“Half the plane disintegrated, and what’s left has been worked over by the fire.” She started to walk away but then stopped and touched Mike’s arm. “Try one of the ambulance crews. Look for a short, thick blond woman. Tell her Melissa asked if she could lend you a hand. At least until your ex-wife shows up.”
Mike nodded and made a beeline to the ambulances, Annie’s hand in his. It turned out that the thick blond woman was the only female among the EMTs. Mike went through his song and dance about Annie having to stay home from school because she’d had a fever the night before and how he had to work unexpectedly, but he might as well not have bothered: at the mention of the policewoman’s name, the EMT lit up with a smile and beckoned Annie to come sit in the ambulance. “I’ve got a daughter about her age,” she said. “We’ll hang out. You cool if I give her a little bit of candy?”
Mike would have been cool with a whole bunch of candy if it meant he didn’t have to take his daughter into the wreckage. He texted Fanny to tell her that Annie was hanging with the EMTs and added the address again in case she missed it on the earlier voice mail. By the time he was ten steps away from the ambulance Annie had gum in her mouth and was playing a video game on the woman’s phone and lounging on a gurney as if it were a couch.
Near the plane, the grass was wet from the firefighters’ hoses, and he felt mud sliding under his shoes. He wished he were wearing a pair of good boots. As he stepped past a piece of metal the size of a car’s hood—part of a wing?—a tall, olive-skinned man in a suit held up his hand. “Sorry pal.”
Mike held up his badge. “Agent Rich. Just need to poke around a little.”
“Moreland,” the man said. “And sorry, but you aren’t going to be poking around at all. PD. We got the scene.”
Mike felt the phone resting in his pocket and resisted the urge to pull it out. The director had said he’d get the support he needed, but he was pretty sure it would look better if he could show some initiative. “Look, Moreland, I don’t want to come in here like a dick. I know how it is when the feds step in, and I’d like to play nice. Today was supposed to be my day off. I’ve got my daughter with me”—he pointed to where Annie was now sitting on the bumper of one of the ambulances and evidently telling some sort of story to a crowd of EMTs—“and I was just at the hospital visiting my partner, who got shot yesterday. You hear about the shooting in the northeast?”
“Yeah. That you guys?”
“Yeah, that was us, and after shooting two Aryan Nations motherfuckers, watching my partner get hauled off to the hospital with a gunshot wound and a couple of broken ribs from where his vest took a hit, and supposedly having today off to visit my daughter, the same daughter whose soccer practice I missed last night because of the aforementioned shooting, well, I’m not too thrilled to be here. But the thing is, I got a phone call ordering me to be here. A phone call from somebody so high up it scares the shit out of me. If I needed to, I could phone him back and make it rain suits from here to Sunday. I could have your asshole designated a federal case if I need to. But I don’t want to do that. And why would that be?”
Moreland couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to smile or scowl at Mike’s rant, but he played along. “Because you don’t want to come in here like a dick.”
“That’s right. I don’t want to come in here like a dick. So all I’m asking is to poke around a bit, and if I can do that and reassure the same person who called and told me I was working today, that I was working regardless of my partner getting shot, regardless of me downing two Aryan Nations chumps yesterday like a regular hero, regardless of the fact that I had to ask the fucking EMTs to babysit, if I can reassure that same person there is nothing to worry about, that would be great. I would very much like to avoid making it rain suits down like spring showers, and I am sure you would very much like to avoid having your asshole designated something that needs to be investigated by the federal government.”
Moreland didn’t say anything for a few seconds, but Mike saw the man’s eyes flicker in the direction of Annie and the ambulances. Finally, Moreland relaxed and moved to the side a little. “You been practicing that speech?”
Mike grinned. “Little bit. First time I’ve ever had to use it. Pretty good, huh?”
Moreland shrugged and then pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket and handed them to Mike. “The ‘rain suits from here to Sunday’ thing wasn’t bad, but I’m not sure about designating my asshole a federal case.”