Jesse had signed the form on the bottom of the page with a sprawling signature boldly underlined twice. Louis closed the file.
“Dale, did Pryce ever mention to you what he was working on in his last few weeks?”
Dale looked up and shook his head. “He never talked about his work. I offered to help, you know, filing, tagging evidence, but he always said no.”
“What about his notebook?” Louis asked. Every cop kept a small spiral notebook and Louis had found nothing in Pryce’s drawer.
“Don’t know. Maybe the chief has it,” Dale said. He looked up at the wall clock. “Whoa, it’s almost eight. Coffee-making time.”
“I already made it.”
Dale went to the coffee machine, looked at the torn sugar packets on the counter then over at Louis. “You take three sugars in your coffee?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason.”
Louis watched Dale as he wiped the counter clean. “What? Pryce took three sugars, too?”
“It’s no big deal, Louis. Ollie says it’s got something to do with karma trying to correct itself or something.”
“Right,” Louis muttered. He turned his attention back to the Pryce file on his desk but his eyes went to the blotter. He hadn’t noticed before but it was covered with doodles. He wondered if they were done by Pryce or his night shift desk-mat, Ollie. The doodles were tight, intricate, heavily inked. They sprawled over the blotter, paisleys and amoebas curling around numbers and words. He scanned for the numbers 1 2 3. Nothing.
The door flew open, letting in a whirlwind of snow and Jesse, bundled in a hooded parka. Jesse threw back the hood and struggled out of the jacket as he walked across the office. He paused by the mirror and raked his hair with his fingers.
“Damn weather just ruins a good styling,” he said, as he headed toward the coffee machine. He poured a cup and came up behind Louis, who was still studying Pryce’s blotter.
“What you doing?”
“These doodles…You know if Pryce did them or Ollie?”
“Pryce. Ollie was always bitching about it.” Jesse took a sip of coffee. “You can tell a lot from doodles, you know.”
“Like what?”
“These say that Pryce had an acquisitive mind.”
Louis turned to look at him. “What, now you’re into handwriting analysis?”
“I read a book on it once.” He pointed at a paisley shape.
“Look, see how he tries to contain the numbers with those squiggly shapes? He was trying to organize his thoughts. The guy was a mental pack rat.”
Louis shook his head.
Jesse spotted the Pryce file. “What are you doing with that?”
“The chief gave me the case.”
Jesse fell silent. Louis felt an instant chill in the air. Jesse started to walk away then he turned back. “Sorry. I guess I didn’t see the shit on your nose. Blends with your skin.”
Louis’s head shot up. “What?”
But Jesse had stalked off to the locker room. Louis heard the slam of a door.
“He didn’t mean that,” Dale said from his desk. “His mouth overruns his brain when he gets upset. Jess has been pissed for weeks. Jess and the chief are kind of close and I think Jess is mad the chief didn’t let him work the Pryce case more.”
Louis could feel his cheeks grow warm, signaling a slow-burn anger. Damn it, he wasn’t going to let this slide. He rose and went into the locker room. There were two other officers in there, both looking over their shoulders at Jesse. Jesse slammed the door of his locker, the clang echoing loudly through the tiled room.
Louis waited until the other men had left. He leaned against the far wall, watching Jesse as he yanked on his uniform.
“All right,” Louis said, “what the hell is your problem?”
Jesse glanced at him. “Problem? Who says I’ve got a problem?”
Louis sighed. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
“What?”
“The black-white shit,” Louis said.
Jesse let out a nervous chuckle.
“I’m serious, Harrison,” Louis said. “I put up with this shit in Mississippi. I’m not going to tolerate it here. Do you understand me?”
Jesse buckled his belt. “Hey, I told you, man. Nobody here is like that.”
Louis came forward. “I suppose your little remark back there was just some little test? You want to find out if I can ‘lighten up’ like Pryce?”
Jesse was silent. Louis waited, watching as he fumbled with his service pin. He dropped the clasp and jerked the bar from his shirt and looked at Louis.
“All right. I’m sorry,” he said. “It slipped out.”
“Freudian slip?” Louis said.
“Give me a fucking break, Kincaid. It’s not like I called you a nigger or something.”
“Well, actually it is like you called me a nigger or something. You’d be surprised how many people don’t quite catch that subtle distinction.”
Jesse looked away, trying again to force the clasp on the pin under his shirt. His face was red, whether from anger or embarrassment, Louis couldn’t tell.
“Look,” Jesse said, “I got a real bad habit of using my mouth to hurt people. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Right.”
“Cut me a little slack here, Kincaid. The only black people in this town are a couple of maids over at the lodge and old Elton at the bait shop. I never worked with a black man before Pryce got here.” He dropped the clasp again and bent to pick it up. He still couldn’t fix it to the back of the pin. “Christ, my own father used to call black people porch monkeys.”
Louis stared at Jesse, but Jesse couldn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry, man,” Jesse repeated, finally facing Louis. “Okay?”
Louis hesitated then nodded. “Okay.”
Jesse got the last pin on and went to a mirror.
“Look,” Louis began. “About this Pryce case. I’m not trying to show anyone up. I think the chief just thought I might bring a fresh eye to it.” He paused. “You could help, you know.”
Jesse let out a grunt. “The chief doesn’t think so. Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks I’m stupid. Well, I’m not stupid. I may not have a college degree and I can’t play chess or spout out quotes and shit, but I’m not stupid.”
Louis decided to let that one lie. He didn’t want to get involved in Jesse’s relationship with the chief, whatever it was.
“Jess,” Louis said. “I need your help.”
Jesse turned to Louis, studying him. “All right,” he said, “what do you want to know?”
“For starters, I need to know more about Pryce. You think he might have kept a case file to himself for some reason?”
“Shit, maybe. Pryce hated having anyone looking over his shoulder, that’s for sure.”
“It’s got to be a former perp,” Louis said.
“I told you, we looked. We went through every file in his desk.”
“Did you ask Mrs. Pryce if he kept any files at home?”
Jesse’s face colored slightly. “No. We’re not supposed to take files out of here.”
Louis leaned against the locker, folding his arms, looking at Jesse.
“You think Pryce might’ve taken stuff home?” Jesse asked.
“It’s possible, given what you’ve told me about him.”
Jesse let out a long sigh. “I guess we’re going to have to go to Flint.”
“I’ll drive,” Louis said.
“No fucking way.”
They started out of the locker room. Jesse stopped and turned. He patted his pins. “Straight?”
“Damn straight,” Louis said.
After shift was over, they made the three-hour drive down to Flint. Stephanie Pryce had moved back to her mother’s home, a simple shingled house on the outskirts of the city. When Jesse pulled the Loon Lake cruiser into the drive, the front door opened and a woman came out. She rubbed her hands on her apron as she watched the two officers get out of the car. Louis assumed she was the mother. A small child burst from the door and wrapped chubby arms around the woman’s legs. Louis recognized him from the photo. Louis put his cap on and walked to the door, Jesse behind him.