Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [1]
“I called Stacey’s mother,” said the lieutenant, “and she’s on her own way right now. Charles, however, is our package.”
It came back to me. Charles T. Houser, thirty, thirty-one, two, a systems analyst with a degree in communications from Gonzaga, deep roots in the community, and no criminal record, jumped bail. He’d been busted for unlawful carnal knowledge, the complaint brought by his other girlfriend, the grown-up one. He was out long enough to pack a bag before he and his fourteen-year-old sweetheart Stacey took it on the arfy-darfy.
“You two have the honor of going to pick him up and bring him back here, without incident,” said the lieutenant.
“Okay,” said the Swede.
“Why us?” said I, not seeing the honor in it. Besides, I thought, why us? They had people for that sort of detail. Odd and I were ordinary in the extreme. Our folders held neither commendations nor reprimands. We were just day to day cops.
“Because I need my two best people on this,” said the lieutenant. How could this be an insult? Trust me, it was. I’d tell you his name but who cares? He’s a lieutenant, suspiciously thin, close set steely eyes, bristles for hair. He doesn’t like me.
“They’re holding him at tribal headquarters, at my request. The Indians would just as soon drop him down a white hole, but I talked to the chief, who seems like a stand-up guy. He’ll keep him on ice for us. Only we’ve got to hustle. If we futz around, they’ll have to turn him over to the county and it’ll add another jurisdiction and another couple of levels of paperwork. Let’s get him back to Spokane before anyone east of the reservation, like our own local newshounds or some young pussy protective society, finds out he’s been had. It’s a nice drive, you’ll enjoy it.”
Until you hit the Snoqualmie Pass, where you can run into snow in June and traffic at 120 mph, the drive from Spokane to Seattle is as boring a five hours’ drive as God has ever devised, and then you still have to go north to this island I had never heard about before.
“I’ll have to go home and change, shower,” I said.
“What for? Shower when you get back.”
Working with men all my life, I’ve grown tired of justifying hygiene. They sweat as much as we do, it just doesn’t bother them.
“Besides,” said the lieutenant, “I want you in uniform.”
Rebuked, I argued for the new Lexus in the confiscated vehicle pool, but he gave us, as I knew he would, the shit-brown Chevy Lumina, with the cage in the back for restraining Charles T., the short-eyed lover boy.
“You stop for gas, for coffee, you stop to pee,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s say six and a half hours to get there. Here’s your Xeroxed directions. Figure an hour for the transfer…”
Like that could happen. “More like two, my guess,” I said.
“…Six and a half hours back.”
“Overtime?” I asked. “Right?”
“Time off for time volunteered.”
Da frick. Who volunteered? If he had asked for volunteers, I would have taken one step backwards. And never known. Would never have had to know.
2.
Odd did not have to do anything before we left town, not pick up anything, or say anything to anyone. Me, I had to pull the shit-brown Lumina into the Rite-Aid lot on our way out of town and give Connors a kiss good-bye.
“Kiss Esther for me, while you’re at it,” he came up with.
I shot him a look.
“What?” All innocent.
“Kiss her yourself.”
Esther worked behind the pharmacy counter with Connors and doled out the prescriptions he filled. Every man in town wanted to kiss her, and I thought most of them probably already had. If young men like Odd had lascivious thoughts about her, what about older men like Connors? The same thoughts squared. I worried about it because it had been nearly a year since I’d flatlined sexually. I was slowing down even before that. The half-and-half’s I’d been giving Connors once a month did nothing for me and I worried they were not enough to hold him. I would