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“Even though they clearly fucking are.” This wasn’t new. Riley was terrified of McBride, and Henderson just liked being a bully whenever he thought he could get away with it—he didn’t particularly care who he targeted, as long as he was bigger and meaner.
“Which everybody knows. But McBride decided that he wasn’t going to just leave it at the passive-aggressive shit. He complained directly that Schmidt and McGuire impeded a legit arrest—”
“Which they clearly didn’t.”
“Which clearly doesn’t matter,” Dan pointed out. “Because nobody had any evidence of any wrongdoing, but McBride swore that the kid had a packet of white powder in his pocket, and because Schmidt ran interference while McGuire got in McBride’s face about it, nobody actually got any evidence of that. And the kid wasn’t fucking stupid, so he got the hell out of there.”
“Probably a good call.”
“No doubt. But Schmidt and McGuire are both suspended for another week, and the best Villanova could do was make sure they still get paid while McBride and his fucking cronies tell everyone who will listen or who doesn’t have a choice that they’re probably rotten and on the take from the Tusks.”
The Tusks were—unsurprisingly—an orc gang. They controlled quite a bit of drug traffic downtown and into some of the poorer areas of the city, along with the Bloodwine—vampires—and the Originals, who were a pain-in-the-ass human-exclusive gang with an anti-Nid streak a mile wide and just as long.
“Because the kid was an orc?”
Dan nodded. “When I talked to Schmidt, she said that he was just a kid who clearly didn’t want anything to do with them—didn’t run, but was clearly uncomfortable. He came out of the convenience store and immediately turned to walk away from them. And McBride decided to give the kid shit for it.”
I sighed. “I suppose McBride wanted to argue he was a shoplifter?”
Dan shrugged, chewing on a bite of pizza. “Who the fuck knows?” He swallowed. “It’s only gotten worse since you left,” he said softly.
“What has?” I could think of any number of things.
“The anti-Nid bullshit.”
“You think I kept that under control? Me? With my big fucking mouth?”
That got him to laugh, even if a little bitterly. “Hell, no, Hart. If you were still there it would be ten times worse.”
“Thanks, Dan.” I snorted.
“No offence.”
“Yeah? How the fuck am I supposed to take that?” I was teasing, but his comment also kind of stung.
“It’s not you,” he told me. “It’s—fucking everything else. This goddamn MFM shit. Sure, the riots have died down, but it’s justeverywhere. Nids come in a lot more battered than they used to. There’s always some excuse, but everybody knows what’s going on. If you were still in the office it would be an endless shitstorm all headed in your direction.”
It was actually a good reminder that being a cop wasn’t non-stop catching bad guys and being showered in confetti and rainbows. I’d been suffering from a good, solid case of the-grass-is-greener, and Dan’s litany of administrative bullshit and political red tape demonstrated more than aptly that I was fucking lucky to have Ward and Doc and Beck as colleagues.
“Is that why the Feds are taking the Nid cases?”
“Not Nids, just shifters. The rest of you poor fuckers are stuck with the RPD.”
“Great.” My tone made it clear that I absolutely did not think that was at all great. “Why shifters?”
“Fallout from the Brachiofortis case.” The case that had brought Taavi into my life in all his doggy glory. “The reach of that bunch was too widespread for their taste, and I guess a few people on that contact list had ties to law enforcement or government or some shit, so they’re just taking anything with paws and a tail.” Dan stuffed the last bit of crust into his mouth and spoke around it. “Probably better for the shifters, to be honest.”
I grunted at that. He was probably right, but it made for one hell of a mess.
Dan dished up a second piece of pizza for himself, deftly using the serving utensil to cut off the delicious molten cheese that stretched between the pan and his plate. “So what about you, Hart? What trouble did you dig up that brought out the feebies?”
I told him about the museum’s collection of dogs and shifters.
Dan’s face darkened the longer I spoke, although I left out some of the details—the carving on the whelks, for instance, and the fact that we seemed to be missing three of them. It wasn’t that I distrusted Dan, because I did trust him, but Kurtz and Raj had made it clear that some details had to stay completely confidential. And ‘completely’ included both the RPD and even my colleagues at Beyond the Veil. I’d argued with Kurtz about not telling Ward and Mason, but he’d insisted that they wanted to keep those things need-to-know.
“At any rate,” I wrapped up my recounting, “Raj and company got a copy of that Sun Stone thing from Doc and Taavi, and they’re working on linking that to everything else.” I took a drink of my beer. “Can I ask a favor?”
Dan looked up at me with suspicious dark eyes, one finger tracing the rim of his beer glass. “What?” he sounded hesitant.
