Chapter 30: Her

I have tied for the shortest chapter title!

Anyway, today the boss calls for me and a couple of other blokes. Apparently the lab has identified the poison, and only a few pharmacies are authorized to sell it. Plus, whoever buys it has to write his or her name down on a list. He’s sending us to stake the various places out. He also says that whoever asks, Denvers died of a heart attack. I raise my hand.

“Didn’t you just say he died of poison?”

The Chief does his fishy charades thing again before dismissing us and calling for aspirin.

Back at my desk, I pick up a pencil and began to write another report – the technicians have refused to give me another keyboard, so the coffee has lost its best swimming pool. A voice suddenly screams into my ear, “Denvers? Dead?” and I am so thoroughly frightened that I drop the pencil and it breaks. A purse slams onto my table, the computer monitor squeaks and drops onto the floor with an ear-shattering crash. Not that my ears need anymore shattering. Illy can scream, by god.

“Heart attack,” I explain, picking up the broken ends of the pencil, leaving the monitor where it is. How come Illy was strong enough to make a computer fall without even touching it? “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Illy, sorry, but I need to work.” I realize I can’t work a moment later, because that pencil was my last one.

***

We experienced boys of stakeout know what that means.

It’s basically a night of eating donuts and watching people through binoculars, or playing poker and losing a lot of money.

This is pretty much what happens at this stakeout. We all file into the building opposite, wearing various civvy clothes. I’m wearing a red checked shirt and khaki pants, a lot better than some of my friends. I swear, they’ve been in police clothes so long they’ve forgotten how to dress normally.

Every hour two of us will go out and patrol the building discreetly. And on my watch, I have the pleasure of meeting her again.

My partner screams like a girl and dives into the nearest bushes. I pull out my gun, my eyes never once leaving hers, and shoot her. The bullet goes right through her jaw. She runs off without another sound and I give chase, thinking longingly, whatever happened to the donut-and-poker stakeouts of old?