Vijay, single, serious about police work, a teetotaler who kept himself in shape, cursed the day he drew Billy Poloosha as a partner.

Billy began drinking in the sixth grade and partied his way through high school, graduating with a 2.5 GPA, the minimum needed to enter the police academy. He sobered up long enough to graduate from the academy and land a job with the Modesto Police Department. That out of the way, he started hitting the sauce again, hard.

He married a woman he picked up at a bar, smashed out of her mind, and they now had three kids. His wife sobered up with the first pregnancy; hadn't touched a drop since. Feeling no responsibility to stay sober for his kids' sake, Billy's drinking soared to new heights. He drank a case on his days off, half that on days he worked.

After ten years of marriage, his wife, now sorry she'd ever let him take her home, had had enough and was working on a divorce, behind his back. She'd hired an attorney the week before with money her folks lent her and told him to get the paperwork started.

When the second call about screaming came in from dispatch, Vijay gave Billy the eye, flipped the cruiser's emergency lights on and said, "Better get a move on."

Billy grunted, but pushed a little harder on the gas peddle.

They talked to the people who reported hearing the screams, then cruised the surrounding neighborhoods, listening but hearing nothing.

"Probably just a party," Billy said, wishing he was there.

"Then how come we don't hear any loud music or carrying on?" Vijay asked. "Isn't there a canal on the other side of that brick wall? Maybe the screams came from the canal bank."

Billy frowned. "I doubt it."

"Why do you doubt it?"

"Because I'm hungry and it's time to get something to eat, that's why. Don't a couple of donuts sound good to you right about now?"

Vijay knew it was pointless to argue with Billy's stomach. "Tell you what, Billy. Let's check out the canal since we're already here. If we don't find anything after twenty minutes, we'll get donuts. Deal?"

Billy grunted, and thought about donuts.

They exited the subdivision and found the access road running next to the canal. Pulling onto the narrow road, Billy looked at the full canal and said, "Man, I sure hope this canal bank don't give way. I got a good driving record and I'd hate to be the one guy who dumps a patrol car in the canal."

"The canal bank's not going to give way," Vijay said, turning on a powerful spotlight. He swung the beam over the road and canal.

"It better not," Billy said, slowing down. "They'd stick me on motorcycle duty and I'd hafta' kill myself."

Vijay ignored him and studied the canal. He saw something in the dirt. "Hold it. What's that?" he said, pointing.

Billy stopped the car. "Where?"

"In the dirt, there in the light. See it?"

Billy looked. "I don't see nuthin'."

They grabbed their flashlights and got out of the patrol car, leaving the engine running and the lights on. Billy inched alongside the car, eyeing the canal.

Fifteen feet in front of their car, they found what they were looking for.

"What the hell is that?" Billy asked, bending down and squinting.

After a moment of staring, Vijay said, "Looks like intestines."

They stepped back and took the whole scene in.

"Human?" Billy asked.

"How should I know?" Vijay said, then pointed. "Look at that. It looks like blood." He focused his beam on dark, damp soil.

"Maybe it's a sheep, or goat," Billy offered as he moved in to look at the intestines again.

"Don't step in the blood!" Vijay snapped.

"Do you see me stepping in it?" Billy snapped back. "I graduated from the academy, same as you."

Then Vijay remembered seeing a report on a killing that occurred near a canal earlier in the day. His hand moved to his weapon.

Seeing his partner touch his gun alarmed Billy. He said "What?" and fingered his own sidearm.

"You heard about the killing on the canal earlier today?"

Billy remembered. "Yeah." Then, seeing the connection, he drew his weapon and took a couple of steps away from the canal.

They continued backing away from the intestines and stained sand, swinging their lights back and forth.

"See anything?" Billy whispered.

"No, but I'm calling this in." Vijay reached for the radio clipped to his uniform. "Put that gun away. You know the paperwork you'll have to do if it goes off."

Billy put his gun away. He hated paperwork.

A detective was roused from bed, Yellow Teeth, and dispatched to the canal. Unhappy about having his sleep disrupted, he took it out on the two officers. He told them to walk the entire length of the canal, one on either side, and to stay put until a CSI tech came in the morning and collected the evidence. Yellow Teeth went home and back to bed.

It took the partners an hour and a half to walk the canal. They found nothing.

Back in their patrol car, Billy pulled out the lunch his wife had packed for him: chili, Saltine crackers, and an apple. The chili was really a can of Alpo dog food mixed with a can of beans and some seasonings. He threw the apple in the canal but devoured the chili and crackers.

Vijay kept his window open while his partner ate: the chili smelled like dog food.

A tech showed up at eight and collected the evidence. Billy and Vijay went home, getting an hour of overtime each.

Billy fell into his recliner, turned on ESPN and opened a beer. His wife left without saying a word and drove to her attorney's office to sign papers.

Vijay downed a protein drink on the way to the gym.

Lawless dreamt a new dream.

He was on an island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Sandra Jensen was there, sitting to his left wearing some kind of micro-bikini that amounted to no more than string and half an ounce of material. She looked good and he was damned happy she was there. They lay on lounge chairs; hers flat so she could stretch out and tan, his upright so he could sip fruity drinks with little umbrellas. In his dream, he laughed when he saw they really did serve drinks with little umbrellas; he thought it was a cliche.

Jensen lay on her stomach, her bathing suit top untied to prevent tan lines, facing Lawless, telling him a story from her youth: she'd gone skydiving with friends and her parachute hadn't opened. She described in great detail how free she felt, falling through the air at incredible speeds, and how thrilling the view had been. When she told him she landed safely in a haystack, not a scratch on her, he just nodded and said, "Hmm ..." It was such a whopper of a lie, but he didn't care. He was having the time of his life.

He sat in full sun with just a bathing suit on, tanning, not burning. That's when he knew he was really dreaming; in the real world his skin only burned.

Looking around, he saw other people on the beach. Kids were collecting shells, filling their plastic pails. Young adults played beach volleyball, diving and sweating, trash-talking and shouting out scores. Teens with boogie boards glided through the shallow surf. Heads bobbed up and down in the water, snorkeling. Old people sat under umbrellas talking about what they had for dinner the night before and what they would eat that night, while peering through huge black sunglasses. Music played from hidden speakers, jazzy and cheery. The sand was white, the sea aqua.

Jensen fell asleep. A tan and fit couple in their fifties settled into chairs next to Lawless.

"Just get here?" he asked them.

"We live here," the woman said.

"Lucky you." Then, "You look like Americans. Do you work here?"

"We're retired."

"Retired? You look pretty young to be retired." He smiled. "What'd you do that you could retire from so young?"

"We were in acquisitions."

Lawless wasn't sure what that meant, but didn't pry. "We're cops on vacation."

"We know."

This struck him as odd; they might guess he was a cop by how he looked, but not Jensen. How could they think she was a cop?

He was about to ask her - the man was completely ignoring him - how she knew their profession when a commotion started on the beach. One of the boogie boarding teens was shouting and pointing at something in the water. Soon, several children were shouting and pointing. Then, some of the old people began pointing at the water, shaking their heads and tsking.

Lawless set his drink down and shaded his eyes, trying to see what had everyone in an uproar.

The tanned and fit retired man said, to the woman, "Such a pity."

The woman said, "Why don't you do something about it, Detective?"

Lawless stood, but still couldn't see what was going on. Then he sat back down and picked up his drink. "Not my problem. Let the local cops handle it. Besides, this is just a dream."

The shouting woke Jensen. She sat up and looked out at the sea. Seeing her bare breasts, Lawless said, "Top! Tie your top!"

She didn't hear him. He turned to grab his towel, intending on throwing it around her shoulders, when he heard her say, "I'm going to go see what all the shouting's about."

"Not until you've put something on." But when he turned back with the towel, she was gone. Upset she was showing her breasts to everyone, he stood, towel in hand, and looked for her. She was walking across the white sand toward the sea, dressed in her khaki deputy's uniform. When did she change? He was happy she wasn't bare-chested, but sad to see the micro-bikini go.

The man said to the woman, "He should have done something."

The woman said, "Such a pity. What a pretty girl."

The man said, "Yes. If the detective had done something, she would still be alive."

The woman shook her head.

Lawless turned to them. "Well, the detective's on vacation right now, and besides, I have no idea what you're talking about. And how did you know we were cops?"

They lifted their arms in unison and pointed at the sea. Lawless turned and saw that everyone on the beach was pointing at the sea, even the volleyball players.

They were pointing because the sea had turned to blood, or at least it was red. As Jensen neared the water, she didn't seem to notice that it was red.

He was suddenly very afraid, somehow knowing she should not wade into the blood-sea, that it would be a very bad thing to do. He shouted at her to stop.

She either didn't hear him or ignored him, so he took off, running across the sand, hoping to catch up with her before she reached the blood-sea. He tripped and fell face first in the sand. After picking himself up, he saw it was too late; she was walking through the shallow surf, red waves lapping at her knees.

He shouted at her again and took off running. He tripped and fell and thought, this is one of those dreams where everything moves in slow motion. Up again, he saw everyone that had been near the water, the shell-hunting kids, the snorkeling adults, and the boogie-boarding teens, standing in a circle, pointing at something - a body? - bobbing in the surf.

Fear grabbed him by the throat and choked the breath from him.

"No!"

He raced into the water, already knowing what they were pointing at. He shoved his way through the circle and saw Jensen, lying face-up in the surf; her uniform and skin stained red. He stood by her, holding her hand.

Angry, he looked at the faces in the crowd and shouted, "Why didn't you stop her?"

A girl with a bucket of shells looked up from Jensen's body and said, "You should have done something, Detective."

Her words pierced his heart. Somehow, he knew she was right.

"What was I supposed to do?" he asked the girl. She ignored him and went back to staring at Jensen.

He picked Jensen up and carried her back to the beach, away from the blood-sea and the starers. The sand turned red under his feet. He lay her on her lounge chair, where she had been tanning not five minutes earlier, and stood, looking down at her. The white sand had turned red all around him. The whole beach had become red.

"What a pity," the woman said.

"He should have done something," the man said to the woman. "She would be alive if he had done something."

"Shut up!" he shouted in them. "There was nothing I could do to save her, so shut your mouths!"

They got up and walked to the hotel without saying a word.

He sat and cried.

Lawless sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, the final scene of his dream burned into his mind.

"Great," he said, running his hands through his hair. "Just great."

He looked at the clock: 6:10. Last night Jensen had set her internal alarm for six-thirty; he had twenty minutes to think before she was supposed to wake herself up.

He padded barefoot into the kitchen, got a glass of water from the tap and sat at the table where they'd left their notes from the brainstorming session. He took a drink from the glass, grimaced at the taste of chlorine, and pushed the notes aside. He wasn't ready for that yet; the dream was too fresh.

He wondered why he could remember this dream but not the other one, the one he'd had every night for a week. And why had the dream changed? Was one more important than the other? He kicked the questions around for a while but went nowhere with them. If he couldn't remember the first one, how could he compare it with the new one?

Maybe something had changed, maybe something they'd done in the last two days had altered the dire future the first dream had predicted. He lingered on that, liking it because it suggested they may have done something good.

But then, if his dreams really were a peek into the future, his new dream meant Jensen was in danger. Did his new dream predict her death, or was it just a warning, a real-life Ghost of Christmas Future?

What am I doing? he thought, slapping himself in the forehead. Comparing my life, Sandra's life, to a fictional story?