LITMIR.BIZ

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store I once unknowingly stood in line behind a woman I’d interviewed about her daughter’s violent death. When our eyes connected she turned white, made kitten-mew sounds, and ran out the door, her groceries still riding the belt. Now, entering the worst moment in this woman’s life, I prayed her mind blanked me out after tonight, and when nightmares screamed open her eyes, it wasn’t my face printed on the ceiling.

      “Excuse me, Ms. Knotts, I’m Detective Carson Ryder, and I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes if I may.”

      She took a deep breath and nodded. “While it’s still…fresh, I know.” I had to strain to hear her.

      “Peter didn’t tell you about any kind of meeting today? Anyone he was going to be talking to?”

      “No. But he’s wearing meeting clothes, long pants, dress shirt. He’d work in cutoffs and a T-shirt, unless…someone must have scheduled at the last minute.”

      I heard voices and footsteps at the front door. Sally closed the door for privacy.

      “Did clients come here often?”

      “No. He goes to them. Peter’s big on service.”

      “Walk-ins?”

      “Sometimes people’d see the sign and ask if he did business cards and stuff like that.”

      “If he was going to meet someone and wrote it down, where would he keep the information?”

      She closed her eyes. “I gave him a PDA last Christmas. It’s probably in the front desk. Top drawer.”

      Sal slipped away, returning a minute later with a device hardly larger than a credit card. She’d put on latex gloves. I joined Sal in the hall. She tapped the keypad and studied the display a long moment before turning it to me.

      Today’s date. Under that was entered: 8:00 p.m. mtg.w/Mr. Cutter.

      “Well, isn’t that just bold as hell,” Sally said.

      I stepped out to tell Harry about Mr. Cutter and ran into a straight-arm block with a wall of meat behind it. “Whoa, there, Ryder,” Burlew said. “Where you going, sport?” His breath smelled like manure and onions; maybe he should have chewed Listerine ads.

      “I have to talk to Harry.”

      “Phone him, hot dog. From outside.”

      I yelled. “Harry, you back there?”

      He pointed to the front. “Door’s the other way, bucko.”

      “Where’s the captain, Burlew?”

      “Sergeant Burlew to you. Now haul ass before it gets hauled.”

      Squill stuck his face through the doorway of Deschamps’s studio a dozen feet down the hall. It was like the world had shifted on its axis and everyone got thrown into different positions. “I’ve got the scene now, Ryder,” he said. “Go take statements from the neighbors.”

      “Where’s Harry, Captain? It’s important.”

      “Didn’t you get enough air at birth, Ryder?” Squill said. “I gave you a direct order. Get outside and start interviewing.”

      I’d read the revised manual about a hundred times, mostly in drop-jaw disbelief at the autonomy supposedly granted the PSIT. In cases judged to be under the unit’s purview, Harry and I were to be the ones coordinating the efforts.

      “Excuse me, Captain,” I said, “but this scene, combined with the Nelson murder, displays evidence of a disordered mind, psychopathologically or sociopathologically, that means—”

      Squill jabbed a manicured digit toward the door. “Door,” he elucidated.

      “Dammit, sir, hear me out. The evidence indicates—”

      “Swearing at a superior officer? That’s it. I’m done talking, Detective.”

      “Then how about listening, Captain? We have two men beheaded, and we have—”

      “You, Officer,” Squill barked to a young patrolman by the back door. “Yes, you. Wake up. Get over here and escort Mr. Ryder from the house, now.”

      “—clear evidence of a disordered mind…”

      Burlew’s hand tightened around my bicep like a vise and I yanked it free. “Off me, Burl. Shouldn’t you be washing the captain’s socks or something?”

      Burlew wheeled to me and spat a gray plug of newsprint on the floor. “Anytime,” he dared, a foul-breathed Gibraltar with clenched fists, cannonball biceps bulging beneath his jacket. “Got the balls to try it?”

      I shifted my balance low in my hips and felt the buzz of energy just below my navel. I could smell heat coming off Burlew. His penny-sized eyes blazed with anger, but behind it I sensed fear.

      “Sergeant,” Squill commanded. “Get over here. We have work to do.” Squill gave Burlew a come-hither twitch.

      I spoke low. “Captain needs a foot rub, Burl. Best get on it.”

      Burlew tried to set me on fire with his glare, then tongued his lips and turned toward the studio, a heavy shoulder nudging me as he passed. “Your time’s coming, asshole,” he whispered.

      The uniform was at my side. “I’m sorry, Detective Ryder,” he said, “but could you please step outside, sir? Please.”

      Shaking with anger, I went to the porch and heard Harry’s whistle. He walked up from the shadows beside the house. “Welcome to the B team, Carson. We B out here while Squill’s in there. He showed up while you were with the fiancée and it was like the Marines landing.”

      “Explain this to me, Harry. Am I missing something?”

      Harry pointed to a big command SUV pulling onto the front lawn, engine revving needlessly, tires breaking traction and spitting grass. Look at me, the machine seemed to say as it lurched to a stop. The passenger door opened. After a five-second pause to let camera lights frame the scene, Deputy Chief Plackett emerged as if born of the dark vehicle. He straightened his tie, showed the newsies his palm, and no-commented his way to the house. Bile roiled in my stomach—I got the message: Squill and Plackett were doing the brass-hat dance, Squill performing for Plackett, Plackett for the cameras and public. While inside the house a dead and mutilated human body functioned as a prop in an act of ego theater.

      “Excuse me, Detective Ryder?”

      I turned to the uniform Squill had walk me from the house, a young blond guy looking like he’d skipped directly from the Cub Scouts to the MPD.

      “I’m sorry about the action in there, sir. The captain ordered me and I—”

      “Did what you had to do. Relax.”

      “It’s bullshit if you ask me, Detective. It seems if anyone should be in there, it should be you. This crazy stuff…wasn’t it you solved that Adrian case by yourself? I mean, didn’t you?”

      His words were innocent, but they wrapped dread around me. From the corner of my eye I saw Harry’s head angle my way, watching my response.

      “Not really,” I told the patrol officer, trying to talk through the sand in my throat. “I just got lucky that other time. And I had a lot of help.”

      “Carson, you NEEEEED ME AGAIN….”

      I didn’t tell him where the help had come from. Or how just thinking of going back for more made my knees weak and my spine cold. I looked at Harry. He was studying the sky like it was a movie screen.

      I drove home with the windows down, the AC blasting, and a knot in my gut the windstorm in the car couldn’t blow away. Created in the wake of the Adrian killings, the PSIT was the rarest of all public-relations contrivances: one that—accidentally or not—served a purpose. But, like so many blue-ribbon-panel creations over the years, the PSIT seemed destined

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