Ghost Owl

Hudson City

December 24th, 1998

The old reverend lay sprawled out on the white blanket like a morbid snow angel. Oddly serene for the scene of a murder. Sad and tragic, but somehow darkly festive; maybe it was all the scarlet. And the guy was old - on that rugged, rawboned face, with its hard planes and tapestry of wrinkles, you could read the years, the decades, of hard living in a split second. But there was a quiet strength there too, a sense of dignity that not even death and a gaping bullet wound could steal away. Not an ordinary man, but he'd died a seemingly ordinary death in spite of that - season's greetings, Hudson City style.

But he wasn't alone. A kid in a hoodie huddled against a nearby wall, eyes wide with shock. He couldn't have been any older than sixteen. He was shivering, not from the cold - he didn't even feel the cold, not now - but from the horror of what he'd just seen. From the anger of allowing it to happen.