Chapter 11

I got up early the next morning, thanks to the alarm clock. I don't have Cecelia's faculty of waking up only to my alarm; either it wakes me up regardless, or I sleep through it regardless. So I physically got up to turn it off; when I was young I wound up late for work a couple of times until I learned to do that.

Before I left, I wrote a note and left it on the table:

"Dear Cecelia,

"I'm going to report to Harry this morning. In the afternoon I'm going to the range to shoot – I might even see if I can qualify, though probably I don't have to, given the situation. If you and Darlia want to go with me give me a call sometime before noon.

"Tú eres mi querido amor."

I signed it, wondering if my little bit of Spanish was correct. I speak some of the language, but not much and not always well. Cecelia always knows what I mean, and refrains from correcting me; her Spanish is, apart from the American accent, as flawless as any Mexican's. No doubt someone from Argentina or Chile or Spain would notice differences, but living in New Mexico the varieties of Spanish she encounters are Mexican and Chicano.

I closed the door softly behind me. A thin fog was drifting over Red Hawk, and the early sun was trying to burn through. Before I got in the car I walked around the perimeter of the parking lot, and found that there'd been a heavy dew in the night. There was a plowed field just east of the motel, with a barbed wire fence around it, and in an angle between a fence post and a dead sapling a spider web had caught the dew and was presenting its own version of diamonds. I left it intact, for spiders eat insects – most of which I detest – and anyway I like the eight-legged beasties.

When I got to the station Harry wasn't in, but I didn't have to wait long. He picked up a stack of reports from the dispatcher and waved me into his office. He settled behind his desk, while I sat in front. He skimmed quickly through the reports and set the stack aside; obviously there wasn't anything in the paperwork that he needed to deal with immediately.

He regarded me over his coffee cup for a moment. "It seems, Darvin, that you haven't had your radio on."

"Actually, no. I've got just the one job, after all; I have no reason to listen to the calls."

"It would be nice, though, if I could get hold of you."

"Maybe, but with what I'm doing I can't think why you'd need to."

"I'm the chief around here, Darvin. I decide whether I want to contact one of my officers."

I took a breath. "Look, Harry, I took the oath and accepted the shield, and so I owe you something. But you and I both know that I'll turn that shield back in the minute I finish what I'm doing – I'm not here to be a Red Hawk cop. And on top of that I'm sacrificing vacation time with my family to do this for you. Maybe you owe me something too."

"Okay, so we owe each other. Still, I might want you sometime. You've got your assignment, and that's what I want you to do, but we're a small department and we had an incident Wednesday morning where even one more officer at the scene would have helped."

I hadn't known anything about it. "What happened?"

"A little girl went missing. Turned out she was just down in the creek and lost track of time, and then went upstream till she was in the ravine. But we had officers all over the place hunting, and the parents wailing around, and because the officer who looked at the creek didn't see any indications the girl had been there he didn't go upstream far enough."

"You need to get yourself a tracker, Harry."

"Darvin, you're a tracker – as I very well know, since I saw you follow Jimmy Gooden from the Fraley place clear to Camargo, right across fields and roads and through the woods and creeks. If we could have reached you, we might have found that girl three hours sooner."

He was right – but so was I. I decided on a compromise. I pulled out my wallet and got one of my PI cards. "Here's my cell phone number. It's for emergencies only, Harry – I don't give it to just anyone. I want you to have it, and the dispatcher, and that's it. If I find that every cop in the county's got it, I'll change the number and not give it to you."

"Darvin, you don't have to make a speech. It's me, remember?"

"Yeah, I know. But I've made it a point as long as I've had a cell phone to keep it down to the bare minimum – I don't like talking on the phone any more now than I did when I was here before, and especially not a phone I carry in my pocket."

"Okay, yeah, I remember." I could almost see him shifting gears. "So what have you got so far? I know you've been talking to businessmen around town."

"Yeah. The only hint you gave me had to do with abuse of free or cheap meals and whatnot, so I thought I'd tackle that angle first. It's certainly something that a cop could do if he had such an inclination. But so far I've got nothing definite. Two or three people seemed to maybe know something they weren't telling, but it's just cop intuition at this point."

"And while cop intuition is essential in this business," he said, "it's not admissible."

"Yeah. You and I have both had our 'fun' trying to explain to a judge how we knew that someone was holding, or had just committed a crime, or whatever. For us, 'He's hinky' is sufficient; but a judge wants a list of objective reasons."

"Yep. I've often thought that before he can deal with criminal cases a judge ought to have to ride with the cops for a month or two, so he could see just how difficult it is to do the job within their theories."

"Yeah, it'd be an eye-opener all right."

"So what's your plan for this week?" He took a slurp of coffee.

"I'm gonna shoot this afternoon. I don't suppose you'll need me to qualify—" he shook his head "—but I practice on a regular basis, and so does Cecelia, and it's about that time."

"I'll call the range and let 'em know it's okay for your wife to shoot with you."

"Thanks. Anyway, tomorrow I'll start looking at some other angles. And on that point, I got a couple of requests. First, I'd like to look at the personnel files on your officers. And second, what opportunities for corruption exist here in Red Hawk?"

"You want to see the files?"

"Yeah. I wanna get a feel for which, if any, officers have histories which seem to indicate a weakness in that line."

"You're asking a lot, Darvin."

I leaned forward in my chair. "I'm asking for exactly the same thing as the headhunters routinely get in any department, Harry – the same thing your IAD guy would get if you'd handed this to him."

I could see him accept this. "Yeah, you're right. Okay, I'll clear it with them."

"And then the other opportunities for corruption?"

"What do you mean?"

"Cops have to deal with a lot of stuff. Some of it puts money – seemingly easy money – right under their nose. I'd like to know what kind of stuff like that's going on around here."

"We've got a good town here, Darvin."

I waved a hand. "Yeah, I know – I used to live here, remember? But it takes a mighty small town to be completely free of temptation; probably the only way for such a town to exist is for it to be too small to support any cops. Let me ask it in pieces: Y'all got any drugs? Any prostitution? Any gambling? How 'bout liquor licenses, or bars serving people who they oughta cut off? I can think of a lot of ways a cop might find money floating by under his nose, and all he needs to do to get his hands on some of it is maybe just look the other way. Maybe certain trunks he doesn't search, maybe certain bars he doesn't look into much, maybe certain houses he doesn't notice the number of men coming and going. I was a cop here – I saw some temptations myself for two years, and I doubt it's gotten better – more likely worse since I left."

Harry stared at me for a moment, and then turned his chair around. He swiveled back to me almost immediately, saying, "I'll never understand why they didn't put a window in that wall. We're in the corner of the building – they could have done it."

I waited. I knew why he wanted a window; I frequently stare out my window when I'm trying to keep from biting someone's head off ... well, perhaps not "frequently," considering the fact that I run a low-volume business. I knew he'd say something eventually, once he'd curbed his temper. I wasn't sure why his temper had flared up...

He picked a paperclip out of the dispenser, one of those plastic dispensers that has a lid with a hole in it, and a magnet around the hole; you turn the dispenser over and then the clips stick to the magnet so you can grab 'em. He started unbending the clip, straightening out the wire as best he could. His fingers worked at it as he spoke.

"I've been a cop for 40 years, Darvin – and maybe I'm getting too old for this job. I know – I know – that the things you're asking about are everyday temptations for a cop, and yet I had been refusing to think that any of my officers could have surrendered to them. Shoot, Darvin, I hadn't even considered those temptations."

I waved my hand in a negative gesture. "Harry, you're a good cop. Don't ever forget that. Regardless of anything else, you're a good cop.

"But maybe you have been at it too long. You can get ossified. You can get, I don't know, stuck in a certain spot along the timeline. When did you become a cop?"