Inherit the Bones

Chapter Forty-six

Five o’clock in the afternoon, and the police station was empty. The lone receptionist-a temp-sat at the silent switchboard, her neon green nails flicking the pages of a newspaper with a crisp efficiency.

Outside, an evening shower had crept in, and rain fell gently against the windowpanes.

I was out of breath and I couldn’t get my pulse to slow down. “Where is everyone?”

The temp looked up at me and smiled. “I’m not sure, honey. Chief Chavez left a message that he was going to be gone the rest of the day. I think he was attending some political dinner tonight. A couple of guys took a call on an accident out east. Everyone else is out on patrol. You know.”

Yeah, I knew all right.

I was halfway down the hall when the temp called me back. “Oh, I do have a message for you, from Finn. He said he got a tip that he’s checking out, but he’ll be back real soon and you shouldn’t wait for him. He signed it ‘dear,’ now isn’t that sweet?”

She flipped the note around so I could see the word scribbled at the bottom but I barely noticed it.

“Did he say what the tip was? Or where he was going?”

The temp shook her head and resumed her newspaper perusal, each flip of the pages sharp-sounding in the silent station.

Shit.

I paced at my desk for half an hour, calling, and then leaving messages, for Chief Chavez and Finn. I tried the Bellingtons, but no one answered. Not even a machine picked up, and I cursed again. I called the mayor’s office and some man with a snooty voice explained that Mayor and Mrs. Bellington were attending a fund-raiser dinner and would be unavailable for the rest of the evening.

Nothing kept this family away from the voters, it seemed.

I left another round of messages. “Call me, it’s urgent, very important. Call me.”

Where the hell was everyone? At six-thirty I couldn’t wait any longer. I stopped at the front desk on my way out.

“You tell the next damn cop that walks in that door-I don’t care who it is-to call me, all right? I don’t care what time it is. Call me.”

The temp nodded, her eyes solemn at the seriousness in my face, and in my voice. I pointed a finger at her, probably closer to her face than she would have liked.

“You tell them to call me,” I said again on my way out the door.