I already knew my friend wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. His day off had ended the moment he heard the woman scream. As for me, even if I wanted to get myself a taxi home, I was a witness and I’d already been told that I would need to give a statement. I had thought I’d already done that when I told them what I saw the first six times, but apparently that was not official. When they would be getting around to me again was anyone’s guess.
“Hey, Row,” Ben greeted me sullenly as he drew himself up against the stairwell railing.
“Hey, Chief,” I returned, starting to pull myself to my feet. “You need to sit down?”
He motioned for me to stay seated. “Sit, sit. I’m good.”
“You sure?” I asked, stopping mid-rise. “It looked to me like you had a pretty serious limp there.”
“I’ll live.”
I lowered myself back to the step and regarded him for a moment. “The paramedic threatened you with a hypodermic, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” He let out something between a laugh and a sigh. “The words ‘tetanus booster’ got mentioned.”
“You probably need one.”
“We’ll see. Nothin’s broke.” He gave a slight nod as he spoke, but the expression on his face was saying ‘hell no.’
“So much for lunch, eh?” I offered after a moment.
My friend was looking out across the lot, massaging the back of his neck and lost in thought.
I spoke again, “Ben?”
He started and glanced over at me, “What? Oh, yeah. That’s a bust for sure. Maybe dinner depending on how this goes.”
He brought his hand up to smooth his hair then allowed it to fall back down to his side. He huffed out a heavy breath then addressed me with an added seriousness, “So listen, Row, the Major Case Squad is gonna be runnin’ this one.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged. “That’s not a big surprise.”
“What I’m tryin’ to tell ya’ is that Bee-Bee is on her way,” he emphasized. “Hell, she’s probably downstairs already.”
“Bee-Bee,” I repeated and rolled my eyes. “Just what I need.”
The moniker struck home. It was short for Bible Barb, which was probably the least offensive of the nicknames given to one Lieutenant Barbara Albright. She was a cop and a self-serving bureaucrat all rolled into one package, and she was in command of the MCS.
Like most of those her rank and above, she spent the majority of her time pushing a pencil. But that is where the similarity ended because unlike the others, she had a penchant for getting directly involved. Unfortunately, her involvement was not always a plus.
What had garnered her the various epithets was her self-righteous attitude. That, combined with the fact that she not only wore a badge but also a prominently displayed gold cross around her neck, had earned her the reputation of ‘God’s Personal Cop.’
She consciously built upon that distinction as well. She wore her badge like a shield and wielded the cross like a sword, using its symbolism like a heavy-handed weapon with which to mete out her own interpretation of justice. To Lieutenant Albright, the laws she was sworn to uphold were but secondary suggestions to the commandments held within the Holy Bible; and she was more than happy to tell you so in no uncertain terms.
While this didn’t necessarily make her popular among the ranks, she still had her supporters, and there were enough of them to make a difference. She managed to skirt around various departmental policies and flaunt her religion without reproach. Still, none of this would really matter at all were it not for one simple fact: she absolutely despised me.
While her initial hatred of me began simply because of my Pagan roots and religious practices, my being a Witch was not the only reason for her disdain. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to accept responsibility for a portion of it, as I had been partly responsible for sparking an Internal Affairs investigation of her.
Just a handful of months ago, I had been the object of a madman’s quest to eradicate WitchCraft from the face of the earth. Eldon Andrew Porter had taken the lives of several innocent people in the process, two of them my friends. Before all was said and done, I had come close to losing my own more than once.
During a single day that had been spawned by nothing less than hell itself, far too many things had gone horribly wrong. Information had been leaked; potentially dangerous mistakes had been made, and events that could have only been deliberate sabotage had occurred. All of these things had placed my life in jeopardy at every turn and had almost allowed Porter to escape. I, among a few others, believed that ‘Bible Barb’ had been responsible for it all.
While in the end she had admitted to using me as the bait to draw Eldon Porter out of hiding, she had been officially cleared of any other wrongdoing and was given nothing more than an administrative slap on the wrist. As for me, I was never fully convinced of her innocence and didn’t know that I ever would be.
At the same time, her own convoluted thinking made her believe that I was the root of the problem. She had even commented during a newspaper interview that had it not been for me, at least two of the victims would still be alive. I was already torturing myself over that very fact on a daily basis, and I sure as hell didn’t need her fueling the fire for me. I was doing a fine job of that all by myself.
“Look, Row, if it was up to me, I’d get you outta here right now before she gets here,” Ben offered. “But we both know that ain’t gonna happen.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s okay.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he added, “I ain’t exactly one of her favorite people either.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He wasn’t lying. He had gone toe to toe with her for the sole purpose of defending me and had done serious harm to his career in the process. While my friend was still a homicide detective, Albright had seen to it that he was no longer allowed to work as a member of the Major Case Squad as long as she was in command. That serious blow to his advancement was yet another thing I held myself responsible for, even if he didn’t.
“So, I don’t want to sound crass,” I said. “But what’s so important about this particular case that she feels like she needs to get her fingers in it?”
“Nice try,” he returned. “But it ain’t funny.”
I shook my head and looked back at him with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”
“C’mon, Row,” he chided.
“No, really.”
He arched an eyebrow then cocked his head to the side, squinting while looking at me hard. “You aren’t friggin’ serious are you?”
“Serious about what?” An audible note of annoyance crept into my question.
“Do you have any clue at all what you just witnessed?” he asked.
“I’m guessing a kidnapping.”
“Yeah, and?”
“And what?” I asked, growing more impatient.
He shook his head and gave me an incredulous look. “Don’t you ever watch TV?”
“Sometimes. So what?”
“You watch the news, right?”
“Ben, will you just spit it out?” I demanded.
“You’re gonna sit there and tell me you didn’t recognize the woman who was grabbed?” he asked.
I flashed on a quick memory of the blonde victim and remembered having had a passing thought that I should know her.
I shook my head and shrugged. “Not really. She looked a little familiar, but other than that…”
“She’s all over the news,” my friend returned, shaking his head as well. “The Gateway Club Telethon, all kinds of charity events… You know, anything with a cause and a donation jar.”