Lieutenant James Wilson stared at the two men in front of him doubtfully. "Are you two certain that you aren't hiding something?" he asked suspiciously.
"Of course we are," Detective Burkhardt replied readily – a little too readily, his mind prompted – looking for all the world the paragon of trustworthiness. "Besides," he added, "Why would we lie?"
He had a good point, but still – something didn't sit right, and he knew better than to ignore nearly two and a half decades of police experience. "So you just happened to get an anonymous tip – on your personal cell phone – telling you where the kidnapped children were? Two of whom hadn't even been formally declared missing?" he asked sceptically.
Detective Griffin looked rather put out. "Of course that's what happened," he said. "How else could we have come across them in the middle of the woods?" he demanded.
"And what about the man you brought in immediately after you found the children?" he continued to probe relentlessly. "What was his name? Vincent something or the other, right? What about him? Why did you let him go?"
"He was one of the Santas we thought could be of interest," Burkhardt replied, shrugging. "But he didn't match the descriptions the children gave, and he definitely didn't have any sort of mask with ram's horns on him. We didn't have any evidence connecting him to the kidnappings at all – we had to let him go."
Wilson continued to stare at them. There wasn't anything that they were saying that he could refute, but still – "I don't believe the two of you," he told them flatly.
"That's your prerogative," Griffin replied, sounding just a bit too unconcerned. "But I can guarantee that it's the truth."
A glance at Brurkhardt told him that he was similarly unperturbed. "Lieutenant, we have no cause to keep anything from you," he said, his tone much more conciliatory than his partner's.
He sighed. "I will still be letting the Captain know about the – other incident with that Santa, though," he warned him.
"Of course," Burkhardt murmured, dragging Griffin behind him as he walked away.
Wilson looked at the two retreating figures suspiciously. When Captain Renard had asked him to take over the precinct while he went to visit his family in Austria, he was sure that it would have been easy. After all, the very detectives who he had just dismissed had one of the highest solve rates in the city – he wouldn't be surprised if it had been one of the highest in the state.
And then this.
Honestly, there was a part of him that didn't even want to know. After all, those two did seem to be constantly involved in rather – well, odd cases.
Really, he would be rather thrilled when Renard got back. Burkhardt, Griffin, even Wu – he would be more than happy to see the end of them and return back to normal, predictable police work. The lot of them were just a bit more than he could handle.
A/N: I swear, this was supposed to mainly focusing on the minor characters. Hell, I wanted to put in a piece about Barry/Roddy or something here. But then I saw the new episodes, and they just gave me these ideas...This show really needs to stop getting constantly more interesting, especially with creatures.
Also, the gods of Wikipedia have informed me that Lieutenant is the direct rank below Captain in US Police Departments in general and Portland Police Bureau in particular, so I just brought in a random Lieutenant OC to try and deal with the mess that knowing Nick results in...
As always, please don't forget to review on your way out :)