Boyd heaved a sigh.“Yeah, but this is my thing,” she said.“Gardner says that since I started getting Mel sandwiches, I can’tstopor she’ll give us all the shit calls, and now everyone else wants in too.”
“Does Mel give me the shit calls?”Cloister asked.
Boyd grimaced as a handful of juicy sliced beef was slapped onto a buttered log of bread and looked away.She nodded at Bon.
“You have the dog,” she said.“That’syourthing.Tancredi brings the baby in for Mel to see sometimes.That’s her thing.Everyone pays their way.I just…got sandwiches.”
It wasn’t exactly how it worked, but Boyd would learn that on her own eventually.
“So tell me what happened that night when you took our guy in,” Cloister said to pull the conversation back on track.“Why did he get cut loose?”
Boyd rubbed the back of her neck again and shifted her weight uncomfortably.She gave the sandwich-manufacturing line a hopeful look, as if her order being called might get her out of this conversation.
“I don’t really know,” she said.“It wasn’t my call.”
Cloister reached down to rub Bon’s ears absently.“Whoever’s call it was got my dog hit by a wrench,” he said.Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the server’s eyes widen in horror and shifted to give him a reassuring smile.“She’s fine.”
The server didn’t look convinced.There wasn’t much Cloister could do about that.He looked back at Boyd and gestured for her to move away.She did, with the foot-dragging reluctance of a kid.
“There’s also a federal agent in the hospital,” Cloister said.“I’m not going to be the last person who asks about this; I am probably the most reasonable.”
Boyd lifted her hand to her mouth to chew on her already-ragged thumbnail.
“Am I really going to get in trouble?”she asked.
“I won’t know,” Cloister said.He glanced down at Bourneville and gave her a nudge with his knee.She sighed but did the necessary as she got up, padded over, and pressed her weight against Boyd’s thigh.“Not unless you tell me what happened.”
Boyd reached down without thinking about it to pet Bon.She winced as she felt the lump on the dog’s skull and pulled her hand away.
“Is she really OK?”
“She’s got a hard head,” Cloister said.“She’s fine.”
Boyd glanced over at him.“I heard you got shot.”
“Mine’s even harder,” Cloister said.“Why did you let that guy walk?”
Boyd folded both her lips between her teeth as if she was holding the words in.She finally blurted them out in a confidential mutter.
“I didn’t,” she said.The words getting out made her shoulders relax like it was a physical relief.“Gardner did.And it didn’t make any sense, but…I’m just a rookie.”
“I’m not,” Cloister said.“Go on.”
“You won’t tell him I told you?”
“Not unless I have to.”
Boyd twisted her mouth and chewed on her ragged nail some more, but finally gave a quick, firm nod to herself.
“Guy wasn’t talking,” she said.“He said he was a sovereign citizen and we had no jurisdiction over his comings and goings, and then he clammed up.So we ran his prints, right?”
She stopped to look expectantly at Cloister.He nodded.
“Right,” Boyd repeated.There was blood on her nail at this point.She pulled her hand away from her mouth and grabbed a napkin to dab at it.“So they come back, and he’s in the system, but he’s got no priors.It’s from an enhanced security check, from his job.So Gardner asks me to go get him a coffee, I come back, and he’s cut the guy loose.I don’t know why.He had the whole story about the foreclosure and the sister, and I don’t fucking know where he got that from.”
She stopped abruptly to take a breath, shaky, as if the words had gotten away from her.Her hand drifted toward her mouth again, but she stopped herself and tucked her thumb out of the way under her fingers.
“I should have said something.I know that,” she admitted.“But I figured the guy obviouslywasn’twell, and maybe Gardner just cut him slack.We all know someone who could have done with some slack.And then there’s a Fed missing, and you’re suspended, and I figured…bigger fish to fry.”
