“You might want to rephrase that.”
Detective Lane's face reddened, a mix of anger and embarrassment. Even in moments of honesty, words had a penchant for twisting themselves into problems. Saying what was intended was not as simple as just transcribing a thought. Language had a way of playing games with your head.
“I was getting some advice on how to live up to the ridiculous standards you set.”
“They aren't ridiculous. All I want is for you to learn how to do the job.”
“If that's the case, how about you spend a couple of minutes teaching me what that entails, rather than leave me twisting in the wind, wondering if everything I do is wrong.”
“That's the whole point. Haven't you figured that out yet?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“Doubt. The key to being a good detective is doubt. You need to doubt everything you know, everything you see, and every idea you have. Only when you assume you're wrong all the time will you start to see what's possible.”
“I'm still lost.”
“Let me put it to you this way; most times, your first idea is going to be wrong. That's true for all of us. What the book doesn't tell you is that you're going to waste half your career chasing down the wrong leads. If you start out with the assumption that the idea in your mind is wrong, you can move on and try to think of other possibilities. More often than not, one of those will be the right answer.”
“Expect failure to find success?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“You make this a lot harder than it needs to be.”
“No, everyone believes it's a lot easier than it really is.”
“Can we get back to the case now?”
“Sure. I made some calls while you were busy.”
The detectives crossed the street, walking back into the heart of the abandoned building that George Hobbes had been taken to. As ugly as it was the first time they laid eyes upon it, the sunlight accentuated its ghastly features, highlighting the crumbling decadence and inch thick grime that painted the exterior. Whether originally intended or not, the structure was an abattoir for souls, a mass grave unnoticed in the midst of ordinary life.
The interior looked no better in daylight, the relics of life merely allowed the dust to collect at different heights, creating a topographical map of rot. Some would say it was a fitting place for a kidnapping to wind up, but Knox felt differently, amazed that life could survive within those walls for more than a few minutes at a time. Even the air seemed to have given up; it was thinner and failed to fill the lungs.
“So what do you think we're going to find here?”
“Probably nothing, but now that we know this is where he was taken, we need to make sure we didn't miss anything. Since we didn't know what we were looking for, exactly, something could have been overlooked easily.”
“I thought you didn't make mistakes like that.”
“Nobody's perfect, even me.”
“I wish I had my recorder on when you said that.”
“Get to looking.”
The scene looked no different than on their previous visit. The dust and dirt blanketing every inch showed that nothing could have disturbed the scene for decades without being noticed. Detective Knox was confident they had not missed anything, that there was nothing to miss, but due diligence was still a necessity. They turned their attention to the space in the center of the large floor that had been swept clean of the marks of age. The stains from George Hobbes' blood remained, soaked into the concrete, impossible to wash away.
No one had tried; there was no need. Crime scene or not, no one was going to enter that building. The dark residue of spent life was not going to scare anyone off; that had already been done. The building would stand as it was, uninhabited even by rats, until the structure finally collapsed under the burden of carrying the sad weight. The ensuing rubble would likely be an improvement.
“I don't think we missed anything. This place is spotless, or as spotless as a decrepit old building can be.”
“For once, kid, you're right.”
“So what was the point of coming here, other than crossing t's and dotting i's?”
“I'll tell you. While you were out gallivanting around, I made some calls to friends in other divisions.”
“Friends? Seriously?”
“Whatever. The point is, I made some calls, and it turns out that even in this godforsaken part of the city, people value their security. They might all be members of various criminal enterprises, but they have cameras plastered all over the place, to keep each other honest.”
“You're telling me this place has cameras? We can't be that lucky.”
“We're not. There aren't any here, but the place across the street has them. None of the gangs down here want to be on the hook for this, so the people in there gave us all the footage we need.”
“They did?”
“You might be surprised to hear this, but most criminals live by a code of honor, the same way we do. It's twisted, sure, but it's there. None of them want to be blamed for anything they didn't do, so they try and bring the competition down whenever they can.”
“So where's the footage?”
“It got sent to the tech guys downtown, but I just got a message. They found a van pulling up right in front here during the window of time when Hobbes was missing.”
“So that might be our suspects.”
“We'll see when we get back to the precinct. We might have gotten lucky.”
“I thought you don't believe in luck.”
“It's a better alternative than thinking this was all a big plan.”
“Yeah, that's true.”
Chapter 21
Film Noir
Silence rode along with Detectives Knox and Lane as they returned to the precinct. Knox preferred silence to any form of conversation; he enjoyed listening to the pistons firing in perfect sequence, waiting for the moment when the mechanism failed, and like everything else the heart of the mechanical beast died. Though he was no mechanic, Detective Knox could hear the sound of death in any form, so much so that he often thought death followed him around like a morbid shadow.
Detective Lane was of a different mind. He craved the camaraderie, the bond that was formed by the sharing of experiences. He was also a prudent man, and understood that pushing Detective Knox beyond the boundaries of their relationship was an exercise that would only serve to alienate him from his partner, would only stop whatever progress he had made towards becoming the detective he ultimately wanted to be. Thus, Lane sat in silence, listening to the engine's chorus rise and fall with each stoplight, feeling not altogether different than the gears themselves, forced to do their jobs with no hope of escape.
Freedom was not something Detective Lane craved. Following orders was a trait embedded in him from his earliest days at the academy, when he realized the risks he would face every day he was on the job. He did not sign up completely naïve, but the reality of life and death strikes more severely when you hold a gun in your hand, and you realize anyone standing opposite you might be doing the same. Freelancing was a signature on a death certificate, a fate Detective Lane preferred to leave up to nature.
They made slow progress through the city, every light red, the fresh bulbs burning brighter than usual, leaving echoes in Lane's eyes as they made their slow procession. The delays gave Lane more time to think, although he did not want to consider the conversation he had with his partner, the betrayal of going behind his back and revealing his distrust of Knox's methods as a teacher, but there was nothing in the moment to distract him. He was consumed by guilt, knowing he had proven all Knox's doubts about him right.