“Alas, I would hazard you have not foreseen at least one thing. And that is that your lessons have taught a dutiful son how to hate his own father.”
He rushed across the room and seized an overcoat from within a closet, then slammed his thumb down on the elevator button.
“A hard lesson,” he whispered into the sudden silence, “...but a necessary one. Just like so many others you have taught me. This one, however, is not one I shall soon forget.”
The elevator doors whispered open and Braze quickly tapped the code that would take him to his private parking garage.
He would find her and take her back. Even if it killed him.
~~~
Officer Branson checked the duty roster again and groaned. He had just pulled two weeks straight of third shift and here he had been put down for another two weeks.
“What the fuck did I do to deserve this?” he grumbled to no one in particular then went to take his place at the front desk. Granted that third shift was not as long as most shifts in the police barracks, but anyone who thought the front desk job was easy was someone who had never had to plant their ass behind it and listen to the crazies as they rolled in through the night.
Three a.m. can’t come soon enough, he thought. That’s when he would have his lunch break. At that time of day, or night to be exact, he was never very hungry, but he could coffee up hard and down some empty carb’s to get him through until his relief showed up at 7 a.m.
It was already past 11 which meant the usual rush of weirdos in about an hour. They were mostly harmless, but sometimes there was serious trouble blown in the door with them and it would be up to him to sort it out.
He thought again about being forced to keep at it for a month straight and murmured, “Fucking fuckers...if I have to, I’ll have a word with the union rep. I’ve got seniority for chrissakes.”
It would be nearly a year and half before the hour of his retirement would sound, but he felt like he had already been put out to pasture. He sighed, then said under his breath, “Rat bastards think I don’t deserve better....”
And then, just as quickly, he felt bad about cursing. His Rosie would not have liked it. Two years earlier Officer Branson had found his wife lying on the living room floor when he had gotten in late one evening from work.
He remembered how strange it was to hear the vacuum cleaner humming away at such an hour and that led him straight in to see what Rosie was up to.
She liked a clean house and she liked a clean mouth.
A saint is what she was, he thought as he remembered her frown each time a curse word slipped by his guard.
He cleared his throat at the memory of her, then thumbed through the day’s register once again. Nothing too special except for the Renardine woman and God only knows how that would shake out.
Pretty girl implicated in such an ugly crime. After all these years and all the crazy things he had seen, Chet Branson could only shake his head over the whole thing.
The little red light on the underside of the desk’s counter flickered bright then dimmed again and Officer Branson sighed. At one time the front door of the police barracks had been equipped with a buzzer to signal every time someone stepped into the building. But the noise had driven the cops half crazy before they switched it back out for just a light.
Here come the crazies, he thought. The first of the night that would at best make the hours slip by a little more quickly until his break, or at worst, leave him a jittery mess and wishing he still smoked. Only his Rosie...God rest her soul...would not have liked that either.
The man who walked calmly to the front desk did not appear to be crazy. He was tall, of medium build, dark brown eyes. Caucasian, but probably of eastern European descent. Officer Branson made him out to be approximately thirty five years of age and saw no obvious scars or tattoos.
“Good evening, Officer,” he said as he approached, “I wonder if I might have a little of your valuable time.”
Ok, that’s different, the policeman thought, quickly followed by, I wonder what he’s selling?
“It’s my understanding that you have a certain Sara Renardine in your custody. Is my information correct, Officer?”
Chet frowned. He did not care much for the press. Reporters getting their stories only half straight before slapping it down for everyone to see and to hell with the consequences.
“I think you already know that I can’t confirm nothing, buddy. Not one way or the other,” he said, hoping the man before him would just back off and leave.
Instead, he smiled with a mouth full of bright, shining teeth.
“Yes, of course,” the man replied, “But, I thank you all the same, Officer...”