Fall had come as a sweet relief. The cooling weather that signaled the changing of the seasons was dramatically more sudden nearer the mountains than in the rest of the country. There was a reason Coors had chosen the slogan ” As cold  as the Rockies.” they weren’t kidding. when September 1st hit, it was like flipping a switch labeled ‘warm’ and ‘cold’. three guesses which way the switch was flipped. No surprise, though. It was like this every year, or had been as long as she had lived in the area. Oh, it would go back to the warm days and cool nights, the mild autumn that everyone else experienced. For now, though, the chill was a welcome change.

The sudden dip in degrees had put a dent in the random, chaotic violence that came with the high temperatures of summer. It made her job easier in many ways, but also harder in others. Now the blazing heat and equally hot tempers were no longer a motive, and the “Joe shot Jack over Jane” scenarios were coming to a halt. this meant the cases that did land on her desk took more work, more time. they were harder to solve, and were planned instead of spontaneous. there were no more where the man standing over the body with a smoking gun was the actual killer. Now he was more likely to be the victim of an elaborate framing, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fall was a sweet relief from the caseload, but the changing seasons certainly did not mean less work.

The sun rose that morning in a blaze of fiery glory, the light turning the sparse clouds a bright, blood red. For most people, it was a spectacular sight, beautiful to behold. For her, it meant a long day at the office.

There are two sayings about a red sky. One says, “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailor’s delight,’ and has quite a lot to do with maritime weather predictions. The other is that a red sunrise means that blood had been spilled the previous night.

The sun was rarely ever wrong….in either case.

For the most part, her morning started just like any other morning. The alarm screeched at 5:00Am, as usual. Moments later she was stepping into the steady stream of nearly scalding water pouring fourth from the shower head into the small stall she had installed in lieu of a bathtub. By six, she was sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, watching the red sun rise.