mystery Beneath a Hazzard Moon - Chapter 1 and Intro

[EnosIsMyHero]

Title: Beneath a Hazzard Moon
Rating: Teen
Status: COMPLETE
Tags:  Mystery/Crime/Hurt-Comfort/Drama/Post-series
Summary: When a serial killer begins targeting the women of rural Georgia, LAPD Detective Enos Strate must make a choice - stay in Los Angeles or face the painful past that drove him away from his beloved Hazzard County.
Permanent Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6786021/1/Beneath-a-Hazzard-Moon

 

Author's Note: This story starts four years after the Dukes of Hazzard series ended, so the year would be 1989. I've kept most of the time-line that we learned from the first Reunion movie intact up to that point, but you can just pretend that the movies never happened.

Chapter 1:  Far From Home

Detective Enos Strate watched the rain as it fell, beating against the window of his office. It was dark now, another night spent up too late and working too hard, and the lights of passing traffic shone far below him. He raised his hand to the glass, tracing the patterns of their taillights – a endless, mindless stream of red in the vast ocean of dark Los Angeles. Once again the reality of how small and inconsequential his world was struck him, a feeling that had never ceased to fully disappear even in the nearly four years he'd been here since returning from Hazzard. In truth, he knew it never would, but little of that bore thinking of now. The past was a memory as dark, deep, and murky as the storm that raged outside.

He turned back to his desk and the solitary folder that still lay open. A simple domestic violence case which had ferreted out a small drug ring on the outskirts of the city, hardly large enough to make a dent in LA's major drug runners, but one contact had led to another before. Hand-written notes in his characteristic block script lay neatly to the side, and he placed them back into the folder before closing it and filing it away in his desk drawer. The clock on the wall read 2:10 am, and he knew he'd regret the late night in the morning. Enos took his coat from its hook and shrugged it on, making his way through the outer office and out the door, turning left into the corner stairwell instead of continuing to the elevators. He'd always believed that a little extra exercise never hurt, and besides that the idea of hurtling down eight stories in a metal box made him slightly claustrophobic.

The rain had subsided to a steady drizzle by the time he made it to the subway station. He stepped into one of the partially filled front cars instead of the abandoned rear ones, too tired to have to fight off any punks who were too drunk or too stupid to see the LAPD insignia on his jacket. He took a seat, resting his head against the window and dozed off as the vibration of the subway car lulled him into sleep.

The conductor announcing his stop woke him and he counted himself lucky he hadn't missed it. His apartment wasn't far and five minutes later he slid his key into the lock and bolted it behind him as he entered the meager dwelling.

The job at the LAPD paid enough money for something larger and the good Lord knew he didn't have anything else to spend it on, but it was better this way he figured, and one didn't notice the loneliness so much when they lived in a walk-in closet. Most of his money he sent home to his mother, who he had a sneaking suspicion wasn't spending it either though he'd told her to pay off the mortgage that his father had left behind when he'd died. Thankfully Rosco wasn't as eager to foreclose on the good people of Hazzard county as Boss had been.

He dressed for bed, turned out the light, and raised the blinds on the window. The rain reminded him of another day - three years, seven months, and four days ago to be precise, in a little town half a world away from where he sat now. It had been raining the night he'd left Hazzard, and it had followed him like a dark cloud to sunny California. His eyes came to rest on the drawer of the nightstand in which a single picture lay, but he made no move to open it. Instead he turned down the covers and crawled into bed, trying to remember what it felt like to be happy, only to dissolve into a dream where a girl with long brown hair and a radiant smile had stolen the sun from his sky.

Continued in Chapter 2:  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6786021/2/Beneath-a-Hazzard-Moon

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by EnosIsMyHero