It begins...

Ok, it's on! More Ray Douglas coming up. Hopefully I'm over a recent slump in motivation, probably due to finishing uni recently.

Just a few quick notes on the first chapter of Irredeemable posted already. I'm not sure if it's the formatting of the Blogger site or what, but the paragraphs and dialogue etc are supposed to be indented but I'm not sure how I can do that, hopefully I'll figure it out, if not, oh well.
Also after extensive research (Wikipedia) I found out that the Pennsylvania State Police, which is what the character Officer James is, actually don't carry "service revolvers." Maybe it's just the nostalgic noir image of a revolver that I was drawn to, but in actuality they carry a .45 Glock 37 pistol. This has been changed in the draft saved on my PC and all future references to that pistol in the story will have it as a .45 Glock.
I probably should take this opportunity to mention it was probably fairly reckless of me to set the story in Baltimore as I've never been there. So far I'm using every scrap of knowledge I learned from HBO's The Wire and whatever I need from Google Maps to make it work but for a Baltimore native it may be pretty unrealistic.

The following is Part 1 of 4 for Chapter 2, I find that this format makes the word count quite manageable for weekly updates.




- 2 -
Part 1 of 4


Violent raindrops pounded directly onto Ray Douglas' windshield as he drove along the Jones Falls Expressway into Baltimore. The large swooping gusts of wind outside the vehicle propelled the rain intermittently at Ray, while rocking his car around in the black storm. Ray could barely make out the dilapidated brickwork of the Baltimore skyline through his furiously swaying windshield wipers which did nothing to clear the rain. Occasionally a bright blue pulse of lightning would illuminate the road ahead, otherwise Ray relied on the busted headlights of the caddy to see his way. Checking his watch, Ray felt a pang of confusion as he realised it was only eight-thirty in the morning. Ray blinked, rubbing his eyes, trying to remember where he was. The lack of sleep was getting to him, affecting his concentration. That, and the lack of sunlight today was making Ray's mind scramble to make sense of what was happening. Ray lit a fresh cigarette with the one dangling from his lips and flicked the old butt out of the tiny gap in the window. Despite the occasional raindrop shooting in, Ray left the window wound down a crack as an exhaust for his smoke.
Digging around in his pocket Ray felt the crumpled letter he had received two days earlier. 'Douglas, little sis needs fifty grand before midnight. Friday. You know the deal. You know who this is. You know what happens if you don't.' Rachel was in trouble. While the letter was deliberately vague, it was accurate, Ray knew exactly what it meant.
He remembered how happy Rachel looked as she saw him off at the airport, when he went to Iraq. The image surprised Ray, not because Rachel never appeared happy, but because of how drunk he was at the time. Iraq changed both Ray and Rachel; while he swore of booze over there, she lost her job at an inner-city accounting firm due to the downturn in the economy. She soon found herself with another job though, working to books for a local businessman named Bryan O'Reilly. Ray knew the name from his time as a cop and through their back-and-forth e-mail exchanges, pleaded Rachel to quit. The guy was dangerous and allegedly linked to several drug-related murders in the Baltimore Projects. Ray's new-found sobriety gave him a sense of duty to his family and he knew he had to put a stop to this before Rachel wound up in trouble. Rachel saw it differently however, Ray wasn't sure what her issue was, but he remembered getting the vibe that Rachel hated the idea of taking advice from a brother which she had taken care of for so long. A brother who never listened to her and threw empty bottles of bourbon across the room when she yelled at him for living on the couch. Eventually Rachel stopped contacting him and when he finally got home the first thing he did was confront Bryan O'Reilly.
Ray lit another cigarette with the one in his mouth and again threw the butt out of the crack in the window. He rubbed his eyes, which burned and itched from waking life. Catching a glance of himself in the rear-view, Ray noticed that his swollen and bloodshot eyes looked as if they would drop out of his skull with the next bump in the road.
Outside of the car, Ray noticed a bird flying into the wind. The bird appeared suspended in the air, not making any progress, it's life put on-hold as it repeated the mistakes of the past. Ray shook his head and slapped his cheek, repeating the mistakes of the past. Ray Douglas lost his train of thought as he blinked wildly, focussing on the road ahead.