July 14 1998 Raccoon City.
Irene gave Irons' words time to sink in. Her chest burned as if she had taken a line-drive to the sternum, and the best she could manage were quarter-breaths. White pinpoints swam through her field of vision.
At last she managed a deep breath, could smell the interrogation room's familiar redolence of ashtray and sweat. Across the expanse of steel table Irons and Findlay scrutinised her. They looked like a pair of barn cats swishing their tails at a cornered rat.
"Parking Enforcement?" It was a surprise that her voice held steady. It was a note lower perhaps, as if she had cursed within the walls of a church, but calm nonetheless.
"Municipal Code Enforcement, actually." Irons pushed a clipboard across the table. Those alcoholic eyes were fixed steady on her, gauging her reaction.
She grabbed the forms with gentle care. Her heart thumped. Her back was warm with sweat.
"You're making me a meter-maid?" Irene's side of the clipboard showed thumbnails gone white with strain, but a quick check of the one-way mirror ensured that her calm façade remained intact.
"Don't be ridiculous." Irons rolled a pen over to her. "We wouldn't take your badge without a good reason."
Findlay nodded at Irons, but his disarming brown eyes, sheep's camouflage, stayed on her.
"It's not a bad post. Desk work, straight days, no overtime." Irons said.
She grit her teeth. The grinding reverberated through her skull. Straight days, goodbye night-shift and overtime premiums; hello mortgage foreclosure.
"Am I being punished?" That low voice, her mother's voice. She felt her mouth tighten into a hard line.
Irons' teeth flashed from behind his moustache. His yellow eyes and cowlick only reinforced the image of an old, one-eared tomcat, fat and slow perhaps, but still with the love for a fresh kill. "What makes you think you're being punished, Lundstrom?"
"Why are we doing my assessment in the interrogation room?" She tilted the clipboard toward Findlay. "Why is Internal Affairs sitting in on a contract renewal?"
Findlay smiled. He was handsome in a forties actor sort of way, an ex-Umbrella HR guy hired by Irons to enforce protocols. Internal Affairs was a position traditionally held by a fellow officer. To have a civvie bring the hammer down was sacrilege. And now said blasphemy sat across from her, lean and playful, claws out.
"We've recently changed the assessment process." Still he smiled, strong jaw, sharp teeth. "Miller is indisposed, and I'm his stand-in, so here I am."
"Miller hasn't missed a day's work in five years," she said.
"I suppose it's a day of firsts then." Irons leaned forward. He had't brushed his teeth. Irene could smell bourbon on his breath. "Sign the form, please."
"I asked for a post to general patrol, Ward One. My other reviews were all good. Why am I being taken off the road? This…" She waved down to the transfer papers, controlled her breathing. "This is work for some old guy on disability."
"You are on disability, Lindstrom." Again Findlay with that eager grin, no doubt he was relishing the moment when she lost her cool and admitted to leaking the Arklay files.
They would lock her up, just as they had done with Ashcroft.
Another deep breath; she wiped the sweat from her forehead. "I'm on temporary disability. My feet are getting better every day. I don't think that it's necessary to-"
"This, is the only position available, Officer." Irons leaned back and crossed his arms.
A moment of silence passed as each player contemplated their next move. The quiet was disturbed as Findlay rested his elbows on the table. Soft fabric whispered across the stainless-steel surface, a snake's hiss.
"Of course, there is another option." Findlay's elegant fingers were steepled as if in contemplation.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"You can always choose not to renew your contract."
Irons gave a single nod.
Irene flicked her eyes from Irons to Findlay, and then settled on the door. The cats were giving the rat opportunity to escape.
"Do I have time to think about this?" she asked.
"I have a press conference in half an hour." Irons said. "Make up your mind, and stop wasting my time."
Findlay raised an eyebrow. His long, ladylike hands opened a thin black portfolio, and a tortoise shell pen popped between his fingers as if by a magic trick.
"If you don't mind, Chief, while I have Lindstrom here, I was wondering if she might answer a few quick questions I had about her incident on the fourth."
His eyes sparkled with good cheer. He twirled the pen, turned to a fresh page and threw her a friendly wink.
"While we talk, you can use the time to decide whether you want that assignment to code enforcement or not."
Irene hurried down the basement steps and ran both hands though her sweatslick hair. Every nerve felt shocked. Her cheeks burned like hot coals. She could still smell the interrogation room, Findlay's cologne. She balled her hands into tight fists; it was the only thing that kept them from shaking.
-Parking Enforcement. Five hundred bucks a month less-
"Shit!" She swung an elbow into the morgue door. Something on the other side tumbled and shattered.
Irene walked as fast as her bandaged feet would allow, managing a slow jog through the oily dungeon that the RPD called a parking garage. A deep breath replaced sweat and aftershave with gasoline and engine oil. It wasn't enough. She needed fresh air, the smell of fertilizer and tilled earth. She would get into her truck, drive as far as possible, and direct her rage toward the Arklay Forest's impartial hills. They were not Wyoming's rocky bluffs, but they would do.
The two mechanics popped their heads out from under a squad car's hood and watched her cross, their eyes dull with bovine indifference. The old one with the hairy ears was checking out her ass, she just knew it.
Her calves burned as she jogged up the garage's entrance ramp. The bandages strained. Pain shot up her legs. She swore, curled her toes, and resigned herself to a slow limp.
"God damn this place…those assholes."
"Watch your language, Lindstrom."
Irene spun toward the familiar voice, frowned at the cigarette that dangled between Officer Gutierrez's lips.
"When did you start smoking again?" She walked over to him.
"About half an hour ago." He glared at her from under his forage cap. His eyes were like two piss-holes, and as red as Irons'. "What are you doing here?"
"Irons and Findlay just gave me my review." Irene caught the hitch in her voice and transformed it into an angry snarl. She would allow herself to feel anger, but refused to tolerate self-pity. From the moment she called Alyssa Ashcroft she knew that her actions would have implications.
"They're parking me behind a desk, code enforcement. I'm the lucky cop who gets to impound cars with overdue tickets." She laughed. "Great huh?"
Joe took a long drag and spat between his boots. "They got you too, then."
"What?" It felt as if someone one had dumped a bucket of water on her, the fire of her righteous fury extinguished in a single sentence. She took a step forward, hushed her voice. "What do you mean me too? What happened?"
Joe pulled his cap off and ran a hand along his shiny scalp. "They're not giving me my Sergeant's stripes."
His lips peeled back, revealing every coffee-stained tooth he had. He pitched the cigarette and sneered back toward the precinct.
"Goddammit, Juan stats college in September. He busted his ass all year, and now…so long, pay raise."
Joe's powerful overhead throw sent his forage cap careening off the precinct's limestone bricks. It landed upright a few yards away, visor bent. The cap-brass twinkled at their feet like fool's gold.
"Fucks sake!" He snatched the insignia off the ground, threw it like a skipping stone. It pinged off unit fifty-nine's white paint, caught the sun as it sailed over the light bar.
"Thirty years of my life. Still a fucking patrolman!"
Irene took a step away from Joe, reminded of the time her brother had caught a badger in a foothold trap. It was impossible for twelve year-old Irene to believe so much aggression occupied such a small creature.
Joe Gutierrez, the injured badger raging against the injustice of his predicament.
And it was her fault, every bit of it.
She glanced at him. Guilt had already began to pump icewater through her veins. "I…I can't believe they think you're the leak."
Joe's eyes sharpened to sewing needles. She could feel him searching her face, reading her words. Twenty-eight years of investigative experience bore down on her, and in an instant he went from being the badger, creature of indiscriminate outrage and violence, to the snarling dog challenging a rival.
"It was you, wasn't it, Irene?" His voice had the grim pronouncement of a judge handing down a sentence.
Irene opened her mouth, but found that words had failed her. There was no point in denying it. She couldn't lie to Joe, never could.
Instead, she found her own anger. Icewater became ammonia.
"What did you want me to do, Joe?" Every bit of frustration welled forth. Her voice echoed off the walled compound. "You said yourself that Irons and Silverman were stalling on this case. We're supposed to PROTECT people. I did what needed to be done."
"What needed to be done?" Joe's eyes bulged. Spittle flew off his lips. "You don't know this town."
"I know that more people would-"
"You don't know shit! You remember Sam Connor?" Joe gave her no chance to answer. "He's head of the Arklay Game and Fish Branch. Him and his pals know those woods better than anyone else, and now they're all gunned-up and looking for some country justice. Irons was holding the lid on this thing to keep people calm and safe, but now YOU fucked it all up. Those idiots are gonna get torn to shreds out there."
He took a quick breath, jabbed a finger at her. "And YOU cost me my stripes. Thanks a lot, buddy-fucker."
"Joe-"
"Get away from me." He gave her a shove, strong despite his age and size, and stomped back into the garage. Joe the badger, a bandy-legged terror hunting for someone else to chew on. Even with the dim overhead lights she could see thick cords bulging from his forearms and neck, could see his hands balled into tight little fists.
"I did what I had to, Joe," she shouted down to him.
A muffled, "Fuck you," drifted back to her.
Joe disappeared into the garage's greasy darkness. The two mechanics dropped their heads once they realised the show was over. The old one chuckled and lit a cigarette.
Irene turned back to her truck, trembling. Thunder grumbled on the other side of the mountains, an odd death knell to her career as a beat cop. Halfway across the lot, a day-shift cruiser swung-in and parked. The car rocked as Marv Branagh and Moose Hildebrand pulled their prisoner from the back seat. The ride had flattened her hair and wrinkled her doubtlessly expensive suit, but Ashcroft's chin was high, and she walked with the self-assured stride of a woman in command.
Hildebrand clamped one of his huge hands around her arm and guided her toward the garage. She ignored the intusion, kept that pert nose pointed to the sky. The heavy steel handcuffs were an interesting choice of accessories considering her posh wardrobe.
They neared, and Branagh sent a genial smile in her direction. "Hey, Lindy. When you back at work?"
"Not for a while, Marv."
"Shame, you're missing all the fun."
"I've had enough fun."
Irene passed the group, and Ashcroft sent a nod her way, just the slightest tilt of the head. But in that fraction of a second's worth of interaction, Irene saw her own sentiments reflected in the reporter's familiar blue eyes.
I'm not sorry.
AN. I think Chief Irons is my favourite RE villain. I love writing that guy!
Stay tuned!
-C