Brian Freeman - Stripped

Cordy crooked a finger at the cop in the patrol car, who got out and joined them. Serena approached the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. She left the door open, then used a button to roll down the passenger window. Cordy came over on that side, leaning his elbows on the door.

The car stank. Busby was wearing a gigantic Running Rebels T-shirt, and odor wafted from the wet stains at his pits and under his neck. His legs, like tree trunks, grew out of white shorts. Shifting nervously, he passed gas, then mumbled an apology. His eyes darted back and forth between Serena and Cordy.

“Mr. Busby?” Serena asked. “Is that your car there?”

Busby nodded. His chins swayed.

“How long have you owned it?”

“ ’Bout two months,” Busby mumbled. For a large man, he had a voice so soft that Serena had to strain to hear him.

Cordy jutted his face through the window. “You fit in that car, man? I wouldn’t think you’d fit in that car. What do you do, steer with that gut of yours there?”

Busby looked like he was about to cry.

“That’s enough, Cordy,” Serena said sharply. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Busby?”

“I’m a chef at the Lady Luck downtown.”

“A chef!” Cordy hooted. “They ever wonder why the guests look hungry and you got a big smile on your face?”

Busby meekly shook his head. “I don’t steal nothin’.”

“Do you work any other jobs?” Serena asked. “Anything to bring in a little extra cash?”

“No, I’ve been full-time at the Lady Luck for five years.”

“You ever been to Summerlin, Mr. Busby?”

“That rich place out west? Don’t think so. No reason to.”

“You didn’t go out there last Friday afternoon?” Serena continued.

“No. Like I said, I’ve never been there.” He wiped his forehead with a hand the size of a football. “What’s this all about?”

“This is about the kid you killed, you lying sack of shit,” Cordy told him.

Busby shook his head furiously. His eyes got even bigger and whiter. “I never killed nobody.”

“You ran down a little boy,” Cordy insisted. “Then you ran away like a piece of pussy, didn’t have the balls to tell his mother what you did.”

“You’re crazy,” Busby murmured. He turned to Serena. “He’s crazy. I didn’t do that. No way.”

“You want to tell us how your car got stolen?” Serena asked coolly.

“I parked in the Fremont Street lot downtown last Friday. When I came back, it was gone. I called it in. That’s what happened.”

“This was about eight thirty in the evening?”

“Guess so,” Busby replied. “Sounds about right.”

“And what were you doing downtown?” Serena asked. “Playing the slots?”

“I wasn’t playing, I was working,” Busby said. “Like I told you, I cook sausage and eggs at the Lady Luck.”

“When did you get to work?” Serena asked. She didn’t like where this was going.

“Around noon, like always.”

“You mean you parked the car in the Fremont ramp before noon?” she repeated, just to be sure.

“ ’Course. That’s what I do every day. That’s what I’m saying.”

Serena closed her eyes, feeling sick again. This time it was because she knew they were wrong. He had an alibi. She thought about Cordy teasing the man about his gut and then remembered, too, the tight fit as she slid into the Aztek to search. Wrong, wrong.

“Anybody work with you?” Serena asked. She knew she was wasting her breath. He wasn’t the one.

“Well, yeah, you’ve got a bunch of other cooks and waitresses in and out all day.”

“Did you take any breaks? How about a lunch break in the afternoon?” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it.

“No, I don’t take a lunch break. I work straight through.”

Serena couldn’t help smiling. She eyed the man’s whalelike physique. “Come on, Mr. Busby. No lunch break? You?”

Busby smiled for the first time, too. “The fact is, I’m trying to cut back. And, well, I guess I do have a little snack from time to time on the job.”

Serena sighed. “So tell us what happened to your car.”

“Not much to tell. I left work at the usual time, went back to the lot. No car. I always park in the same spot, so it’s not like I could have lost it. It just wasn’t there.”

“Any relatives have keys to your car?”

“I don’t have much in the way of relatives,” Busby said. “Mama’s dead, Daddy’s in the nursing home. Nobody wanted to marry me looking like this.”

Serena nodded. She felt like shit now, putting this poor man through the ringer. A sad, lonely life, and all she could do was sprinkle in a litde more pain and fear. Then she was going to have to tell him that he couldn’t have his car back tonight

She gestured to Cordy, and the two of them huddled. Cordy popped a piece of gum into his mouth and began chewing loudly. “He didn’t do it, did he?”

“Nope.”

“So what does that mean?” Cordy asked.

Serena stopped and thought about it The more she did, the less she liked the implications of what they had found. It didn’t feel like an accident anymore. It felt like something much worse.

“Somebody steals a car downtown and then just happens to get into a vicious hit-and-run in a suburb the same afternoon?”

“He killed the kid deliberately,” Cordy concluded.

“It sure feels that way.”

Serena remembered the receipt for the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. She returned to the patrol car, where Busby was waiting, and leaned inside.

“Did you go to Reno last month, Mr. Busby?”

Busby frowned. “No, I’ve never been to Reno. Not ever.”

Stride waited in Lieutenant Sawhill’s office, swirling coffee in his mug and staring down through the third-floor window at a black cat slinking across the street outside and disappearing into a garbage-strewn backyard. Not long after, a policeman sped by on a mountain bike that looked several sizes too small. His ass hung over the seat, and his knees were almost at his chin. The cat and the cop, both patrolling for rats.

The Homicide Detail was housed in the Downtown Command, Metro’s flagship building, modern and beige, its entrance lined with palm trees. The city fathers had located it in one of the city’s uglier neighborhoods, a few blocks from the downtown casinos, as if the presence of the police headquarters might somehow bring down the surrounding crime rate by osmosis. It wasn’t working.

Stride checked his watch and saw it was almost noon. His stomach was growling. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do more, sleep or eat.

Behind him, the office door opened and closed. Stride nodded at Lester Sawhill, who frowned and pointed a finger at the chair in front of his desk. The phone rang, and Sawhill picked it up. The lieutenant settled himself into his own leather chair, which was so large compared to his small frame that it made him look like a child visiting Daddy’s office. Stride took a seat, too, and waited.

“Good morning, Governor,” Sawhill announced, looking unimpressed, as if he talked to the governor every day.

Serena said she couldn’t remember ever being in Sawhill’s office when he wasn’t on the phone. He liked an audience. It reminded everyone of where he stood in the pecking order.

In Minnesota, Stride had reported to the deputy chief, a leprechaun of a man named Kyle Kinnick-K-2, they called him-who had elephant ears and a reedy voice that sounded like a clarinet played by a six-year-old. Sawhill wasn’t much taller than K-2, but he was a smoother piece of work. He seemed to get a haircut every five days, because the neat trim of his balding brown hair never changed at all. He had a narrow face like a capital V , pockmarked cheeks, and half-glasses that he wore on a chain around his neck when they weren’t pushed down to the little round bulb at the end of his nose.