head Road, the unmarked sedan hugging the road like a lover.
    Hughes scratched his upper lip. “So...you believe him?”
    Fact was Leonard really didn’t know what to make of Richard Sparke . He seemed a bit too approachable, likable. A kindly cooperative man who didn’t seem all that capable of committing the rather violent crime he’d been accused of two years ago. He was soft spoken, and even today, while angered, his demeanor leaned towards an uninhibited attempt to create peace instead of war. The question remained: was he telling the God’s honest truth about what happened with Pamela Bergin inside his condo this morning?
    Leonard was more than confident that Sparke had left out some finer details.
    Which led to another interesting tidbit.   It wasn’t entirely impossible, but Leonard found it strange that Sparke hadn’t--or at least didn’t appear to remember--that it was he , Leonard Moldofsky , who had worked the domestic violence report Samantha Sparke filed two years ago.
    Moldofsky had recorded detailed conversations with both the Sparkes following the event, and even though Richard’s story had remained coolly consistent, Leonard’s instincts, even back then, had told him that Richard wasn’t telling him everything there was to know.
    So what Leonard had now were two reported incidences of violence, spread apart in time, the particulars lost beneath a thin layer of mystery, each running deeper than just the indisputable blood on the perpetrator’s hands.
    Leonard had always told himself that any hunch, however remote, was worth looking into, especially when there wasn’t much else going on. Clearly Richard Sparke had a private little something up his sleeve, and the intuitive detective in Leonard Moldofsky wanted to find out exactly what it was.
    Leonard blew out a deep breath. “I’m not sure what to believe, other