Page 71 of I Want You
Wes: Update me
Goddamn Wes. I rolled my eyes. With everything going on, I hadn’t devoted enough time to helping with Wes’s investigation. Our investigation. Between the burglary case and patrol duty, work had been swamped. Looking into who had left that threatening note on Scarlett’s car, keeping her safe, the divorce proceedings, it felt impossible to pick up yet another thread to follow. It was a poor excuse, and I knew it. I needed to get my head on straight and figure out a way to prioritize the internal investigation into Redmond’s case.
Me: Nothing to report. I’m not out though. Just need to regroup.
Wes: 10-4. I have a lead I’m following up on. Someone who may have been giving Alana a hard time outside of school.
Me: Who? I’ll see if we have any record of it on our end.
Wes: The case notes would be damn helpful right now.
Shit. It shouldn’t be this hard to get my hands on my own damn case file. I was making it my mission to get the documents copied by the end of the week.
Me: I’m on it.
I put my phone away, straightened my shoulders, and headed over to the file room for open and active cases. Since we weren’t in the dinosaur age, all of our records were digitized, but reprinting them from our system would leave a trail. Copying the physical pages of our notes, reports, lab results, and evidence descriptions would be more discreet.
I opened the cabinet to search for Redmond’s file, shuffling through the folders.
“What are you looking for?” I turned around to face the speaker. Captain Langston was looking at me quizzically. “Has something not been documented in the system yet?”
“Not sure. I was going to check my notes on Geller’s interview again, just make sure I had everything entered accurately,” I lied.
“Ah. Always good to double-check. You find it in there?”
“No. I think Monroe must have it with him.”
He raised a brow at me. “Things still that bad that you didn’t check with him first, huh?”
I closed the cabinet, walking out of the room with Captain. “We’re fine. I’ll go check with him now.”
“Make yourself a note to review your documentation later. I need you on the streets for the rest of the day. We don’t have enough units out there.”
Shit. There went another chance to make some headway. I looked down at my clothes. Black jeans and button-down shirt were perfectly acceptable for the detective duty I was scheduled for today, but patrol called for the standard police uniform.
“No problem, Captain. I just need to run home and change.”
“That’s fine. Take the patrol unit and call in once you’re active.”
“Yes, sir.”
Twenty minutes later, I was changed and heading through town. I called in my location and status on the radio.
“This is zero-nine-zero-four, reporting for duty.”
Brimley’s scratchy drawl responded with confusion. “I don’t have you on the schedule, zero-nine-zero-four.Everything okay?”
“Following Captain’s orders. He needed more units on the streets.”
“Oh, um, ten-four.”
I drove through Calla Bay, sticking close to Main Street and Pine Street, our downtown area. Neves passed me with a two-finger wave. Not five minutes later, Lieutenant Rebello was making a similar loop as me, just from the other direction. Our youngest officer, Brody Halls, called in a traffic stop on the other side of town. If Captain expected trouble today, he was certainly well covered for dealing with it.
But as it turned out, it was as quiet of a day as usual.
Despite the changing relationship between Scarlett and me, I found it just as easy as always to talk and text with her throughout the day. She listened to me vent about getting pulled from detective duty for street patrol while she told me all about her day. It wasn’t that I was upset about street patrol. I loved being out in the community. Serving and protecting the people and this town was what made me want to become a cop. But why the fuck did I get pulled instead of Monroe? I couldn’t keep an eye on him from out here, and I didn’t like it.
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