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"LOOK AT YOU, BOUCHER," Heat mumbled a greeting to his fellow ex-pat from Louisiana. "Egyptian cotton?"
Boucher nodded, running the back of the fingers of his left hand up and down his dress shirt. “Nothin’ but the best for Missus Boucher’s baby boy,” he replied. “Might not have two nickels to rub together, but I’m gonna look good.”
Ignoring Garcia, Heat shoved his hands in his worn and stained khaki pants and leaned against the hallway's dirty wall. “Why did the two of you call me down here? What has Wolf done this time?”
“I didn’t call you,” Boucher protested, pointing as his partner. “Miguel did.”
Garcia frowned at Boucher. “Look, we don’t want no scene now, Heat. Let’s take this someplace where we can talk in private.”
Heat stared at the Latino detective. Miguel Garcia had come up through the ranks the hard way, earning his detective shield. On the other hand, Elijah Boucher had somehow wrangled himself a shield during his stint in the New Orleans police force and, knowing Boucher, had finagled himself a detective’s job when he’d followed his ex-wife to Houston after Hurricane Katrina. The two detectives couldn’t have come from more disparate backgrounds. Garcia from a working-class family. Boucher from old money and French creole society in New Orleans, the youngest of four children and the only male heir. An odd couple they indeed were. But the pair had the highest clearance rate of any detectives in Houston's Homicide Division.
If Heat had murdered someone, Boucher and Garcia were not the detectives he would want to catch the case.
—-
“THAT’S WOLF.”
"You sure," Boucher asked kindly, nodding at the young male intern to pull the white covering back over the body. The intern restored the body to its resting place in the long wall of square, stainless steel doors, each hiding what had once been a living person.
"I'm sure," Heat replied in a surly tone. "Why didn't you just tell me this is why you wanted me to come down here?"
A stony silence ensued, tipping Heat off as to the pair’s reasoning. “You think I did this to Wolf,” he growled, clenching his fists.
“Hey, chill, man,” Garcia quipped, placing his hand on the butt of his pistol. “We had to start with you, Heat. Word is you and Wolf ain’t been getting’ along so well of late.”
“So? It’s like being married when you’re partners, you two should know that," Heat snapped. "You have ups and downs, but you don't just go and get a divorce because the other spouse pisses you off half the time. Wolf and I were goin’ through a patch, that’s all.”
“Where were you, last night, say from eight till bout three in the morning?” Boucher asked in his smooth manner.
“Watching a no good, cheating, soon to be ex-wife of a client have a night on the town.”
“That’s nice, but just tellin’ me, that ain’t proof.”
“How about the ticket stub from the House of Blues? They started the evening there, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were the main act. Then it was off to the JW Marriot Downtown for some carnal fun. I have time stamps on the photographs if you want. After that, I went home to sleep for a couple of hours."
Boucher nodded, stroking his immaculately groomed mustache with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “Sounds good, but you’re gonna have to produce the stub and the photos.”
Heat pulled his wallet out, extracted the ticket stub, and handed it to Boucher, who examined it. "Good show?"
“If you like that sort of music, yeah, it was a good show.”
“Email me the photos this afternoon,” Garcia said firmly, handing Heat a card. “My email is on there.”
Garcia took his cue from his partner and moved the questioning along. “Let’s say you didn’t do it, Heat. Anyone come to mind that would do this to Wolf?”
"Lots of anger, whoever did it," Heat replied, stating the obvious. "Yeah, I can think of a few husbands Wolf caught that would want to do that to him. Few other people I can think of as well."
"Can you get us a list of names," Garcia asked respectfully. Heat was in a mood, and being pushy was not going to generate any cooperation. "Sooner would be better, first forty-eight hours, you know?"
Heat nodded. “As soon as I get back to my office. Can I go now?”
“Yeah, I think so. You got any other questions, Elijah?”
“Yeah, I do,” Boucher blurted out. “How did Wolf get that for a nickname?”
Heat stared at Boucher and let out a long sigh. "His name was Wolfgang Johann Pfeiffer, fourth-generation German-American, from the Fredericksburg area. Wolf was just short for Wolfgang."
—-
“YEAH, BOSS?”
“Get me the list of all the husbands who threatened to kill Wolf.”
Amy's pulse quickened, and she dropped the phone. Hurriedly, she retrieved the headset and held it to her head again.
“Boss? Is Wolf okay?”
Heat responded by saying nothing, letting the silence over the phone line do his talking for him. He hadn’t figured out how to tell Amy what happened to Wolf. Not telling her seemed like as good a way as any once she asked the question. Heat could hear Amy’s rapid breathing over the phone as she worked up the nerve to ask the question he didn’t want to answer.
“Is Wolf dead?”
"Yeah, Amy, he is. It's why I need the list. Boucher and Garcia want it, and I want to cooperate."
A sharp intake of breath came through the line as Heat applied the brakes of his aged Honda Pilot to come to a stop at a red light. “Boss, they don’t think you did it?”
“It’s crossed their minds,” Heat replied. “It’s why I want to shift their attention elsewhere.”
The next question wasn't unexpected. Heat knew Amy had to ask. “Boss?”
“Amy, you know I didn’t.”
Heat listened carefully through the silence on the phone, worried Amy would even put the thought into words. When he heard his pretty assistant ask who he wanted the list emailed to, he let out a sigh of relief.
—-
“YOU LIKE HIM FOR IT?”
"Nah, Captain," Boucher drawled. "Heat has an alibi, and I could see the wheels turning, you know, him thinking about who could have done it."
“Garcia?”
"Same, Captain. You had to know those two. On a given day, they might hate each other's guts, but they were partners, you know? Kinda like brothers, if you pick on one, you have to answer to the other.”
Captain Browning leaned back in his chair to think. He played with his tie absentmindedly for a moment before brushing an imaginary crumb from his shirt. A former defensive lineman at Texas Southern, a bad knee had made exercise of late problematic, causing the big man to lose the battle of the middle-aged spread.
“Well, don’t cross Heat off the list, just move him to the bottom. Keep an eye on him, though. He's a hothead. Heat is just as likely to solve an argument with fists of his or a gun as with words.”
“Captain, that's part of what's got us worried," Boucher replied in his New Orleans drawl. "We figure Heat might beat us to the perp, and then we'll have another body to deal with."
All three cops nodded and sat in silence, wondering what they would do if Heat did take matters into his own hands.
