The man straightened with a grunt and grimaced as he reached around to rub the small of his back. “Junkies,” he said. “There’s always someone. We see them at night. They panhandle our customers on the way into the restaurant. The boss is always calling the cops, but this is the first time anyone’s come out.”
He tossed the garbage into the dumpster.
“Did you see this man?” Cloister pinned Bourneville’s lead under his elbow and clumsily pulled his phone out of his pocket. He fumbled one-handed through to the last picture of Andrew Macintosh, his face framed by the black of a body bag. In death he looked surprisingly peaceful. The only visible sign of his cause of death was a black rimmed hole under his jaw and a faint sag to his face where the bullet had cut through behind it. He still looked obviously dead, and the dreadlocked kitchen worker recoiled.
“Fuck,” he said. “What happened to him?”
“Did you see him?”
“I don’t know.” The man licked his dry lips and craned his head to peer at the picture from a distance. “Maybe. He wasn’t a regular, but I’ve seen him before when the weather was really bad. Over the summer when we had that heatwave, he stayed here. Maybe he was here recently.”
That was good enough. Cloister let the disturbed man go back inside, the tail end of his “You won’t believe the shit I just seen” cut off as the door slammed shut, and called the find in to Mel. Then he kicked in the cracked blue door.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AFTER Aweek of being relegated to coverage on special interest blogs, the violence at the hospital finally propelled Janet Morrow’s case into a headliner.
A news anchor positioned outside the police station stared earnestly into the lens of a camera as he confirmed for viewers that “The assault today at the hospital may have been related to the attack on a transgender tourist earlier this week.” His shirt was dark with sweat under the arms, but the camera was angled high enough that all the viewers would see was the crisp collar and styled hair.
Cloister limped past him, bagged evidence dangling from one hand and Bourneville’s lead looped around his wrist. It had felt good to run Bourneville, his muscles loose and the dark itch in the back of his brain outpaced as his boots hit the pavement, but once he stopped, his hip stiffened and creaked. Last time he hurt himself that badly, he was still in the army. He was too close to an explosion and wound up with a collapsed lung, but it barely slowed him down.
Someone pointed Cloister out to the reporter, and he called out from behind him, “Deputy Witte. Was your injury last week connected to the attack at the hospital? Was Galloway there to talk to—”
Cloister ignored the questions that peppered his back as he jogged up the steps and dodged into the station. He held the door for Bon to trot in ahead of him, her nails noisy on the tiled floor.
The reporter’s voice filtered through the door as he turned back to the camera. “Deputy Witte played a prominent role in the Hartley kidnapping. He doesn’t appear interested in answering questions today.”
The deputy at reception looked up from the paperwork he’d red-penned his way halfway through. “You keep being so high profile,” he said, “the lieutenant is going to make you start talking to the press.”
Cloister shrugged and pointed at Bourneville. “Not my fault, Calhoun. It’s her. She’s a crime-fighting machine.”
Calhoun stood up and leaned over the desk to look down at Bourneville. Aware she was the subject of conversation, Bourneville grinned a wide dog grin and wagged her tail happily. It had been a good day for her. Calhoun snorted and sat back down again.
“Well, let’s be fair. She’s prettier than you too,” he said. “Maybe we should stick her in front of a camera. By the way, the cleanup crew sent in a complaint about you.”
That wasn’t a surprise.
Cloister shrugged. “Hewitt rubs me the wrong way,” he admitted. “And Bon doesn’t like him either.”
“Frome does, though, so stay on his good side.” Calhoun chewed absently on the broken cap of his pen. “Oh, and if you’re looking for Agent Merlo? He’s still at the hospital with Galloway.”
“Thanks.”
“Typical Fed. Get shot a little bit and has to take the whole afternoon off to make us look bad.” Calhoun looked up, his lower lip folded down behind the wet plastic of the pen. “Wait and see, he’ll end up in front of the cameras when this is over. Do half the work, take all the credit. I’d steer clear of him if I were you, Witte.”
He went back to work. Cloister eyed the faint pink tonsure just visible through Calhoun’s failing hairline and wondered if that had been a veiled comment on the earlier kiss or if Calhoun just wasn’t keen on Javi. There were plenty of people who weren’t. Cloister rubbed the back of his neck and realized that he kind of wanted it to be a jab. Not that he cared, had ever cared, what anyone thought of his sex life, but he wanted the kiss to bea thing.If it were, then… he could think it was important too, without it being weird.
“Thanks,” he repeated, his voice a bit drier.
He left Calhoun to the paperwork and went to log the bag as evidence before he headed… home, he decided at the last minute. Bourneville needed her reward for a good job, and her dinner. If his invitation to stay at Javi’s still stood, he supposed Javi would let him know when he got back.
THE METRONOMEthump of Bourneville’s tail on the floor of the trailer provided a soundtrack as Cloister made dinner. Her food was stored in an airtight container, weighed out to the gram, and enriched with 20 percent of warm, boiled-and-diced chicken breast. His dinner came in a plastic compartmented dish, and he blasted it in the microwave for five minutes.
While his dinner went around on the turntable, Cloister picked up Bon’s dish and carried it to the door. She beat him there, and he had to step over her to get the door open, dish balanced precariously on his cast.
He let her scramble down the steps and do a quick check of the perimeter of the small yard to make sure it had been respected. A few plots down, a handful of colored balloons bobbed listlessly from the steps of a trailer. The foil banner over the door announced Happy Birthday in bright-pink letters. Bourneville sniffed thoroughly at any gap and, finally satisfied, came back to sit down in front of him.
“You know what a good job you did today?” Cloister asked as he set the dish down. “Even with me laid up, we’re still the best team in the department.”
