Me and My Annabel/Ballard/Sat March 24/4:23 pm: "I am capable of anything," wrote an estranged West Seattle man (whom we shall call Mr. Lee) to his 18-year-old daughter (whom we shall call Annabel). Annabel currently lives with her protective mother in Ballard. "I hope it doesn't come down to you seeing what I am capable of [but, my Annabel], you have nothing to fear." The meandering letter (as Officer/critic Dain Jones described it) then tries to persuade Annabel to make a grand leap of faith and leave with Mr. Lee to California where Daddy has a new job. There in a kingdom by the sea they will live like a king and princess. The letter makes other big promises, takes jabs at the ex-wife, and at the end, as if the author were overwhelmed by a frothing flood of passions, finally chokes on these words: "From the only one you got, your loving motherfucker, son of a bitch, stone cold killer father, proud to be so. Love you!" Indeed, this happened to be one of those rare moments where motherfucker was used in the correct sense.

The Blue Apartment/Green Lake/Sat March 31/3:35 pm: A blind woman called 911 on her cell phone and said she had been attacked by her deceased brother's best friend. The officer dispatched to the scene of the crime was again Dain Jones. This was his report: A blind victim insisted that her attacker drove a blue van. However, during her call to 911, she told the operator that he drove a brown pickup. When the officer asked her about the discrepancy, she complained, "You're making my head hurt with all this thinking." The blind woman then asked Officer Jones for a light, so that she could smoke a head-clearing cigarette.

It appears that Officer Jones ignored her request and continued to bother her brain with questions about the suspect. He lives in a blue apartment, she said, but could not provide an address for the blue apartment. "He treats me like a sack of potatoes," she said, and admitted that they were lovers. Officer Jones gave her a case number and returned to the precinct to write his report.

Judgment Day/South Seattle/Mon April 2/8:30 am: When John Gainey arrived at work at a bakery this morning, he found "large quantities of blood" in the office. Blood was everywhere. It was smeared on the walls, on office chairs, and formed small pools at the bottom of trash cans. Gainey then noticed a distinct trail of blood, which led him to a body oozing life under a black desk. Gainey touched and poked the body, and it arose from the dead and said, "I'm all right. Leave me alone." Gainey called the police, who arrived a few minutes later with the Seattle Fire Department. When asked by the law what he was trying to do, the man said, "I was trying to check out." Later, while recovering at Harborview, it was discovered by Officer Kinney that the victim had a felony warrant. The tragedy? The man's suicide attempt did not result in an appointment with the judge of all things. Rather it resulted, thanks to the bleeding man's previous felony, in a minor appointment with a district judge in Seattle.

Fear and Trembling/Eastlake/Tues April 3/11:35 pm: A woman who lives by herself on a houseboat went grocery shopping at 8 pm and returned to her floating home at 10 pm. When she entered her living room, she felt funny. Something was not right, but what? She then put away her groceries, placing food on shelves and in the refrigerator. Suddenly, five minutes before midnight, she realized that her "strike plate" was not in the middle of her living room, but along the wall. Had someone moved it? If so, why? She called the cops, who then filed this report, which was examined by the approving officer, Sgt. Shelhorse. A week later, Police Beat read the report, and, as a consequence, it's been reprinted in 80,000 copies of this weekly paper. The fact that nothingness can cause so much activity should make us tremble in fear.