Quintic (26 page)

Damn
those cops were dumb. “Perhaps one of your
colleagues has a brain?”

Mondays Are MacLaren’s
Worst

O
n Monday, big surprise, Chris
was back at the office early. His men came in one by one. Shapiro
punched in after a family weekend, lunch box full of pasta, like
always. Chris would have appreciated a home-cooked pasta dish at
the Shapiros this weekend. If he had called, the Shapiros would
have welcomed him with open arms. They had had supper there a few
weeks ago, Patricia and him. Colleagues having dinner together my
ass.

They weren’t
pretending
anymore, so he had brought
Patricia over with him and had taken her to his place afterwards.
They had to make their relationship more official soon. Maybe he
should propose.
For real,
Princess
. The crooked grin appeared, the
first one in three days. He would stun Patricia with such a
proposal. No doubt she would turn him down rudely. The crooked
smile grew bigger. When he finally dropped his knee and proposed,
he was going to make sure she couldn’t say no. Not that she could
technically, right? Since they were already married, not engaged,
though, but still
legally
married. The smile turned
into a wolfish grin.

Charles
walked in right after Shapiro. The new guy was trying to impress
the boss and the other guys. Chris hadn’t made up his mind about
the rookie yet. Charles did work hard, but he was a little too
by-the-book and lacked initiative. Not that it was necessarily a
bad thing for it balanced off some of Ham’s blunt edge. Teaming
those two proved a good test for the new copper.

Since
Hamilton, for one, wouldn’t be in before nine-thirty ten, barely
making it to the team’s weekly meeting, Chris would get to see a
little of how Charles worked when left to himself.

Reid came in
at eight, regular as a clock, closely followed by LeRoy. Chris
wondered for the nth time if those two had an affair going. It was
obvious to him Reid liked LeRoy, and that LeRoy liked Reid. But
with his three marriages that hadn’t lasted more than six months
each and his endless string of live-in mistresses, LeRoy was not in
a romantic mood these days. This year.

Chris
sighed. If those two ever dated,
official
procedures demanded he transferred one of them. Which would bring
forth a credibility issue because of Patricia. Although,
technically, the damn woman wasn’t working
for
him. Archives officially
had her on their payroll (her pay was not worth a shit compared to
what she was making as a writer) as a temp filing clerk. Damndest
woman.

Fuck
, he had missed her this
weekend. A little softness would have improved his mood
drastically. He longed for her laughs, her smell, her breathing
next to him; he even missed her off-the-wall ideas
except
if
about trips to strip clubs That visit had been a disaster. That he
had not been able to figure out what had possessed her to bring him
there didn’t help with his anger management. That Lemieux thing was
getting to her.

Leaning on
his office door frame, he studied his team as they settled for
work, coffee cup in hand. He had stopped counting, but it was
probably his fifth (huge) mug of the morning. The team teased one
another, read emails, made calls and teased some more. Bridget had
been in at seven per her usual. She still looked tired, her cold
not completely gone but was busy answering the phones (without
using the pad), doing follow-ups for the guys with her usual
efficiency.

DesForges
and Frankke
clomped in together. The guys
had taken into starting the week with breakfast at a restaurant a
couple of blocks off. Good food, good service they said. Good
waitresses Chris suspected. Both guys were incorrigible bachelors,
a bit screwed-up but reliable. Those guys had his back. Whatever
the situation, they could handle it, and had many times before.
Like the rest of them. His team, a damn fine team. Quartet
leftovers excluded, he had picked each individually. Great
choices.

Busy as they
were, s
howing appreciation often came way
down his to-do list, but Chris made it a point of honour to remind
them every couple of weeks of how important each one of them was to
the team. The fucking quartet he didn’t consider important; he had
not chosen them, which might help explain why it had blown up in
his face. The remains of the four were persona non grata.
Indefinitely.

Fredrick and
Hamilton entered the conference room at ten sharp. They had learned
not to be late for the weekly meeting’s kick-off. Fred was not the
most sociable and well-adjusted guy. Chris had arrested him some
years ago. The kid being on the cusp of adulthood (according to his
birth certificate at least), Chris had commuted the kid’s arrest
into a job, Chris’s first and only try at a rehabilitation
programme. A crash lesson.

Today, a
couple of years later, Chris still debated with himself. Was he
truly helping Fred? When one knew how to work around the kid’s
phobias and quirks (and Chris knew how), Fred was good at what he
did. Chris never expected a full reintegration; Freddie was too
damaged for that, but most of the time, the kid was (somewhat)
functioning in society from deep down there in the cave. Fred acted
as the team’s geek; he knew how to work the technologies and
computers and had helped the team on numerous occasions, on and off
the records, efficiently.

When the kid
walked in
yesterday’s clothes (last
week’s?), Chris wondered when was the last time he had changed or
washed. Fredrick shuffled in with his head down, eyes on his
blackberry, or his iPad or whatever gizmo he was playing with, and
sat close to the door, not looking at anybody, not saying hello.
Patricia wasn’t in today, hence Fred’s lack of social
interest.

Ham’s entry
was in total opposite. The guy ambled in like he owned the place,
grin all around preceding a flow of crude remarks. The
show.

Chris closed
the door behind Ham. “OK, guys, settle down. I don’t want us to be
at it all day. Shapiro, you start.”

Fredrick
seemed to wake
at that. He lifted his
head and looked around. “Where is she?”

Patricia
being Patricia, Fredrick
adored her. As much as she liked geeks, Chris knew from the likes
of Joshua and his friends, geeks loved her more. She was possibly
one of the only females to have touched Fred
physically
, skin to skin
. The damn woman
had the habit of fingertip-touched the kid’s forearm when she spoke
with him; she held his wrist when they strolled together, patted
his shoulder when she observed him work. More than her touch, it
was the attention she gave Fred that drew the kid toward her. She
was sweet, gentle without being motherly, and visited him in the
basement to enquire about his work, his friends, his life. Had Fred
not been scared and grateful, Chris might doubt to whom Fredrick’s
loyalty swung because she had
tricked
the kid into doing
special projects for her. Damn woman.

“
Patricia
will not be in today.” Nothing else to add.

Chris had
brought a paper calendar, on which Bridget had written out
Patricia’s schedule (Patricia was only in every other week), but to
no use. Half the time, the damn woman didn’t follow her damn
agenda, so Freddie here kept on asking for her. Except for when she
had replaced Bridget for a sick day or two, Patricia had not been
around much lately; the kid was in withdrawal. Fred wouldn’t lift
his eyes from his toy for the rest of the meeting, but as long as
he was listening, it made no difference to Chris.

The meeting
took the rest of the morning. He had Bridget order some sandwiches
and salads, and they worked through lunch. Everyone started to
leave after that. Visits to do, follow-ups on leads, places to
inspect, people to call, people to see.

Chris
headed to Central. Brass wanted to review the
Feds’ latest visit. A complete waste of time to discuss another
waste of time. He did not bother checking the quartet leftovers
since he didn’t fucking care. He met some contacts, chatted with
old colleagues, and didn’t return to his office until three, after
a quick stop at Vitto’s place for a double espresso.

Bridget
and Frankke were waiting
for him. His guys had no time to spare and certainly no time to
wait around for him. Hence, Frankke’s sitting in his office was not
a good sign.

“Was waiting for you.”

“
I can see
that. I had
a meeting at Central. You
should have called, I would have enjoyed the
interruption.”

“Thought better to be with you
in case you blew a gasket.”

“Fuck, that sounds bad. What’s
up?”

“
I was at
the 31
^st
station, near the West Precinct, info on my case, you know?
I heard a copper called in a body. Dead girl in an alley. The
locals were closing down the place when I left. I’ve been listening
in; the locals are still at the scene.”

“
And?”
Regular stuff, Chris didn’t see where Frankke was going with
this.

Bridget looked at him
strangely.

“
Look, boss,
Intel so far is the cook found the girl, but they’re questioning
their clientele.”

“
Get to the
punch line, Frankke.”

“
Dispatch
has an ambulance waiting because one of their customers is
incoherent. I twitched when the dicks at the scene reported the
customer, an unidentified female, plucked the body from behind a
dump container in a back alley.”

Chris’s
heart skipped a bit. What the fuck
was
she doing there?

The Good Cop, the Bad
Cop, and MacLaren

H
e dialled Patricia’s number as
he headed to the car with Frankke. No answer. He tried her hotel
suite, hung up after the sixth ring.

He
phoned the hotel’s front desk next. The
receptionist transferred him to the hotel’s cook, and then to the
doorman; those three were part of the unofficial watchdog team he
was slowly organising around her. He knew their loyalties went to
her first, no contest, but they did help out from time to time,
mostly when she had not specifically asked them not to. The men
both informed him Patricia had not been seen since her early
morning departure. Shit.

“
You got
confirmation on the witness yet, Frankke?”

“Nothing.”

Chris drove
too fast. Their first stop was
at the
31
^st
station. If he didn’t clear it with the local chief there,
he would not be able to take over once they got to the diner. And
he intended to handle the case. He had to. Again. If.

The local
chief wasn’t collaborative
. Hence, the
talk at the station took too fucking long. Even if he had not
wanted the case to start with, now that someone else wanted in, the
man wanted something out of the trade. “Seeing as you have a
similar case, you can go over the scene, MacLaren, but, for now, I
keep the case.”

“
I want to
see all the logs,
” Chris
specified.

“
Let my guys
do their things then we’ll talk.”
Asshole
. “And MacLaren? Just so
we’re clear. Consider this a personal favour I’m doing you here.
You’ll owe me.”
Asshole
jerk
.

Chris hated
to owe anybody anything
. “What’s the word
on the witness?”

“No ID.”

He had a
plan.
First, get her out. Then, get the
case, find a way to clear the ledger with the chief. Then put her
under arrest. Handcuff her to the bed posts. Buy bed
posts.

The
street
was cordoned off with yellow tape
and forensics was already at work when they arrived. Chris parked
next to the yellow crime scene ribbon, and getting out, asked for
the detective in charge.

If
the chief had kept his part of the deal and
called his guys as he was supposed to, someone should have been
waiting for them, but it took more than five minutes to get a
police officer their way. A cop motioned them to the diner. Ten
steps from the front door, another cop blocked the way and gestured
to a plain-clothes officer.

“What you here for again?” The
dick asked.

No fucking
collaboration, the chief’s way of ensuring Chris
didn’t override his authority. Unacceptable. He signalled
Frankke, “Sneak closer,” while he growled at the detective in
charge.

Local cops
barred the door for
Frankke. Frankke was
an impressive man, built like a barrel, scarred face and black. He
could have pushed the cops aside and walked right in had Chris told
him to but, if Patricia was indeed the mystery witness, they might
need the locals’ collaboration. So Chris kept his calm and waited
while Frankke argued, pushed a little and managed a peek into the
restaurant.

H
e came back and nodded at Chris.
“We have a visual.” Meaning he had seen her.