by D V Wolfe
“Agent Connell,” a voice called as soon as we pushed through the door.
Luke smiled at a policewoman standing beside the copy machine. She was giving him a million-watt version of her own smile and throwing in some eye batting for good measure.
“Good Morning, Officer Parker,” The woman’s smile faltered when she noticed me standing beside him. Luke followed her gaze and then motioned to me. “This is Dr. Wesson. She’s a specialist I’ve brought in for the Copia inquiries.”
The woman raised an eyebrow at me. “A specialist?”
“Forensic Accounting,” Luke said.
“Oh,” The woman turned back to the copy machine. “Very good. Well, the debrief is in twenty minutes, I’m just copying interview notes for the group.” She turned back to look at me. Her expression was somewhere between wanting me to leave and wanting to throw me into lockup. “Sorry, your specialist will have to be cleared before she can be allowed into debriefs. She can wait in the waiting area until it’s over.”
I nodded. “Ok by me.” The police officer looked surprised as if she had expected more of a fight from me. I glanced around and saw what looked like a breakroom through a doorway to one side. “Is it ok if I get myself a cup of coffee?”
“Oh,” Officer Parker said, “I haven’t made any yet today.”
“I can do that,” I said, breezing by her. This was the perfect opportunity. I had a flask of holy water in my inside jacket pocket and a Kleenex full of rock salt in my pants pocket. This had worked before. I was pretty sure Officer Parker was reacting to the fact that I had come in with someone she might be interested in. I assumed she would have been more aggressive with me if she were a demon. Especially if she was working for ole Dukey. Besides putting on a suit, I hadn’t even tried to disguise my appearance and I had a feeling that all his peons would know my face.
The break room was empty for the moment and I hustled over to the coffee maker. I dumped the rock salt in with the coffee grounds. The machine didn’t have a water reservoir. It was hooked directly into the waterline at the sink so I had to put the holy water in the bottom of the coffee pot for the new coffee to drip on top of. There was the sound of footsteps behind me just as I stuffed the flask back into my coat pocket.
“What are you doing?” Officer Parker asked behind me, her voice hard. I turned to face her, plastering on my best smile.
“Making coffee,” I said, trying to sound like the picture of innocence. I turned slightly and hit the start button. I just needed to make sure the coffee started dripping into the pot before she saw the water in the bottom and tried to dump it out.
“What did you just stuff into your pocket,” Parker barked, striding towards me.
So much for being non-aggressive. I could hear footsteps outside the breakroom. Probably heard Officer Paranoid’s barking and were headed over to see if there would be a showdown. Two men appeared in the doorway.
“What’s going on, Elaine?” The older of the two men asked, looking at Parker.
“She just stuffed something into her inside pocket,” Parker said.
I held up my hands. “I was just making coffee.”
“And then you stuffed something in your pocket!” Parker said. She moved one hand to rest on her gun.
I kept one hand up and carefully snaked my hand into my jacket. My fingertips brushed against the flask and then found the wadded-up Kleenex. I dragged out the tissue and held it up for her and the men to see.
“I have allergies,” I said, apologetically. “The smell of the coffee grounds was making my nose run. It’s embarrassing.”
The two men in the doorway sighed and looked at Parker. Parker looked angry and embarrassed. She gave me a “watch yourself” glare and pushed past the two men, stalking out of the room.
The younger man had a buzz cut so short I could see his scalp. He was a foot taller than the older guy who was completely bald. Bald and Balder. They were both wearing well-worn suits. Bald strode into the room and offered me his hand. “Detective Marlowe, but everyone calls me Jim.”
I took a breath, trying to not stumble on my introduction. “Dr. Lucille Wesson, but everyone calls me Dr. Lucy.”
“Doctor huh? What are you a doctor of?” I could tell Marlowe was just being friendly. He wasn’t trying to trip me up. Which was good, because I could do that all by myself. I gave him my most convincing smile.
“Finance, but I’ve since specialized in Forensic Accounting.” I was so proud of myself for not stumbling, that I almost broke character.
“Oh I see,” Marlowe said. “I suppose the Feds brought you in for a consult?” I just nodded and smiled, not wanting to say more than I had to and deciding to quit while I was ahead. He motioned to the older man who was nosing around in the fridge. “This is my partner, Detective Jerry Thompson.” Thomspon waved at me and went back to digging through the fridge. I could smell the coffee brewing behind me and I turned to see that the holy water wasn’t obvious anymore. I started moving back across the room towards the lobby.
“Wait, aren’t you going to get a cup?” Marlowe called after me.
“Oh in a minute,” I said. Further down the hall, a door was open, revealing what looked like a conference room. In the waiting area and hallway, I counted four more guys in Fed-style suits and another guy in a shabby brown suit. Brown suit guy was chewing gum and blowing bubbles before popping them loudly and sucking the gum back into his teeth. He wondered into the conference room, head down, reading something. After a moment, he stuck his head back out into the hallway, but he didn’t look up.
“Parker! Coffee!”
“Yes, Chief,” I heard Parker call from the front desk area. I heard her coming and quickly got out of the way. She was carrying a coffee carafe and glaring at me. I gave her a sympathetic smile as she went by. This was going to be easier than I thought. Well…
“Connell,” I heard the Chief bark. “Where’s Burke this morning?”
Awkward.
Since he couldn’t say, ‘Well Chief, turns out he was possessed by a demon and so my fake Forensics Accountant out there had to run him through with a sword and then sneak what was left of his body into the local crematorium after breaking and entering,’ he said, “Not sure. He was complaining to me yesterday that he thought he might be coming down with something. He might have taken a shuttle back to the airport and headed back to D.C.”
The Chief chuckled. “All the better. He was a crabby s.o.b.”
No follow up questions, no worries or asking if he’d tried calling Burke on his cell phone. Clearly, the two hours we spent on closing every loop and figuring out what anyone could possibly ask about Burke, had been unnecessary.
I sat down in the lobby and tried not to be noticed while the others started drifting down the hallway to the conference room. A few minutes later, Parker marched out of the breakroom with the carafe in front of her, and then there was the sound of a door shutting down the hall and Parker returned to the front desk area. She glanced at me and then went to one of the desks and sat down at the computer.
I decided to try to mend some fences and maybe glean some intel from her if she had any. I didn’t have much else to do while I waited for the men in the conference room to all choke on salty, holy water coffee.
“Wow,” I said softly. “You must be the only one they trust to follow the investigation leads solo. You’re probably already working through a plan now, while they’re down the hall, trying to get their shit together enough to follow what you tell them when you go in there.” It was a stab in the dark, but the worst she could probably do was snap at me and tell me to shut up and then go...I guess, tell on me. Instead, she shook her head.
“No, I wasn’t invited to the debrief,” She said.
“Why?” I asked, pretending to look shocked. “I mean, you were the first one here. You were already prepping notes for the debrief, I thought you would be running the meeting.”
She pushed back from her computer a bit and shook her head.
“I don’t have the right equipment down south if you know what I mean.”
I huffed indignance for her. “Well I’m sorry, but that’s just bullshit.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’ve been busting my hump here for ten years. Marlowe waltzes in two years behind me, never been a cop before and doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. I train him. Teach him how to be a good cop, follow procedure, interrogate suspects, the whole nine yards. Then he gets promoted to detective over me.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I said. I got up slowly and moved to the front counter to be closer to her. I leaned on it, my attention riveted on her so she’d keep talking.
She glanced down the hallway at the closed conference door and then got up and came to stand on the other side of the front counter. “I was hoping that if I got a chance to really impress some of these Feds, they might put in a good word for me at Homeland Security and I could get out of this hell hole.”
“Really? You don’t like it here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I mean, I grew up here but things have just gotten, I don’t know, colder. Especially this last year.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to curb my enthusiasm and just sound empathetic.
She lowered her voice even more. “Odd things. Neighbors that I’ve known most of my life are not as friendly. We’ve had to break up a lot of fights between groups and individuals who never had any problems before. I know that a lot of small businesses are having to close because of the shopping mall and no one can get good help because the new plant has hired all the strong backs. Things like that. It’s just...not my town anymore.”
I nodded. “I heard about the new plant.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “I should hope so, isn’t that what you’re consulting on?”
I shrugged. “Well, mostly on Bill Griffith’s personal and business finances, but I haven’t been over to the plant yet. What was your first impression of it?”
“Big, sanitary, and I don’t know, something just...didn't feel right. It puts me on edge every time I have to go in there for something. I guess that’s a plus of not being a detective right now. I’d have to be there just about every day.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “Every day?”
She nodded. “Griffith is supposedly very busy and the guys have had a hard time getting him pinned down for a real interview. They get an answer here and there, but they’re always so vague, according to Marlowe, that they have to then come back, do research and ten more questions pop up because of the first answer.”
“Can’t they force the interview?” I asked. “You know, compel him to take some time to talk to them?”
She shook her head. “We don’t have enough P.C. to compel him to do squat. So, we just keep going back, dogging him to talk to us.”
“Has he shown any hostility?” I asked.
She shook her head. “That’s the strange thing. Any other person under investigation would get annoyed and lash out. Personally, I think that’s what Marlowe and Thompson are hoping for. They’re bringing the Feds with them to every interview, hoping that they might be able to either compel him under federal regulations because of something they see in plain sight or something he says. Or maybe they’re just hoping that he’ll be so rattled with a herd of Feds looking up his skirt that they’ll shake something loose. He has been cool-headed and pleasant every time they go to talk to him. He only ever has a few minutes for them because of meetings and conference calls, but he’s always apologetic before he slips off.”
“Huh,” I said. “So nothing really feels out of the ordinary with him?”
“I mean, besides the fact that he’s acting so ordinary that it’s almost creepy?”
I opened my mouth to reply but there was a commotion coming from the conference room.
“Jesus Christ,” I heard the Chief boom as the door swung open. The men in the conference room were all coughing and gagging. I was moving around the front desk, my left hand itching, ready to draw the sword. There was no blistering skin or melting that I could see. No screams either. “What the hell is in this coffee, Parker?! This is the bitterest shit. Did you fuck up and put salt instead of sugar in the bowl this morning?”
Parker looked confused. “No Chief, I swear.”
“Well, someone screwed up,” He coughed again and his gum flew out of his mouth and landed on the carpet. “You made the coffee and you brought the coffee in. I’m not seeing anyone else in this process who could have-”
Ok, that was enough. “I made the coffee,” I said to the Chief. He paused, mid-tirade at Parker, and swung his watery gaze at me.
“Who the hell are you?” He asked.
“Federal consultant,” I said.
“What did you do to the coffee?” He asked.
I shrugged. “I always mix salt with the grounds. It’s how we do it in D.C.”
The Chief didn’t seem to have an answer to that. The conference room had emptied behind him and the men were filing into the breakroom to dump their cups. No one appeared to have anything wrong with them except for a bad taste in their mouths. I was disappointed. So none of the cops or the remaining Feds were possessed. Burke must have been a one and done. Of course, if that was the case, whoever his boss was must be wondering where his messenger is now. He’d sent him over to Luke’s hotel. Why? Luke wasn’t possessed. He hadn’t even been wrapped up in the demon aspect of the investigation until Noah and I had mistakenly pegged him as the demon and staked him out. Realization hit me like a fastball to the head. We...I...had made Luke a target. The damn demon was probably tracking me, found Luke, and possessed his partner, Burke, because of it.
“This is Dr. Wesson, a Forensics Accountant. She’s going to be reviewing Griffith’s finances to see if she can glean any insight on him. She’ll be heading back to D.C. to look over the files, but I wanted her to meet the team that was ‘boots on the ground’ here,” Luke was saying. The men were all silent, staring at me with their newly rinsed and empty coffee cups in their hands.
“She made the coffee,” The Chief muttered.
15
I gave the rest of the men a wave and my most winning smile. “Sorry, we like our coffee salty where I’m from. My mistake.” They grumbled for a minute and then start filing back down the hall to the conference room. “Nice to meet you all,” I call after them. The Chief was the last one to head back down the hall.
“Parker,” he barked. “Make a new pot.”
“Yes, Chief,” she said.
“I hear urinal cakes give coffee an even more robust flavor,” I muttered to her.
She glanced back at me. “Tempting.” She moved back down the hall to the break room. The Chief had already headed into the conference room and now the only person still in the room with me was Luke. He was looking at me with the same surprise I was feeling. We’d made it through the charade, well almost. I motioned him towards me and he glanced down the hall and then hurried over.
“Great job,” he said. “What’s the verdict? Are they demons?”
I shook my head. “No, sounds like they’re just chauvinists. Well, the Chief is at least.”
Luke nodded. “I don’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed.”
“Combo platter,” I said. “Hey, was Burke staying at the Holiday Inn with you?”
Luke shook his head. “No, he and the rest of the agents are at the Ramada. I stay at the Holiday because my personal credit card gives me bonuses for staying there.”
I nodded. “Ok. Well, I hope you got those bonuses already because you’re not staying there anymore.”
“I’m not?”
I shook my head. “No, you’re moving in with Noah and me. I think the demon that was wearing Burke, found you because Noah and I were staking you out.”
Luke shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll be fine…”
“No,” I said. “I know these fuckers. They’ll take you and torture you just to do it. And you’re connected with
me now and they really hate people connected with me.”
“How are you any safer? You’re not even carrying a weapon,” Luke said. The room was still deserted, so I put a hand up and touched the hilt of the Ukkin sword on my back, pulling it out an inch or two so he could see it. Luke’s eyes widened. “I wondered where the sword came from last night. I swear it was like you pulled it out of your ass.”
“Thankfully, no, it just disappears when its sheathed,” I said.
“Wow,” Luke said. “Where can I get one of those?”
“You really don’t want the hassle that goes along with it. What’s next?” I asked.
Luke shook his head. “They’re discussing throwing in the towel on the investigation. At least locally. They can’t find anything in their jurisdiction to even give them enough for a search warrant. I told them that we might be able to find something with another business he’s connected to, which might eventually turn into something that would give them what they need, but the Chief isn’t very impressed and it’s feeling like he wants to move on.”
“What does that mean for us?” I asked.
Luke shrugged. “We’ll have to get creative. Give me a minute to tie things up here and we can head out.”
Parker re-emerged from the breakroom carrying a different carafe. She paused and grinned at me before heading down the hallway to the conference room.
“Hey,” I said to Luke. “Parker sounds like a good cop. I think she might want to move to something on the Federal level. You should put in a good word for her with your people.”
Luke looked surprised. “You two talked?”
I shrugged. “A little bit. Just saying.”
Luke nodded. “I see her. I know how hard she works. I’ll mention it to Stephens. He does a lot of recruiting when he’s not a part of local liaison task forces.”
“Good,” I said. “Go wrap things up. Being this close to law enforcement for extended periods of time gives me a rash.”