All things considered, it should have been the opposite way, he thought as he waited for a couple of cars to pass by. But focusing through discomfort was either a habit or a skill for him.
Either way, he’d refined it over time.
With the coast clear, he jogged across the two lanes. Or shuffled, was more like it.
“Captain,” he said as he lifted a hand.
Standing next to the entrance of an unremarkable brick apartment building, Captain Stanley Carmichael was dressed in plain clothes—which was to say that he was wearing a dark suit. His tie was unknotted, however, the blue strip of silk hanging loose. The man was also smoking, the cigarette between his teeth halfway done, two crushed stubs by his scuffed loafers.
“Thanks for coming, José,” was the exhausted greeting.
“Stan, what’s going on.”
As José came up the short concrete steps, he shoved his hands in his pockets, and thought about the many times they’d stood together and all the different contexts of the proximities: The two of them had gone through the academy at the same time, back a hundred and fifty million years ago. José hadn’t had a lot of patience for the political side of things, however; he’d been too interested in solving crimes. His buddy, on the other hand, had excelled at the palm pressing, but not in a fake way. Even as Stan had risen through the ranks, he’d still stayed plugged in at every level of the hierarchy, from the newbies to the rank-and-file cops to the mayor herself.
“I got a problem,” the captain said.
When the guy just looked off into the distance and continued to smoke, José leaned against the railing on the other side of the brick stoop.
There were times when questions were invasive, even if you’d been invited into the conversation, times when silence and collected breath were preparation for the hard stuff about to come.
“Okay,” Stan said, “let’s go in.”
The captain dropped the cigarette with a lot of tobacco still remaining before the filter. Crushing it with the tip of his loafer, he opened the outer door into an anteroom with mailboxes. Past that lineup of little squares, there was a second entry that was all glass, and Stan unlocked it with a code that he punched into a keypad.
The lobby on the far side had institutional carpeting, dreary wallpaper, and an elevator with a cockeyed “Out of Order” sign taped to its panels. The smell was a cross between Crock-Pot, fresh coffee, and fabric softener; not exactly nasty, but just a lot in the nose. And meanwhile, underfoot, the floor creaked like maybe it could have used a couple more support joists rising up from the basement.
It could have been any one of a thousand such buildings throughout the city. The state. The country.
As they went forward, the captain who refused to be called chief didn’t say a thing, and José was content to follow—because he wasn’t in a hurry to hear the story. He already knew the subject, even though he didn’t have the name yet, and he could guess the circumstances, even though he didn’t have the fact pattern.
The staircase had short-stop steps that were deeper than usual, and José bet a lot of people tripped on them because they weren’t the standard height and depth. At the top of the landing, the captain went left. Two apartments down, he stopped in front of a door that was no different from any of the others in the hallway. Out of habit, José looked left and right, noting all the doors with numbers that began with 2 because they were on the second floor, and whether there was anyone peeking out of a doorway at them, and if there were any unusual stains on the runner.
The captain took a nitrile glove out of his pocket, snapped it on, and slid a single-soldier key into the dead bolt face. With his forefinger and thumb, he turned the brass knob and then pushed.
The apartment on the far side was dark and stuffy, lit by an overhead fixture in the center of the main living area. As Stan went to take a step forward, José grabbed his arm—
“Stop.”
The other man froze like a statue. “What?”
José pointed to disruptions in the carpet. “Scuffs and blood. This is a potential crime scene, captain.”
There was a moment where Stan closed his eyes, and then he seemed to deflate. “You’re right.”
“We can’t go in without booties. Is there a body?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”
“Stan, come here.” José pulled the man back out into the hall, the apartment door shutting itself with the key still in the lock. “Talk to me. Who the hell lives here?”
“Rio Hernandez-Guerrero, she’s one of our undercovers. She was involved in two incidents last night. I put her on administrative duty pending assessment as per protocol, and she was supposed to come into HQ this morning. She never showed up, never checked in. We reached out to our sources downtown, no one’s seen her. Her car’s out front. Her cell phone’s been inactive. And she hasn’t been here—”