J. Kerley - The Killing Game

They were congratulating me, but being cops wouldn’t use those words. The accolades were in their grins. Or the thumbs up after the joke. I climbed the steps to the homicide department. Harry was on paid leave for three days, standard procedure for a cop involved in a killing.

“Carson!” a voice called. My supervisor, Lieutenant Tom Mason, stood at his office door, lean as a teenager though in his mid-fifties, wearing his cream Stetson and cowboy boots. Tom hailed from piney-woods Bama, but he always looked straight from a cattle drive across the plains. I banked in his direction.

“Chief Baggs wants to see you, Carson.”

I winced. “Why?”

“Probably something to do with last night. Make nice, Carson,” Tom said pointedly. “He’s the chief, right?”

I went upstairs to a hushed and carpeted row of offices inhabited by the brass hats of the department, crossing the floor with the same thought I get in funeral parlors: Where’s the nearest exit ?

Chief Baggs’s personal assistant sat at a desk outside the closed door of his corner office. Though Darlene Combs was only in her late thirties, she’d already buried two husbands, one a suicide, the other OD-ing at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Her green eyes always seemed as irritated as her hair was red. I studied her outfit: a blue skirt hiked high to display plump thighs she thought slender; a white silk blouse a size too small, to highlight a pair of odes to silicone; and an Evan Picone jacket, to show she didn’t have to wear the big box knock-offs worn by the women on the lower floors.

Darlene said, “The Chief is very busy today.”

“He asked Lieutenant Mason to send me up here.”

“You’re not in the Chief’s appointment book.”

“Perhaps I’m in the footnotes.”

She tapped a button on her phone. “Chief?” she said. “Detective Ryder is out here.” She listened for several seconds, put the phone down. “He’s on the phone to the Mayor. It’ll be a few minutes.”

Every time I’d come here, I’d waited out a call to the Mayor. I once compared notes with Harry, who’d been here twice. Both times Harry cooled his heels while the Chief finished his consultations. Harry, ever the detective, had noted Baggs’s phone line wasn’t lit, but perhaps he communicated on a secret line like the Batphone.

Darlene returned to penciling a magazine page as I studied the walls, laden with photos of Baggs shaking every political hand in four states, including such Washington stalwarts as Alabama senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. Both men’s eyes seemed to say, Who is this geek at the end of my arm ?

Though the degree in Police Administration was framed near center on the Wall of Baggs, most prominent was the law degree. The name of the institution was unknown to me, perhaps a correspondence subsidiary of Harvard or Tulane. While the bulk of the photos and certificates were in simple black frames, the degree was in a baroque gilt rectangle. It seemed a shade overwrought, but who was I to judge, being sans entrée into the world of police administration.

The ambition-prone Carleton Baggs was late to the top floor. Though he and a cabal of like-minded administrators had been headed upstairs several years back, Baggs had cast his lot with an ambitious manipulator named Terrence Squill who eventually ascended to Acting Chief. Squill’s career had slammed a wall when he’d been murdered by an even more ambitious manipulator.

Since Harry and I – me particularly – played a major role in the incident, we were not beloved of several old-timers in administration, feeling we had delayed their ascension to the uppermost ranks, thus costing them time and money. When the former chief retired last fall, enough years had passed for the scandal to have become history. Baggs, twenty years in grade and boasting well-framed degrees in law and police administration, got his shiny new Chief hat.

Darlene’s phone buzzed. “You can go in,” she said, not looking up from her pencilings. I shot a downward glance and saw Darlene was taking a quiz: “Test Your Hotness in Bed”.

I mumbled Somewhere between death and dry ice .

“What?” she said.

“I said you look lovely today.”

Chief Baggs was staring out his window, his back broad and blue in summertime seersucker. I could smell his cologne, one of those over-musked concoctions advertised by ageing jocks wearing towels. He turned, snatching a memo from his jacket pocket.

“Your lieutenant recommended you for a citation,” he said. “I want to present the award in a department-wide ceremony to let the public see what their taxes are paying for.”

The situation wasn’t about me, it was about the department’s image. Baggs pursed his lips and studied my clothes: green tee, cream linen jacket, jeans, black running shoes. “You’ll wear a uniform or a suit,” the Chief said, recalling the time I received a citation dressed in chinos and a T-shirt touting CRAZY AL’S MARINA AND BAR.

“I’ll do the department proud,” I promised, holding up a two-fingered Boy Scout salute as I backpedaled.

“One more thing,” Baggs said, halting me with an upraised hand. “Shumuchuru is taking a leave of absence to care for his mother. He can’t teach his class series at the police academy. We need a replacement, starting tonight. It appears, Detective Ryder, that you’ve never done a teaching stint.”

I resisted a groan. “The classes always seem to be at times when I’m indisposed, Chief.”

“The last time the academy asked, you said you had to visit a sick brother. Didn’t you tell me you were an only child, Detective?”

I had a brother, but not one I admitted to – for various reasons. Thus I had long fostered the only-child story. “A misunderstanding, sir. It was, uh, an uncle.”

“You’ve also claimed your house had fallen into a sinkhole. Do they allow sinkholes on Dauphin Island, Detective?”

“Uh, more like quicksand, Chief. The stuff can be treacherous if—”

“I don’t know why you’re dodging the academy, Ryder,” he scowled. “People like you usually jump at the chance to pontificate before an audience.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what good I could do, Chief. They’re raw recruits. Kids, basically.”

“Meaning what exactly, Ryder?”

I shook my head, Baggs just wasn’t getting it.

“It’s a total waste of my time, Chief,” I said. “Pearls before swine.”

“Class is about over for tonight, folks,” I announced. “Any final questions?”

I set aside the projector’s remote and studied the recruits, surprised to discover the class wasn’t entirely made up of dolts. Several were complete dullards, of course, a red-faced mouth-breather named Wilbert Pendel coming to mind. No matter what I said, Pendel wanted to talk about guns. The other students began telling him to shut up. He muttered, stamped a foot on the floor like a mini-tantrum, then sulked in silence.

But on the whole the class seemed several notches above my expectations. They were fast learners, too. A cell phone had gone off early on. “Don’t think of that as a phone,” I’d said. “Think of it as a warning bell. When the next phone rings I will stomp it into its components. Thank you.”

Not an electronic peep since. I’d explained various homicide cases solved by Harry and me – with histories, photos, news stories – and the recruits now regarded me with eyes both admiring and envious, which wasn’t offensive in the least.

In response to my call for final questions, a tentative hand climbed into the air. “I have a question, Detective.”

“What was your name again?”

“Wendy Holliday, sir.”