Page 37 of Deja New
NINETEEN
He was midway through his paperwork
(should I put in the thing about her highlights?)
when he saw Lassard making her way to his desk. Depending on what was in the folder in her hand, this could be terrific or terrible.
Captain Marci Lassard greeted him with, “Nice catch.”
“No.” This wasn’t false modesty, or even actual modesty. He hadn’t done any detecting, simply responded to a call and arrested the bad guy. That was fine. Most police work was strictly custodial. That was fine, too.
“But you could have shot yourself in the foot, Jason.”
“Marci—”
“It worked out for you, it usually does, but it’s not your job to repeatedly remind people arrested for homicide that ‘no, really, you can still have a lawyer, are you sure you don’t wanta lawyer?’ When they turn you down—and thank God she did—you focus onyourjob: taking statements, building a case for the DA.”
“She was pitiful.”
“Irrelevant.”
“Wonderful attitude, though.”
“I’ll agree it’s nice when they don’t try to kill us, or worse, spit on us...” Marci Lassard, like most cops, had in her younger days been cried on, puked on, bled on, spit on, and shit on. Most of it barely made her blink, but she loathed saliva. She was a heavy hand-sanitizer user long before most people even knew there was such a thing. “But that’s still no reason to sabotage your own investigation. I don’t want to have this chat with you again, Jase.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Hilarious.” She slapped the folder on top of his copy ofDancing Cats and Neglected Murderess.Jason could actually feel himself getting pale. Not this. Not this again. No. “See this?”
Nooooo!“Oh, God.”
“That’s right.”
“Not the chart again, Marci.”
“Take a look.”
“I am begging, do you hear me? Begging you. Look at my face, observe the stress.”
“Ithoughtyou looked a little constipated.”
“Listen to my voice, my pleading and pathetic voice,” he whined. “Put the chart away. I see that thing in my dreams. I will obey you in all things. I will clean the lunchroom fridge every day for a month.”
Too late. She slapped the Chicago Police Department—Organizational Overview Chart*in front of him. Her finger jabbed at a box about midway down. “I’m here. And I want to be...” The finger, having jabbed, moved on. “...up here.” Superintendent of Police. “By way of here.” Chief, Bureau of Detectives. “Youwant me to be somewhere down here.” Records Inquiry Section.
“I promise I don’t.” He didn’t. His predecessor did, which is why Kline was his predecessor and not a partner.
“I can’t move from here...” Point. “To here.” Poke. “Without the detectives under me making lots of arrests and closing lots of cases. Encouraging someone to call a lawyer when they’ve waived their rights is not helpful to either of our careers. And, sorry to sound heartless, neither are closed cold cases.”
Thought so.“Has my productivity suffered since I took over the Drake case?”
The captain plunked down in the chair beside his desk. “You know it hasn’t.” She brushed her short, reddish-brown bangs back from her face. The fluorescent light bounced off her wedding ring; she and her husband were the rare “met in high school and still in love twenty years later” couple. Other than Mr. Lassard’s belief that police work was exactly like what he saw on TV, and his insistence on using phrases like “we threw a real 415e last weekend!” around his wife’s colleagues, Lassard was a good enough guy.
Certainly his wife adored him; she’d asked him to change his name to hers and he had, without hesitation. All her life, she knew she’d be a cop, just like Commandant Lassard from thePolice Academymovies. “It was a calling, and not just because I was Charles Rowan*in a previous life!” she’d tell rookies, eyes shining with a near-fanatical light. “There I was, watching the movie and my name was exactly the same as the guy in the movie. The boss with all the goldfish! The Lassard name up on the big screen! It was fate! The only reason we even watchedPolice Academy: Mission to Moscowwas because Blockbuster was out ofPulp Fiction!” (Woe to the rookie who asked, “What’s Blockbuster?”)
“This really isn’t about your productivity,” his captain continued. “It’s about you not burning out.”
“Really? I thought it was about the chart.”
