Before I could come up with an airtight excuse for not picking up the radio call, my dispatcher piped up once more. Her voice sounded even more impatient and grating this time, almost as if my irritatingly slow response was preventing her from focusing on the Days of Our Lives reruns. “714? You copy?”
I keyed the microphone on my handheld radio. “I copy, control. I’m en route.” My tone of subservience seemed to satisfy the evil harpy since there was no further response from her end. With a sigh, I slid the walkie-talkie back into its holder and began shuffling my way over to the stairwell. I’d tried my best to avoid it, but it’d finally come time to hit the beat and actually go to work. After a moment’s debate, I decided to head down the stairs instead of walking around to take the elevator like I normally did. Taking the stairs wasn’t too much physical exertion, at least not on the way down and besides, it was a good way for me to drag my feet a little longer. My boots made thick, shuffling noises as I lumbered along, the sounds echoing downward off the narrow concrete walls. Even though I was feeling kind of low, I made sure to whistle a loud tune as I went along, my way of giving any nearby winos an advance notice to clear out before I rolled up on them. The city’s parking garages were usually great places to hide out during a shift, except for the fact that all the bums tended to think the same way. See, one of the biggest downsides to policework is the fact that you’re pretty much forced to deal with some unsavory characters from time to time, although it’s been my experience that the more you can avoid these types, the less likely you are to have to make any piddling misdemeanor arrests for trespassing or public drunkenness.
Once I was finally down at ground level, I slid out onto Church Street and headed over towards South Market. Even though the March evening air was quickly starting to cool, I could still feel tiny beads of sweat building up on my forehead and beneath my arms. The physical exertion of walking was already taking its toll, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until rivers of salt water began flowing from my pores. As I slowed my pace, I happened to catch a glimpse of the tips of my boots as they peeked out from beneath my gut with each stride, and my chest swelled with pride at my incredible change in physique. My slimming waistline was a direct result of the huge increase in physical activity since the transfer, and it was also my single biggest point of professional pride. On some long nights, I’d even walked as much as a quarter-mile during a single shift! It was the most exercise I’d done since high school but even still, I knew there was no point in overdoing it. I knew good and well what it meant to be the owner of a thirty-six year-old body. At my age, a pulled muscle or even a torn ligament was only a single misstep away. Besides, there was simply no need for me to go full-on and try to compete with those weightlifting, healthy-eating young rookie cops we seem to keep hiring. Honestly, I guess I just no longer feel the need to prove myself to anyone.
When I finally turned the corner, South Market Street looked deceptively calm. There were no signs of any kind of disorder, only a single white dude holding down the sidewalk in front of Scarlett O’Hara’s. He was slickly dressed, wearing a light gray business suit with thin pinstripes as he stood with one leg propped up on the steps. The guy kept checking his watch impatiently, so I walked forward to meet him as my eyes swept across the alleged crime scene. There was a notable absence of any broken glass, which was normally an early indication that a burglary call was going to turn out to be some kind of bogus complaint instead. I threw my brain into high gear trying to channel all the experience I’d gained during my days as a property crimes detective, struggling to recall all of those magical loopholes which would allow me to shitcan the case without taking a report.
The man spotted me approaching and forced his lips together into a grim smile. “Are you here for me, Officer?”
I looked up and down the street with a slow, exaggerated turn of my head. “Well sir, you tell me. You’re the only other person on this street, so I sure hope I’m in the right place. What’s going on?”
My surly attitude didn’t quite faze him like I’d hoped. Instead, he walked towards me with an outstretched hand as if he was expecting me to shake it or something. “Duke Regan. I own Scarlett O’Hara’s.”
I glanced over at the store’s plate glass windows, which were stacked floor to ceiling with dozens of T-shirts. They all seemed to be cheap screenprinted jobs, each one bearing a similarly lowbrow slogan which might hold the most appeal with a customer base of fifteen-year old boys. One of the classier designs read, “Charleston: A drinking town with a historical problem”, and I couldn’t hold back a chuckle at that. I turned back to look directly at Mr. Regan, both of my hands stowed safely inside my pants pockets so as to send a clear message that I wouldn’t at any point be shaking his. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Regan stood up straight, shifting his neck to meet my stare. One of his eyebrows was cocked at a curious angle so I made sure to add a “sir.”
He swallowed. “Ah…yes. Well. Would you care to come around to the back of the store? It looks like the bulk of the damage was done there.”
I let out a groan, but my professional demeanor forced me to keep it at a respectable volume. “Sure, why not? I mean, I guess it’s my job, right?” I followed him back down to the streetcorner, re-tracing my steps towards the parking garage while I used the time to pump him for more details. Asking questions was always a good investigative strategy, since projecting a false sense of interest helps to build rapport. “My dispatcher said there may have been a possible break-in at your store? What makes you believe that?”
Regan shook his head from side to side. His shoulders were slumped forward, a defeated posture that brought my attention down to his shoes. They were an expensive pair of cap-toed wingtips, jet black with a fresh shine. I’d have put them at about three hundred bucks in the Dillard’s store, easy. “I’m afraid there’s no ‘possible’ about it, Officer” Regan said. “I was minding the shop for a few hours this afternoon in place of the manager, who’d requested time off for a doctor’s appointment. I personally locked up at closing time, six o’clock, before heading off to meet my wife for dinner at Tristan’s.”
I held back the urge to spit on the sidewalk. Tristan’s was one of those high-dollar white napkin places where only lawyers, bankers, and tourists could afford to eat. That place might have scored some high marks in all the area restaurant reviews, but it didn’t even rate a blip on my personal radar. I mean really, how good could a place possibly be if it doesn’t even have an all-you-can-eat buffet?
He went on. “Just as the entrees were being served, I realized that I’d left my Blackberry in the store! Naturally, I excused myself in order to dash back over here and get it, but when I arrived I saw this!” As we stepped around the corner, Mr. Regan swept his arm across the narrow alley that ran down behind the row of storefronts. Sure enough, the rear fire door to Scarlett O’Hara’s had been forced open and was hanging loose on damaged hinges. Judging from the pry marks left behind on the doorframe, it looked as if it had taken at least one big dude a couple attempts with a wrecking bar to force his way in.
Right about then, I found myself biting my lip in order to keep from commenting on the stupidity of owning an expensive cell phone. Personally, I’d finally gotten sick of Verizon cutting off the service whenever I forgot to pay the bill, so I made the smart move and switched over to one of those pre-paid jobs. The phone I used was nothing fancy, just one of those chunky base models left over from the year before, and its display screen was still cracked from that time I backed over it on accident, but at least it still worked fine whenever I could afford to load it up with minutes. More importantly, it was such a piece of crap that I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I ever accidentally left it behind at some bar when I was running low on cash and had to sneak out on my tab. But in spite of all these distractions, I still had a professional duty to attend to so I took a calming breath and tried to focus on the intricate details of the case at hand. “Yup.
Sure looks like somebody broke in, all right.”
Mr. Regan balled his hands up into two indignant fists. He clenched them tight for a moment, causing his flesh to go white around his manicured fingernails. “Let me tell you, Officer, the whole thing just makes me sick! Absolutely sick! I work six, seven days a week, sometimes sixteen hours a day because that’s what it takes to build a successful business, and for what? For some lowlifes to come in and help themselves to whatever they please?” He waved one arm through the doorway, directing my attention towards several rows of shelves which had been turned over. Their contents had been viciously scattered across the laminate floor, and somehow this made all of his merchandise seem even junkier than usual. “Just look at it! The thugs who did this have probably never done an honest day’s work in their entire lives. Do you have any idea how much inventory must be damaged, not to mention whatever’s missing? Honestly, I simply have no idea how much of a loss I could be taking here!”
As I listened to him ramble on, the seed of an escape plan began to germinate inside my mind. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve already been inside the store, sir! That’s going to make it extremely difficult for our technicians to assess the damage, or even dust for prints! If the crime scene’s been altered in any way, it’ll be nearly impossible for us to catch these crooks!” I crossed my fingers behind my back while offering my most wide-eyed stare of sincerity. “To be quite honest with you, sir, I’m not even sure it’d be worth your time to file an incident report if you’ve already gone and contaminated the area.”
Regan fixed his gaze upon me once again. For some reason, the guy didn’t seem nearly as put out as I would have expected. A lot of those rich folks just aren’t used to being chastised by a lowly public servant, so it’s not unusual for them to get a little huffy whenever a cop has to raise his voice. “I apologize, Officer…” he began, pausing to glance down at my nametag for the first time. “…Larsen. I guess I’m just not very familiar with police procedures. I can assure you, though, that I only stepped a few feet inside the doorway. I haven’t touched a thing.”
I let out a loud sigh, then gave him a noncommittal nod as I reached for my radio. When the dispatcher finally responded after my third call, I asked her to send a crime scene unit to the store for photos. Mr. Regan looked a little more satisfied after that token display of law enforcement aptitude, but I wasn’t quite ready to surrender altogether. My notebook was still safely tucked away in my shirt pocket, since I was bound and determined not to take an incident report unless absolutely necessary. Asking for crime scene support early on in the call was simply a way to hedge my bets, since both of our night shift technicians lived way out in the furthest reaches of West Ashley. Those guys had a tendency to check in service from their living rooms each night, so requesting one as soon as possible was a way to guarantee that they might actually get up off the couch at some point. This way, even if I did get stuck babysitting a rubber-gloved geek while he did his thing, there was still a small chance I’d have enough time to grab supper somewhere before all the restaurants shut their kitchens.
I did my best to fix a professional demeanor on my face. It was a tremendous effort to steer my brain away from the all-important matter of where to eat dinner, but somehow I managed. Turning back toward Mr. Regan, I asked, “Would you care to join me inside, sir? That way you’ll be able to point out exactly what you think might be missing.” He nodded at my invitation and we stepped through the doorframe. I made sure to let him go first, just in case we’d accidentally caught the crooks by surprise and a gang of hardened criminals was still hiding in the shadows of aisle three. My stomach churned in disgust as we picked our way in through that mess of a salesfloor, but our reconnaissance mission was absolutely necessary. I needed to judge the extent of the crime as soon as possible in order to get a better handle on just how much writing would be required. If any merchandise had actually been removed from the store, that’d make the crime a burglary under South Carolina law. Those cases are always a royal pain in the ass since they require a two page report, with at least one follow-up call from a detective. If nothing was found to be missing, though, it was as simple as tagging the case as a simple vandalism with property damage to the store and its contents. That particular method of cooking the books was an unwritten procedure at CPD, since 34’s don’t look nearly as bad on the weekly statistics as 29’s do. I hoped that wouldn’t have to scribble out more than two or three sentences, tops, and that would only be if Regan’s insurance company demanded some kind of official documentation before reimbursing his loss. And as far as any kind of an actual investigation? Well, our detectives usually tended to blame all the unsolved vandalism cases on some nameless, faceless group of hoodlum teenagers. Damn kids.
My hopes were dashed, though, when Mr. Regan took a few more steps down the nearest aisle. “Jesus, it’s gone! Those bastards stole my new merchandise! All of it!” He turned around, his face pale from shock and his mouth hanging wide open. Strangely enough, the look of blank amazement on his face was a perfect match for the backdrop of all those empty shelves.
I shot back my own look of disbelief, one that I hoped would come across as equally vacant. “All of your new merchandise, sir?” Thinking fast, I pulled back the Velcro tabs on my shirt pocket and dipped a hand in for my notebook. It was a calculated, professional move, one designed to create the appearance that I actually gave a damn about his minor inconvenience. I took another long look around the store, gazing in wonder at the sheer number of ceramic ashtrays and souvenir shot glasses which had been shattered into splintery pieces. “How can you tell with all this mess?”
He stared at me for a moment, and I knew that couldn’t have been a good sign. In most cases, the victim of a burglary will usually say that they’ll need some time to clean up before they can be sure of exactly what was taken. When it comes to property crimes, at least, the messier scenes usually work out best for the responding officer. In those cases, it’s easy enough to invest a few minutes in comforting the victim, then you simply tell them to take all the time they need for a proper inventory before hauling ass out of there. All you really have to write in the incident report is that a full list of stolen property wasn’t immediately available, and with any luck the victim won’t get done taking stock of their losses until after the next shift has checked on duty.
I should be so lucky, I thought. I could tell by the way Mr. Regan opened his big mouth with such confidence that my plans for the evening had just gone up in smoke. “I received a new shipment of logo T-shirts this afternoon” he said. “Give me two seconds and I’ll dig up the invoice. It looks as if the thieves could have been after those shirts specifically. I imagine that type of merchandise must be somewhat easy to resell on the black market?”
I couldn’t tell if his last remark was intended as a question or a statement, so I did my best to ignore it altogether. But you know, if there actually had been some kind of T-shirt smuggling ring working its way around the Lowcountry, that would’ve had to have been the absolute lowest-priority case in the history of detective work. I reached down and picked up a stray T-shirt which had been kicked over into a corner and left behind. The fabric was a crewneck style with a snug athletic fit, heather gray with a Jolly Roger skull-and-crossbones flag screenprinted above the words “Buccaneer for Hire: Will Work for Rum.” As I flipped the price tag over, I felt my jaw fall. At a retail price of twenty bucks the real crime seemed to be highway robbery, and my thoughts slipped past my lips before I could hold them back. “Twenty dollars? Geez, what kind of suckers actually buy this crap?”
It was the curse word that caught Regan’s attention. With his eyebrows raised, he glanced over at me to examine the shirt in my hands. “That particular design is actually one of our top sellers, Officer Larsen.” He turned his gaze back towards the sales counter and began shuffling through all the reams of paper stored underneath. “Ah, here it is.” His hands came back up into vie
w, bringing with them a hefty three-ring binder that contained a number of laminated pages. “Let me just find the most recent bill of lading. I’ll bet anything that the thieves must have spotted the truck dropping off this afternoon’s deliveries, and they figured that the store was ripe for the picking.”
I rolled my eyes at his amateur detective work. The conversation was getting way too serious for my taste, so I did my best to lighten the mood. “So…the most likely suspects are a band of bloodthirsty pirates?” I asked, waving the t-shirt above my head. “Some random group of scalawags looking to outfit their motley crew with the very latest in plundered fashions? Arrrrrrrrr, matey, they could be anywhere on the high seas by now!”
Mr. Regan stopped turning pages long enough to cock an eyebrow at me again, clearly not amused by my unique brand of humor. “It’d have to be a pretty big crew” he said. “It looks like the thieves got away with nearly all of today’s shipment. Over two thousand new T-shirts in all. That was supposed to have been enough to last us through most of the summer.”
The gears in my head started turning as I cast my eyes down at the floor and began crunching the numbers. “Sooo… around two thousand shirts, give or take, at around twenty bucks a pop…” I’ve never really had a head for figures, so I looked back up at Mr. Regan for his best guess. “What do you reckon that comes out to in terms of a total loss?”
On The Beat (Goosey Larsen Book 3) Page 3