Billy Straight

30

Feeling guilty and useless but making sure to look calm and sharp, Stu tightened his tie and put on his suit jacket. Five hours of phone calls; no cases resembling Lisa Ramsey's. Or Ilse Eggermann's.

He didn't know what to make of the German girl's murder; wasn't getting any help from the Austrian police or Interpol or the airlines. Tomorrow he'd try U.S. customs and passport control. Asking them what? To keep an eye out for Lauch? Good luck. He stared at the Viennese mug shot. A conspicuous-looking guy, but it was beyond needle-in-the-haystack.

Maybe Petra was having some luck with Ramsey.

Maybe not. It was hard to care… he cleared his desk and locked it, walked across the squad room. Wilson Fournier was on the phone, but just as Stu passed, the black detective hung up scowling and reached for his own jacket. Fournier's partner, Cal Baumlitz, was out, recuperating from knee surgery, and Fournier had been working alone for days and showing the strain.

“New call?” said Stu, forcing himself to be social.

“Poor excuse for one.” Fournier was average-size and slim, had a shaved head and a bushy mustache that reminded Stu of one of the actors he'd seen on Sesame Street back when he'd worked nights, had mornings to spend with his kids.

Fournier hitched his holster and collected his gear, and the two walked out together. “Life sucks, Ken. You and Barbie get Lisa Ramsey, celebrities up the ying, and I get an end-of-shift, maybe-prowler/rapist/burglar gig with stupid overtones.”

“You want Ramsey?”

Fournier laughed. “Yeah, yeah, I know fame has its price.”

“What kind of a maybe-prowler/rapist?”

Fournier shook his head. “The rapist thing is crap-'scuse me, deacon, manure. We're supposed to be working homicide, for God's sake, and on this one, no one got hurt, let alone dead, so why's it my business? Meanwhile, I've got four open 187's and pressure from the boss. Goddamn brain-dead chief and his community policing manure.”

A few steps later, just to be polite, Stu said, “What exactly happened, Wil?”

“House on North Gardner, two lesbians come home from a week in Big Sur, find someone's been in their kitchen, scarfed food, used the shower. They walk in on it- the shower's still going- freak, run screaming out the front door, and the perp rabbits out the back.”

“What was burgled?”

“Food. Part of a pineapple, bologna, some soda. Big bad burglary, huh?”

“So where's the rape?”

“Exactly.” Fournier gave a disgusted look. “Lesbians. A big pile of mail at the front door. Gone an entire week, do they think of putting a stop on it? Or leaving some lights on? Or getting an alarm or a Rottweiler or a poison snake or an AK-47? Man, Ken, what kind of folks still think they can count on us to do a damn thing about crime?”