Chapter Ten #3
“Is this you about to do something stupid?” JJ asked. “Or is this how you regulate yourself instead of whiskey?”
The question made Cloister pause as he reached for the lock on Bon’s door.
He’d not have put it that way. He just liked dogs.
Always had. When he’d been a kid it hadn’t mattered how bad things had gotten with his mom, his stepdad’s dogs had always been there.
Dogs had always been straightforward. So…
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” Cloister said.
He flipped the latch to open the door. Bon shook herself vigorously, hair and concrete dust left to float in the air, and pranced out on her toes. She wound herself between Cloister’s legs and whipped his shins with her tail in her excitement at being released.
“It was two hours,” Cloister told her as he bent down to grab her head in both hands and scrub her ears. “Not a month. And I know Hudson was in here to spoil you.”
Lies, Bon assured him as she took advantage of his position to stick her tongue up his nose. Her breath smelled of fish, so he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her. Cloister pushed her head affectionately and straightened up.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
JJ raised his perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Dogs work faster than whiskey,” he remarked. “Good to know. And as I said, it could have been worse.”
“That implies it could have been better.”
JJ’s phone beeped. He checked the message briefly and flicked his attention back to Cloister.
“Well, I wouldn’t have advised you to imply the investigating officer has a small dick–”
“I meant his character.”
“Sure,” JJ said. “That’s what I have on my dating profile, too. ‘Looking for a man packing a big…character.’”
His phone caught his attention again. He checked it and grimaced.
“I have to go,” he said. “But you did well for most of it. Next time, do well for all of it.”
“There’s going to be a next time?” Cloister asked. He didn’t really need to, but…
JJ shrugged his answer. “Look, I know he can’t prove you’re dirty. If you were, one of my clients would have let me know—”
Cloister snorted. “I appreciate that,” he said. “Not sure it’s a reference I can take to court.”
“— but the problem is that we can’t prove you’re innocent,” JJ said. “Well, it’s not my problem. Legally, I don’t need to prove that. It’s just a lot of shit getting thrown at you by someone with authority. The assumption is going to be that he must have something to go on.”
His phone actually rang this time. JJ made an aggrieved face as he answered it.
“I’ll be touch,” JJ said as he lifted the phone to his ear. “I’m already at the sheriff’s department. Just tell him to shut up and—”
“I’m not sure I can afford for you to be in touch,” Cloister pointed out to JJ’s back as he walked away. “I’m not dirty, remember?”
JJ gestured over his shoulder. “Merlo’s problem,” he said as he let himself out. As the door swung shut behind him, JJ snapped into the phone. “Yes, that goes for you, too. Just in a different way.”
Despite everything, Cloister felt his shoulders go up at the idea of Javi paying for him. He hadn’t asked for that…but he’d not turned down the hour of JJ’s time he was already going to be billed for, either.
A nudge of a cold nose at his fingers interrupted Cloister’s mental budget—it wasn’t like he lived an expensive life, he had savings—and he looked down at her.
“I know,” he said. “We’ll work it out.”
He clipped her lead on and headed out of the kennels into the comparatively fresh air of a midsummer day in Plenty. As he stepped down into the parking lot, he heard raised voices.
“Nobody asked you people to get involved,” a man’s tense, agitated voice delivered the condemnation.
“But you did, and now you can’t even provide me any reassurances about our safety?
You just make things worse than they already were and then wipe your hands of them?
My husband is missing, and you don’t care, but the civil rights of our stalker is your first concern? ”
Under the rant, Cloister picked out Tancredi’s voice as she tried to placate the man.
“You have to understand…we don’t have any…I assure you…”
She sounded stressed but not worried. Still. Cloister headed around the side of the building. As he squinted against the sun, he saw a vaguely familiar man gesturing in frustration as Tancredi tried to usher him back inside the station.
It took a second. The last time Cloister had seen the man he’d been in his pajamas, but he’d been as loud and irritated. The homeowner from the stalker case.
Cloister hesitated for a second. He was suspended and under investigation, but…it would feel good to do something stupid.
“Mr…” he hesitated a beat as his brain fished up the name. “Lassiter. It’s…I was one of the responding officers the other night. Is anything wrong?”
Lassiter turned around to glare at him, his face flushed and jaw tight.
“My husband is missing,” he snapped, and then he gave Tancredi a dirty look. “And according to her, it’s not a problem, even though you let the fucking creep that was in our house go already. Does that sound like anything is right?”