haven’t lost a suspect due to shoddy police work, yet,” Brock reminded his father.
His old man chuckled. “I know that. You're one of the best detectives I have. I just worry. It’s a father’s prerogative. Oh, and you’re coming to dinner Sunday. Your mother, bless her heart, wants all her children at the dinner table every Sunday. You’ve missed the last three months. I don’t care what you have on your plate here at work, make time for your mother.” His dad headed toward the break room door.
“Damn, old man, you’re good at the guilt trip, thing. Was it Gramma Thompson or Mom who taught you that?” Brock teased as the man reached for the door.
“I’m good at a lot of things, none of which your grandma or mother taught me.” His father leveled a stare at him and jacked up a single eyebrow.
The smirk his father added took his mind to a place it never needed to go. Ever. He squeezed his eyes shut. He dropped his mug to the counter and slapped his hand over his ears. “TMI, Dad.” The rumble of his father’s laughter still made it past his hastily erected barriers.
Slowly he allowed one eye to ease open. He relaxed when he realized his father wasn't in the break room any longer. After a full body shiver, he grabbed his coffee mug and poured the rest of the pot into his mug. It took him less than a minute to start another pot of coffee. In this precinct, everyone followed “the code”. A person never took the last cup of coffee without making another pot. God help the person who decided to test it. Coffee was the lifeblood of any building inhabited by police officers.
He rolled his shoulders, grabbed his mug, and headed to his desk. Treyson’s body would be at the front of the queue in the morgue. So, minus the toxicology and histology reports, the autopsy report should be ready tomorrow. It didn’t matter how much money you had; those damn tests took time. Real life didn’t work like the television crime shows where the reports were done as soon as the medical examiner had finished the autopsy. True, money had a way of making shit happen more rapidly, but it couldn’t make chemicals process any faster than nature allowed.
The amount of money the Treysons had could also make shit disappear. The hunt to find Samuel’s killer needed to be quick and efficient, especially if Samuel Treyson had enemies. Which led to the question–who would want Samuel Treyson dead? Between now and 3:30 this afternoon, he and Jordan were going to try to find out.
He maneuvered through the homicide bullpen. Actually, it wasn’t much of a pen, more a conglomeration of mismatched desks pushed together in the center of the large room. There were currently four whiteboards being used. He and Jordan had moved one board next to their desks and were using both sides. One side displayed the facts they had for the murder of an eighteen-year-old prostitute. The other side tracked the case of a gang related drive-by shooting. An APB had been issued for their primary suspect in the drive-by. Rival gangs and known players made investigations like this a common event. He and Jordan were well known to all the gangs who resided and fought over territory in the area of town designated as The Desert. Commission Street acted as a border for the largest gangland rivalry in the city. Destitution, hardship, and low-paying jobs highlighted those two neighborhoods. The good people who could, had already moved. The ones who couldn’t afford to move were paying the price. Unfortunately, more times than not, it was with their lives. Samuel Treyson and his ilk didn't frequent The Desert. The shoes the man wore probably cost more than most of these people earned, legal or not, in months. Samuel Treyson did not belong in that warehouse. Why had he been there?
His cell phone rang as he stood looking at the murder boards that stood as sentinels in the early morning quiet of the precinct. He palmed it without looking at the caller ID. “King.”
“Hey, Brock, we’ve got the initial swabs back and were able to confirm my findings against Jonas’.” Brock had seen Sean’s partner working in the warehouse, but he hadn’t had a chance to talk to him after the atom bomb also known as Samuel Treyson had detonated.
“What’s that mean to me? Was this the work of your arsonist?”
“It was