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Turns out, that wasn’t such a great idea.
“You fucking point-eared snitch, you’re a rat and a filthy fucking traitor.”
I was so goddamn surprised that it didn’t even occur to me to hit the damn mute button. Or hang up. I just gaped at my phone as the entire bullpen went dead silent.
“We know it was you, you shit-eating lily-white bastard. You’re a fucking traitor to the uniform and a traitor to your own goddamn species, you subhuman fucking fairy. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll quit the job and stay the fuck out of Four’s business.”
And then he hung up.
I didn’t recognize his voice, but I would have laid out money that someone in the now very-quiet room probably did.
I reached out to delete the message and Villanova’s voice echoed through the room. “Don’t you dare delete that, Hart.”
I stopped, my finger headed for the button. Then I sighed, grinding my teeth together to get control of my temper.
There was no way to win this one.
“Not worth it, Captain,” I said, not bothering to turn around.
“The fuck it isn’t.” His voice was closer, and I could hear the press of his shoes against the floor as he walked up behind me. I looked down at him—he was six-one, but I’m taller—when he reached my desk, and was mildly surprised to see how red his ears were, his grey eyes angry over his dark blue mask. “Nobody threatens my people.”
Right. Clearly the voicemail had come from Precinct Four—they’d told me explicitly to stay out of their business, after all—and the Captain wasn’t about to let Four lay the blame on One for something one of theirs had done. And it was abundantly clear to pretty much everyone in One that Shelby had been up to his eyeballs and then some in shit.
Even if they might have agreed with his politics, everybody knew that you didn’t get caught arresting someone who turns up dead only a day later.
It’s just bad form.
Or maybe—just maybe—there was actually more basic decency in Precinct One than I gave most of my coworkers credit for. Maybe they did actually care that Shelby was a corrupt chicken-fucker of a human being and wanted him taken down, if for no other reason than he gave other cops a bad name.
Maybe.
But since nobody else seemed to have gotten a nasty voicemail, I wasn’t going to hold my breath that they were fully in solidarity right alongside me.
Call me jaded, but I figure it’s better to be jaded than dead.
By the time IAD—the real IAD, not Raj, sadly—came to copy the voicemail and ask me and pretty much everyone else in the room a million questions, nobody was in the mood to go out socializing, although Caro made me promise to go out with them next week, instead.
I had just picked up Taavi’s leash when Dan Maza came running back into the bullpen.
“Um.” He stopped, his eyes wide and his brow furrowed over his mask. “You can’t go yet.”
“Why not?” I wasn’t in the mood for either some sort of joke or a pick-me-up-feel-better-buddy speech.
He ran a hand over his hair. “Your car,” he said softly.
“What the fuck about my car, Dan?” I demanded.
He looked at the woman from IAD who was unplugging their recording device from my phone. She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Somebody, uh. Vandalized it,” he said, half-swallowing the words. “You’re going to want to see it,” he said to the woman, whose name was Christine Madsen. Madsen frowned, the fair skin of her brow furrowing.
She pulled her tablet out and opened an app. “Tell me.”
“Um.” Dan looked between me and Madsen. “Well, they busted up the windows and sprayed… insults on it.”
“Insults?”
“Um. ‘Point-eared bastard.’ And, um, ‘albino freak.’ That… sort of thing.” Dan’s voice was apologetic.
