“Police!” Kirk yelled with the shotgun pointed at the shooter. When the shooter turned, Kirk lit him up.
With the shooter down, Bautista got up from under the dining room table and walked toward Kirk.
“Are you alright?” Kirk asked.
“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m okay. Just wondering what the fuck got into you?” Kirk asked angrily.
“Me? What did I do?”
“I said wait for backup.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No,” Bautista said and stepped to Kirk. “That is not what you said.”
“Yes, it is what I said!”
“You said you were going to call for backup. You didn’t say anything about waiting!” Bautista shouted back as other cops arrived at the scene. “That is not the same thing!”
Kirk’s eyes narrowed in frustration.
“Fuck it,” he said and then turned to the uniformed officers as they came in the door. After explaining the situation, Kirk instructed the officers to check the rest of the house as one of the uniforms checked the body for a pulse, and then searched him. The officer found and then checked his driver’s license.
“Guy’s name is Lawrence W. Ryder.”
All Kirk and Bautista could do was look at each other and shake their heads, because although they had found Ryder, it wasn’t the Ryder they were looking for. Now Kirk was even madder because Bautista took an unnecessary and stupid risk for nothing.
The two detectives argued about it all the way back to the precinct. It got pretty-heated at times and it ended with Bautista yelling, “If you don’t want me as a partner anymore, get another one!”
Kirk didn’t say anything, he simply walked to his desk and sat down, thinking maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. Since they were partners and spent all day together, it was inevitable that their personal relationship would ease into their business relationship.
And that can’t happen because lives are at stake.
Maybe it was time to put an end to either their partnership or end the relationship that for him had gotten cumbersome. But one thing was certain to Kirk, one of them had to go.
“Kirk! My office!” Lieutenant Sanchez yelled, and Kirk stood up. Bautista got up too. “Not y
ou, Bautista. Just Kirk.”
Bautista sat down and watched as Kirk went into the office, but not Sanchez. He walked over to the desk of Detective Rachael Dawkins. Bautista had paid attention to the way she looked at Kirk, so she didn’t like Dawkins. Now Bautista grew angrier as she watched Sanchez and Dawkins go into the office and shut the door.
Once the pleasantries were exchanged, Sanchez got to the reason that he brought the two detectives into his office.
“A teenage girl’s body’s been found gagged, bound, raped and her throat was slit,” Sanchez began. “This is the third body this month and the seventh in the past three months.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that,” Kirk said.
“Neither have I,” Dawkins said.
“Major Case has been keeping it quiet.”
“I guess that’s changed.” Kirk said.
“Yes. Suddenly, it’s become clear to the higher ups that the cases actually are related and that we have a serial killer on our hands.”