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Darby
I was standing against our company Flexion nearly an hour later when Mark’s footfalls alerted me of his approach.
Mark stopped in front of me, arms folded over his chest. “CSU have anything?”
While I wouldn’t say anything to him, today he was particularly roguishly handsome, especially with the late September sun streaming through his black hair. He’d greyed a bit more at the temples in the last few years, but his fortieth birthday was quickly approaching. I preferred to think it was a result of age, and not the stress of the job.
I shook my head. He’d tasked me with following up with CSU while he dealt with the canvas team. “Maybe they’ll have some trace evidence, but they’ll need time to analyze.”
“Time’s exactly what we don’t have.”
We climbed into the Flexion.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Inform the boyfriend? We’ll have Tulsa Bendex inform the parents.”
I tapped into my glass, which automatically received the data from Mark’s. As partners, they were linked so we always had the same data. “Ian Brecunier. He lives in Lee’s Summit. Says he’s a bouncer and occasional bartender at A Glass Half Full in the Light and Power District. He’s also a trainer at a gym in the Northland.”
“He goes all over the city, doesn’t he?”
“Sure looks that way.”
Ian’s half-duplex was dark, and no amount of knocking made a difference. No door service was evident, which would have allowed us to make inquiries on when he would return. Mark had me check the neighbor to the north while he visited those to the south.
The neighbor I spoke with indicated she’d seen Ian take off earlier in the afternoon.
I rejoined Mark a few minutes later in our vehicle.
“I’ve got nothing,” he said.
I told him what I’d found.
“Make some calls. I’ll head back toward the core of the city.”
I got on the comm while Mark disengaged the auto-drive and took Route 350 out of Lee’s Summit back into Kansas City. We’d been out of jurisdiction—Lee’s Summit didn’t contract with Bendex for their police protection.
Years ago, about a decade before the Super Uprising and the subsequent SuperHuman Bill of Rights, there’d been a move nationally to privatize police departments. Something about less government involvement meaning less corruption and more competition. It came down to large corporations who mostly subsidized the programs.
Our company, Bendex, had contracts with about half of the major departments nationwide, and about two-thirds of smaller city departments and sheriff’s offices. The nice thing was it made transferring easy: your spouse gets a promotion and has to move from Chicago to Phoenix? No sweat! Bendex would transfer you within the company.
It also made jurisdictional issues a partially moot point. With so many cities within, say, the Kansas City metro, about half of them contracted with Bendex. So if we had a case that starts in our jurisdiction of Kansas City, but a lead takes us into Olathe, Kansas, we didn’t have to worry about checking in with Bendex there. When we crossed into Delta’s or Virgin Ltd’s territory, it could get dicey, but the lawyer types had mostly worked out the border issues between municipalities and state-to-state problems.
Bendex was the top dog where police protection services came into play, with Delta and Virgin Ltd. behind us. Other companies, and some company conglomerations, especially in small towns where they wanted one or two police officers, were small fish comparatively.
Dutifully, I carried out Mark’s directive to find Ian Brecunier. A failed call to the gym sent me to the bar. An employee confirmed Ian was tending bar.
After finishing the calls and putting the address into the computer, I leaned back and rested my head. The brief conversations I’d had with Ian’s bosses showed me a man seriously in love with Prairie. Sorrow for the man we were about to inform overwhelmed me.
It never got any easier.