The Witness Wore a Puppy Tail, chapter 10 (Patreon)

After making sure that one of the patrol officers understood the importance of guarding Robert—understood in some specific detail—Ken headed toward the figure standing on the far side of the parking lot in a narrow strip of weeds. He’d half expected the shadowed man to take off running, but he waited as Ken closed the distance. The man was old; maybe that’s why he didn’t run. As Ken closed the distance, he greeted the man with a simple, “Hey.”

The guy leaning on the fence straightened up. “That’s your opening. Hey? That’s not impressive.” He gave Ken a dismissive look. Ken knew he didn’t look his best in a wrinkled shirt and old jeans, but he’d been woken in the middle of the night. This guy’s ratty beard and foul breath came from more than a late-night disturbance. He might even be homeless, although more than one person lived in an apartment with no water or electricity, either because they couldn’t pay the bill or because their landlord refused to fix equipment. So bad hygiene didn’t reveal much.

Ken stopped a few feet away and curled his fingers around the top pole of the fence. “I could start by asking if you saw anything, but you already know I’m a detective, and you already know I’m looking for witnesses.” 

“Witnesses? Seriously?” The guy sounded not only surprised but also pissed.

Ken took a deep breath and silently counted to five. “That’s what cops do when there’s a crime.”

“Maybe when there’s a white boy involved. It seems like the police show up a lot faster for them.”

Ken contained a sigh. He understood that people had legitimate complaints, but he never understood why people thought the solution to the police ignoring some crimes was for them to ignore more crimes. It seemed particularly inappropriate now because the first officers at the scene had tried to ignore Robert’s attack. However, getting in an argument with someone rarely led to cooperation.

“The police don’t show up fast enough down here,” Ken admitted, “and they might have dismissed tonight’s attack, but the victim called me.” Ken turned his back to the fence and leaned against it as he watched the patrol officers gather into knots of two and three and talk. Now that the scene was secure and the officers weren’t needed, they seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork. Most of them were probably here to see the explosion when the captain on duty found out someone had called a crime scene unit to a simple push-in. They were all shameless gossips.

“He related to you?” the man asked. 

“He’s a nosebleed who has shoved his way into my case, but since he did that by first saving someone from an attack, I’m willing to stick my neck out by calling out the troops to investigate.”

The old man shifted so he was facing Ken now. “And when the rest of us get robbed?”

If Ken made a promise, he wouldn’t be able to keep it. This wasn’t his jurisdiction. “I can only cover the ones assigned to me.”

“And white boy’s home invasion gets a detective.” The old man drew out the syllables in the last word in an exaggerated southern drawl. Ken was almost sure he was being insulted, but he chose to focus on the facts.

“No, a series of assaults that has landed men and women in the hospital warrants a detective. He’s just the unlucky bastard who stuck his nose in my case and now is being targeted by a pack of delinquents.”

The man stared at Ken for a long time, and then something shifted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He took time to cup his hand around the end of one while he lighted it. His first drag made the cigarette glow brightly, but then he said in a weary voice, “Bobby is nosey as all hell.”

“Bobby?”

The man shook his head as though disgusted, and the tip of his cigarette made an arc in the air. “It’s hard to take a man seriously and call him by an adult name when he bounces around like he’s been doing crystal for three days. He says he’s clean, but either he’s on something or that boy has issues.”

Ken thought about Robert’s job as the world’s oddest rent boy and his unique defense of his profession. “I think it’s probably issues. Many, many issues.”

“You’re probably right.” He took a deep drag, and Ken waited. His time in Africa had taught him that important conversations often began with silence. Eventually the old man spoke. “So, you think this is more than someone looking to grab some quick cash?”

For several seconds, Ken let the question linger on the air as he studied the cars that rolled down the street, the drivers craning to get a glimpse at whatever disaster had attracted police attention. “I think,” he eventually said, “someone who wanted money would have grabbed shit and run.”

“Around here?” The old man gave a rough laugh. “You got a good chance that any fucker breaking into your apartment is too stoned to know how to grab the goods and run. It’s not like we have a high class of thief.”

Ken took a risk and pushed a little harder. “Is that what you saw? Some stoned assholes targeting Robert?”

“Me? You’re assuming I saw something.”

“I am.” Ken offered his hand. “I’m Detective Ken Hoffman.”

The man looked down at Ken’s hand without even trying to take it. He leaned back against the fence. “Harry.”

Ken dropped his hand to his side. He’d clearly pushed a little too hard, but Harry wanted to help—otherwise he would have walked away. “So what did you see, Harry?”

Harry took another drag on his cigarette and stared across the yard where a small knot of cops were talking. Ken heard his own name drift through the air more than once, so he was clearly fueling the gossip mill again. Ken was about to give up when Harry spoke. “There were three little snot-nosed shithead, but I don’t think they were from around here.”

“Can you be more specific about the specific size and color of the shitheads?”

“White. Not from around here.” Harry dropped his cigarette on the weeds, and one sparked before he scrubbed it out with his shoe. “All three had that fresh-faced look that companies like to put on their advertising. And they were cackling like fucking witches.”

Ken pulled out his phone’s note taking function and started jotting down the details. “Cackling? Like laughing?”

“They were getting real excited about putting Bobby in his place, talking each other up.”

Ken looked up at Harry. The tone of voice he’d used sent cold shivers up Ken’s spine. “What do you mean?”

Harry’s mouth twitched like he had swallowed a curse or had a spasm. “The shortest one kept saying, ‘I bet you’re all talk. You didn’t even land a single kick last time’ and ‘you can’t hit hard enough to take down a little girl.’” Harry’s voice had the elaborate sing-song quality of a child making fun of someone. “You know how little boys talk to each other when they’re trying to work themselves up to doing something they’re scared of.”

Ken greatly doubted that fear had anything to do with it. This was more about psyching each other up for the attack the way football players did before a big game. It was about enjoyment and excitement. It was sick. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

That earned a hard snort. “Around here, cops don’t turn up quick enough to do much good. I called my son. He showed up not long after those three hot footed it out of here.”

“And by then, Robert had called the police,” Ken added. He really wished the captain would let him call in some resources—send the file over to the FBI to get their advice on it or even take it to one of his psych professors. They were all retired police, and several had worked serial killing cases. 

Ken’s gut told him that his case was going that direction if he couldn’t figure out how to get ahead of the pack. But the captain had decided early that Ken was seeing spooks from his own past, and the harder Ken pushed, the more the captain would assume Ken had lost perspective. It was a catch-22 and Ken didn’t want someone dying to break the cycle.

Hell, change one or two details, and he might have been called out to a murder tonight. That thought circled his brain like a vulture as Ken got Harry’s contact information and got a promise that Harry would come down to make a statement. Harry clearly worried because most folks around the neighborhood had vanished the second the officers started looking for someone to talk to. However, if Ken wanted to get his captain to take him seriously, he needed to run this by the book, even if he had already bent the rules by calling for a crime scene unit.

Ken did the obligatory knocking on doors, albeit quietly so he didn’t wake anyone who might have slept through the drama. He was working the second floor when the crime unit showed up. An older black man had charge, but the other two techs looked too young to vote. Hopefully that didn’t mean that someone had sent a second-string unit. Since Ken couldn’t do anything about that, he put it aside and knocked on the upper floors. 

Forty minutes later, he had landed exactly nothing. Other than Harry Butler’s statement, he’d hit a wall of silence. Either the neighbors had slept through it or they didn’t want to get involved. He’d come back during the day, but he didn’t have any faith in his ability to shake loose any more intel. 

Ken slogged down the stairs feeling at least twenty years older and twice as useless as he had when he’d gotten ready for bed. As he drew closer to his car, he was struck with a sudden fear that Robert had taken off. While that wasn’t logical, Ken had learned to expect stupidity from him.

That wasn’t fair. Ken actually admired Robert’s desire to make his own way without his father’s money and his work to make the world better. Even when Robert’s crusades made the police department’s lives more difficult, Ken respected the convictions. However, his self-preservation skills were up there with lemmings and deer that were staring into spotlights. The man was a menace to himself.

When Ken spotted the dark peach-fuzz buzz cut barely visible under one of Ken’s old jackets, the strength of Ken’s relief surprised him. From the looks of it, Robert was out cold in the back seat, his knees drawn up and his face completely hidden under Ken’s Atlanta Hawks jacket. With nothing else to do, Ken leaned on a section of the fence east of the broken place. That’s where the crime scene techs were focused. Apparently they had found some blood and fibers, although the odds were that some neighborhood kid had gotten careless. Ken didn’t count on forensics to solve this one.

He wasn’t sure he could solve it, either. 

When Ken joined the police department, he’d had some asinine hope that he could find a place where he’d be allowed to make a difference and save lives. Ken respected that his work in Africom was vital. Americans underestimated the sheer number of places where militant groups hid and plotted terrorism or how many attacks had been thwarted before anyone outside the military knew about them.

However, the cost of that work was allowing the daily shit of life to happen unchecked. Ken couldn’t save a woman’s life or he would compromise a listening post. He couldn’t challenge a warlord or the command might lose access to the bastard’s corner of bushland. He’d grown numb from the number of compromises he’d been forward to swallow like a cup full of bitter pills.

When he’d become an officer, he’d hoped for something different. It was only Robert’s vocal challenges that made Ken realize he’d fallen back into old patterns. He was making excuses for other officers and himself because of what was most practical.

But he couldn’t ignore practicalities, either. Sometimes Ken hated how much Robert made him think, and when it was three in the morning and Ken was waiting for a captain to show up and chew him out, Ken really wanted to drop kick Robert into a deep, deep well. Maybe that’s why Ken couldn’t quite wrap his head around just how much it terrified him to think about these budding psychopaths targeting Robert.

Chapter 11: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-11-18463879 

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-12-18561312 

Chapter 13: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-13-18583563 

Chapter 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-14-18835280 

Chapter 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-15-19009742 

Chapter 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-16-19049610 

Chapter 17: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-17-19064720 

Chapter 18: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-18-19083274 

Chapter 19: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-19-19142224 

Chapter 20: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-20-19153311 

Chapter 21, 22, 23: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-21-21192263 

Chapter 24: https://www.patreon.com/posts/witness-wore-24-21260957