After the murder scene. Coffee. Clevenger with pancakes, me with Tabasco and hash.
“You are going to catch this one, right?”
“Why?”
“Because I need you to. How else am I going to get the resources of SAPD to find this chick?”
Sarcastic: “Sure, buddy. Anything I can do to stall official police work into a murder to help you earn a paycheck.”
Honest: “Oh good. For a second I thought you were going to fuck me on this one.”
Interested: “How do you want to play it?”
“Okay, this is how I see it—”
“I’m just entertaining you, by the way. I’ll see what parts of your idea Captain Flemming will let me get away with.”
“Right, right,” I say. “Here’s the plan...”
42
Riggens, Rudd and Volksman all in the same room at the same time.
SAPD headquarters. Detective’s bureau. One of the three conference rooms. The other two rooms have their own projector screens; they were booked.
No one has smoked in this building in twenty years but the stale grit of long-gone tobacco holds firmly in the brick and mortar. The floors are wood and in desperate need of refinishing. As it is the bottom-of-the-barrel, the house cleaning crew just runs a buffer over it once a week and calls it good.
The incandescent light bulbs cast a harsh patina across the bureau. One socket buzzes no matter what maintenance does. The socket hangs over a desk we all called the FNG Desk. Every new detective spends time under the buzzing light, waiting for the next rookie to get promoted.
Rudd looks fairly severe and all business. That’s too bad because I like the shape of her. If she were in a school girl’s outfit, snapping a ruler against one palm, I think I’d stick around for detention. Riggens looks young, naïve and a little too blockheaded to be in this job so early. Volksman looks like he should be hung over the side of a bridge and made to cry a little bit before he’s dropped.
Clevenger walks in, papers in hand. Copied, collated and bound. Drops them on the table, sits. Slides a packet across to everybody.
“Pamela Rudd, Art Riggens, Richard Dean Buckner.”
They nod. So do I. I look to the egomaniac seated to my right. He smirks and I’m not sure if it’s a greeting or an acknowledgment of his feelings towards me. Either way I don’t like it.
“Okay,” Clevenger says, sipping coffee. “We’re all here because I think our separate cases tie in. I want to put our pieces together as best we can and—”
“What the fuck is this burnt-out piece of shit doing here?” Volkman asks.
“Oh, Thomas...” I say, rubbing my knuckles. Clevenger grunts and I see him shaking his head. I guess my old partner would look bad if I cleaned this fat turd’s clock right here, right now. I might do it anyways. I wonder what it would take to get Clevenger to forgive me for it.
“Mr. Buckner is here because he is working a related case and his information will tie in. And watch your mouth, Detective.”
Volksman’s eyes light with a fury and I love it. Detective. That’s got to sting. I know the story but I hate this worthless fuck so much it’ll be worth the delay in real police work to see what I can stir up.
“Detective, huh?” I look at Volksman, smile, interlace my fingers and place my arms on the table. Lean his way. Shit-eating grin written all over me. “Last I heard, you were on the list for Detective Sergeant.”
“RDB,” Clevenger says.
One more: “What could possibly knock you down?”
“Richard.”
One more again: “You noodle a school girl?”
“Damn it, Richard.”