Brad Parks - The Good Cop

Still, this was the first potentially complicated moment of our young relationship. We had yet to define what we were-exclusive/not exclusive, going somewhere/just playing around, et cetera-and I had to treat this with due care.

“Well, I guess Tina and I had some adult situations, but we never-”

“What, you never made the move?”

“No, I made the move-”

“But you never sealed the deal? What’s up with that?”

I explained, as best I could, how the combination of a ferociously ticking biological clock and an irrational fear of committed relationships had led to Tina’s desire for my seed and my seed alone.

When I was done, Kira said, “Oh. That’s kind of weird. But you said no?”

“I guess it’s not my idea of how fatherhood should work.”

“So, what, now she has voodoo dolls of you somewhere? You’re not suddenly going to start grasping your side when she puts a pin in you?”

“No, but it sounds like you might want to watch out. She’s practiced in witchcraft, you know.”

“I’ll be careful,” she said, then, thankfully, changed subjects. “By the way, Powell called me a little while ago. He wants to talk to you.”

“Why didn’t he just call me directly? He’s got my number-he sent me those text messages last night.”

Kira gave her eyes a quick roll. “I don’t know. He’s a little flighty sometimes. He spends so much time thinking about the dead he has a little trouble focusing on the living.”

“Yeah, I suppose I figured that.”

“Anyway, he seemed really excited to tell you about something. So you might want to call him.”

“Okay, I’ll go do that,” I said. “You want to grab dinner tonight or something?”

“Can’t. My steampunk book group meets tonight.”

“Oh. Can I come?”

“Well, we always do it in costume. I’m dressing as a proper Victorian widow who’s really a zombie. My character lures men into marrying her and then eats their brains. You want to come dressed as one of my soon-to-be-dead husbands?”

“That’s tempting, really, but maybe I’ll pass. I haven’t read the book, after all.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Well, have fun,” I said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, because I knew no one was looking, then departed.

Kira hollered after me, “Watch out for the aging voodoo sperm witch!”

* * *

I was perhaps two strides back out into the newsroom, and still chuckling about what Kira had just said, when I saw something that made me immediately remove the smirk from my face.

It was the aging voodoo sperm witch herself. She had her arms crossed and was demanding to know, “ What did she just call me?”

“Huhwhawho?” I said, hoping perhaps she had been too far away to really hear it.

“Oh she did not just say that.”

“Say, uh … say what?”

“Aging voodoo sperm witch?”

Ah, so apparently Tina was doing that pissed-off-chick thing, where they ask a question to which they already know the answer. There was only one response, of course, and that’s to do that conflict-avoiding-guy thing, where we try to say anything to stem a total cataclysm.

“Oh, she wasn’t … that’s a … a movie we saw. Kira’s into all that fantasy stuff, you know. Some of the titles are a little bizarre.”

“For the hundred millionth time, Carter Ross, I know when you’re lying,” she said and began stalking away before I could have much say in the matter.

About three steps into her stalking, Tina turned like she was going to say something. Then she changed her mind and continued on her way. There was no sense in going after her-in the same way there’s no sense in running your fingers under a working power saw-so I retreated to my desk.

I was at least semicurious as to what had Paul/Powell riled up, so I made him my first call. His phone cut straight to some indistinct-yet-ominous-sounding symphony music, which droned on for a good twenty seconds. There are few things more annoying than people who turn voice mail into an opportunity to foist their music on a defenseless listener.

Finally, his wannabe Vincent Price voice said, “You have reached Powell. Please leave a message in which you recognize that life is fleeting and death is forever.”

I wasn’t prepared to give up on reincarnation just yet, so I hung up.

This led to a few minutes of thumb-twiddling-more in the figurative sense, since literal thumb-twiddling gets exhausting if you try to do it for more than about thirty seconds-during which time I pondered my next step.

This was one of the other ways in which the Internet had changed the dynamics of the modern scoop. As soon as you posted something, it set the clock going: the competition would start scrambling to catch up with you, meaning you had to scoop your own scoop if you were going to stay in the lead.

In this case, I decided fairly quickly what my new scoop would be. A story that said the Eagle-Examiner had obtained autopsy photos contradicting police findings was good. But a story that said the police had recognized their egregious fault and renewed an investigation because of photos uncovered by the Eagle-Examiner? That was even better.

They just had to be given a reason to do it. And, of course, I happened to have witnessed that reason earlier in the day, when I saw the first few minutes of what could have been Mimi and Fusco’s amateur porn video. As Tommy had made me recognize, I would need to tell the police about that sooner or later. Might as well make it sooner.

I briefly considered telling Tina what I was about to do. But I knew how that would go. I would inform Tina I felt ethically obligated to tell the police about something. Tina would ask Brodie, who would ask the lawyers, who would dither about it for three days-at $400 per dithering hour-and then eventually decide I was, in fact, ethically obligated to do it. It would then go back down the food chain, making everyone feel justified they had done their job. And all the while, I wouldn’t be doing mine.

Not being in the mood for any of that, I dialed the number for my good friend Hakeem Rogers.

After a minute on hold and two minutes of insisting I really did need to speak directly with the Newark Police Department’s esteemed public information officer-and, no, I couldn’t just send him an e-mail-I was finally connected.

“Check your voice mail,” he said as soon as he picked up the line. “Everything I have to say is already on there.”

“I know, I know. And we’re about to post your very informative words online. I’m calling about something else. I’d like to report information about a crime that may have been committed. I’d like to speak with the investigating officer on the Darius Kipps case.”

Rogers took a second to swallow this before saying, “Really? You serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

“You’re not trying to backdoor yourself into an interview, are you? Because if I hear you were just-”

“No,” I cut him off. “I have real, actual, credible information.”

“What is it?”

“Ha, no way. I’m not doing this through intermediaries. I talk to the detective in charge of the investigation or I don’t talk.”

There was another pause on his end before he said, “What are you up to, Ross?”

“Just doing the right thing. Isn’t this what you guys are encouraging responsible citizens to do in all those tips posters you plaster all over the place?”

“Yeah, but…” He let his voice trail off. “Okay. Let me make a call.”

I went back to twiddling my thumbs (again, not really) and watched as my story went live on our Web site. This is horribly old-fashioned of me, I know, but a scoop online never feels quite the same as a scoop in the newspaper. The online scoop seems to disappear into the Internet ether-or, worse, into some message forum where five trolls who still live in their parents’ basements make comments on it like “yeh hahaha that remind’s me ov the time my cuzin got tyed up by his girl frend n the beeeyatch didnt let him go 4 like 3 dayz hahahahaha lol.”