Chapter 13 Moving Parts #2
“Nice job on the seatbelts,” Ace said, indicating the racing webbing with the quick-release catch Sonny had installed on both front seats. He was held tight as a baby in a bundle, which was a little dangerous, because he kept imagining he could fly.
“I know you, Jasper,” Sonny said. “I got plans for us in five years.”
“Yeah? Plans?” Ace grinned, tickled. “Your last plans were a racing car and a garage—look at all it got us. What plans you got us now?”
“For one thing,” Sonny said, “we need an extra racing car. People are starting to run away from the SHO, you know that? Somethin’ in forest green, like this car, somethin’ people don’t see coming.”
Ooh…. Ace liked that idea. “That’s good,” he said, seeing the roadblock ahead and picking up speed. All them cops, drinking their coffee, leaning on cars—there had to be a dozen cars, all set up in a row like that. What absolute fun! “Maybe forest green with some gold pinstriping, you think?”
“That’s real good, Ace,” Sonny said, his hand creeping up to the oh shit! bar. “Course, blue’s a classic too. You see any of those throwing star things they use to pop tires up there?”
“Nossir,” Ace said. “I asked Jai, and he said all they had was road flares and attitude. And coffee, it looks like. You see anybody with their hand on a gun?”
“Nope,” Sonny said, fingers flexing as Ace hit the gas a little harder.
“I didn’t think so,” Ace muttered. On its mount on the dashboard, Ace’s phone started to buzz with Burton’s number. “Hit that,” he said mildly, and Sonny used one finger to do that.
“Lee?” he asked.
“Cuthbert just pulled into the station, and Eric and Brady need a distraction.”
Ace laughed, and even he had to admit it was one of the most disturbing sounds he’d ever made. “Don’t you worry now, son,” he said. “Cuthbert won’t be there long. Sonny, you got that chicken stick throttled yet?”
“Almost dead, Ace,” Sonny said, sounding breathless and happy at once. Oh yeah, he worried about Ace, but they’d come together riding cyclones through the sand in a faraway desert. A part of him was right on this apocalyptic horse with Ace, and Ace was sure glad to have him back.
“Let’s kill it,” Ace said, and the roar of the Forester’s engine had nothing to do with safety ratings of happy families and everything to do with speed.
ERIC DID what Burton said and kept his Bluetooth buds in his ears, even though he felt like a complete asshole.
It didn’t help that the police station was about a quarter of a mile down a long driveway, with a parking lot in front so the lobby faced the parking lot and the interstate.
To stand at the counter, Eric had to have his back to the entire world, and besides feeling like an asshole, he also felt like a sitting duck and, as he watched the complete waste of skin and oxygen at the desk try to shine him on, a failure at his profession.
“Sir,” said the night-desk sergeant, “are you positive it was vandals that broke the window of your car?”
“Absolutely,” Eric told him. “I could hear them talking on their phones the whole time.”
“And you’re positive this is your address?”
Desk sergeant could be an honorable position—it was the public’s first introduction to their law enforcement community, and the person who could reassure a crime victim the most when they were trying to file a complaint.
This particular desk sergeant was everything that was wrong with Brady’s entire department. He was short—although Eric wouldn’t normally hold that against him—but he carried himself with that bearing that said, “I know you are, but what am I?”
It was five thirty… erm, five forty-five in the fucking morning, and Eric had come in with a complaint of his car being vandalized in his apartment complex parking lot. And he’d used Brady’s address, so the place wasn’t a dump.
And this guy was disdainful of Eric, the public in general, and Eric’s assertion that he was filing a complaint so his insurance company could fix the damage in particular.
“I’m not even trying to get you to do anything,” Eric said bitterly, feeling a grievance building for his imaginary car and his imaginary job in LA that he was commuting to that morning. “I just want the paperwork done so my insurance company can do all the work.”
“But we haven’t even ascertained if a crime has been committed,” said the little man, hoisting his belt up over his middle-aged tummy with his thumbs.
“The vehicle is right outside,” Eric lied. This little man had no intention of looking at his imaginary car, which was too bad, because Eric had needed to beg for a paper cup of water to get the guy to leave the front desk while Brady crept in.
“Well, hold on now,” the man said, “I thought you said the car was broken?”
“I said the windows were broken, and it was spray bombed,” Eric repeated coldly.
“But if the windows were broken, how could you drive it here without breakin’ the law? I’m gonna have to cite you for driving a car—”
“SUV,” Eric corrected, because he felt like being an ass.
“A vehicular mobile without sufficient visiability,” Desk Sergeant Doolittle finished with a sneer.
“I defy you to find that classification in your stack of paperwork,” Eric told him with a straight face.
On the one hand, Eric was wondering if killing this man would count as a public service—it would be stretching that line he’d drawn for Brady a little fine, but…
well, he thought a lot of the public might rejoice.
On the other hand, this ignorant, trivial little cockroach was doing the Lord’s work, because while the dispatcher monitored a shitton of calls in the comms corner of the office (it wasn’t a center, not really—it was a corner, and she barely had room to stretch her legs), this guy was so intent on making Eric’s life hell, he hadn’t so much as shifted a whisker as Brady had crept along the hallway to the back offices, including, he’d whispered to Eric via their Bluetooth headphones, Cuthbert’s.
And while Doolittle (or, well, Vance, his nametag read) was actively mangling the definition of “vandalism” and “property crime” and “competence,” Eric had gotten an earful on the locations of the roadblocks actively searching for Brady.
Some of them they knew about. Two miles east of the turnoff for the cul-de-sac, they’d seen that one the night before. Five miles west, well, Burton had told Eric and Brady about that one as they’d neared the station.
The three roads to the north and one to the south—those had been a surprise, and Brady had made a comment wondering how many of the men Cuthbert was riding herd on actually belonged to his station.
“We’ve got twenty units—tops,” Brady had said. “There’s between five and ten at every roadblock, which means he called in the CHP on this, and they only know the party line.”
“I’ll tell Ace and Jai,” Burton told them on the open line. “Keep looking for the phone until you hear from me or you absolutely positively have to get out of there.”
Which put Eric dealing with Officer Vance/Doolittle for as long as he possibly could.
“Shit,” Brady muttered in his ear. “Man, I’m almost through his desk and there’s nothing here. Except… eww. Cockroaches. And a half-dead burrito.”
Eric—who was watching Vance/Doolittle rifle through a file cabinet at the end of the help counter—murmured, “If there’s cockroaches, the burrito is fully dead.”
“Yeah, but I’m mad the phone’s not here. I was sure it would be in the station. It was… I was hanging on that!”
Eric couldn’t answer because at that moment his antagonist/patsy turned to him with a smile and a veritable stack of triplicate forms.
“Well lookee here, I do got me some paperwork for vehicular mobility transmandibulary andilism.”
“Is that vandalism, or are you just happy to see me?” Eric asked grimly, taking the stack of papers—most of them not involving vandalism or police report numbers to give to insurance companies at all.
“Your choice,” said Vance. “You don’t wanna fill that out, you can go drive your wrecked car and get pulled over maybe at one of the traffic stops they got goin’.”
“I’ll pass,” Eric told him, watching the sky lighten from the desert-facing window. “What are those for, anyway?”
“There was a bank robbery the other day, you didn’t hear?” Oh yay! Now Vance was his beauty-shop bestie. I could kill him and make it look like a heart attack, Eric thought in desperation.
“Yes,” Eric said, “I was there. In Baker. It was terrible—four men came in, and then they planned to rush out and kill the one officer responding, and then things went to hell. Are you after one of those men?”
The blank expression on the officer’s face was more than worth this entire awkward con.
“They what?” he asked.
“The bank robbers,” Eric said slowly, “had been paid to kill the responding officer.”
“You got that wrong,” said Vance, and for the first time, Eric felt some sympathy for him. “He… our sheriff said he was illicit in the crime.”
It took Eric a moment to process that. “No,” he replied when it had sunk in. “Your man was almost unalived during the crime. Why are you chasing him all over the desert?”
“Because, uh, he killed a man.”
Eric shook his head slowly. “He killed nobody. I was there, remember. A lot of people were there. Not one of us was questioned by the police, so I’m not surprised you don’t know what happened.” This was useless, Eric knew, but since he was playing for time, he might as well spill some truth.
“But… but there’s a manhunt,” Vance said, as though the manhunt explained everything.
“Yes, I know,” Eric said. “For a guy who was apparently left hung out to dry.”
“Well, he was queer.”
Eric gazed at him with an obvious lack of surprise. “And that’s illegal nowadays? I shall have to tell my friends. Do you have a pen I can fill these out with, or do I have to spit in the little boxes?”