“Your what?” Liz asked him, bewildered.
“Come on, don’t make me say it. My soldier isn’t at attention. My tent ain’t got no pole. My pocket is all out of rockets, my morning don’t got no glory, there ain’t no wind in my sails, you know!” Craig continued.
“That is absolutely the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.” Liz said and turned to look at Mike who was hiding a grin behind his hand and attempting not to laugh. The ever serious Mike, former soldier, laughing at a penis joke. She couldn’t believe it.
“Seriously, Mike?” Liz said sarcastically to her partner, hands on her hips.
“I’m sorry! It’s funny! We just dragged the kid out here to tell us he can’t get it up when he is drinking! That’s just embarrassing!” Mike flat out laughed in Craig’s face.
“I mean I know I said it was a ridiculous excuse before but look at his face! That boy is not lying, he is humiliated.” Mike continued, holding his stomach as he doubled over with laughter.
“Come on, man, that’s fucked up. How you going to say that to me? Supposed to have each other’s backs as men, man.” Craig kicked his feet awkwardly against the ground.
“Yeah, I don’t think so, pal. You just keep you and your malfunctioning equipment a good yard away from me.” Mike turned around to walk out of the alley, still laughing. Liz looked after him and then threw up her hands, scoffing and followed her partner. Craig awkwardly stood in the alley, not knowing what to do with himself after such a humiliating encounter.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“So, do you plan on telling me what the fuck that was back there?” Liz said to Mike as she got in the passenger side of the squad car and he settled into the driver’s seat.
“What do you mean?” He said, putting the car in drive and pulling out onto the street to head back to the precinct.
“Your little Mike meltdown! Mister Stoic suddenly laughing at a damn dick joke? Seriously? Then you just walk off, we didn’t get anything out of him!” Liz huffed angrily at him.
“Snow, calm down. You are too close to this. Listen, The Photographer was at your house last night. I want to catch that asshole just as much as you do, maybe more. But you can’t start thinking like a victim, think like a cop. Go back to the entire conversation we had and listen to it as Detective Snow would listen to it, not Liz.” Mike told her, as he turned down a side road for a shortcut. He was many years her senior on the force and so he often pushed her to be a better cop when she was flailing.
Liz looked at him angrily but knew that he was right. She was letting this affect her heavily and it was clouding her judgment. She took a deep breath and focused her eyes on the dashboard while she replayed the interrogation with Craig in her mind. She was quiet for a minute and then her eyes popped open and she turned to look at Mike.
“Holy shit. NYU! Clara McConnelly went there. The time-line is about the same as Craig, you think that they went to school together?” She asked her partner. He just nodded his head at her and shrugged his shoulder.
“I’m thinking that we need to look into the witness that testified against Craig who was also at NYU. If Craig is innocent, why did that kid lie?” Mike pointed out to her. She pondered what he was saying and was suddenly very eager to get back to the precinct and look through the old files from Craig’s case again. Who was this classmate and had he made the entire thing up? Had Craig been innocent all along? Liz was not going to stop until she found out the truth.
~~~~
“I want you to wear your favorite dress and be ready by six o’clock.” Derrick said through the phone to a grinning Kate as she sat at the kitchen table in Derrick’s apartment. Technically it was their apartment now, even though she still had more things to move over. He was at work on his lunch break and had called her to tell her he was planning a special dinner date for them.
She hadn’t been out for a while, at least not anything fancy or social, so she was looking forward to it. Tomorrow would be Friday and then the next day she would be picking Annie up from the train station to spend the weekend together. It was looking like it was going to be a good few days. Liz from the police station had called to tell her that things were looking up in the case and that they had a police cruiser driving past her apartment every fifteen minutes to ensure her safety.
“Where are we going?” She flirted back at her fiancé.
“It’s a surprise, guess you are going to have to wait and see.” Derrick chuckled into the phone, enjoying torturing her a bit.