AUTHORS NOTE!
Garfield Logan- Beast Boy
Rachel Roth- Raven
Richard 'Dick' Greyson- Robin
Victor J. Stone- Cyborg
Kori Andrews- Starfire
Roy Harper- Speedy
Gilles Summers- Aqualad
Wally West- Kid Flash
Xavier Red- RedX (I know! It's weird! But nobody else fit the profile, ya know?)
Billy Thibidoux- Use you imaginations people! I don't know, some low life criminal I guess.
Okay, I know Beast Boy, a.k.a Garfield Logan, doesn't really talk french, but how the hell am I going to learn his African language? And the characters are a little OOC, but I like to think of it as, like, Gar's letting the Beast get out of hand, ya know? Any way's, enjoy!
*****
''He's guilty,'' Wally declared. Ignoring the chair he had been offered, he prowled the cramped confines of the sheriff's office, adrenaline burning inside him like a blue gas flame.
''Then why don't we have squat on him, Wally?''
Victor J. Stone kept his seat behind his desk. Raw boned and rough edged, he was working hard to affect an air of calm and rationality, even though the concepts seemed to bounce right off Garfield Logan.
''We had the damn ring,'' Logan snapped, slicking his dirty blond hair back.
''You knew it wasn't on the warrant. You should have known it'd get thrown.''
''No. I thought for once someone in the system would use some common sense. Mais sa c'est fou!''
''It's not crazy,'' Wally insisted, translating the raw french automatically. ''We're talking about the rules Gar. The rules are there for a reason. Sometimes we gotta bend em'. Sometimes we gotta sneak around them. But we can't just pretend there not there.''
''So what the hell are we supposed to do?'' Logan asked with stinging sarcasm and an exaggerated shrug. ''Leave the ring at Renard's house, go back, and try to get another warrant? Can't use the 'plain few' argument to get the warrant. Hell, the ring wasn't even in plain sight. So then what? Trace down some of Pam Bitchon's family and start playing 20 questions?''
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to his forehead. ''I'm thinking something of Pam's might be missing. Can ya'll guess what that might be? Mais non, I can't tell you that. That would be against the god damn fucking rules!''
''Goddammit Logan!''
''What!? And while we were chasing our tails, trying to follow the rules,'' Logan went on. ''you don't think Renard would be pitching the ring?''
''You could have left Greyson there and come back. And why haden't pitched the ring already? We'd been in his house twice...''
''Third times a charm.''
''He's smarted than that.''
Of all the things Gar had expected Stone to say to him, to insinuate, he hadn't anticipated this. He felt blindsided, then foolish, then told himself it didn't matter. But it did.
''You think I planted that ring?'' he asked in a voice gone dangerously soft.
Victor gave a sigh between his lips. His narrowed eyes glanced a look off Gar's chin and ricocheted elsewhere. ''I didn't say that.''
''You didn't have to. Hell, you don't think that I'm smarted than that? You don't think if I knew I was gonna find that before I went there, I woulda had sense to list the ring on the god damn warrant?''
The sheriff scowled. ''Im not the one who thinks your a rogue dope, Gar. That's Kudrow's game, and he's got the press playing with him.''
''And i'm supposed to give a shit?''
''You, of all people. This case has folk's spooked. They're seeing killer's in every shadow and they want someone put away.''
''Renard-''
Victor raised a hand. '' Save your breath. We all want a conviction on this. I'm just telling you how you look. I'm telling you how this thing can be twisted. Kudrow plants enough doubt, we'll never get this creep. I'm telling you to mind your manners.''
Gar let out the breath he had been holding and turned away from the cluttered desk, resuming his pacing with less energy. '' I'm a detective, not a damn community relations officer. I've got a job to do.''
''You can't just go and do it all over Renard.''
''So i'm supposed to do what? Have a gypsy conjure me up some more suspects? Cast suspicion on someone else, just to be fair? Buy into the bullshit theory this murder is the work of a serial killer everyone knows got his ticket punched in for him a long time ago?''
'' You can't keep leaning on Renard, Gar. Not without some solid evidence or a witness or something. That's harassment, and he'll argue our asses eight ways from Sunday.'' Wally added.
''Oh well, god forbid he sue us,'' Gar sneered.'' A murderer!''
'' A citizen!'' Wally yelled, thumping Victor's desk between stacks of paperwork. '' A citizen with rights and a god damn good lawyer to make sure we respect them. This isn't some lowlife dirt bag you're dealing with here. He's an anchorite, for Christ's sake.''
'' He's a killer.''
''Then you nail him and you nail him by the book. I've got enough parish to deal with half the people thinking the Bayou Strangler's been raised from the dead and half of them spoiling for the lynching- Renard's, your, mine. This fire's burning hot enough, I don't need you throwing gas on it. You don't want to defy me on this Gar. I'm telling you right now.''
''Telling me what?'' Gar challenged. ''To back off? Or do you want me off the case all together Rich?''
''Keep a loss profile, for crying out loud.'' Wally said with registration as he lowered himself into his own chair. ''Let someone help you with the case. Don't get in Renard's face.''
''He killed her, Wally. He wanted her and she didn't want him. So he stalked her. Her terrorized her. He kidnapped her. He tortchured her. He killed her. But merde, maybe I shoulda let Davidson kill him.''
''Then it'd be Davidson up for murder.''
''Pritchett's filing charges?''
'' He doesn't have a choice.'' Wally picked up a arrest report, looked at it, and then put it to the side. '' Davidson tried to kill Renard in front of fifty witnesses. Let that be a lesson if your planning on killing someone.''
''Can I go?''
Wally gave Logan a long look. ''Your not planning on killing someone, are you, Gar?''
'' I've got work to do.''
Gar's expression was inscrutable, his dark green eyes unreadable. He slipped on his sunglasses. Wally's stomach called out loudly for his lunch. He jabbed a finger at his detective. ''You keep that coonass temper in check, Logan. It's already landed your butt in water hot enough to boil crawfish. Blaming cops is in vogue these days. And your name is on the tip of everyone's toung.''
*****
Rachel loitered in the open doorway to the briefing room, a leaking Baggie of melting ice pressed to the knot on the back of her head. She had changed out of her torn, dirty uniform into the jeans and T-shirt she kept in her locker. She strained to make out the argument going on in the sheriff's office down the hall, but only the tone was conveyed. Impatient, angry.
The press had been speculating even before the evidentiary hearing that Logan would lose his job over the screw up on the warrant, but then the press liked to make noise and understood little if not any of the police work. They had written much about the public's frustration of the cops working the case. They all but called for public hanging of the suspect based on nothing more than hearsay evidence, than spun around 180 degrees and pointed fingers at the detective in charge of the case when he finally came up with something tangible.
No one had any evidence Logan had planted that ring in Renard's desk drawer. It didn't make sense that he would have planted evidence but not listed it on the warrant. There was every possibility Renard himself put the ring in that drawer himself, never imagining his house would be searched for a third time. Perpetrators of sex-related homicides tended to keep souvenirs of their victims. Everything from pieces of jewelry to pieces of bodies. That was a fact.
Rachel had attended the seminar on sexual predator three months before the Bichon murder. She took as many extra courses as she could in preparation for one-day making detective. That was her goal-to work in plain cloths, dig deep into the mysteries of the crimes she now dealt with only at the outset of a case.
The crime-scene slides the class instructor had shown them had been horrific. Crimes of unspeakable cruelty and brutality. Victims tortured and mutilated in ways no sane person could have ever imagined in their worst nightmares. But then she not longer had to imagine. She had been the one to discover Pam Bichon's body.
She had been off duty the weekend the real estate agent was reported missing. On a routine Monday morning, Rachel had found herself drawn to a vacant house out on Pony Bayou. The place had been for sale for months, though the renters had moved out only five or six weeks previous. A rusted Bayou Realty sign had fallen owner on one side of the overgrown drive. Something she had read in Police Magazine made Rachel turn into the drive way- an article about how female real-estate agents each year are lured to remote properties, then raped and murdered.
Hidden in the brambles behind the dilapidated house sat a white mustang convertible, top up. Rachel ran it to be certain. The plate's cam back to Pamela K. Bichon, no wants, no warrants, reported missing two days previous. And in the dining room of the old house it was Pam Bichon she found... or what was left of her.
She still saw the scene too often when she closed her eyes. The nails in her hands. The mutilation. The blood. The mask. The flashbacks still waking her in the dead of night, the images intertwining with a nightmare four years old. The smell still burned in her nostrils from time to time, when she least expected it. The putrid miasma of a violent death. Cloying, choking, thick with the scent of fear.
A chill ran up her now, twisting and coiling in her stomach. The baggie dribbled ice water down the back of her neck, and she flinched and swore under her breath.
'' Hey Roth,'' Deputy Roy Harper slide past her through the doorway to the break room. '' I heard you were a cold one. How come that ice is melting?''
Rachel shot him a wry look. ''Must be all your hot air, Harper.''
He gave her a wink, his grin flashing white against his dark sunglasses. '' My hot charm, you mean.''
''Is that what you call it?'' she teased. ''Here I thought it was gas.''
Laughter rolled behind her, Harper's included.
'' You got him again Roth.'' Gilles Summers said.
''I quit keeping score,'' she said, glancing down the hall towards the sheriff's office. '' It got to where it was just cruel.''
'' Friends, you should have seen Mr. Logan!'' Kori Andrews said with a big grin. '' He moves like a panther, him! Talk about!''
''Yeah, he was on Davidson like that.'' Gilles snapped his fingers. ''And there's women screaming and the gun going off and nine kinds of hell all at once. It was a regular goddamn circus.''
''And where were you through all this Roth?'' Richard Greyson asked, having just entered the room. He turned his pale eyes on Rachel.
Tension rose inside her as she returned the detective's stare/
''At the bottom of the pile,'' Xaviour Red snickered. '' Where a women belongs.''
''Yeah, like you'd know,'' She tossed her dripping ice bag into the trash. ''You read that in a book Xaviour?''
''You think he can read?'' Gilles said with mock astonishment.
''Penthouse,'' someone suggested.
''Naw,'' Harper drawled, elbowing Summers. '' He just looks at the pictures and milks his lizard.''
'' Fuck you, Harper.'' Red rose and headed for the candy machine, hitching his pants up his skinny hips and digging in his pocket for change.
'' Jesus, don't fish it out here, Red!''
''Christ,'' Richard muttered in disgust.
He had the kind of looks that could draw a women's eye. Tall, trim, athletic. An interesting combination of features hinted at his mixed family background- long dark hair spiked from the head, skin that shaded a little more brown than white. He had a slim nose and a Dudley Do-Right mouth.
His face would have looked good on a recruiting poster with his square jaw and chin, the light turquoise eyes piercing out from beneath heavy black sunglasses. But Greyson wasn't the type in any other respect. He cultivated a laid-back , free spirit image advertised by his unconventional clothing, which today consisted of baggy gray janitors pants and a square-bottomed shirt.
'' You steal that off Chi Chi Rodriguez?'' Rachel asked.
'' Come on Roth,'' Richard murdered with a sly smile. '' You want me. You're always looking at me. Am I right or Am I right?''
'' Your full of shit and you're kinda hard to miss in that getup. So where were you during all the fun? You been working the Bichon case just as much as Logan.''
He leaned a sholder against the doorjamb, glancing out into the hall. ''Gar's the primary. I had to go out of town. They picked up my meth dealer on a DUI.''
'' And that required your person attention?''
''Hey, I've been looking to nail that rat for months.''
'' If they had him in their jail, then what was the hurry?''
Greyson flashed his teeth. ''Hey, no time like the present. You know what i'm saying. The warrants come out of this parish. I want Billy Thibidoux on my resume ASAP.''
'' You left Logan swinging in the breeze so you could have Billy in your jacket. Yeah, I'd wanna be your partner Dick.'' Rachel said with derision.
'' Gar's a big boy. He didn't need me. And you...'' His eyes hardened a bit, even though his smile stayed firmly in place. '' I thought we'd already covered that ground, Roth. You had your chance. But hey, I'm a generous guy. I'd be willing to give you another shot... out of uniform, so to speak.''
'I'd rather mud wrestle alligators in the nude. But she kept that remark to herself, when she would be ready to toss it out at any of her other co-workers. She knew from experience that Richard didn't take rejection very well.
He reached out unexpectintly and pressed his thumb against the darkening bruise along the crown of her left cheekbone. ''You're gonna have a shiner, Roth.'' He dropped his hand as she pulled back. '' Looks good on you.''
'' You're a jerk,'' she muttered, turning away, knowing she was the only one in the department who thought so. Richard 'Dick' Greyson was everyone's pal... except for hers.
The door to the sheriff's office swung open and Logan stormed our, his expression deadly, his tie jerked loose at the throat of his tan shirt. He dug a cigarette out of his breast pocket.
''We're fucked!'' he snapped at Greyson, not slowing his stride.
'' I heard.''
Rachel watched them go down the hall. Greyson had been working the Bichon case when Pam was alive and claiming Renard was stalking her. He had missed the homicide call, but worked the case as Logan's partner. They weren't being held up to the public as a team, though. It was Logan's name in the papers, Logan, who had come to the Partout Parish to cheak it out, Logan who had found the ring. Greyson wouldn't be raked over the coals after today's hearing. He had assured that by making himself scarce.
'' Billy Thibidoux, my ass.'' she grumbled under her breath.