Chapter Six - Molly
“Hello?” I croak out, my voice raspy and my throat so dry it feels like sandpaper.
“Goddammit, Masters. You’re still sleeping? What, two days isn’t long enough for you? You think you’re special, need three-day weekends? What fucking day do you think it is, sweetheart?”
I pull my phone away from my ear and look at it with blurred vision. “Who is this?”
“Who is this?” He’s screaming now. I can almost picture a blood vessel popping out from his fleshy neck. “You goddamned better know who is this, Masters. And if you’re not at work in thirty minutes, you’ll be unemployed.”
Beep, beep, beep.
Oh, shit. My mind clears up in an instant and I jump out of bed. I totally fail at that and fall face-first on the pink chenille rug where my pink stilettos are parked, ready for… what the fuck happened?
It looks like…
- I got really drunk. Because there’s empty wine and whiskey bottles everywhere. And…
- There must’ve been a whole lot of people here, because I don’t drink. One or two, every now and then. But this? This looks like…
- I had a rager and there might even have been drugs involved from the look of the…
- Ashtray?
- Jesus fuck.
- It’s a good thing pot is legal in Cathedral City, or I’d be out of a job.
I get to my knees and realize I am going to hurl. So I throw every instinct I have out the window, get to my feet, peel out, making the pink chenille rug slide on the polished wood floors, and dive for the bathroom. I land face first on the white field floor a few feet through the doorway and crawl the rest of the way to the porcelain god, where I hike myself up, flip the lid open, and spew.
Oh, God.
I’m disgusting.
I sit like that for a few minutes, just hugging the toilet like we’re best friends. And then I remember my boss’ threat and crawl to the shower. It takes me another minute to stand up and turn the water on. And that’s when I notice…
7. I’m wearing lingerie. And not just any lingerie, but…
8. Sexy shit I don’t even own. It’s light pink with cream-colored lace. And the bra has a wire in it to lift my girls up towards my chin.
I look around at my ass and nope. My cheeks are not covered. It’s just a strip of fancy pink lace riding up my butt crack.
What the fuck? And who the fuck wears this shit to bed? No one, that’s who. Unless you’re getting…
9. Oh. My God.
I bolt out of the bathroom and cringe as I scan my bed covers. They are all rumpled up into a pile on one side and I hold my breath as I jerk them off the bed in one swoop.
No one. Empty, as usual.
I sigh and start laughing. “Right, Molls. Like you’d be getting laid.” Good one, I think, walking back to the shower holding my head.
But where the hell did this lingerie come from?
I check the clock and realize I’ve used up twenty minutes and start to panic. I can’t go in without a shower, so I’m totally late. My ass is getting chewed out good when I finally make it in. But I don’t have time to wonder about my dubious choices right now.
So I whip the pink lace cami over my head and shimmy out of the panties I would never—ever, ever, ever—wear. And get in the shower.
More than an hour later—I had to stop for coffee—I walk into the Cathedral City Police Department headquarters wearing my best work suit and my brown and white saddle shoes, wishing I was back in bed and trying my best to avoid Chief O’Neil. It’s not hard at the moment, because the place is jumping like the circus. There’s four sets of couples, each with a woman crying her eyes out, in the front lobby. The men with them, probably their husbands, look like they are all about to punch someone.
“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Roger, the intern at the front desk, says as he buzzes me through to the back offices. “Chief says you need to see him as soon as you get in.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, nodding my head to the couples.
“Kids ran away over the weekend. A whole group of them. And the parents are making a big scene about it.”
“Oh, that sucks.” I study the faces of the crying women again, this time with a new appreciation for the grief. It’s got to be the worst thing that can happen to a parent. But I need to get to work. I walk through the security door and start weaving my way through the maze of desks. I really need to sit down and nurse this hangover.
“Masters!”
Shit. “Coming, Chief!” I yell over the commotion. There are suspects everywhere. Some are handcuffed to benches, some to desks. When I pass the intake door, a whole line of them are chained together waiting to be processed. I’ve only been here two weeks but I’ve never seen it like this.
Something definitely happened over the weekend.
“Shut the door behind you, Masters,” Chief says when I enter his office. He’s got one of those stereotypical fishbowls with windows on three sides, but only one of them looks out onto the city. The other two face the main work stations so he can keep an eye on things. And so everyone can watch when someone gets their ass chewed out, because he never lowers the shades when he does that.
Today I am the one about to get an ass-chewing.
I sigh and close the door, then walk over in front of his desk and wait for him as he shuffles papers around.
“Do you have any idea how short-handed I am right now, Masters?”
“No, sir.”
He looks up from his paper-shuffling and stares lightning bolts into me. “Why not? Isn’t it your job to notice things, Masters? Isn’t that why I hired you? Military cred. Spying undercover. It’s all impressive on paper, but in the field, you’re a major disappointment. Worked with some of the biggest hush-hush cases in the country for the past three years, your resume said. And now you’re telling me you don’t even have the intuition to figure out I’m severely short-handed?”
“Sorry, sir. Yes, I can see we’re busy—”
“We’re not busy, Masters. This is the Monday after Cathedral Festival Weekend. And you have the nerve to be late?”
“I forgot, sir. I’m sorry, it won’t happen—”
“And I heard all about that party you threw at your house, Masters. Do you think I don’t know that the police were called seven times?”
“No!” That’s not even possible.
“Oh, yeah, honey. And I’m going to ream your ass good for that. But you’re lucky I need you today and don’t have the time.”
“I saw the parents out in the lobby. I’ll get right on finding those missing juveniles, sir.”
“Kids? What do we look like, babysitters? No, Masters, you’re not working on the runaways. I had a very angry Atticus Montgomery in my office this morning.”
Shit. Montgomery is the town billionaire. His family owns… well, I could make a very long list of what he owns, but it would take far more internal monologue time than I have right now.
“One of his employees killed himself in his office over the weekend.”
Double shit.
“And it’s the second one in a month. So you’re gonna get your pretty ass over there”—he does not miss a beat even though calling my ass pretty is against policy—“and figure out what the fuck is going on. You got me?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, adding a salute. “I’m on it.” I turn on my heel and make for the door before he can say anything else.
“And Masters?”
Triple shit.
“Don’t salute me. You’re not in the military anymore.”
“Right,” I say, pulling the door open quickly and making my escape.
That—I sigh—is crystal clear.
I don’t talk to anyone as I pass through the desks, the other cops, the suspects chained to anything that’s bolted down, and make my way back out to the lobby. Alone.
I had a partner. Sort of. He retired last week, which is why I’m now a detective for Cathedral City Police Department instead of just a cop. He was on short-timers the whole two weeks he trained me. But at least he was a friendly face in the midst of animosity.
There were quite a few men in the department who wanted to be promoted to detective. But the chief hired me. Begged me to come out of retirement, actually. Filled my head with promises and all that crap about public service.
And I believed him.
Because, well. I believe in public service. I get most of my satisfaction in life out of helping people these days.
I take one more look at the group of overwhelmed and sad parents before I make my escape, feeling like I’m letting them down. So it sucks that I’m on the chief’s leash and I’ve been ordered to sort out a suicide. There’s been a rash of them, I hear. People desperate over the bad economy. Crime is up a hundred and twenty percent from five years ago. People are ready for a change. And those juveniles are among them, I guess. But they’re just kids. They should be protected and if they go missing, someone should notice. It pisses me off that the CCPD can just ignore them like that.
But you need this job, Molls, I remind myself. You need it because:
- You haven’t had a job since Will died.
- You got depressed and… yeah.
- You can’t hide from the world forever.
- People need to pay their dues and this is how you will pay yours.
Maybe there’s another detective in our department who’s familiar with these kids? I wouldn’t know. I’m too new. So maybe the chief is doing the best job he can with the people he’s got. And I just happen to be new, with no cases, since my last partner closed them all out. Maybe the chief wants me to contain the backlash the city’s biggest corporation might encounter if the public finds out they are a hotbed for suicides?
I’m gonna go with that. Chief O’Neil knows what he’s doing and I need to focus on the task I was given.