Chapter Three

Back at the Ford, Hoyt stood with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the lights on the third floor of the apartment building. He looked at a few puffs of his breath as they left his mouth.

Something you want to say about this? asked Sunderland. He was halfway in the car already. Or you just like making me wait.

Hoyt opened the door and folded himself into the passenger seat, his knees crushed up against the glove compartment. He kept looking up at the building.

Sunderland was watching him.

You going to start it up? Hoyt asked.

You going to tell me what's up?

Nothing's up.

You're acting like you like this guy for something.

I don't like that guy for anything.

Sunderland turned the key in the ignition. OK, he said. Sunderland was the kind of man who did not do his job when he wasn't working, so he was not about to interrogate Hoyt about anything. The drove most of the way back to Wheaton in silence.

But Hoyt could not hold it in. While Sunderland was making the turn onto Randolph Road, he said, I think he's hiding something.

Of course he's hiding something, said Sunderland. That's not the question. The question is if you think he killed the woman or if you think he knows something about it.

Aw hell.

What?

You're gonna talk to me like I'm a rookie. One last time.

I never stopped doing that. Sunderland pointed his finger at Hoyt. You tell me right now that you think this process server is going to kill someone. We get everything we need to know about him in two hours in the middle of the night, where he works, just off his business card that's stapled to the damn summons that he leaves on the floor of the dead woman's house. Nobody is that stupid.

What about Mark Rounds?

Sunderland laughed out loud. Mark Rounds was a favorite story, a county commissioner who had tried to evade blackmail at the hands of prostitute by trying to have her killed. Unfortunately, the dumb bastard had paid by check. The thing that still gets me about that is the fish, said Sunderland. Mark Rounds's wife, upon receiving the check, duly cashed by a digital TV technician and Ritalin dealer named Jerzy Spillman, had gone after her husband with one of those fake mounted singing fish.

They're trying to arrest them both, said Hoyt, and she cussing, and he's all I did it for us, baby, for us, and the fish is just singing away, Take Me to the River, Drop Me in the Water.

Damn. Sunderland shook his head. You can see a Mark Rounds, though, is what I'm saying. You know when you meet a man whether he's stupid enough to leave that kind of evidence at the scene. Or if he could get mad enough that he'll lose his mind and drop it, even though he wouldn't under normal circumstances. So the question is. He looked at Hoyt. Is this process server of ours that kind of idiot? What do you think?

Hoyt blew air at the windshield. I don't know. But I'm going to talk to him again.

Well. He is your problem now. Not mine.

Don't remind me. Do not fucking remind me.

Hey now. Sunderland objected to sexual profanity, though he obviously had no problem with the blasphemous kind. You can talk that all the time with your new partner.

Yeah right. That's if I get one.

What's the word on that, then.

No word. Which is not good.

No. It's not.

They had arrived at the station house. You going to miss this part? asked Hoyt.

Nope, said Sunderland. Not in the slightest bit.

Chantal waved them over on their way in. Sunderland leaned over her desk. How are you tonight, young lady? he asked. She was easily ten years older than him, but it was the same thing he said to her on almost any occasion of their speaking. She laughed the same way she always laughed.

You asked me to tell you if they were gonna do something, she said.

I did. Are they?

Well, I don't know if I should say with Mr. Detective Hoyt standing over me, but yes indeed they are.

Well then. Sunderland stood up and made a show of brushing off his shirt and slacks. Best make a good show of being surprised.

Think I can manage that, said Sunderland. Hoyt shook his head but didn't say anything.

The truth was, Hoyt was going to miss Sunderland a lot, and not just because it was likely he wouldn't be getting a new partner for months or longer, because of budget constraints and a shortage of suitable personnel in an expanding force. Sunderland was not a second father to Hoyt or anything like that, but he was in a way sort of a guardian angel. He and Sunderland rarely talked about families or personal matters, because both men were restrained about such things, Hoyt because he was obsessively private, Sunderland because there was nothing much to talk about.

They could see through the window in the door that the lights were off in the briefing room. The lights were never off in the briefing room. And no one was standing outside, like they normally would be. With or without Chantal, it would have been obvious. Sunderland entered shaking his head, but when he flicked on the light and everyone yelled "Surprise!", he was grinning broadly, and saying Oh my, oh my.

Someone started singing the first lines of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, with half present singing Which Nobody Can Deny and half singing And So Say All of Us. Then they brought in his cake, which was so small that even cut into tiny pieces there wasn't enough for all forty or so people. Fortunately, it tasted pretty mediocre, so there was plenty to go around.

So what you going to do with yourself now? Lieutenant Prosner boomed this over everyone's heads. He was one of the shortest men in the room, a compact man with a bushy mustache that belonged to another era.

Not going to do anything with myself, said Sunderland. Going to relax.

Yeah right. They'd had this conversation five or six times. It was well established the Prosner saw himself as the caretaker of all cop cliches, and the surest of these was that no cop could retire to the quiet without needing to get Back Into The Action before a week's interval was up. Hoyt knew for a fact that Sunderland was planning to spend his retirement mostly gardening, and traveling around the world to look at various flowering plants. It was not a desire that Hoyt understood in the least, but it was a man's real desire. Not something taken from TV.

He's got his mulches all picked out, said Hoyt, but as often happened in crowds he said it too quietly for anyone to hear. He was really good at talking to himself by accident.

By the time he was paying attention to Prosner and Sunderland again, they were talking about the murder. Sunderland was saying Yeah, we talked to him. But he didn't do it.

Prosner looked at Hoyt.

He's not so sure, but he wrong, said Sunderland. Then Sunderland just pointed at Hoytand smiled. It was something he'd been doing a lot lately. It was him passing the buck, everything headed onto Hoyt's head.