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“I like it here in Burney.”
“Really?” A slight smile crept across her face.
Cash was itching to say something, but I got the feeling the senator kept him on a tight leash.
I was getting tired of people thinking Liz was the reason I was in Burney. I’d been here six months before she’d returned to town after a fifteen-year absence. Six months isn’t long, but long is relative. I was here first. Relatively.
“Really,” I said. Although, truth be told, Liz Danger was a good reason to be anywhere.
“Burney might not be the place for you, Office Cooper.”
Cash smiled at that. His lip had healed quite nicely from where I’d busted it over a month ago.
She’d called me detective and now officer. I was enough of the former to pick up on the latter. “Why not, ma’am?”
“They brought Mickey Pitts out of the coma on Saturday for surgery,” Senator Wilcox said. “Just before they operated, he told an interesting story about being offered a hundred thousand dollars in cash by a newly-minted detective to leave Burney.”
I had no snappy reply to that because it was true. She was more on top of the Mickey Pitts saga than I was. I’d left word at the prison to get called right away if Mickey regained consciousness, but my word, as it was, apparently mattered little compared to the senator’s network.
“Hold on, let me handle this guy,” Cash said to the senator in what I assumed was his manly man voice. He opened his door, but I caught the look of irritation cross her face as he got out to confront me. I heard Franco mutter “Give me a break,” under his breath.
Me, I was thinking Cash’s lip would probably split much more easily this time. I know, I am small and petty and vindictive at times.
Cash wasn’t totally stupid. He kept the heavy car door between us as he leaned into it and lectured me across the top. “Cooper, you’re a dinosaur living and working in a dying town. We’re going to replace the entire police force and headquarter it in our development where the tax base is going to be and the people who should be protected are going to be. You won’t fit in. The senator has just made you a very generous offer. You should take it. Burney, as it is now, is on its last gasp. We’re going to have shops and restaurants and everything people need in the development. People will only go to old Burney to see the dying past. And you can tell Liz that. That I’m the future. You? You’re done, Cooper.”
I stared at him. His eyes were wrong, the pupils off, probably from getting out of the dark interior of the car into daylight. “Thanks for the advice,” I said. I leaned back toward Franco’s window so I could see the senator. “You have a nice day, ma’am.”
She nodded, her lips tight. Then she said. “Get back in here, Cash.”
With a smirk, Cash slid back inside and slammed the door shut.
I looked at Franco and he gave me a slight shake of the head, then powered up the window and pulled out. Fast, but not spitting gravel and dirt from the shoulder.
I watched the big SUV drive away, then got back in the Gladiator and turned off Rt. 52, and headed into town.
Fucking Mondays.
* * *
Police headquarters is on the first floor of the municipal building which also houses the mayor’s office upstairs and animal control out back. The latter gets more calls than we do. We probably could use a new building, but not in that development. A remodel, maybe.
I nodded at Steve Crider, the desk officer and daytime phone answerer, as I came in. I was anxious to talk damage control with Chief George Pens.
“Chief is upstairs with Mayor O’Toole,” Steve said, looking worried, which meant I was too late. Then Steve added the hammer. “Senator Wilcox was here earlier.”
“Was Cash Porter with her?”
“No.”
I hadn’t been invited, but given the senator’s comments and Cash’s speech, I took the stairs two at a time.
The door to the mayor’s office was open and I saw George standing in front of the mayor’s desk, his badge and gun on top of it and O’Toole grinning behind it. I took that as an invitation.
As I stepped in, I noticed Brandon Bartlett, O’Toole’s stool pigeon on the force who put the plural in “Burney detectives”, sitting off to the side. He was both the mayor’s and chief’s nephew-in-law because George had once been married to O’Toole’s current wife, Honey. I wondered how she felt about that deal now. O’Toole looked like a hung-over Jabba the Hut behind the desk with his splotchy, drink-addled face and receding hairline, while George was in the best shape he’d been in years under the strong hand of Liz’s boss, Anemone Patterson. Whenever Anemone took an interest in someone, their life took an upward trajectory. But that seemed to have hit a wall today.
“Cooper,” O’Toole said as I walked in, “no one invited you.”
“Senator Wilcox did,” I said. “I just saw her on Route 52.”
