The Dream and the Nightmare
Chapter 1
…the newly fallen snow soft underfoot, he bounded through the narrow gaps in the tree trunks, soaring over the frozen brook and coming to a halt on top of a dead, snow-covered tree trunk. Enjoying the feel of the wind on his face, his breathing heavy, he looked over at his mate and—
—BUZZBUZZBUZZBUZZBU—
I rolled over and put a heavy paw on the “alarm reset” button, trying to get back to sleep. It was useless. There was no way I was going to experience the rest of it. Trying to remember every detail, it was slipping away from me as it always did in the morning. It was so ironic. The best part of my day now was when I was happily asleep, thankful at least that the nightmares had stopped. Dragging the covers off, I rolled over to the edge of the bed and swung my long legs off. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, I tried to shake the mental cobwebs of sleep from my mind, reaching out with a paw and feeling around on the floor for my boxers.
Glancing over my shoulder at my alarm clock, I stood up, walked over and untangled a towel and a pair of boxers from my clean laundry basket, and walked down the hall to my bathroom. I leaned over the tub and twisted the knob marked H all the way to the right. Standing back up, I dropped the towel and boxers on the end table and lifted the toilet seat.
I finished up, stopping myself before I flushed, as I didn’t want a frigid shower. Pausing to look into the mirror, I smiled at my reflection. I was quite tall, which considering that we wolves tended to be among the tallest was no small feat. My body wasn’t exactly sculpted, but I wasn’t very overweight either. My long, stonewashed blue and white fur ran all the way to my pawtips, and I kept my black claws short but sharp. I had always liked the way the dark blue stripe on my back ran all the way from the tip of my long tail up over the top of my head and down the sides of my muzzle, my bright green eyes staring back through the stripe at me in sharp contrast. As the mirror began to fog and the wolf staring back at me in the mirror faded away, and I turned around to adjust the temperature of the shower.
I climbed into the steamy shower stall and enjoyed the hot water pelting my fur. Twenty minutes later, I slammed the knob all the way from H to C, a trick I learned from one of my friends who used to be a SEAL. I forced myself not to scream as every one of my nerves flamed at the sudden temperature change, shocking me awake better than four cups of coffee ever could. Turning off the water, I got down on all fours and shook vigorously to get most of the water off. Standing back up, I stuck my hand through the gap in the curtain and felt around for my towel.
I dried off, threw on the boxers, and walked out of the bathroom, pausing to reach over and flush the toilet. I chucked the towel into the dirty laundry hamper as I walked back into my room, and sat down at my computer, pressing the power button on the front of the tower.
Smiling to myself, I stared past the 20” monitor to the Plexiglas window on the side of the tower, waiting for my system to boot after choosing “Microsoft Windows 7 (x64)” at the prompt. I had Ubuntu installed too, but I wanted to get some gaming in before I left for work.
My computer was my baby. Never having finished at college after the money ran out, my technical expertise was little more than a side note to the stuffshirt bureaucrats that read my résumés. I had the knowledge and the experience, though, and had built and re-built the system in front of me. Glowing like a Christmas tree on steroids, I reached up and flicked the switch I had built into the side of the case to shut off all but the fan lights. It was pretty, but tended to give me a headache if I was sitting there for a long time.
After logging in, I waited for Steam to finish loading, and then opened up Internet Explorer. A lot of my friends used Firefox, and I had it installed, but I still preferred IE8 as my primary browser. I clicked on the bookmark labeled FA Forums, then browsed through the new posts, paying particular attention to one thread some coon had written about attending a con in October I had already registered for.
I quickly logged into my e-mail account and grumbled about how Sarge can’t seem to post a schedule without changing it three times a week, then pulled up Steam and launched CS:Source.
Right about when I was about to break even on my Kill to Death ratio, I looked up at the clock and realized I had 10 minutes to get dressed and out to the car. Since I was in a hurry, I pressed WinKey+R and typed in “shutdown –s –t 05” and hit enter, then shut off my monitor, trusting the command line script to finish the job.
I stood up and went over to the chair where I had parked my uniform the night before. I pulled on the polyester shirt, listening to the badge, nametag, pen, and whistle all clink together. I then hoisted up the black pants and fastened the oversized belt, picking my HTC Touch Pro, Mag-Lite mini, handcuffs and P99 .45 compact up off the floor and throwing them back into their respective holsters. I slapped on my ankle holster and snapped the PK380 in, then I zipped up my oversized SWAT tactical boots. I grabbed my KIVA pack, threw my campaign hat on, and ran down the stairs out the door, throwing my keys into my paw and tapping my code into the alarm panel as I left. I hopped into my blazing blue Yaris hatchback, threw my KIVA pack into the passenger seat, then flicked the key while I clicked on my seatbelt and tested the strobe bar on the dash.
Pulling out of my driveway onto the empty paved road and setting in for the drive to the barracks, my mind began to wander. I tried to keep it on track, but I couldn’t fight it, and it drifted back to that horrible night I had been trying to forget for two months.
Chapter 2
Turning onto the Interstate, I pushed the little car up to 87 MPH, set the cruise control, and leaned back, one paw still on the wheel.
I didn’t want to go through this. Not again.
Every day on my way into work, my mind finds a way to drag that night into the forefront of my thoughts. Just like before, I feel nauseated, intensely guilty about what I did. Sure, I told the county therapist that everything was fine. I wasn’t having the nightmares anymore (which was mostly true), and I told her that I had come to grips with what had happened and put it behind me. She didn’t understand though. She genuinely tried, but she couldn’t. There’s no way she could.
Until you’ve killed someone by your own hand, you never can.
Three months ago, I had been working on a missing persons case involving a 14-year old named Hayley Bennett. I felt really bad for the kid, not just because she was missing, but because of who eventually called it in. Up here, there’s two kinds of families, the close-knit normal ones and the I-beat-your-momma-now-it’s-your-turn ones. Hayley came from the second kind of family. Her redneck dad had been in and out of the system for domestic abuse and DUIs like he was caught in a revolving door, her Canadian mom had died in a car crash years ago, and her older brother had gotten out and moved to Canada on his dual citizenship years ago. Thanks to old baboon’s No Child Left Behind act, though, she hadn’t been able to drop out of Jr. High and go with him. She should of.
Damnit.
About a week beforehand, my old high school English teacher Mrs. Page had called me to report that one of her students hadn’t been in for almost a week. She couldn’t get a hold of the parents, and the school’s corrupt new principal couldn’t have cared less. She asked me to swing up to her dad’s shack on Camel’s Hump road during my patrol that evening. I said I’d make a point of it, and told her to say hi to Mr. Thompson for me before hanging up.
I pulled my cruiser up the long, muddy driveway around 5pm, right as the sun was starting to go down. I parked in front of a rotting fence separating the scraggly front yard from the run down hovel that looked like it was being held up purely by luck and duct tape. I stepped out of the car, and my ears twitched as I heard the brook babbling behind me and house creaking ominously in front of me.
Something didn’t feel right.
People always say that “sensing” trouble is a load of horse crap. I don’t buy it. My instincts have paid off more than a few times over the years, and right now, my trouble-o-meter was all the way in the red.
I pulled my P99 and Mag-Lite Mini out of their holsters, and picked my way up the cluttered lawn up to the front door, reaching out with the flashlight and rapping it on the graying wood door.
“Hello? County police. Anybody home?” I waited for a few seconds and swiveled my ears around, straining to hear something from inside the house. Nothing. The sun was slowly disappearing behind the tree line, so I clicked on my Mag-Lite, extended it and my firearm in front of me and pushed the door open as a strong gust of wind blew against the house causing it to creak and sway.
“Hello?” I called out as I walked into the kitchen, the dim light from the doorway and the powerful beam from the Mag-Lite illuminating the dark room, falling across the dirty plates and melted bell-jar candles on the rickety table and the chairs lying on the floor. I buttonhooked into the den-cum-bedroom, sweeping my sidearm and flashlight from left to right.
My whiskers twitched. I shined my light into the corner at the ancient washing machine.
Blood.
Hanging out of the top-loader was a small, red-stained t-shirt. I finished clearing the shack, then holstered my P99, unsnapping the pouch next to it and extracting a pair of latex gloves. I slid them on, being careful not to let my claws rip them, and picked up the shirt. It was too small to be the father’s. The blood pattern looked like drips from a horribly bloody nose or a badly split lip. Having looked at the father’s file before I left, I immediately drew the conclusion that he had been beating his daughter again, and that this time, he had actually done some physical damage in addition to the mental havoc he inflicted upon her.
Gently putting the shirt down, I thought to myself “Where are you?”
Chapter 3
I jerked upright in the driver’s seat as a red Honda Civic swerved in front of me, obviously trying to make the exit after flooring it past my car. I pressed the switch on the center console and the strobe bar on my dashboard started pounding out the hypnotic blue and white flashing patterns most drivers have come to fear seeing in their rear view mirror. Slamming on their brakes, the Civic came to a halt on the side of off-ramp for the Moretown-Middlesex exit. Coming up behind them, I parked the car and hopped out, thankful for the distraction, though dreading the ass-chewing I was going to get from Sarge for being late. Again.
I walked up to the driver’s side window and leaned against the frame, eyeing the young red fox buckled up behind the wheel, and his white bunny girlfriend giving me stares of dread from passenger seat. He looked about ready to have a nervous breakdown as he reached forward and cranked the handle for the window.
“Drivers license and registration?” I said in my menacing growl of a voice, my badge tinkling against the pen in my shirt pocket. Ahh, the classic rite of passage: your first speeding ticket. After going through his pockets and having his girlfriend dig around in the glove box, he shakily handed me a Maryland registration card and Junior Operator’s license.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” I questioned, following the script I’d used countless times. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then shook his head. He looked on the verge of crying. Geez.
“Well, let’s see...” I said in a softer voice, trying to keep the kid from bawling. “I was going about 85, and you zoomed right past me. You do know the speed limit is 65, right?”
Right as the nervous fox opened his mouth to start the excuses flying, there was this awful screeching noise from the center console as the girl’s cell phone starting playing a scratchy rendition of that god awful song “Lollipop” that was so popular with the kids these days. Whatever happened to subtlety?
As she reached for the shrieking phone, she caught the glare I threw at her that said “don’t even think about touching that” and slowly sat back in her seat. A few seconds later, the cell stopped whining.
Feeling my own phone vibrate against my hip, I realized that I was already dreadfully late, so I silenced the phone and looked back down at the panicky young fox.
“Look” I said, cutting him off. “I’ve got to get going, so you’re getting a warning this time.” The relief was clearly visible as it washed over his face. “But!” I barked, almost sending him through the upholstered ceiling, “If I ever catch you again, you’re going to get a lot more than just a ticket, got it?”
He nodded his head vigorously, making it clear he understood how serious I was, and how easily he was getting off. I copied the information from his license and registration onto the notepad in my pocket and handed them back to him. As the Civic pulled away and turned right at the bottom of the ramp, I slowly walked back to my car, sighing to myself.
***
Looking around the decrepit hovel, I tried to figure out what had happened to Hayley. Taking one of the gloves off, I walked back out to my cruiser while speaking into the radio on my left shoulder.
“Dispatch, Delta 669er”
“Go ahead, Delta 669”
“I’ve got a possible missing persons with suspicious circumstances”
“Acknowledged, Delta 669. Awaiting data burst.”
I hopped back into my cruiser and grabbed my tx2z tablet PC out of my KIVA pack. Most of the cruisers had ToughBooks already mounted in them, but I prefer using my tablet, as mine has multi-touch capabilities. Sarge wasn’t too thrilled about me using my personal machine on the job, but he knew that I could run circles around him tech-wise, and that I wouldn’t cause any of those all-too-common “stolen laptop” headlines. Flipping it open and spinning the screen around, I walked back towards the house and tapped the PowerShell and Word icons on my screen. After logging into the barrack’s and the DMV’s secure networks via the WiMax chip in my tablet and pulling up the father’s profile on both databases, I quickly filled out the report form, attached the profile links and used the tablet’s enhanced webcam to snap several photos of the house and the shirt. I then put a BOLO request in the notes for the Dodge pickup registered in the father’s name and submitted the form to dispatch, but I already knew where to look.
Cheap bastard.
***
I pulled into the barracks lot right next to 072, my usual cruiser. I hopped out, put my tablet under my arm, threw my KIVA into the passenger seat of the cruiser, locked both cars, and headed inside.
Nodding to Jadzia, the very attractive gazelle that runs the dispatch office for the night shift, I headed through the double doors and swung a right. Marching down the pseudo-cubicle hallway, I heard a gruff voice call out from behind me “Shino! Get in here!”
Oh boy.
I backtracked and walked into the pseudo-cubicle where the angry voice had originated. Sitting behind the desk was Sarge, a large German Sheppard with a loud bark and an even worse bite. The scar across his muzzle didn’t help soften his appearance any, either.
“Where the hell were you? I swear, if you’re late one more time—“
“Sarge, I had a traffic stop. A kid in a Civic was roaring down the highway. I’ve got the numbers right here.” I said, waving my notepad in front of him.
“Uh, huh. Right. You just go give those to ‘Zia. She’ll run them for you. Besides,” he sighed, “that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” He sighed again and his gruff demeanor softened.
“Shino,” he said, once again pronouncing it wrongly as Shy-No, instead of saying She-no like everyone else. “Are you sure you’re all right? Ever since you got back a week ago, you’ve been… well… distant. Are you sure you’re ready to be back?”
“Sarge,” I said with an exasperated sigh, “I’m fine. Really, I am. That’s all behind me now. I need to get my head back in the job, not be sitting at home wallowing.”
He paused, then sized me up with an appraising stare. After a heavy sigh, he said “You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Thanks, though.” I lied.
Chapter 4
As I walked back to my desk, I kept mentally kicking myself for lying to Sarge. I should have said “No, I’m not okay. I’m a miserable wreck. I really need help.” But I lied right through my teeth to my superior officer.
I plopped down into my high-backed microsuede office chair and plunked my tablet down on the desk. It had taken a lot of fighting with the quartermaster, but I finally managed to talk the ruddy little old lynx into ordering me something other than those atrocious task chairs after I pointed out that he had expensed a “Donald Trump” edition executive chair, and all I wanted was something comfortable.
Not wanting to spend all day sulking, I spun around and grabbed the stack of pink “while you were out” notes that had piled up in my inbox teetering on the corner of my desk. As I started to riffle through them, I felt my cell vibrate. I plucked it out of its holster and tapped the “New Message” icon. It said “hey come0ver to my plce tonite. Wantto talk. –Xavier”
I know Xavier meant well, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Of course, I couldn’t shut him out, either. I was running out of friends.
I tapped a reply into my phone, slid it shut and put it back in its holster. I flipped open my tablet, snapped it into the dock on the desk, opened up PowerShell, and logged into the network. First I submitted the paperwork for the kid I had pulled over earlier, then I logged into my personal Gmail account, muttering to myself as I read off the Subject lines.
“Thinkgeek – Save $5 on orders…” Archive.
“Sarge – IMPORTANT SCHEDULE UPDATE…” Delete.
“Jeff – Dude! Awesome link…” Mark as read.
“M. Hershberger – Your next therapy session” Mark as read.
“Walther – The new SP22 and more!” Dele- no, wait. Archive.
“WaltherRep5 – Hey Shi. Got that new tac holster in.” Mark as read.
I clicked over to Google News and started to read about how the Top Dog had finally gotten the senate to pass that health care reform bill. Heh. I’m so glad that he won over that yippy Secretary of State and the shaky old bloodhound.
I put my tablet in my lap and leaned back, putting my feet on the cluttered desk. I began tapping away, trying to get some of my backlogged paperwork I’d been putting off taken care of.
***
I knew exactly where to look for that sleazy abusive scumbag. I was going to find him, and when I did, I was going to drag him kicking and screaming all the way back to the barracks for questioning. He might even “slip” a few times before getting to the cruiser.
I could only hope.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, seated firmly between all the “New”s: New Hampshire, New York, and Canada, wai- ok, that doesn’t work. Anywho, out here, there’s really only three places for people to go and drink: the Alchemist, which is a decent pub right on Main St., Wings, which is right up the street, and a sleazy tavern up Stowe Street called the “Skunk and Boar.” One of those places where you drink to get drunk, the name said it all. If we didn’t get a call at least once a week to go break up a drunken redneck fight, it was a good week.
After submitting the files to dispatch, I bagged and tagged the bloody shirt, closed up my tablet, hopped back in the cruiser, and left that despicable hovel, hoping to never set eyes on it again. Something told me I’d be back soon, though.
Being a Thursday evening, the bar’s undersized parking lot was crammed with dirty pickups and rusted SUVs being held together with bungee cords, bondo, and duct tape. I parked my cruiser on the curb on the opposite side of the road, hoping I wouldn’t come back out and find that it had toppled into the river below. I walked right in the front door, half-expecting that reaction you always see in westerns: the sheriff walks into the bar and everything stops.
Well, it did.
I stood in the doorway with my menacing look on (which wasn’t that hard, considering I’m a very tall wolf in a police uniform who had just walked into a bar filled with the underbelly of the town) until everybody took the hint and went back to what they were doing. I walked up to the bar and found Rob, the rather ugly warthog and co-owner of the Skunk and Boar, cleaning dirty glasses with an ever dirtier rag. Already having made the connection years ago that you don’t piss off the people who break up your bar fights, he came right over to me and asked who I was looking for.
Holding a printout of Jim Bennett’s profile from the iP90 inkjet in my cruiser, I showed it to him and said “Where’s Jim tonight?” in a quiet tone, looking around to make sure none of the other patrons were eavesdropping.
He suddenly opened his eyes wide and swallowed nervously, then regained his composure and said “I’m honestly not sure.” with an overly-thoughtful look on his face. “I haven’t seen him since Monday night.” The alarm bells starting ringing in my head… Monday?.
“Do you know where he might be now?” I said, playing along. He responded with a “do you really think he would tell me?” look, and then said “have you checked his house?”
I returned his look with one of my own and said “Ok then. But you know how to get in touch with me if you hear from him.” I turned as if to walk away from the bar, then stopped and looked back over my shoulder as if I had forgotten to say something.
“Oh, and say hi to Hayley for me.”
The look on his face was priceless.
Chapter 5
I was jerked back to reality by the sharp shrill of my fax machine. Because of the way I was reclining, it was right next to my pointy ears, and startled me into sitting upright, knocking half a dozen folders and papers from the top of my desk in the process. While I scrambled to pick up the papers and ignored the bemused snigger from the intern passing by, the fax machine spit out two grainy images and a blurb of text, with “FBI: WANTED” in big letters at the top of the page.
The grainy images were of the Civic kid and his girlfriend.
Oh fuck.
Stopping the tablet from falling out of my lap as I bolted upright, I ripped the thermal paper from the fax machine, almost pulling it off the filing cabinet in the process, and sprinted out of my cubicle and down to Sarge’s.
“Sarge!” I spit out, skidding to a halt like I had chains on my feet in front of his cubicle. “That kid I pulled over earlier, he’s on the 50 list!” I frantically waved the fax in front of his face.
“What?!? Give me that!” He barked as he ripped the fax out of my paw. Watching his eyes scan the paper, I thought about how nervous that kid had been, and started mentally kicking myself for not making the connection.
“When was this?!?” He barked, his dark blue eyes drilling into my bright green ones.
“Uh” I said, glancing at the clock over his shoulder, “about 25 minutes ago. He was heading down Center Road.”
“So?!?” He barked, “Get going! I’ll take care of the BOLO!” We both raced out of his office, and I sprinted out to my cruiser while he came to a halt in front of Jadzia’s desk.
***
“Oh, and say hi to Hayley for me.” That did it. I watched his face go from relaxed to shocked to embarrassed to horrified, all in a split second. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, I might have laughed.
Being at the open end of the bar, I put my paw around his ruddy arm and roughly dragged him into the back room. As soon as the door had swung shut, I pushed him up against the wall and opened up on him.
“WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?!?” I screamed in his face, the blood boiling in my veins. Obviously having never been on the receiving end of an interrogation, he immediately broke down and began sobbing, sliding down to the wall to the floor.
“It… it wasn’t my idea!” He sobbed through wheezing breaths, obviously terrified of what the wolf towering over him was about to do to.
“WHERE IS SHE?!?” I screamed again, putting one paw around his throat and throwing him back up against the wall, while curling the other into a fist.
“I don’t know! I… swear! They left… yesterday!” He choked out, having difficulty breathing with my paw around his bulbous neck.
“Wait, yesterday?” I paused as I thought back to dinner remnants on the table in the shack. They were definitely more than a day old. “She was here?”
“Yes! Yes, please!” he said, his voice now barely more than a muted wheeze, pointing franticly at the paw around his neck.
I dropped my paw and watched the sniveling barkeep slump to the floor. I got down on all fours and stuck my muzzle right in front of his face.
“Keep. Talking.” I growled, my voice dripping with malice.
***
As my Chevy Impala ripped out of the barracks parking lot, roof lights blazing and siren screaming, I heard Jadzia’s calm voice crackle over the radio.
“All units, please be on the lookout for a Red 2004 Honda Civic EX, Maryland plate number 571 Echo-Charlie-Kane, last seen in the Middlesex Center area. Suspects inside are wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and are to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.”
Wow. I can’t believe that that sniveling kid and his girl are hot enough for the FBI to be after them. And I walked right up to their window without so much as a clue. I’m lucky they didn’t shoot me!
As I turned a corner and ripped past the I89 on- and off-ramps, nearly scaring an older guy driving a silver minivan half to death, I roared up Center Road and floored the Impala, scanning all the driveways and vehicles I screamed past with a trained eye.
“Where are you?” I thought to myself.
Chapter 6
The sniveling warthog was curled up in the fetal position on the floor of his stockroom, terrified that the wolf three inches in front of him was going to rip him to shreds if he stopped talking.
He explained that a few weeks ago, an old buddy of his contacted him with a business proposition. Apparently, his friend had gotten into the child trafficking business, and had received a special order for a female bear, early teens, and the clients were willing to pay double the usual fee. Being rather intelligent, he thought to check some of the domestic abuse databases and Haley’s profile had popped up, believing it would be a lot easier to snag a battered teenager. I felt a twinge of guilt as he he told me this, for I was the one that filed that report almost a year ago, back when I first joined the force.
The barkeep continued on, saying that his friend had contacted him knowing that he had opened up a bar in the same area as the girl’s school on the report. His friend offered him a deal: collect the girl and keep her at his bar for a day until his friend could drive up and collect her. In return, his friend offered him enough hard cash to dig his sorry establishment out of the financial hole it was in. He nervously agreed, knowing he needed some big money real soon if he wanted to keep the bar.
Standing back up, I spun my head around, looking for somewhere one could hide a child. I quickly walked over to the ancient spiral staircase in the corner, pushed open the hatch at the top, and stuck my head up into the loft area. A spot on the floor in the corner had been hastily cleared away, boxes crammed into the corner to make space for something. There was few filthy blankets in the center of the room, but other than that, there was nothing up there. Hopping off the stair step I was standing on, I glared back at the barkeep. He immediately started babbling excuses.
“They left a few hours ago! He said he was gonna get her across the border then ship her out! As soon as he got paid, he was gonna wire me the money!” He bawled like a child that had been caught stealing.
“What’s his name?” I growled.
“Randal… his name is Randal.”
“Randal…” I prompted, waiting for more information.
“I don’t know his full name! Honest! We just always called him Randal the Weasel back then!”
“What was he driving?”
“Uhh… something sporty… bright red. Might have been a Mustang or something, I’m not sure. We don’t usually see cars like that here.”
Walking back over to him, I grabbed the scruff of his collar and stared right into his dull brown eyes. Feeling him squirm in my grasp, I growled “You better hope she’s still alive, because if she’s not...” I trailed off, leaving his imagination to fill in the rest.
***
Three hours and ¾ of a tank later, I pulled my Impala back into the barracks, exhausted and disheartened that I didn’t find the Civic or its occupants. After stepping out of my cruiser, I noticed the slightly-worse-for-wear blue Chevy Lumina half-parked in the handicapped spaces in front of the offices.
The Calvary had arrived.
Walking in, I was immediately confronted by an orange striped tiger in a bad suit shoving a badge in my face. “Corporal Shino, I’m Special Agent Lawlor with th-“
“With the FBI, I know.” I said, sighing and moving past him to the antique coffee maker in the front lobby. “And to save time, yes, I know you want to ask me some questions, and yes, I’ll join you in the conference room.” I deadpanned, pouring myself a cup of the overbrewed coffee.
After sitting down in the conference room across from an already seated stone-faced white tiger, though this one in a noticeably better suit and in much better physical shape, I plopped my KIVA bag into the chair next to me, crossed my arms and said “Where do you want to start?”
“At the beginning.” Predictable.
“Well, I was on my way into work…” and I explained how I had pulled over the kid, and how I had let him off with a warning. After finishing, I paused to see if they were gonna grill me about not calling it in. When they didn’t say anything, I tried to steer the topic away from me and asked why they were so interested in the kid.
“We can’t tell you that.” Also predictable.
“Look,” I said, rubbing bridge of my muzzle, “I appreciate that you guys have a job to do, but I don’t like being treated like a mushroom, either. So just give me the cliffsnotes.” I stared the lead agent right in the eyes.
Getting a skeptical look and raised eyebrow in return, I decided to push my luck. “Besides,” I causally tossed out, leaning back in the plastic chair that was probably older than I was, “if you guys really read my file, you already know that I have Sigma-level clearance.”
I held my breath, trying not to flinch about revealing my ace in the hole. I had found a well-hidden backdoor into the DHS mainframe a while back and upgraded my clearance level myself. It was definitely not something I would have been given otherwise, not at my rank anyways. I hoped that these agents wouldn’t read too far into it. The last thing I needed was the FBI investigating me next.
The lead agent looked at his partner with a raised eyebrow, then sighed and said “Very well. Have you ever heard of the Palermo Protocol?”
