by Loki Renard
After seeing the deceased, Jack would have expected any wife to have been on the heavily tattooed, somewhat toothless side of the equation. Instead, he found himself confronted with a quiet woman with mousy brown hair cut in a neat bob. She wore a long skirt and a blouse with a silk scarf knotted about her neck. Preppy didn’t begin to cover it.
“You’re the wife?” Jamie asked the question in shocked tones.
“I am Mrs. Brampton,” the woman said, speaking in soft, cultured tones. “My husband has been missing for a month. He simply disappeared from the office one day.”
“He was a stockbroker, correct?” Jack took over the interview, throwing a sharp be quiet glance at Jamie.
“Yes,” Mrs. Brampton nodded, straightening a piece of paper and chasing a non-existent stray wisp of hair away from her face. “He traded equities.”
“And did rather well at it, by all accounts.”
“Our lives have been comfortable as a result of my husband’s work, that is true,” Mrs. Brampton said. “Which is why we suspected foul play when he disappeared.” She began to tear up in spite of her staunch efforts to remain impassive. “I did not recognize him at the morgue.”
“No,” Jack said gently. “I understand it was the dental records that provided the match.”
“Yes,” she sniffed, delicately dabbing at her eye with a lace trimmed kerchief. “I can’t quite bring myself to believe it.”
“Did he show any signs of instability before he went missing?”
“No,” she said, “none. Lee was a very clean living man. He was religious and serious about his health. He would never have done anything like this of his own volition.”
“Can you think of anything that might have caused him to snap this way?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head profusely. “The only thing I can imagine is some kind of… some kind of daemonic possession.”
Jack glanced over and noticed that Jamie had indeed made a note on her pad about daemonic possession. Of all possible causes of death, Jack did not regard it as being one of the more likely contributors.
“We will be investigating his death very thoroughly, Mrs. Brampton. You have my word on that,” Jack said. “We may need to contact you again with further questions. I hope you will be available.”
Taking a lavender kerchief, Mrs. Brampton dabbed at her eyes and then nose, neither of which were running. “I will do all I can,” she assured him.
“Then for the moment, we will leave you be. Thank you very much for your time, Mrs. Brampton.”
*****
“Maybe we should get her a psych screen,” Jamie said as they rode down in a shining elevator, which played strains of classical violin over the smooth churning of gears and rollers beyond the embossed walls. “She’s gone off the deep end.”
“Hmm?”
“The daemon thing. She’s blaming this on ghosts. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“Grieving people will believe in anything,” Jack replied. “It’s no doubt easier to think that her husband was taken over by an evil spirit rather than left her of his own volition and spiraled into a very dark place.”
“I guess,” Jamie said, sounding a little more sympathetic. “I mean, how does a stockbroker end up a meth-head throwing himself at the cops?”
“Psychotic break, perhaps induced by prior drug use,” Jack suggested. “These brokers usually aren’t strangers to cocaine at the very least. It’s not all that great a jump to crystal meth. The wife may not have known about it, may have attributed signs of drug use to overwork.”
“Hmm,” Jamie nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Right now,” he said. “We’re going back to the scene of the death. Forensics should be done with it by now, we’ll see what we can glean from the place and see if there is anyone about to interview.”
“Sounds good, boss,” Jamie smiled.
He smiled back. After the first day from hell, Jamie was actually being very pleasant and placid. Maybe he had misjudged her. Maybe she wasn’t a complete pain in the rear end. Maybe it had just been those first day jitters that made her so completely arrogant.
Together, Jack and Jamie drove out of the city center and to the rundown edge where city met suburb in a stormy clash of class and culture. Just a few miles further and there were leafy green well-manicured yards with painstakingly whitewashed fences and well kept houses with all-American families. But where they stood, large red brick buildings rose four stories high, housing those who did not quite have the income to purchase a little piece of peripheral paradise.
“Man,” Jamie said as they got out of the car. “This place is a dump.”
A certain smell hung in the air, a used, decayed, dirty smell as if all the inhabitants had decided that bathing was too bourgeois. In reality, it was not a matter of those who lived there smelling, but the fumes of nearby factories, tanneries and gelatin plants belching the rot of animal decay into the atmosphere.
Out here, when something got broken, it stayed broken. Many of the apartments had windows boarded up, not because they were abandoned, but because the cost of replacing the glass was deemed too high. Inside, electric lights would be burning, consuming more electricity than would be necessary if the window had been fixed in the first place.
Fact of the matter was, living in the ghetto wasn’t cheap. Shoddy construction and lack of maintenance meant water damage, rot and mold. It also meant that there were plenty of places where buildings had warped and were no longer weather tight. In the winter, keeping warm meant running heat 24/7, which cost a bundle. It was more expensive to heat a one roomed apartment out here than it cost to keep an entire house warm out in the well insulated, double glazed suburbs.
Jamie was right; it was a dump.
“Keep an eye out,” Jack said. “We’ll want to question anyone who might have known Mr. Brampton before he died. Stay close by me and don’t get too mouthy, all right? People around here don’t like to talk to the authorities, so don’t expect a warm reception.”
Jamie nodded and fell in behind him. Again, Jack felt a modicum of relief. Maybe he’d worried for no good reason. She seemed to be able to do as she was told after all.
For an hour or so, they went back and forth, asking people sitting out on porches if they’d known the man who died the day before. For the most part, people were closemouthed. They looked at Jack and Jamie with sullen, hostile gazes and said little.
“And this,” Jack murmured to Jamie, “is why we pay informants.”
“Some of them are just avoiding us,” Jamie scowled. She was growing impatient with the process, which was getting them nowhere. “Don’t they know we’re just trying to solve a crime?”
“They do,” Jack chuckled. “But most of these people aren’t exactly accustomed to being on the right side of the law – or seeing the state as a friend, for that matter.”
“They damn well should,” Jamie grumbled. “Where do they think their food stamps come from?”
“Easy, Tiger,” Jack said sharply. “We’re not here to judge. We’re here for information.”
Jamie shrugged, then pointed. “What about that guy? He looks like he might know something.”
The moment she pointed, the man, who had been walking down the street minding his own business, broke into a run.
Before Jack knew what was happening, Jamie had given chase. He took to his heels after her, but she had a head start and she was fast like a greyhound – triggered by motion like one too, as far as he could tell. She couldn’t have been more invested in the chase if she were a dog on the track pursuing a fleeing fake bunny.
“Stop,” she yelled, giving entirely unnecessary voice. “FBI!”
The news that he was being chased by the FBI did nothing to slow the suspected witness. If anything, he ran faster. Unfortunately for him, Jamie was hot on his tail and closing the distance. She was fast. Very fast. Much faster than Jack would have given her credit for, in fact.
What she planned to do when s
he reached the man was unclear. He was a good deal larger than she, and she hadn’t drawn her weapon, so she obviously wasn’t planning on opening fire. That was the only redeeming part of the whole clusterfuck as far as Jack was concerned.
“Stop!” Jamie shouted, hurling herself into thin air. Jack watched incredulously as Jamie wrapped her arms around the suspect’s lower legs and bought him down in a rugby tackle. It was impressive to watch a 120 pound woman bring down someone at least twice her size, but the fight had gone to the ground, which was bad news for Jamie – fast and nimble as she was, there was no way she was going to subdue an angry man more than twice her size alone. Almost close enough to help, but still vital steps away Jack watched her dodge several punches, big fists missing her head by fractions of an inch.
Time seemed to slow to syrup. He felt as though he were pushing through some invisible substance. Closing the final yards between Jamie and her suspect seemed to take forever, and the rush of relief he felt when he finally managed to reach out, grab her by the collar and haul her off the suspect was beyond that he’d felt in a very long time.
“That’s enough, agent!”
Caught in his grip, Jamie shrugged at him wordlessly. Fortunately for her, Jack had the suspect to deal with. Fortunately for the suspect, he had the sense to stay on the ground. He was panting and wide-eyed, angry as all hell.
“Sir, why did you run?”
“Because I ain’t talking to no fucking Feds.”
“Why were you at the crime scene?” Jamie asked the question, though she was still semi-dangling in Jack’s grip.
The man’s face contorted with disgust at her stupidity. “I live there, fool!”
“I’m going to need to see some identification, sir,” Jack said, starting the process of a normal interview. Too tired out to do anything besides cooperate, the fellow produced some identification, which indicated that he did indeed live at the rundown apartments where the shooting had taken place.
“Thank you, sir,” Jack said, handing the smudged driver’s license back to the man. “Did you know the victim, sir?”
Again the face wrinkled up. “I ain’t talking to you, Fed!”
“You’re talking right now,” Jamie piped up.
“I mean I ain’t telling you nothing, bitch.”
“Well that’s just rude,” Jamie said. “There’s no need for that language.”
“There wasn’t any need to bring me down, slam me into the gutter. I got my kicks scuffed. You gonna buy me new shoes?”
“I’ll buy you some soap,” Jack said. “To wash your mouth out with.”
“You trippin’.”
“Actually,” Jamie said, “you were the one tripping.”
“Hey, fuck you, bitch.”
“Don’t antagonize the witness, Agent Black,” Jack censured her. He caught her incredulous look, the one that seemed to ask him why he was letting the suspect call her a bitch. “And you, sir, watch your language.”
“Or what, motherfucker?”
“Or you’ll find yourself under arrest.”
“Shit! I ain’t done nothing ‘cept try to get myself a burger.”
“You ran from law enforcement,” Jack said. “That’s not smart. At all.”
“I tell you what’s not smart. What’s not smart is you coming round here, sniffing after some guy you all done whacked. I seen it. I seen the cops shoot him down like a dog.”
“Did you know the deceased?”
“Naw,” the suspect said. “I didn’t know him. I don’t know nobody, see?”
The witness was beyond uncooperative. Jack briefly weighed arresting him, but decided it wouldn’t ultimately serve any purpose. Besides, the guy probably had a case against Jamie for the way she’d chased him down.
“Well, sir, thank you for your time,” Jack said, “Feel free to go on your way.”
“Well shit, thanks very much, sir.” The man flipped them both the bird, got up and walked away. Jack figured they were probably safe from any complaints. People in this part of town didn’t cooperate with any authorities, even the ones that could help them. It made him feel mildly guilty. Jamie needed to be punished for what she’d done. If it wasn’t going to happen through official channels, he’d do it himself.
“You just let him go!” Jamie protested. “He lived there! He must have known Mr. Brampton.”
“Never you mind about him,” Jack said, rounding on her. “What the hell do you think you were doing running off like that?”
“He ran. I stopped him running. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“If someone is an actual suspect, perhaps. You don’t go running off after anyone that catches your eye. You certainly don’t tackle them. For one, it’s severely against protocol and two, you could get yourself seriously injured going toe to toe with men twice your size.”
“I’m not going to let criminals escape just because they’re bigger than I am,” Jamie said, setting her lips in a firm line. “If he hadn’t run, I wouldn’t have chased him.”
“Under some circumstances, your response might have been appropriate, but this was hardly an emergency. Nobody was in any danger. He wasn’t a suspect. And he wasn’t a criminal.”
“He was a suspect in my mind,” Jamie defended herself all the more. “He was acting suspiciously near a crime scene.”
“Just be more careful, all right? What you just did? That was a really good way to get your head blown off for no reason.”
She pouted at him. Pouted. It was difficult for Jack to reconcile the image of a woman who chased down huge men without a trace of fear, then pouted at him afterward.
“Have I made myself clear? Or are you going to need a reminder?”
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll go get a manicure and you can solve this case. Maybe you can question that wall over there. It will probably give you about as much information as anyone else in this fucking dump has.”
She was being sarcastic, she was losing her temper, and she wasn’t the least bit sorry for how she’d behaved. She was an unrepentant brat of a rookie. Jack wasn’t going to have that. He still had a hold of her and he used his grip to maneuver her around so his hand could meet with the soft curve of her bottom once, twice, three times. She jumped and squirmed, but he kept a firm hand on her upper arm, following the writhing of her curves with his punitive palm.
“That attitude won’t fly with me,” he growled in her ear.
“Not out here!” Jamie complained. “People can see!”
“All anyone can see is a brat getting her bottom spanked,” Jack replied. “You don’t want this? You behave yourself and do as you’re told.”
“Jack!”
She squealed his name as his hand came down hard across both her cheeks in quick succession. This was no little series of love taps. This was a solid slapping that was no doubt settling a serious sting into her cheeks. She was dancing on her tippy toes as he spanked her toward the car and slapped her bottom firmly as she got in.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” she said, reaching under herself to rub the sting. She gave him a resentful look as he got into the driver’s seat. “That was not professional.”
“Neither was going haring off after someone without my say so. You’re a federal agent, not a loose attack dog.”
She bared her teeth in a growl, apparently designed to teach him otherwise.
“Young lady,” he said sternly. “That’s more than enough.”
“It’s not,” she said. “It’s not even a little of enough. Everyone we interviewed saw what you did to me. Did you see the people at their windows? People were laughing.”
“I’d rather leave them with the sight of you getting a smacking you deserve than the sight of you chasing down their own and tossing them in gutters,” Jack replied. “Now put your seat belt on.”
“No.”
“Jamie…” he said warningly. “You’re digging yourself a heck of a hole here, my girl.”
“I don�
��t care.”
She was being petulant and borderline rude. Jack knew why. It was because he’d stung her bottom enough to upset her, but not enough to ensure any kind of lesson had been learned. That was the problem when dealing with a strong-willed woman. A few taps weren’t enough to do the trick. Nothing but a proper spanking was going to rein her in, and he didn’t want to do that in the middle of the ghetto.
“Put your seat belt on, or I’ll get out of the car, get you out, pull your pants and panties down and spank you over the hood,” he threatened.
“Oh yeah,” Jamie said. “Good luck explaining that one when I make an official complaint.”
“Seat belt. On. Now.”
“No.”
He sighed and opened his door. She was going to make him do it. She was really going to push him to the very limits. He’d just put one foot out of the car when he heard her seat belt click.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s done.”
Looking back over his shoulder, Jack frowned at her. “I shouldn’t have to micromanage you this much, agent.”
“You shouldn’t spank me either.”
“You want normal rookie discipline,” he said. “Great. I’ll send you out to the country for a month to listen to Amish wiretaps.”
“You can’t wiretap the Amish,” Jamie pointed out. “They don’t use telephones.”
“Precisely. It means you sit out in a shed in the middle of nowhere and you do nothing. It’s a time out, basically. A very long, very boring time out. Is that what you want? Or would you prefer I smacked your butt and we got on with the case?”
Her pout grew deeper as she folded her arms over her chest. “I guess I’d rather go on with the case.”
“Yes,” he said. “You would. Now we’re going to go somewhere quiet and I’m going to finish the spanking I started.”
“What?” Her eyes went wide. “Why?”
“Because you haven’t begun to learn your lesson yet, my girl,” he said. “Now, shall we go to the park, or…”