More than an hour later—I had to stop for coffee—I walk into the Cathedral City Police Department headquarters wearing my best work suit and my brown and white saddle shoes, wishing I was back in bed and trying my best to avoid Chief O’Neil. It’s not hard at the moment, because the place is jumping like the circus. There’s four sets of couples, each with a woman crying her eyes out, in the front lobby. The men with them, probably their husbands, look like they are all about to punch someone.
“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Roger, the intern at the front desk, says as he buzzes me through to the back offices. “Chief says you need to see him as soon as you get in.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, nodding my head to the couples.
“Kids ran away over the weekend. A whole group of them. And the parents are making a big scene about it.”
“Oh, that sucks.” I study the faces of the crying women again, this time with a new appreciation for the grief. It’s got to be the worst thing that can happen to a parent. But I need to get to work. I walk through the security door and start weaving my way through the maze of desks. I really need to sit down and nurse this hangover.
“Masters!”
Shit. “Coming, Chief!” I yell over the commotion. There are suspects everywhere. Some are handcuffed to benches, some to desks. When I pass the intake door, a whole line of them are chained together waiting to be processed. I’ve only been here two weeks but I’ve never seen it like this.
Something definitely happened over the weekend.
“Shut the door behind you, Masters,” Chief says when I enter his office. He’s got one of those stereotypical fishbowls with windows on three sides, but only one of them looks out onto the city. The other two face the main work stations so he can keep an eye on things. And so everyone can watch when someone gets their ass chewed out, because he never lowers the shades when he does that.
Today I am the one about to get an ass-chewing.
I sigh and close the door, then walk over in front of his desk and wait for him as he shuffles papers around.
“Do you have any idea how short-handed I am right now, Masters?”
“No, sir.”
He looks up from his paper-shuffling and stares lightning bolts into me. “Why not? Isn’t it your job to notice things, Masters? Isn’t that why I hired you? Military cred. Spying undercover. It’s all impressive on paper, but in the field, you’re a major disappointment. Worked with some of the biggest hush-hush cases in the country for the past three years, your resume said. And now you’re telling me you don’t even have the intuition to figure out I’m severely short-handed?”
“Sorry, sir. Yes, I can see we’re busy—”
“We’re not busy, Masters. This is the Monday after Cathedral Festival Weekend. And you have the nerve to be late?”
“I forgot, sir. I’m sorry, it won’t happen—”
“And I heard all about that party you threw at your house, Masters. Do you think I don’t know that the police were called seven times?”
“No!” That’s not even possible.
“Oh, yeah, honey. And I’m going to ream your ass good for that. But you’re lucky I need you today and don’t have the time.”
“I saw the parents out in the lobby. I’ll get right on finding those missing juveniles, sir.”
“Kids? What do we look like, babysitters? No, Masters, you’re not working on the runaways. I had a very angry Atticus Montgomery in my office this morning.”
Shit. Montgomery is the town billionaire. His family owns… well, I could make a very long list of what he owns, but it would take far more internal monologue time than I have right now.
“One of his employees killed himself in his office over the weekend.”
Double shit.
“And it’s the second one in a month. So you’re gonna get your pretty ass over there”—he does not miss a beat even though calling my ass pretty is against policy—“and figure out what the fuck is going on. You got me?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, adding a salute. “I’m on it.” I turn on my heel and make for the door before he can say anything else.
“And Masters?”
Triple shit.
“Don’t salute me. You’re not in the military anymore.”
“Right,” I say, pulling the door open quickly and making my escape.
That—I sigh—is crystal clear.
I don’t talk to anyone as I pass through the desks, the other cops, the suspects chained to anything that’s bolted down, and make my way back out to the lobby. Alone.
I had a partner. Sort of. He retired last week, which is why I’m now a detective for Cathedral City Police Department instead of just a cop. He was on short-timers the whole two weeks he trained me. But at least he was a friendly face in the midst of animosity.