Seeing Captain Roush was a shock. It always was. He was young—the youngest police captain in Hot Type City’s history—but he had dark bags under his eyes, doubling the bandit-mask effect of his raccoon markings. His whiskers twitched along with his pointy snout as he showed me his sharp teeth in a wan smile. His nigh-cherubic face looked out of place on his limber, early-thirties body, as if it had been transplanted. He didn’t let his inexperience show and maintained a straight posture that suited his position.
“Howl,” he said through the bars. “I was starting to think you were avoiding me. You know, if you wanted to say hi, you could have called.”
I tried to return his smile, but mine was even weaker. I was avoiding him.
When I first met him, he told me with that squeaky, prepubescent voice it was his dream to be the youngest detective ever. I thought it was cute. I took pride in watching him fly through the academy and excel as a beat cop. The last time I saw him, he was a newly minted detective, shipping out to help people in Burr City, just across state lines.
Now, looking at the bars on his shirt and the permanent divot his constant furrowing had put in his brow, I felt a profound sense of guilt. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it was my fault.
My greeting came out as a reflex, but the words were slow and sullen. “Hey there, Terry.”
A spark of childlike glee flashed in Roush’s eyes, but the lit coals dimmed quickly.
“Officer Marley,” Roush said over his shoulder. “Pop four.”
The light flashed, the door buzzed, and Roush opened the door. I wanted to sink into the bench, let the cold metal swallow me like a tomb, but I forced myself up and staggered out of the cell.
“Flying the coop already?” Lawrence said as I passed through the bars. “Remember, Ed’s door is always open for you. Just in case…”
Roush glared as he slammed the door, and Lawrence put his hands up. “Not that I know anything about that. I’m just the messenger. Barely even know the guy.”
Roush didn’t dignify the playful banter with a response.
“What have you got him on?” I asked, deflecting so we didn’t have to talk about us.
“Just intimidation for now,” Roush said. “We were hoping to get him on racketeering, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to stick.”
“His type are slippery.”
“We thought we had something, but the shop owner he had been harassing clammed up when we went back. Guess Big Ed’s guys got there before we did.”
Roush led me out of the cell block, but he didn’t take me back through the intake area. He led me to an elevator, which brought us out of the dungeon and up to the top floor.
I kept my head down as we crossed through the bullpen. A couple detectives still slouched over their desks, reviewing notes and scribbling reports by the glow of green-shaded lamps, but the only eyes that tracked us all the way across were those of Police Commissioner Fosse’s portrait on the wall.
I tried to look away from his heavy-browed scowl, but my eyes didn’t find safe harbor among the desks. It was policy for officers to remain apolitical while in the public eye, but that didn’t stop much of the bullpen from decorating their areas with mugs and bumper stickers and plaques bearing Regis Fellini’s face and trite slogans.
I knew the captain’s office well. I’d been chewed out there more times than I could count. The name plates on the door and desk had changed, as had the framed certificates on the wall, but everything else looked the same. It offered the same bird's-eye view of Hot Type City, sparkling like a diamond with all the fresh puddles and rain-slick glass.
Roush sat in his chair, blocking the window, and I sat across from him. I felt like I was back in the principal’s office. I’d been caught pulling pigtails, and Roush was going to tell me he wasn’t mad; he was just disappointed.
He let out a sigh, and his shoulders slumped enough to change his posture. The machine had worn him down, same as it had done to me.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
I thought it was some kind of test, but he was already reaching in a low drawer. He came back up with a half-full bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He plunked them on the desk, splashed a few fingers into each, then slid one over to me. Some officers and I took him out for a drink at The Cut on his twenty-first birthday. I’d bought him his first whiskey and watched him sputter at the taste before he gave a watery-eyed nod, assuring me that he had liked it.
He slid my glass toward me, then scooped up his own and took a gulp. His eyelids fluttered with the ecstasy of the taste and the hot punch of alcohol, but he didn’t grimace. He had been practicing.
I took a disorienting slug myself. It was good stuff, rich and sweet. The high proof broke down chunks of calcified impurities built up in my mouth from all the cheap hooch I had guzzled in recent years, liberating my tastebuds. It would be hard going back.
“So. You’re still looking at the Calhoun case?” Roush said after a second drink. His voice had a token inflection at the end, but it wasn’t really a question. It was obvious what I had been doing poking around the place the police had already connected to Ethan.
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Since it wasn’t a question, I didn’t feel a need to answer. I drank more instead.
“You don’t need to worry about him. As you saw, we’re still on it. I heard Mrs. Calhoun called off your contract. Why not work on something that pays more than mothballs?”
“Got to keep busy somehow. Don’t exactly have offers flooding in. Besides, for all we know, the kid’s still out there. If we’re going to save him, we need to be fast.”
“I assure you, we have as many assets allocated to the case as I can spare. We’re always making headway, but there’s a procedure to follow.”
“Procedure’s too slow,” I said, as close to biting as I’d gotten with Roush. “I thought you’d have learned that by now.”
Roush was too exhausted to take the bait. He knew I was right anyway. “Sure. But cutting corners can be slower.”
The door opened and Spangler scuttled in. He dropped a box full of my confiscated possesions onto Roush’s desk.
“Thank you, Officer Spangler,” Roush said.
“Yes, sir.” Spangler didn’t immediately scurry back out of the office. “Sorry for the mixup, Mr. O’Howell. I thought you were— I mean we—”
“It’s handled,” Roush said. “Why don’t you get back downstairs? The midnight rush will be starting soon.”
“Sorry,” Spangler said. “Yes, sir. I’m on my way.”
Roush watched over the top of his glass as Spangler hurried across the bullpen. He took a deliberate sip, then said with a smirk, “Rookies.”
“Wasn’t so long ago you were one,” I said as I retrieved my things.
I checked my revolver first. The cylinder was still loaded, and I tucked it into my holster where it was safe before I went back to digging. I gave my notepad a search then tucked it away too. No pages were missing, but I couldn’t be sure nobody had read through it. Whatever, if they found something in there that would crack their case and bring Ethan home, more power to them.
I retrieved my wallet, keys, and hat and put them in their proper places, leaving only a few receipts and scraps of crumpled paper at the bottom of the box. I might as well have turned the whole thing up over the trashcan, but I dutifully found pockets for all the junk. It helped me fill the dead air.
When I had all my things packed up and set the box aside, Roush slid a pair of folded papers across the desk. “Looking for these?”
I thought I had everything, but I nodded and gave a gruff thanks when I unfolded the papers. One was an updated private investigator license, and the other was a concealed carry permit. Both had issue dates in line with when the ones from my glove compartment had expired.
“Looks like there was a hiccup somewhere down the line. These must’ve fallen through the cracks before, but I got it sorted out.”
As grateful as I was, it was strange coming from someone who had been lecturing me about cutting corners not three minutes ago. It seemed drinking wasn’t the only unseemly part of the job Roush had gotten used to. He had become part of the corrupt machine, after all.
I needed a drink, and I was glad to find one already in my hand. Roush swirled his thoughtfully. The amber reflections off the whiskey looked like firelight flickering on his face.
“So what can you tell me about Ethan’s grow op?” I asked when I’d found the courage. “You think he might have pissed off the wrong people?”
“Nothing like that,” Roush said. He stayed lost in the gemstone waves of his whiskey a moment longer before he sat up and engaged with the conversation. “It was just a small-time gig. A couple kids who went looking for a bit of trouble and found it.”
“A couple? Who else was involved?”
“I can’t tell y—”
“Come on, Roush. Just let me talk to them.”
“Really, I can’t. Even if I thought it would help, everyone other than Wally was a juvenile. If the parents knew I was blabbing about their kids, they would have my bars and send me back down to the booking desk so fast I’d get whiplash.”
“So these parents are important people? They have sway?”
“I’m not giving you anything, Howl. I helped you out once tonight; don’t make me regret it.”
Even when we were almost equals in the hierarchy, there had always been a deep reverence underlying everything Roush said to me. That had been stripped away, and Roush finally showed his teeth. Almost made me proud.
“All right, you won’t give me anything on the other kids. I get the message,” I said. “But what about Ethan? I know he was involved. Surely you could let me have a peek at his record? I get the sense he’s got a pretty thick one by now.”
“Not happening.” Roush’s annoyance wanted to leak out, and he worked to keep his voice flat. “I can’t just go showing off police records to civilians. Especially not when the case is as public as this one. Hell, I’ve already got the police commissioner calling me twice a day, asking for updates on the investigation. It takes a lot to get that old bastard’s attention.”
Roush had changed. The kid I knew never would have maligned the commissioner, no matter how much he deserved it.
“Fine, fine, no records,” I said. “What about—”
“No!” Roush slammed his hand down, knocking the bottom of his nearly empty glass hard on the table and rattling the pens in their holder. He took a deep breath before meeting my eye again. “Look, Howl. I invited you up here to catch up as friends and old colleagues. I know you want to help the kid, but there’s nothing more you can do. We have all the information, all the records and leads and names and numbers, and we know what to do with them. If the guy’s out there, we’ll catch him. Don’t you worry.”
“But…” I spoke slowly, testing the waters to see if Roush would snap again. “What about time? Ethan’s still—”
“You know the statistics as well as I do,” Roush said. “If Ethan’s alive now, odds are he’ll stay that way. If he’s one of the unlucky eighty-nine percent of kidnap victims murdered in the first twenty-four hours… Well, then it won’t matter when we find him. All that will matter then is that we get the perp clean—follow procedure, so there’s no risk of the case getting thrown out because some hot-headed detective decided to do things his own way.”
I watched the city lights refract through my whiskey and warp around the glass as I turned it. The number of lighted windows was low already and more winked out every second I watched. I was losing time, but clearly I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Roush.
We drank quietly for a bit, both ruminating. I was the first to break the silence when I decided to try to salvage something of our relationship. “You still with Janice?”
Things could have gone the other way if the answer was no, but I’d noticed the ring on his finger earlier. His dreary scowl disappeared in an instant and he sat up, grinning from ear to ear.
“Things going well? I always thought you two were good for each other.”
They were empty words—I’d met Janice one time at a department cookout—but empty words were what the moment called for.
Roush turned a picture on his desk around so I could see it. It was one of the few bits of ornamentation in his office, aside from the requisite flags and portraits. In the picture, Roush had his arm around a mousy-looking skunk with thick glasses. Between them was the pudgy nugget of a baby gopher.
“Hot shit,” I said. “You’re a dad?”
Roush’s new demeanor was starting to make a lot more sense. Things changed when you had a wife and kid to take care of. Making sure there was a paycheck took priority over doing the right thing. I can’t say I’d ever risk finding a missing child for that kind of love, but the world had looked a lot different when Growl was in it, and he wasn’t even mine.