“A vehicular mobile without sufficient visiability,” Desk Sergeant Doolittle finished with a sneer.
“I defy you to find that classification in your stack of paperwork,” Eric told him with a straight face. On the one hand, Eric was wondering if killing this man would count as a publicservice—it would be stretching that line he’d drawn for Brady a little fine, but… well, he thought a lot of the public might rejoice.
On the other hand, this ignorant, trivial little cockroach was doing the Lord’s work, because while the dispatcher monitored ashittonof calls in the comms corner of the office (it wasn’t a center, not really—it was a corner, and she barely had room to stretch her legs), this guy was so intent on making Eric’s life hell, he hadn’t so much as shifted a whisker as Brady had crept along the hallway to the back offices, including, he’d whispered to Eric via their Bluetooth headphones, Cuthbert’s.
And while Doolittle (or, well,Vance, his nametag read) was actively mangling the definition of “vandalism” and “property crime” and “competence,” Eric had gotten an earful on the locations of the roadblocks actively searching for Brady.
Some of them they knew about. Two miles east of the turnoff for the cul-de-sac, they’d seen that one the night before. Five miles west, well, Burton had told Eric and Brady about that one as they’d neared the station.
The three roads to the north and one to the south—those had been a surprise, and Brady had made a comment wondering how many of the men Cuthbert was riding herd on actually belonged to his station.
“We’ve got twenty units—tops,” Brady had said. “There’s between five and ten ateveryroadblock, which means he called in the CHP on this, and they only know the party line.”
“I’ll tell Ace and Jai,” Burton told them on the open line. “Keep looking for the phone until you hear from me or you absolutely positively have to get out of there.”
Which put Eric dealing with Officer Vance/Doolittle for as long as he possibly could.
“Shit,” Brady muttered in his ear. “Man, I’m almost through his desk and there’s nothing here. Except… eww. Cockroaches. And a half-dead burrito.”
Eric—who was watching Vance/Doolittle rifle through a file cabinet at the end of the help counter—murmured, “If there’s cockroaches, the burrito is fully dead.”
“Yeah, but I’m mad the phone’s not here. I was sure it would be in the station. It was… I washangingon that!”
Eric couldn’t answer because at that moment his antagonist/patsy turned to him with a smile and a veritable stack of triplicate forms.
“Well lookee here, Idogot me some paperwork for vehicular mobility transmandibulary andilism.”
“Is that vandalism, or are you just happy to see me?” Eric asked grimly, taking the stack of papers—most of them not involving vandalism or police report numbers to give to insurance companiesat all.
“Your choice,” said Vance. “You don’t wanna fill that out, you can go drive your wrecked car and get pulled over maybe at one of the traffic stops they got goin’.”
“I’ll pass,” Eric told him, watching the sky lighten from the desert-facing window. “What are those for, anyway?”
“There was a bank robbery the other day, you didn’t hear?” Oh yay! Now Vance was his beauty-shop bestie.I could kill him and make it look like a heart attack, Eric thought in desperation.
“Yes,” Eric said, “I was there. In Baker. It was terrible—four men came in, and then they planned to rush out and kill the one officer responding, and then things went to hell. Are you after one of those men?”
The blank expression on the officer’s face was more than worth this entire awkward con.
“They what?” he asked.
“The bank robbers,” Eric said slowly, “had been paid to kill the responding officer.”
“You got that wrong,” said Vance, and for the first time, Eric felt some sympathy for him. “He… our sheriff said he was illicit in the crime.”
It took Eric a moment to process that. “No,” he replied when it had sunk in. “Your man was almostunalivedduring the crime. Why are you chasing him all over the desert?”
“Because, uh, he killed a man.”
Eric shook his head slowly. “He killed nobody. I was there, remember. A lot of people were there. Notoneof us was questioned by the police, so I’m not surprised you don’t know what happened.” This was useless, Eric knew, but since he was playing for time, he might as well spill some truth.
“But… but there’s amanhunt,” Vance said, as though the manhunt explainedeverything.
“Yes, I know,” Eric said. “For a guy who was apparently left hung out to dry.”
“Well, he was queer.”
Eric gazed at him with an obvious lack of surprise. “And that’s illegal nowadays? I shall have to tell my friends. Do you have a pen I can fill these out with, or do I have to spit in the little boxes?”
