For a moment, the Detective smiled wistfully, before slowly letting the picture fall to his side as he gazed straight ahead into some different time.
Leighton was only two days away from ordinariness, and felt as if he was fading into invisibility. It was not an entirely uncomfortable feeling. After a decade in homicide, and being one of the detectives responsible for holding back a tide of murder, he was happy to accept the Chief’s offer, and slip into obscurity. Chief Gretsch considered Leighton as a problem – they had crossed swords in the past, and he clearly didn’t fit with promotion-hungry new generation of unquestioning officers. Being almost sixty-years-old meant Leighton was neither malleable to fit in, nor young enough to justify a further transfer. Therefore, for the previous two weeks, Leighton had been physically present in the building, but was no longer assigned to any investigations. In some ways, it did make sense. No case would be left unfinished when he left, but it also made Jones feel like a ghost, as work in the department carried on around him.
Ever since his retirement became common knowledge, his few friendlier colleagues tried their best to rib him with a mixture of humour and affection. Each morning, he would find an item left on his desk. The first had been a brochure for some coastal retirement home. Rather than simply consigning it to the waste paper basket beneath his desk, Leighton put his feet up, and read the brochure from cover to cover, with a wry smile on his face. Each subsequent day brought more “gifts” to his desk – most of them acquired from the lost property storage room. So far, he had found a walking stick, incontinence underwear, two sets of dentures, and several blister packs of Viagra. He had also been given some more appreciated gifts, including half a dozen bottles of dark rum.
For a man who had spent so much of his life working for the Oceanside Police Department, Leighton’s job of gradually clearing out his desk and two steel filing cabinets had been depressingly simple. Much of the debris of his career had already been consigned to the trash when the station had moved from a rather serious brick building on Mission Avenue to its new home back in 1999. That transition had been almost as psychologically difficult as his retirement. He had spent most of his career driving to and from that building. For at least six weeks after the relocation, whenever Leighton got a late-night emergency call, he would find himself instinctively driving to the dark and desolate building, before realising his mistake, and turning the car around.
It was 6.15 p.m. as Leighton packed a few more items in the box, before placing his car keys on top of it. Hugging it to his body, he made his way through the building to the car park.
He passed through the report writing area, which was essentially a long rectangular room lined with small wooden booths. Each had its own black swivel chair and laptop computer. However, technology had not quite provided the promised revolution, and Leighton was secretly pleased by the numerous shelves above the booths which were stacked with a variety of report forms and paper documents.
‘Good night, Danny,’ Leighton said to a young bearded detective, who had a phone cradled to his ear and was typing into a computer. In response to this, he twisted around in the chair, and nodded and smiled back at the older Detective.
As he walked towards the exit, Leighton tilted his head in to the dispatch room, where two female workers were moving their attention between a wall of display screens.
‘Hey ladies, thanks for the gift, though you really shouldn’t have.’
‘You’re welcome, L.J.,’ said Laura, one of the dispatch officers, without looking around from the screens featuring maps and live feeds from car cameras.
The other female, Wendy, glanced around for a second, and gave the Detective a warm smile.
‘You all set for the big night out, Jonesy?’ she asked with a wink. ‘Maybe if the Chief has forgiven you for upstaging him with that Black Mountain Ranch mess, he’ll hire you a stripper as a parting gift.’
‘Well, I’ll be happy, as long as Chief isn’t going to be the stripper.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Laura said cheerfully.
‘Not on duty, of course.’ Leighton wagged his finger mockingly.
‘Well, you can have one for me tonight,’ Wendy grinned.
‘The only drink I’ll be having is cocoa.’
‘Ah, old age does not come alone, L.J.’
‘Never a truer word,’ Leighton said, with a wave. ‘You girls have a quiet night. Remember, if you can’t be good, get a decent lawyer.’
All three of them laughed, and Leighton departed, leaving the dispatchers to the busy night ahead.
In reality, Leighton had no intention of showing up for his farewell bash. His venue of choice had been an unpretentious bar named Red Rooster over on the Boulevard. Leighton had spent a number of his younger years working in the area as part of the Traffic Division. As a fresh-faced officer with nothing but his TV for company, he had finished many shifts there, consumed his fair share of burgers, and sampled most of the tap beers.
The Rooster was a dive bar, but in a good way, with feisty staff, honest food, and hardworking regulars, who were welcoming to the lonely young officer. More than that, it was a connection to his lost past - when he had first met Rita, and the world had still been good.
On the rare occasions Leighton had stopped in at the Rooster – finding the place unchanged through the years - he sat at the bar and felt he had somehow travelled back in time. He would sip at his beer, enjoying the seductive feeling he could step out of the door into the past, and drive home to his previous house on Maple Street, where Rita would be bathing their baby daughter.
In such moments, it was all Leighton could do to stop himself from sobbing into his beer glass. For this reason, the Rooster was more than some random venue; it was a conduit to his lost past, and the only place he would like to raise a glass to the end of his career.
Unfortunately, Chief Gretsch liked to stage-manage all the Oceanside Police station social events – even to the point of arranging uplifting background music - and the Rooster didn’t fit with his version of a good time. He liked to choose a clean venue he could book solely for the event. That way, there would be little risk of his carefully rehearsed speech being interrupted by catcalls from any cynical retired cops.
Normally detectives would leave via the staff exit at the rear of the building, but because he was using both hands to carry the carton, Leighton opted for the reception with automatic doors. As he walked towards the front desk, he spotted a girl leaning onto the counter. She was in her twenties and making what looked like an emotional plea to the Janine, the reception officer.
‘I’m telling you, I know,’ she said, through the hole in the Plexiglas.
‘Well, it’s probably just anxiety,’ Janine said, ‘but it I’ll take your details, and we can register your friend as a missing person.’
As he passed by the desk en route to the automatic doors, Leighton offered the desk officer a quick smile, and quirked an eyebrow knowingly.
It was a warm afternoon and a slight haze from the ocean hung in the air. Leighton liked it like that - finding something clean and optimistic in the quality of the light. Somewhere overhead, a helicopter was droning out towards the sparkling Pacific.
Stepping around to the side of the building, Leighton opened his car, and deposited his box of memories on the passenger seat. He walked around the rear of the vehicle, and climbed into the driver’s side. Sliding the key into the ignition, he did not turn on the engine. For a moment, he simply held on to the steering wheel, and stared into the past, as if, in some way, given the right conditions, he could put the car in gear and drive towards it. Despite the light and heat of the day, his internal vision was consumed by a dark, rainy stretch of highway and the bitter stench of burning tyres.