Back at HQ, Tom Mason saw us as we walked into the detectives’ room with steps neither small nor large, and gestured us into his office. Tom was behind a metal desk as file-laden as ours, though he lined up the file edges better. Tom was in his mid fifties, rail-skinny, with a face as wrinkled and lugubrious as a basset hound. He was totally unflappable and spoke in a country drawl so slow that waiting for words was like watching cold molasses drop into a biscuit.
“You’re off anything with the baby snatcher involved, Harry,” Tom said. “You had direct involvement in the case, and killed the chief suspect. It’s over on the kid case for you.”
“Come on, Tom,” Harry complained. “I can still work the edges.”
“Procedure says it ain’t gonna happen, Harry. Anyway, here’s the case I need you guys to put to bed,” Tom said, holding up the morning New York Times. The biggest headline read, Rev. Scaler Found Dead in Church Camp. Details Pending Autopsy.
“The Scaler case?” I said. “It’s not a murder. The guy died of a heart attack while wearing panties upside-down.”
“First,” Tom said, “we don’t know anything for sure, right?”
I turned from the blinds. “Not a hundred per cent. Maybe ninety-nine point –”
“Secondly, it’s high-publicity, gonna get higher. You guys are the first team, and the city council and chief are gonna want me to tell them the first team’s on the case, right?”
“That’s just diddle-squat politics,” I groused.
“Playing diddle-squat politics is what keeps me in the corner office. Scaler’s yours for now. Find out who was with the Rev. in his final moments, get all this ugliness figured out.”
“Why?” I continued to protest. “It’s all gonna be kept under wraps. Half the politicians in Washington attended Scaler’s services and prayer breakfasts. Everyone knows Scaler’s support put Senator Custis in office and kept him there. You know what’ll finally come out: Scaler died of a heart attack while writing pietistic sermons at his church camp. The dom who beat Scaler’s butt will be threatened by one of Scaler’s lawyers and offered money by another. Stick and carrot. She’ll clam tight. Richard Scaler’s reputation will stay pure as the driven rain.”
Tom walked to his window. “You’re probably right, Carson. But we’re gonna do our job because that’s what we do, right?”
I shrugged. We did our job all the time and nothing ever changed.
Harry chimed in. “What about the baby snatcher? I want to stay close.”
“You want to take it, Carson?” Tom asked. “You’ve been handling it so far. Or should I assign it to someone else?”
“Give it to Barret and Osborne. I’ll fill them in on what background we’ve got. It’s a freak thing. They’re all freak things these days.”
Tom said, “You don’t think the guy specifically targeted the boat kid?”
“Noelle,” Harry corrected.
I said, “There’s no way a brain-dead fuck-up like Bailes could have known which kid to pick. You got a half-dozen infants in the sick-kids ward, another dozen in the regular paed unit. Bailes called the kid a clone and a mutant in his rant, like maybe he saw Star Wars a few hundred too many times. Or maybe he thought the hospital was breeding them. You can’t get into a psycho’s mind, Tom. When Bailes got caught he made an I’m-a-tough-guy speech to the camera and tried to take the gravity elevator.”
“Carson’s right, Tom,” Harry said. “I can’t see how Bailes could have been looking for a specific kid. It had to be pluck’n’run, a random grab.”
“Give the goddamn case to Barrett and Osborne,” I said. “If we’re gonna pursue the Scaler investigation, we haven’t got time for –”
“I want the abductor case,” Harry repeated.
“It ain’t gonna happen, Harry,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The shooting, remember? Departmental rules are clear.”
Harry looked at me. “Carson? How about it? You can work Noelle’s case, right?”
“I’m working the Scaler case if that’s what Tom wants. We’re working the Scaler case.”
Harry’s eyes were no longer looking, they were pleading. I dropped my head, muttered something that must have sounded like surrender.
“OK,” Tom said, holding up his hand to indicate discussion over. “Carson’s got the baby snatcher case. But that can of worms isn’t high priority as long as Scaler’s in the air, no pun intended. That’s the case I need shed of right now.”
We left Tom standing at his window and hustled toward the garage; it was time to pick up our tack hammers and beat on the Great Wall of China, trying to reduce it to rubble. We climbed into the car. Harry looked my way.
“Thanks for taking Noelle’s case, bro. It makes me feel a lot better.”
I turned to my partner, pulled my mouth wide with my fingers, blinked my eyes and waggled my tongue. I said, “Gaaaaa. Gaaaaaaa.”
“Uh, what’s that mean, Carson?”
“What real choice did I have?” I said.