Seven Seconds

Alice is outside taking pictures of the blackbirds when she thinks about what time the boy died. She sets her pinhole camera on a stump and carefully lifts the cardboard flap to the riot of wings and excited black bodies. Estimated time of death is around two am. She counts to seven slowly. She was looking at the old crime scene photos most of the night, surely she must have heard something. She lives less than a half mile from the spot across the highway, and she didn’t sleep at all. There are three of them, three black and white, grainy photos she was looking at. A fifty-two year old man who was shot with a .32 caliber bullet on the sidewalk in front of the Tudor Theater, a woman raped and beaten in a field, and the little boy whose body was found in a park in Michigan. After seven seconds she flips the cardboard back down and smoothes the black electrical tape to seal it.
-from Omen