“Coffee please, thanks Ash,” I said over my computer monitor at the young twenty something awaiting my request with inscrutable good cheer. How she could be this bubbly at 7 in the morning?
“Black or do you want like a latte or a cappuccino?”
“Black, just black is fine.”
She smiled radiantly at me as if getting me and the other investigators coffee each morning was the highlight of her day. Well, I had to admit it sure beat some of the offices I had worked in, where an intern getting coffee for the staff had been about as likely as cupcakes on your birthday.
“She sure likes getting your coffee in the morning,” Inspector Delilah Oak said, smirking from where she was examining a case file and doing her morning makeup at the same time. My new partner. She was probably ten years younger than me, recently promoted to Investigator and was a ball of sarcasm and wit that was entirely at odds with her short stature and nitpicky professional appearance.
I rolled my eyes. “Give it a rest Oak. She’s a freaking kid.”
“Technically she’s a woman. And a pretty sharp one at that. She’s dug up some useful leads in the high school burglary case last week.”
“That’s good,” I said vaguely, not paying attention as I returned to my screen. I was reading through the latest news feed describing the continuing arduous take down of a massive child labor syndicate that had been operating out of the Capital. My eyes flashed over various details of the story, pausing as they rested on the name DI Lawrence. I blinked for a few moments and then closed out of the web browser, feeling a squirming in my gut. I hated to leave my former partner out there in the trenches to clean up my mess. I had really cocked up the bust, completely letting a key faction of the syndicate walk because of inappropriate conduct while at the crime scene. I had let my anger get the best of me and beaten a suspect nearly to death without probable reason. That had been the moment my boss had officially pulled me off of the force.
“You’re taking a new position,” Deputy Melvin had informed me after my badge and gun had been revoked in the course of the punishment. He stood outside the door of my one bedroom apartment, doing his best not to look disappointed at my current state of ill dress. “This is the last straw. You’ve been headstrong in the past, but we can’t have cops beating up suspects. I’ve already spoken to Chief Mast. You’re not to be tried for your actions so long as you’re removed from the case and the force. You can come back in a couple of years, maybe one if you keep your nose clean.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do until then, work at Starbucks?” I had raged upon hearing this, staring at the Deputy clothed in only my underwear and nearly squinting from a deathly hangover threatening to blow my brain up, a result of my previous evening’s sulking.
“I’ve already seen to that. There’s an opening in the team that’s up in Melspol County. I know DI Meryl, he’s a good man and his lead detective just retired. He’s agreed to take you on, at least for now.”
“Melspol?” I asked incredulously. “I don’t even know where that is.”
“Quiet little county up north, rural, bucolic, peaceful, slow paced. It’ll do you good. You’re also to attend an anger management course and talk to their resident therapist once a week. That temper of yours needs work.”
“Therapist?” I scoffed, shaking my head and immediately regretting this as it felt like nails were hitting the inside of my skull.
“Therapist,” Melvin agreed calmly. “Look if you want to go to trial for your actions instead, you’re more than welcome to. There’s a good chance you’ll be prosecuted and do time. I mean that guy is going to be in the hospital for weeks. You’re just lucky you didn’t kill him. And I can guarantee you your career will be over. Would you like that better?”
So here I was, recently moved to the pastoral town of Cresel, population 2543. The closest city if you could call it that was called Burkus, about 10,000 people strong. The county of Melspol was not just rural but downright primitive. I had passed two blokes riding horseback to work a few days back.
“Nomads,” Inspector Oak had cheerfully informed me when I had mentioned this to her. “Came over the border from the northlands originally. We’ve got hundreds of them around here, thousands as you get closer to the border. Whole shanty camps and everything. They’re itinerant, move around seasonally. Stay away from us mostly.”
I had been shocked to hear that nearly all of these so called nomads were undocumented, a whole hoard of illegally immigrated people just wandering around the county living in camps doing who knew what. We hadn’t had any in the capital that I had come into contact with and I had never been anywhere rural long enough to see any of them before now.
That had been one of several shocks upon moving here. Another was that there were no gunshots late at night, minimal shouting, little violence and no sounds of late-night arrests. In fact, the nights here were so quiet, it was almost unnerving. Atop my lumpy mattress late at night in the quaint little cottage I had rented from DI Meryl, every creak of the 50 year old wooden structure had me nearly out of bed with my gun in hand, every groan of the 30 year old water heater had me groaning in return. I didn’t need any more reasons to be sleep deprived. People said a quiet life was relaxing, but I found everything a little too still and unhindered.
Ashley returned with our coffees and Oak’s biscuits from the cafe across the street. She handed me mine with a bright expression which clearly made Oak smirk. “Come on Senel, time to hit the road,” she called to me in a garble, a biscuit inhibiting most of her airway. “We’ve got a barking dog complaint, a week of parking violations and a chicken robbery to investigate before noon.”
I wasn’t sure if she got a kick out of dragging me along on her morning patrol, or if she was actually just entirely at ease with this shit and figured this was usually my normal morning routine as well. She was my junior in rank by several levels. But I was on duty from 7 am to 5 pm and Meryl had instructed me that I was to assist the office in whatever way was necessary. He alone knew why I had been reassigned here and I was fine with keeping it that way. Still, this was way below my paygrade.
“Ashley can go with you,” I suggested in a hopeful undertone to Oak as she collected her coat and bag.
“Alas, Ashley has the distinguished duty of manning the phone in our absence and writing up the report on Pauline’s Feed and Grain about the moldy oats we found last week,” Oak informed me.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
That had been the third surprise. So far, I had been here just over three weeks and the most intense thing that had happened that we were requested to investigate had been a carjacking. And it hadn’t exactly been the $100,000 luxury vehicle or the high stakes car chase I was used to in the city. Some kid had stollen his uncle’s ancient chevl pickup to take a girl on a date and had failed to bring the car back that same night, having apparently had good luck on his date. We had found him and the girl sleeping in the back parked just outside of the local national forest. This place was downright dead, in the best sense of the word. No kidnappings, no major drug use, no murders, no rapes. Just a bunch of country folk going about their lives and getting into minor squabbles with each other.
I sighed and headed out the door of the tiny office with my coffee in tow. Ashley waved us goodbye, wishing us luck. We started the morning tasks. The parking violations came first. Technically this should have just been a matter for the local cops but because the perpetrator had no license plates on his vehicle and they hadn’t met him face to face, they hadn’t been able to figure out who was parking in the lot reserved for town workers. Had I been back in the capital, the car would have been mercilessly towed days ago and probably deposited in a junk yard but here apparently things were done less aggressively. We investigated the vehicle top to bottom and then I surreptitiously popped open the passenger door of the cab, noticing that it was unlocked.
“Eww, you can get in big trouble for doing that without a warrant,” Oak chided me, though at odds with her accusation as she was leaning against the side bed of the truck chewing on biscuits and scrolling through her phone.
I shook my head, a dark alley and three cops smashing open the windows of about ten vehicles just to find the one with a bag of drugs in it splashed before my mind. Things were, in a word, different out here.
I searched the vehicle, found several empty beer cans, an old delivery box full of trash, a shovel and tucked under the dashboard, a small wad of cash, probably about a hundred bucks. Oak whistled as I handed her the dough. “We’ve got ourselves a real criminal here,” she said thumbing through the glove compartment and pulling out what looked like a baggie of extremely old and stale weed. Yeah, she was definitely fucking with me I concluded.
I rifled through the box of trash and found a few receipts from local grocery stores. I compared them all and then pointed out the common name on the receipt. “Connor Moorse. His phone number is here too.”
“Well done Detective Inspector! I can see why they give you the D before the I in your title.”
I snorted. We called this in to the local police office and then headed to the next assignment, the barking dog complaint.
“I just can’t tell where it’s coming from,” the lady in her late seventies or perhaps early eighties explained to us. “Every night, from about 2 in the morning to at least 6 for the past six or seven days. I can’t sleep. It’s been a nightmare.”
To stop myself from rolling my eyes, I turned to gaze out at the street. There were at least ten houses to be seen just from here. Seriously? This was a call that our office would take? Here I was thinking that the chicken robbery sounded ridiculous. We began to case houses, or rather knock on the front doors of each residence until someone saw fit to answer. In several cases the occupants looked over the age of eighty and probably couldn’t hear any dogs barking at all. Several people had dogs, all insisting that their pets didn’t bark loudly, particularly during the timeframe suggested. I was about to start pulling my hair out when I noticed a massive German Shepard being walked by a thin fellow in a dark suit. Okay worth a shot. I zoned in on the man before thinking and inadvertently scared the shit out of his dog by my sudden approach. The canine began a series of deep thunderous barks and rocked the neighborhood, causing several people on their way to work to look around in alarm. I backed away slowly as the man attempted to calm his dog.
“Sorry, sorry, he’s not usually like this,” the man assured me as I winced at the loud repetitive barks. I guess I could empathize with the woman after hearing this. It would be impossible to sleep through.
“Sir, I’m DI Senel, we’re investigating the source of a…local disturbance. Could you please point out your place of residence?” I asked, holding up my badge for confirmation.
“Sure Detective. I’m there,” the man said, indicating the house directly next to the complaining woman’s, the yard of which abutted her side wall I noted.
“Are you aware that your dog has been barking between the hours of 2am and 6am every morning for the last week?” I asked briskly, hoping to catch him off-guard.
“Barking? That late? Are you sure, I don’t ever hear anything.”
I let out a sigh and plastered a smile on my face. “Do you sleep with earplugs sir?”
“Of course I do. You wouldn’t believe the racket what comes from me neighbor’s roosters in the morning. Can’t sleep a wink past 5 am without them.”
I glanced at the woman’s house and saw what looked like an entire flock of fowl there. “Right. Well, do you leave your dog out at night? Maybe that’s why he’s barking.”
The man shuffled his feet. He glanced furtively around. Then he leaned in closer. “I’m seeing a lady right now Detective. She’s not a fan of dogs. I figured if I left him outside…” he coughed. “I’ll put him in at night from now on. She’ll just have to get used to him.”
I nodded. “Thank you sir. You’ll be doing a great service to your neighborhood. Have a pleasant day.”
And then there was the chicken robbery. Which turned out to be not so much a robbery as a misplacement. Two massive flocks of bird sat squawking and screeching at each other over a tall metal fence, each flock belonging to a different farm on the outskirts of town.
“My best hen, she’s there, that one!” the man cried pointing in aggravation at what looked like just any old chicken on the opposite side of the fence. “They’ve abducted her, hoping to increase their production I tell you.”
I was about to walked out of the yard and get back in the car but Oak pulled on my sleeve. Fine.
“Do you have a way to identify the chicken in question sir?” I asked, trying to keep the desperate ennui from my voice.
“Sure I do. I clip their wings in a particular pattern, see.” He held up a random bird on his side of the fence to show us. “Three hole punch clips out of their flight feathers right as soon as they’re clipped as chicks. No one else has this marking in the whole town.”
Realizing what this meant, I stared out dismally at the neighbor’s flock. “Come on Detective,” Oak called to me cheekily, already out of the one yard and off towards the neighbor’s front door.
After a lengthy discussion about going into his yard to investigate the bird in question, which literally neither of us could point out successfully, we were finally allowed entrance. The squabbling birds all clucked at us as we shifted among them, searching for the one with the feather clipping described. The neighbor on the other side of the fence unhelpfully pointed and called to us each time he spotted her but to little avail as they all moved so quickly.
“There,” I said suddenly, finally seeing the clippings we were looking for. I lunged for the bird, not having any clue how to wrangle a chicken. “Ouch!” I had caught the hen, but she had jabbed me hard in the hand with her beak. I seized her neck and, practically strangling the bird, I managed to move out of the yard, tossing the hen over the fence into the other neighbor’s yard. “Ha.” I turned to see where Oak had gotten to. She had stepped out and was taking a call a little ways away. I glared at the chickens and then nodded at the man who had called us, who was giving us much praise. He went so far as to start talking about tea he was thinking about brewing and I stiffened. Come on Oak, let’s go. I don’t want to be his houseguest.
Thankfully she burst in at just that moment, smiling and giving the man our best before moving over to the car. I could tell immediately that something was wrong. The relaxed, playful air was gone. Her shoulders looked tight, her back was more arched. She stopped outside of the car and looked up at me.
“Thanks for finishing that up,” she said without any hint of sarcasm this time. “We need to get back to office. We just got a call. Sounds like someone’s daughter has gone missing.”