Well. Ordinary according to Kit’s current lifestyle.
Kit:can we meet up soon? i want to see if holden’s murder archives match any of your cases
Bishop:Holden’s WHAT?
Kit:lmao right? it’s not that weird tho
Kit:ok it’s pretty weird but not like BAD weird
Footsteps approached on the other side of the plexiglass, accompanied by jingling chains.
Bishop:I need to go, but I look forward to that explanation.
Bishop looked at his phone an extra moment, composing himself. He knew how to handle Kit’s seduction attempts and panic attacks. But Kit had been strangely casual, comfortable, since Bishop last turned him down. It left Bishop off-balance.
Or maybe Bishop was just more bothered about today’s visit than he wanted to admit. Better get it over with, so he could return to his normal day of covering up murders.
Bishop sat down in the central chair and put the corded phone to his ear. The man across the plexiglass barrier did the same.
“Hello, Archie,” Bishop said to his former partner.
The man behind the plexiglass was strange and familiar all at once. Archie looked much the same after five years inside. He always kept his hair short, and he always wore a grin on his blunt, square face. A graying bulldog of a man. The orange jumpsuit clashed with his ruddy complexion.
Bishop hadn’t expected a reunion before a future parole hearing, when Bishop might be summoned to repeat facts that shouldn’t need repeating.
Archie Calvin abused his badge to hurt civilians. Mostly women. He kept one woman in a temporary holding cell for eight hours, except the cell wasn’t at the station. It was in his basement.
Years from now, a judge might ask about remorse. Lessons learned. Here in the San Corvo Penitentiary visiting room, Bishop just saw a man who belonged in a cage.
The system worked, as Kit once put it. But it was harder than it should have been.
Sometimes Bishop wished the system hadn’t worked. Archie was the first man Bishop ever planned to kill. Maybe Bishop would sleep easier if he’d had the chance.
“You’re here early,” Archie said, still smiling. “Interrupted my afternoon tea party with the boys.”
Smiling, joking, same as ever.
Bishop wasn’t going to play into the false camaraderie. “Paula said you wanted to see me.”
Archie shrugged. “I don’t know your new number, so I figured I’d ask a friend.”
Paula was one of the few officers who kept in touch with Bishop. He wouldn’t call her a friend. She was just so addicted to station gossip that she was willing to talk to anyone,including both of SCPD’s recent disgraces. The felon and the whistleblower.
“Five minutes,” Bishop said. Any longer and his temper would snap.
Maybe Archie sensed that. He wasn’t as dumb as he used to act on the force. There was a brutish intelligence behind his broad smile. “Five minutes? You wanted to give me life, Matthew.”
Bishop sat silent, listening to the clock.
Archie’s face sharpened into a frown. “I don’t need five minutes. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m doing just fine,” Bishop said, and it was mostly true.
“I can see that. Looks like you’re doing real good out there.” Archie leaned back, assessing. “I don’t like that at all.”
Archie set the phone down. He waved both manacled hands at a guard and stood.
Bishop lowered his own phone, trying to slow his pounding heart. He couldn’t shake the suspicion that this visit was a test.
