38) How Hitting for the Cycle Should Have Ended
Inspired by: howitshouldhaveended dot com
Robbins and David seemed oblivious to most of the Wall Crew glaring at them while they divvied their winnings. The Wall was not a cold room, but if the glares on the two were capable of lowering the ambient temperature, it would have been freezing.
"You should buy us breakfast," Henry told them.
The men stopped, staring at him.
"And why is that, Henry?"
"You should at least buy me breakfast. I had to play bookie all night. They made me." Henry pointed at Nick and Hodges. "And I didn't bet against or for anyone."
"That hardly qualifies as a logical excuse," Robbins told him.
"You bet on Dave, man," Nick said. "How is that even fair?"
"No one said you had to bet on yourself, Nick," Robbins said.
David was almost done counting out the money.
"And then you share the pot with him, right in front of us," Greg grumbled.
"I did not tell any of you to come here. You showed up under your own volition."
"I'm not sure if we can really count Rick in this cycle, though," Ecklie said.
Robbins gave him a narrow look over his glasses.
Ecklie pointed out, "You found him dead, in the morgue, thirty minutes before end of shift."
"It still counts," Robbins told him.
"No. I don't think so. I—"
"Conrad, are you being a sore looser?"
Ecklie hesitated. His mouth wasn't wide open, but there was a soft pop when he clamped his teeth together.
"Aren't you going to do something about this?" Mandy asked, turning to Catherine.
She was the only one not glaring. She lay on the settee, reading a RedBook magazine.
Catherine looked up at her. "Hm?"
"Aren't you going to do anything with Robbins and David? Shouldn't they share?"
"Why?" She asked.
"Because it's fair?" Hodges asked.
Catherine laughed, looking back at her magazine.
"You don't think it's fair?" Ecklie asked her.
"You all have lived in Las Vegas long enough to know how far 'it's not fair' works when it comes to gambling. Besides, we all broke a rule just betting on the cycle. We should be ashamed of ourselves." Catherine shrugged a little, smiling. "Or at least swearing off sins for the next week, anyway."
Nick looked up at the wall. "But it wasn't a crime."
"It was based on a crime," Greg pointed out.
"You're based on a crime."
"How does that even make sense?"
"Because you're the milkman's kid and your mom never told you. Told me though."
"Har-har-har."
"You know," Robbins said, pausing to let them know what he was about to say was prophetic and wise. "It's a good think Rick died, in hindsight."
"You're glad someone died?" Gina asked.
"No. Not glad. I said it's a good thing. That boy was headed for someone at a crime scene getting very angry with him and killing him, or else ending up jobless in Las Vegas which is as good as dead."
"That's cold," Mandy commented
"But you know it's true," Hodges pointed out.
She shrugged. "Maybe. Well, since they're not going to be generous, I think we should write a rule about it."
"About losing at gambling on a crime?" Catherine asked.
"Your wit is failing old woman," Mandy told her.
Hoots erupted. Ecklie, Catherine, and Robbins laughed.
"Wow! Mandy!" Nick put his arm around her. "Should we talk about it?"
"No. But there is a rule that needs up here." She pushed him away, grabbed some chalk and the footstool, and wrote:
607. A suspect may be crazy if the following appears in their written statement in part or in the entirety: random and strangely placed commas, notions that I or others are reading their minds, multiple mentions about how you or they are playing a game, promises to tell you where nefarious 'creatures' are hiding, how they thought about the same thing four or five times in the last ten minutes, detailed accounts about the recent activities of their ray-gun building neighbors, or Catholic priests performing wiccan magic.
There was a moment of silence.
"Mandy… You don't deal with suspects… Do you?" Hodges asked.
She glared at him. "He ran into my lab. The police," she shot a glare at Brass, "Apparently didn't restrain him well enough. He was shouting about all of it even as they drug him away."
"He was on meth," Brass told her.
"He was loose in the lab."
"He was on meth."
"In the lab."
"He didn't do the meth in the lab. He did it prior to being picked up."
"And he was loose in the lab!"
"He wasn't trying to hurt you. He was just talking really fast and a lot. Like Hodges here."
Hodges looked at him. "Thanks!"
"He was calling himself a mouse. He said he came to find the priest that turned a guy into a wolf and a woman into a hawk and he was the only one who could save them both. Apparently a horse told him."
Greg snickered.
"It wasn't funny!"
"So… He was trying to help a lady hawk?"
Hodges and Archie started fighting their own snickering.
"Why do I get the feeling we're on the outside of this joke?" Ecklie asked Nick.
Nick nodded.
"And did he call himself Mouse or did he say he was a mouse?" Greg asked.
"Called himself Mouse. Why? What do you know about him?"
"And let me guess, the man was wolf at night, the woman was a hawk during the day?"
Mandy frowned. "He was your suspect?"
"No," Greg laughed. "Dude was on meth and thought he was in a movie. He was playing out a movie, Mandy. And trust me, if he thought he was Mouse, you were in no danger."
"I was stuck with him for four hours!"
"Maybe someone should write another rule before Mandy goes into 'savage every man alive' mode," Gina suggested.
"Shut! Up!"
"I'm next," Nick said, taking the chalk.
608. Be wary of a person who tells you, "I'm making a citizen's arrest."
Catherine chuckled. "Nick got arrested."
Nick looked down from the footstool. She was looking at her magazine.
"It wasn't funny."
"It was very funny."
"He put me in cuffs."
"He was making a citizen's arrest."
"Why was he arrested?" Ecklie asked.
"The guy said Nick was being very loud and obnoxious and had kept him up for three days straight."
"I'd only been working the crime scene for two days."
"He said three."
"You know it was two."
"I know I had a very hard time not laughing."
"You wouldn't be laughing if you'd been arrested."
She lowered her magazine. "This is why I'm the supervisor, you see. I get to laugh at you. You do not, ever, get to laugh at me. There will be repercussions for sub-ordinates who mock me."
"Oh really?" Ecklie asked.
She looked back at him. "Yes."
Ecklie took the chalk from Nick and added:
609. It is wrong to make employees write one hundred times things they are not allowed to do anymore.
A round of cheering erupted.
"Finally! Someone did it! Someone stopped her!" Hodges cried.
Catherine waved them off. "I'll find other, and more painful, things to make you all do now."
"I'm your supervisor. You will not."
She smiled, but didn't look away from her magazine. "You can dream, Conrad. You can dream."
He just shook his head before adding:
610. When delivering a report to the mayor or superior, I will not proposition it with, "Which version of the truth would you like to hear?" (Inspired by Augusta)
"Who did that?" Henry asked.
Ecklie smiled. The group looked at each other, questioned who had done this. Slowly rouge crept up Ecklie's neck.
"It was you?" Robbins asked.
Ecklie shrugged a little.
"And how did the superior – or was it the mayor? – take it?" Greg asked.
Ecklie thought for a moment. "I'm grateful I still have a job.
They laughed.
Robbins hobbled forward. "I have two."
611. It is bad to gloat to the dead.
612. It is bad to play paper football over a corpse while waiting for the M.E. to return with the autopsy report.
"Hey now," Nick said. "You gotta erase that last one, Doc. You take forever sometimes so we gotta keep these idle hands busy. You know what they say about idle hands, don't you?"
"In your case, Nick, idle hands mean you're either asleep or already in trouble."
Nick looked down at her. "Just how many cups of coffee did you have?"
She smiled up at him. "Do you know who I betted on?"
They all stared for a moment. Robbins smiled, hobbling back to his spot between David and Henry on the table.
"Me?" he asked.
"No."
"Greg?"
She wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
"David?"
Another head shake.
"Who?"
"No one."
"You betted against us?"
"I did."
"But that's… That's…"
"That earned her $100 back," Robbins told him.
The room erupted in an uproar of 'unfair' and 'fail' accusations. Catherine got up, grabbed a piece of chalk from the desk and added:
613. We do not yell 'fail!', 'mega-fail!', or any other 'fail' at a crime scene.
"This isn't a crime scene," Gina said.
"Nope. But the other night was, Greg," she said as she returned to the settee and magazine.
He just smiled.
Brass added the next rule:
614. Bullets have no respect for inanimate objects, and even less for animate ones.
615. It is wrong to tell crazy people, "I can see your thoughts. Right there. Above your head."
"Brass, sometimes you are a bad, bad influence," Ecklie said. "And you encourage those two." He pointed in Greg and Nick's general directions.
"But I'm old enough to lie my way out of it."
Ecklie laughed. "I only let you believe that's what's happening. I know full well you're full of shit."
The Crew laughed with them.
"Although I don't want to add this one, I supposed I should," Archie said. He wrote:
616. Television shows do not offer a convincing basis for my technology 'want-o-meter.'
"Archie, you're learning," Langston told him.
"Learning that my supervisors are related to Scrooge."
"What you wanted doesn't even exist, Archie," Catherine told him. "How does that make Conrad or I Scrooge-like?"
"You could have offered a compromise."
"And why would I do that? I have no intention of finding it in my cold heart to help you with your 'want-o-meter,' Archie."
"Ha! See? Didn't I tell all of you? She just admitted to it!"
"You need help," Greg told him.
Archie glared a moment, and then added:
617. It is bad to ask my supervisor, "But would ceiling cat approve of this behavior?"
"Thank you Archie!" Catherine told him.
"Ceiling cat?" Ecklie asked.
"Some Internet thing and frankly, I'm tired of Greg asking me that question on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis."
"It's a funny reference."
"It was funny twice. Then it turned annoying."
"I'll sick basement cat on you for saying that!"
"Oh for Pete's sake, Greg! Does Archie have to add another rule about this basement cat?"
Greg smiled. "Not yet."
Nick took Archie's chalk and wrote:
618. We do not refer to a group of crazy people as 'The Dream Team.'
"Oh come on!" Hodges, Archie, and Greg cried.
Greg added, "That's not fair."
"I don't know what this dream team is you three are referring too, but if it's like all your other references, I'm sure it's not something politically correct.
"You've never seen the movie The Dream Team, have you?" Archie asked.
"No."
"You should. You'd laugh. And then you'd let us call them that," Hodges told him.
"I seriously doubt it."
It was Langston's turn to add a rule. With careful strokes he wrote:
619. The one officer who understands crime scenes and how to handle evidence will be the last one on the scene or has been recently transferred and cannot take command of the scene.
They all could agree with that.
"We're starting to run out of room for the rules, guys," Catherine said as she let her gaze travel around the room.
That brought a silence over the group. She was right. Rules covered everything that could be written on, and quickly they were running out of space. Soon, the rules would come to an end.
"Maybe we could start a Big Book of Rules?" Greg started.
They thought about it, but everyone agreed with a unanimous, "Naw." and "It wouldn't be the same."
"Well, we can't erase any of them. That would be against all the rules," Mandy said.
"I guess we'll figure it out when the time comes," David said. "Now… Who wants breakfast? My treat."
They all turned to him.
"You're going to buy them breakfast?" Robbins asked.
"We're the Wall Crew. Of course I am."
Robbins smiled. "I'll pay half. Let's go have breakfast, Crew."
The noisy group filtered out of the room and out into the warming Las Vegas day.