chapter three
1116 Words
DETECTIVE-TWO CAROL Starkey spilled the fourth packet of sugar into
her coffee. She sipped, but the coffee still tasted sour. Starkey was
using the large black Hollywood Homicide mug Charlie Griggs had given
her as a welcome-aboard gift three weeks earlier. She liked the mug. A
big 187 was stenciled on the side, which was the LAPD code for a
homicide, along with the legend OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOUR DAY
ENDS. Starkey added a fifth sugar. Ever since she gave up the booze her
body craved enormous amounts of sugar, so she fed the craving. She
sipped. It still tasted like crap.
Clare Olney, who was another hard-core coffee hound, looked on
with concern.
“You’d better watch it, Carol. You’ll give yourself diabetes.”
Starkey shrugged.
“Only live once.”
Clare filled his own mug, black, without sugar or milk. He was a
round man with a shiny bald dome and pudgy fingers. His mug was
small, white, and showed the stick-figure image of a father and little
girl. The legend on its side read WORLD’S GREATEST DAD in happy pink
letters.
“You like working Homicide, Carol? You fitting in okay?”
“Yeah. It’s good.”
After only three weeks, Starkey wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.
Starkey had moved around a lot during her career. Before coming to
Homicide, she had worked on the Juvenile Section, the Criminal
Conspiracy Section, and the Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad was her
love, but, of course, they would not allow her back.
Clare had more coffee, noodling at her over the top of his cup as he
worked up to ask. They all asked, sooner or later.
“It’s gotta be so different than working the bombs. I can’t imagine
doing what you used to do.”
“It’s no big deal, Clare. Riding a patrol car is more dangerous.”
Clare gave a phony little laugh. Clare was a nice man, but she could
spot the phony laugh a thousand clicks out. They laughed because they
were uncomfortable.
“Well, you can say it’s no big deal, but I wouldn’t have the guts to
walk up to a bomb like that, just walk right up and try to de-arm it. I’d
run the other way.”
When Starkey was a bomb technician, she had walked up to plenty
of bombs. She had de-armed over a hundred explosive devices of one
kind or another, always in complete control of the situation and the
device. That was what she most loved about being a bomb tech. It was
just her and the bomb. She had been in complete control of how she
approached the device and when it exploded. Only one bomb had been
beyond her control.
She said, “You want to ask me something, Clare?”
He immediately looked uncomfortable.
“No, I was just—”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”
She did mind, but she always pretended she didn’t.
Clare edged away.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“I had a bad one. A frakkin’ earthquake, for Christ’s sake, imagine
that s**t? A temblor hit us and the damn thing went off. You can dot
every i, but there’s always that one frakkin’ thing.”
Starkey smiled. She really did like Clare Olney and the pictures of
his kids he kept on his desk.
“It killed me. Zeroed out right there in the trailer park. Dead.”
Clare Olney’s eyes were frozen little dots as Starkey had more of
the coffee. She wished she could spark up a cigarette. Starkey smoked
two packs a day, down from a high of four.
“The paramedics got me going again. Close call, huh?”
“Man, Carol, I’m sorry. Wow. What else can you say to something
like that but wow?”
“I don’t remember it. Just waking up with the paramedics over me,
and then the hospital. That’s all I remember.”
“Wow.”
“I wouldn’t go back to a radio car. Screw that. Day to day, that’s
way more dangerous than working a bomb.”
“Well, I hope you like it here on Homicide. If I can help you with
anything—”
“Thanks, man. That’s nice of you.”
Starkey smiled benignly, then returned to her desk, glad the
business of her bomb was out of the way. She was the New Guy at
Hollywood Homicide, and had been the New Guy before. Everyone
talked about it behind her back, but it always took a couple of weeks
before someone asked. Are you the bomb tech who got blown up? Did
you really get killed on the job? What was it like on the other side? It
was like being dead, motherf**ker.
Now Clare would gossip her answers, and maybe they could all move
on.
Starkey settled at her desk and went to work reviewing a stack of
murder books. This being her first homicide assignment, she had been
partnered with a couple of veterans named Linda Brown and Bobby
McQue. Brown wasn’t much older than Starkey, but she was a detective
-three supervisor with nine years on the table. McQue had twenty-eight
years on the job, twenty-three working homicide, and was calling it
quits when he hit thirty. The pairings were what Poitras called a
training rotation.
Brown and McQue had each dropped ten ongoing cases on her desk
and told her to learn the books. She had to familiarize herself with the
details of each case and was given the responsibility of entering all new
reports, case notes, and information as the investigations developed.
Starkey had so much reading to do it made her eyes cross, and when
she read, she wanted to smoke. She snuck out to the parking lot fifteen
or twenty times a day, which had already caught Griggs’s eye. Jesus,
Starkey, you smell like an ashtray.
Eff you, Griggs.
Starkey palmed a cigarette from her bag for her third sprint to the
parking lot that day when Lieutenant Poitras came out of his office.
Christ, he was big. The sonofabitch was pumped-out from lifting
weights like a stack of all-terrain truck tires.
Poitras studied the squad room, then raised his voice.
“Where’s Bobby? McQue on deck?”
When no one else answered, Starkey spoke up.
“Court day, Top. He’s cooling it downtown.”
Poitras stared at her a moment.
“You were with Bobby on the house up in Laurel, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pack up. You’re coming with me.”
Starkey dropped the cigarette back in her purse and followed him
out.
- Writer
