Chapter 21

The Dust Bunny

Tuesday morning October 30th 2012

Miami Metro PD: Basement

Officer Cira Manzon was living a life of living hell. The basement of the Miami Metro was down a flight of narrow stairs and contained a mountain of files which were added to everyday. Her job was very important; it entailed taking a stack of papers and sticking them in a scanner and watch as they were scanned one sheet at a time. A vital role in the cog of law enforcement she thought bitterly.

It took ten seconds per page and the machine could hold about thirty pages at once, which means that for three hundred seconds per stack she had nothing to do. Three hundred seconds to think about how far underground she was, about how narrow the isles are, and the stairs. Three hundred seconds to think about her being all alone where no one could hear her scream. Three hundred seconds to breathe the dust, to look at the shadows of the ineffective ceiling fan cast on everything making the room look smaller.

Every few minutes she would think she heard something move, or a footfall, or a whisper. It had been a year since she had called out 'who's there'. She had stopped for three reasons, first of all no one ever came down here; the files came down in an old dummy elevator. Second was that if someone was down here to kill her, or to scare her, they wouldn't answer her anyway. Last was the fear that she would get an answer, but not from a real person. You see, she had come to believe the noises were all in her head and that if she kept desperately calling out, her mind would sooner or later provide an answer.

The place was murder on her asthma and allergies, but that she could deal with. The oppressive heat she could deal with too. But, her claustrophobia had reached epic proportions. She was having multiple panic attacks a day now, usually early in the morning due to her trepidation of having to go down there.

She had learned to put her chair facing the most open part of the room and facing away from the fan and the isle and hence the stairs. She listened to nature sounds on her IPod and tried to remove herself from the moment.

An attack had started today and she was sitting in her chair as she had for almost two years. She was shaking like a leaf, but the room wasn't shrinking yet. She was sitting with one foot tucked under her leg and was swinging the other one, she was very short you see. She was listening to waves with her eyes closed imagining that she was sitting out on the pier as she did every day after work. She would run like crazy out of the building and down the dock, on bad days she would jump in the water. She tried to pretend that the hundred degree dusty air the fan was blowing around was a summer breeze coming off the bay.

This was a jump in the water day she thought, just as someone grabbed her shoulder, "Fuck!" she screamed as she drove out of the chair and onto the floor. She whipped around and saw Debra Morgan standing there with her mouth pursed. "What the fuck is wrong with you! I almost pissed myself for Christ's sake!" she screamed.

"You want to try that again Officer Manzon?"

"How can I help you sir?" she fumed.

Debra Morgan was more shocked by her appearance than her reaction. The Cira Manzon she had known was naturally beautiful, she was sure she was the type of woman that looked hot even when she first woke up in the morning. She could have phoned it in and gotten by on natural good looks, but she got up and worked on her hair and makeup every morning to make herself look even more stunning. She never had a hair out of place and her makeup was done properly and looked professionally done.

If Deb had passed her on the street today she wouldn't have recognized her, for lack of a better example, she looked like a junkie. She was sweating, shaking, and jittery. Her eyes were red, sunken and baggy. Her hair flat out looked not only uncombed but unwashed. She was dressed in short running shorts, a body glove athletic top, and she was barefoot.

"Jesus," Deb said with genuine concern. "What's wrong with you?" she pointed to her arm, which was shaking violently.

"Yeah, like you don't know," she said standing up, trying to take her ear buds out.

"What are you talking about? Are - you - okay?" she said the last part slowly.

"No - I - am - not - bitch. You know exactly what's wrong with me, which is why you sent me here, you whore," she shaking harder than ever and crossed her arms to try to control it, she merely looked like a child that was trying to keep from wetting themselves.

"Cira please calm down before you bust something. Please stop insulting me before I change my mind and leave you down here."

"WH-at?" she stuttered.

"I was coming down here to reassign you back to homicide," she said.

Cira dashed forward so fast Deb thought she was attacking her, she was hugging her tightly and clearly sobbing. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"Cira please let me go. You're sweaty and you smell like a gym sock. You look like a section 8. I'm going to ask one more time, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Oh, sorry sir," she let her go. "I'm extremely claustrophobic. I have tried to Section 8 myself but it was denied, I did it since you were blocking my transfer requests."

"Transfer requests, I haven't gotten any. Do you like it this hot in here; it's like a hundred degrees in here?"

"Ha-ha yeah, I love the thermostat being set at 'hell'. I have applied for transfers thirty-one times. Every job I could I applied for: crossing guard, meter maid, motor pool, midnight shift at the fucking impound, even IA… anything. La Guerta said you were declining them and she couldn't override you."

"That snake! No, I figured you liked it down here at first. Then I kind of forgot about you." Debra climbed on the chair and turned the fan off and stopped the blades, she looked around and flipped a switch on the base of the fan and turned it on again.

"What are you doing?"

"You have it spinning the wrong way. It was pushing hot air down and pulling cool air up."

"WH-at?" she stuttered.

"Fans spin both ways. One way heats, and one way cools. Some ass probably switched it to screw with you. The flue is open too," she moved the chair over to the wall and closed the vent. "Those old ducts are huge, sound carries through it. You can hear walking and a whole conversation if someone is talking right next to one. It's irritating as hell. "

When Debra got down Cira was biting her fist and weeping and laughing. But she wasn't shaking anymore. "…the voices," she pointed at the vent. "I thought I had completely lost my mind." It was already getting cooler in the room.

Deb looked at her watch, "Look Cira, I want you to go home for three hours. Take a long shower, take a nap, do your nails, whatever it takes to pull yourself together and then meet me at Marcos for lunch, my treat. You don't need to wear a uniform, but put on something that makes you feel good. We need you looking like Officer Cira Manzon again, okay? It might be a late night too…"

Cira went to hug her again and Deb threw her arms up and snapped, "...old gym socks! Meet me at Marcos at 2 o'clock."

She nodded vigorously, "thank you, LT."

Cira was twenty minutes late, but called to let Deb know and she went ahead and ordered for them both. The extra time was apparently well used, she looked very much like the Officer Cira Manzon of old, the bags were still under the eyes, but she did have time for a small nap. She looked presentable, but very tired.

"The twenty minutes were worth it, you no longer look like the Dust Bunny. You are looking more like your foxy self!" Deb said honestly but trying to help her confidence. "I figured a patio table would be preferred…"

"Yes, thank you," Cira said gratefully.

"I'm pairing you up with Det. Quinn for now, if that's okay?"

"Yeah, I know Joey. That's great," she said it in a grateful but worried tone.

"I think he might be claustrophobic too," Deb pondered.

"He is…" she trailed off, "… for the same reason. Joey was working in vice, he was way undercover. He had been for months. You know when someone is undercover that someone is always around to help in case something unexpected comes up, someone, usually two people will be there. Well I was just a beat cop, but I was filling in for a vice cop that was ill. They had me assigned as one of his uniformed guards to pull him out if things went south. Well it was me and Stan Liddy, his partner, watching him that night. Only Liddy told me had to check on a lead, which turns out was on the number 5 horse. So, I'm there alone, with no training, and his suppliers show up unannounced and snatch him to 'take him for a ride.'"

"So, I tried to hang back as far as I could. But, they snatched him as his final test to see if he was legit. I didn't know that, Liddy would've though. So, the whole point was to see if he would be followed, they see me following and play like they are going to shoot him to draw me in. So, I screech up and jump out with my gun and badge like I'm big shit until their ten friends with Uzis showed themselves. I'll never forget the look on Joey's face when I pulled up, before I even knew it was a trap. He had this 'you fucking idiot girl' look on his face.

"So, they put my own cuffs on me and toss us both in the trunk of my car and drove it into the bay."

"Fuck me," that's not your fault though.

"Yeah, I know that now. It was Liddy's. So, dispatch kind of knows where we are and that we are in trouble. But, it felt like we were in that trunk an hour. It was almost completely full of water when Joey got the duct tape off somehow. He was able to push the back seat out and swam around and unlocked the trunk, my hands were cuffed behind me, and so I couldn't go through the car like he did."

Deb's mouth was open, "Damn, he never told me that. It explains a lot though."

"Yeah, I'm sure. So, Liddy was blamed but nothing really happened to him. Joey wasted two months of his life under cover. He never once said that he blamed me, or that I was a fool, or that I should have done xyz… He would just give me this 'I'm very disappointed in you' look."

"Fuck, that's worse. My dad used to do that, it used to drive me nuts. I would rather him scream at me."

"Yeah… So, that's Joey and I in a nut shell. I know he is a burn out now and so no one wants to be his partner. I am part of the reason he is a burn out and he saved my life, so no I don't mind being his partner. I'll see if I can't straighten him out."

"Alright, well let's get you caught up to speed and find out where Quinn is…"