This one was a lot of fun for me. I hope you enjoy the most recent addition to this little ol' story of mine. It should go without saying but I'll say it anyway. If you've taken the time to read this, please take an extra minute or two to tell me what you think.

Disclaimer: Balkoth does not own the Teen Titans. Of Gumshoes and Moonlighters is mine. All mine! Enjoy.

The Case

"Ah, Richard Grayson and Garfield Logan, I presume?" The Jump City Chief of Police seemed less than thrilled with the meeting. If the grim slash across his face and the tone he employed were misinterpreted, the narrowed slits of his eyes could not be.

"Chief Skinner," Richard replied with just as much poorly concealed malice and a curt nod of his head.

"Dudes, did I miss something?" Garfield was the only person out of the three who didn't currently radiate hatred.

"Nothing important, Gar," Richard responded. The deadly glares that were traveling between Skinner and Richard said otherwise.

"Right." Garfield coughed uneasily after a moment of silence. "I'll just call the Anders' and say Kori's stalker has been taken care of, shall I?" Garfield vanished before getting a response. In truth, it wasn't likely that anybody had heard him.

"You are aware that you've committed a crime. Correct, Mr. Grayson?" Chief Skinner kept his gaze fastened onto the blue mirrors covering Richard's eyes.

Richard didn't rise to the bait. "What crime would that be?" he asked with sincerity ringing in his tone. If it wasn't obvious that Richard would love to jump the chief, he might have fooled somebody.

"What crime? I'm so glad you asked, Mr. Grayson," Skinner snickered in a way that communicated that he was about to ruin somebody's day as he plucked a manila folder off the top of his desk. "Let's see, shall we?"

Richard and Garfield had just caught Kori's stalker and delivered him to the police. Unfortunately, the police were less than happy that they had been shown up by private investigators.

"Discharging your fire-arm in a public area, impersonating an officer of the law, and making an arrest without a warrant. Quite a track record you have here." The chief threw the folder back onto his desk while darting a hand through his mane of prematurely gray hair.

"First off, sir," Richard spat out the word as if the very taste was poison, "I only fired in response to an unprovoked attack on my partner. Besides, I only shot the guy's finger. Second, we had probable cause for the arrest."

"Really? Your report failed to mention such." Chief Skinner spoke in the same falsely sweet and over-enunciated voice that he used to address children who were taking a field trip through the station; and, Richard was forced, briefly, to wonder if it was at all possible for him to make the chief like him less.

"We had a look-a-like in the middle of being kidnapped."

"Oh!" Skinner's eyes took on an adventure's wistful gleam of final discovery as he clicked open a cheap office pen. "So we can add entrapment to the list!"

"Not at all." Richard stood from the straight-back chair and barely stopped himself from punching the chief's face in when the glint in the man's eye grew. "We did nothing to force or encourage the suspect to act as he did."

The chief scowled and put down the pen as he realized Richard was right. He would love to add more to the folder. In his opinion, the Gotham Police had been fools to give Logan and Grayson as much freedom as they had.

Gregory Skinner had his secretary run a background check as soon as he learned that there were new private investigators in Jump City. The investigators, Richard Grayson and Garfield Logan, had been spoiled in Gotham City by police who couldn't tell their head from their backside. Now they were in his city and expecting the same treatment.

"Well," the chief huffed, "there's still the man's statement to take into account." Skinner flipped through the folder and withdrew a piece of paper. "When the man first showed up," he read, "he shouted 'Freeze, police!' The last time I checked, Mr. Grayson, neither you nor your partner were members of the JCPD."

"If you'll re-read that statement," Richard started to smile. He'd won this round on all counts. "I said we were police. Both Gar and myself are honorary members of the Gotham force. Not once did I indicate that we belonged to Jump City's police force." The chief kept trying to trap Richard and Richard kept sidestepping. If it were possible for Richard and Skinner to dislike each other more, the next few hours did it.

ooo

"That went well," Garfield said once the chief's office door opened and Richard stepped out. Sadly, he wasn't being sarcastic. "For the record," he continued, "I am never pretending to be an eleven-year-old girl again."

"I'm surprised that it actually worked," Richard laughed to his partner as he pushed his meeting with Skinner to the back of his mind. "You're small, Gar, but not that small. Still, whatever works, right?"

"Maybe for you. I still have some dignity, you know."

"Exactly," Richard pointed out, "that's why you needed to be the bait. We can't have you with dignity, can we?" Richard's tone was light and joking.

"Your aim has gotten pretty bad since I last checked." Garfield shot back. "Honestly, severing the tendons in his forefinger? What were you aiming for anyway?"

"His forefinger," Richard stated bluntly. "Have you ever tried to fire a gun without your trigger finger?"

"Wait," Garfield turned and walked along side Richard while doing a deformed grapevine; "you were aiming for his finger? Never mind what I said about your aim." They continued in silence for a moment. Only a moment though. Garfield broke the silence with one drawn out and highly annoying sentence; "I know something you don't know." Garfield righted himself and started walking regularly.

"If it's like the last time you told me you knew something I didn't know, I don't care." The memories of that conversation were painful for Richard.

"Hey, that's information all people should know. If they did, maybe they'd stop eating so much meat," Garfield insisted. In Richard's opinion, anybody who knew that kind of information and continued to eat the stuff had a death wish.

"Gar," Richard put one hand up to stem the flow of his friend's words, "is this like the hot dog thing?"

"No, but if you want…"

"That's okay. Really." Richard would never be able to eat a hot dog again. That was what Garfield had done to him. Garfield's vegetarian habits had forever destroyed any of the appeal Richard had once seen in a cookout. To think, he had once gladly eaten something with such a high amount of sodium, fat, and nitrate. Worse still, they could easily have been made of any combination of snouts, ears and organ meat and Richard would never know.

"What I'm talking about involves one of your more recent obsessions." That got Richard's attention. Richard ignored the stab at the fact that he was a work-a-holic for the moment. Garfield knew something about the investigation on The Raven.

"What do you know?"

"Well," Garfield started slowly. Now that he had Richard's undivided attention, Garfield was going to dangle whatever scrap he had over Richard's nose until he begged for it. "I talked to a few people while you were in there poking the chief with a cattle prod." Richard tried and failed to hide his smile. Garfield knew him far too well. "After asking a few questions, trading names, all that good stuff," Garfield was getting ready to deliver what he had, "I managed to get Logan and Grayson invited onto the investigation on The Raven."

Richard was speechless and Garfield filled in the silence with a poor imitation of Richard's voice that made him sound like a naïve little girl. "Wow! Thanks a lot, Gar. You're the best!"

Garfield switched back to his own voice; "I know. I am nothing short of a miracle worker. You can repay me later. Oh, by the way, don't expect anything for your birthday."

Richard finally regained his voice. "You're not playing some cruel joke?"

"Me? Play a cruel joke?" The ruse fell away almost instantly. "Fine, but not this time."

"What do we have to work with, Gar?" Richard fell into his business role instantly.

"Dude, we have the city department's full cooperation. At least until the chief finds out, that is." Garfield held out his left hand in a high-five motion. Richard had stopped after Garfield's announcement and was too far behind to follow up the motion.

"Wait a minute," Richard took off his sunglasses and eyed Garfield in a new light. "During the three hours I was in there, you built up a network of Jump City cops we can count on and got us invited onto the case behind the chief's back?"

"And," Garfield held up a paper bag Richard hadn't noticed until then, "got a new police scanner."

"I knew I liked you for a reason." Richard had been going crazy over the whole Raven thing since it started and Garfield had just handed him the means to look into it. He was going to be impossible to deal with the next time Richard tried to put his foot down about something but this was worth it.

Next Update: Wednesday, August 16, 2006