by scifiguy3553
PORTLAND, OREGON; PRESENT DAY...
"Two-thrity-eight..."
"Go ahead..."
"Got a female, about twenty; patrons complained about subject disrupting a private party at Janet's Booth Bar and Grill. Why don't you send over a twenty in case subject's still around."
"Copy that..."
Silence...
"One-one..."
"Go ahead..."
"Any update on that sighting?"
Silence...Some static popped over the speaker to Sammuel Harpel's laptop speaker as he listened in to the Portland Police Department's live radio scanner feed from his small apartment near downtown Portland.
"One-one," repeated the other officer over the radio; the slightest touch of impatience heard in her voice.
"Yeah, one-one, here...I've got two civilians here who said they spotted something following them while they were hiking through Forest Park...I'm over at Northwest Industrial with them now. Civilians are in vehicle with me out of precaution."
"Copy that...sending over a twenty to St. Helen's Road."
"One hundred, on that."
The static, droning of Portland police officers over the online radio broadcast went on while Sammuel responded to a phone call from his girlfriend. Being so engrossed in the radio scan, Sammuel was actually startled by his smartphone's vibrations. Sammuel fumbled for his phone out of his front pants pocket to answer.
"You heard that," Trisha Mohr asked him excitedly; her high voice shot through the smartphone's speaker. "That's three, now, Sammy...three calls about something spotted by people in Forest Park in the past five months!"
"And so far the cops have said absolutely nothing about it whenever we or the media ask them about it," Sammuel responded with as much force as Trisha. "I don't know about you, Trish, but that sounds like a cover-up in my books!"
For a time, neither said anything while they both listened to the Portland police scanner. "I say we go over," she said suddenly.
By that time, Sammuel's eyes had gone over to his laptop, which had a map on the monitor of the city of Portland. But he snapped them to attention after Trisha's last comment. "You mean tonight?"
"Hella yeah! Sammy, we've been tracking this for basically half a year now. Summer will be over if we keep waiting! And this time we have a third sighting! And you know what they say about three's..."
"Yeah, when you have a situation at least three times, you have a pattern!"
Trisha was still living with her parents, so Sammuel had to take that into consideration of any plans about the two of them going out; before twelve in the morning! But Trisha had already thought that out.
"Hey, I'll just tell my folks I got a call from work and they needed someone to close for them after one of their grill people walked out. They'll believe that! I suppose I better make sure to put our gear out in my car before I tell them."
Sammuel was now back at his seat, in front of the laptop; scrolling around the map with a partial view of downtown Portland and a swath of Forest Park. "You realize it'll be tricky staying connected to the net out there...none of this will matter if we can't post it online for the world to see!"
"Even if we get to a point where we can't stay connected to the net," she said as she gathered some hiking gear, "so long as we record it all, it'll be on our devices. We can always upload to the net later, when we get back in town."
Even though Trisha could not see Sammuel over her smartphone, he was nodding at her point. "Ok, I'm about to head out...where did you want to meet?"
She took a few seconds to think. "Let's just park by the La Quinta hotel out there. Just in case things go south, at least a large group of people won't be that far from the woods."
...............
FOREST PARK; TUALATIN MOUNTAINS. SEVERAL MILES WEST OF DOWNTOWN PORTLAND. 1:42 AM...