It wasn’t the sea hurling its waves at the shore that woke him or the piercing yellow light of the streetlamp that supposedly kept the block safe at night; the party across the bay was winding down and a heavy silence hung over the beach. What woke him was a feeling of dread. He got to his feet and walked over to the window.
The rain had stopped; tomorrow the fog would roll in. It unsettled him to be able to see the stars so clearly. Sagittarius loomed above him, and a scarlet moon peeked through the dark. For a moment, he thought the sun had risen on the wrong side, but then he realized that the red sphere in front of him was a blood moon. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
He remembered the last time he’d seen one like that. How long had it been? Ten, twelve years? It’s an image you don’t forget. The officer who’d taught him everything he knew had just died, and it was a troubling omen. He thought about the mess down at headquarters, where he was the one in charge now. About the man who’d sworn to kill him. He felt a strange disquiet take hold of him. That’s the moon, he thought. I’m the chief, I’m sixty years old, and they’re going to kill me.
When the moon vanished behind a cloud, he turned his attention to the stars, but Ursa Major and the North Star, which had soothed insomniacs for centuries, were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was only Sagittarius, the archer, pointing insistently at La Eternidad.
But, then again, there’s no such thing as a policeman who can read the stars.