She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,176

broke the law. No reason to charge you and ruin your career, though. Cops carry. An honest mistake. Sleep it off, and we’ll take a SITREP in the morning.

Fogel remembered staring at the officer as he said this, a kid of no more than nineteen who probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. The only thing holding up his uniform pants was his gun belt, and she suspected a pair of suspenders might be at work under his shirt but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

Officer Mitchell Jun, his name tag said. Alone at the desk on the nightshift. A shit gig, she thought. Other than being too small to frighten anyone, what did you do to deserve such a shit gig?

SITREP?

She managed to repeat the word when he said it, but it came out slurred. Close enough for him to understand, though.

Situation report, ma’am.

Oh.

We just call them “Situation Reports” back home in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, pencil boy.

He ushered her to the cell at that point, to the thin mattress and the LEGO pillow where she closed her eyes and hoped to God the room would stop spinning before her dinner came back up.

“Ma’am? The telephone?”

Fogel turned her head toward the open bars, where Officer Mitchell Jun stood holding a corded phone, and she wondered if he could slip through those bars.

Forcing her legs off the bed, she turned, sat up, and waited for her head to catch up. As she stood and crossed the six feet to the door, she realized she was barefoot, spotted her shoes next to the bed, nearly went back for them, then changed her mind. All of these thoughts sloshed through her head in a vat of half-set Jell-O, her brain making the connections but operating at 40 percent capacity.

Fogel took the receiver and held it about a half inch from her ear. She was present enough to think about the other ears that probably touched that phone and knew she didn’t want to share biology with any of them. “Hello?”

“How’s the head, Fogel?”

“Stack? How did you know I was here?”

“You called me last night. You don’t remember that?”

Nope.

“Oh yeah, right,” she said.

“You said the little shit tricked you. Although you sounded more like, ‘thal ittal shizricked mah.’ I’ve been there, though. Lucky for you, I speak the lingo. When you get back home, maybe I’ll teach you to drink so your talk can match your walk.”

Fogel heard him chuckle at his own joke. “Now what?” she said.

“Wait for him to pull out more cash, I suppose. We got nothing else.”

“Any bodies?” Fogel had lowered her voice as she asked the question, but Officer Jun heard her anyway. His eyes perked up.

“Nothing here. But we didn’t suspect one, did we?”

“I guess not.”

“Get a room somewhere close. Sit tight for a day or two. If we lose him, come home. I think that’s the plan,” Stack said.

Fogel agreed with him, said good-bye, and handed the phone back to Officer Jun.

He set the phone down on a desk to the right of the station’s four cells. “I need to run a camera out to the Chestnut. I can give you a ride back to your car, if you don’t mind making a quick stop.”

“The Chestnut?”

“It’s a motor lodge off 118. It’s on the way out to Mike’s.”

Fogel nodded and wished she hadn’t.

Officer Jun produced a bottle of Advil from his pocket and handed it to her with a weak smile.

The Chestnut Motor Lodge was a real dump. If not for the naval base, they were lucky if tourists stopped here for gas. The owners of the Chestnut tried to sell, couldn’t, and eventually decided to let the motel die a slow death.

“That’s all just fine by us,” Officer Jun said. “The prostitutes need somewhere to bring their Johns. At least this place keeps the riffraff outside the city limits.”

By the looks of things, the riffraff had been busy last night.

Officer Jun’s coworkers had the entire parking lot taped off along with the west end of the building. The remains of a large SUV smoldered at the center of the lot and several cars were taped off, too.

“What happened here?”

“Someone vandalized every white car in the parking lot, even set that one on fire. We had reports of shots fired. They found some blood in the stairwell, but no victim.” He reached across the car, popped open the glove box, and rummaged around inside. He found a couple boxes of 35mm film, checked the label, then