“Roy Powder,” she said when he walked into her office without knocking. She gave him a smile that crossed the years. “Well, well, well.”
“Long time no wheel your chair,” Powder said.
“You never wheeled me.”
“It did sometimes feel like it was the other way round, I admit.”
They had worked together for a while in the then Missing Persons Department. They had also shared some personal time. But that was long ago and in another emotional country.
“How are you adjusting to work in the provinces?” she asked.
Powder’s assignment as a roll call lieutenant was, in career terms, a demotion. He was no longer a detective and, more important to the many who couldn’t stand him, he no longer worked downtown at Indianapolis’s law-enforcement hub. But like Fleetwood, Powder had an intense commitment to effective policing. Even the most political members of IMPD would be hard put to assign him somewhere he didn’t think he could improve. “North is good,” he said. “I like getting the chance to help the kids become better policemen.”
“And policewomen.”
A flicker of a smile indicated that Powder’s failure to include both genders had been intentional, intended to provoke just the response from her that it had gotten.
Fleetwood sighed, perhaps reminded of Powder’s downside. “So what brings you here that you couldn’t have sent in on a postcard?”
“It’s all e-mail these days. When was the last time you got a postcard?”
“I was trying to talk in language that wasn’t too up-to-date for you, Roy.”
“Ah, I was being matronized. But I’m into the new technologies now, Chair Girl. I admit, I hesitated at first, but then I decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And now I love all the new machines. We can do so many things easily that were hard or impossible in olden times.” From a pocket he brought out the recorder that had been under his clipboard. He placed it on her desk.
When she refused to ask what it was and what it was for, Powder looked around the small office. Then looked around it again.
“Lost some marbles?” she asked.
“I just figured you’d have another wheelchair somewhere. For visitors to use, so we could all speak on the same level. No?”
“I don’t need to tower over you to fire your ass,” Fleetwood said.
Powder allowed himself a grin as he took one of the conventional chairs that was available for visitors.
“So are you well, Roy? I mean physically. I can’t believe they’ve invented a cure for what ails your mind.” Fleetwood leaned back and the wheelchair she sat in tilted with her.
“Me? Oh yeah, sure. And you? Walkin’ tall?”
“As ever.”
“As a matter of fact, you are looking good.”
“Despite the added years?”
“I don’t pay attention to years. You just look... settled. Yourself.”
“I like what I do.”
“And you haven’t ballooned up like a lot of you cripples do.”
She laughed, but only because she knew him well. “And you wonder why your career has dipped rather than risen? Or maybe you don’t.”
“I figured if I dropped in to see you, you’d make me the next chief.”
They both knew she didn’t make anyone into anything, although her recommendations for hiring and firing were almost never ignored.
“If you’re ambitious, why not run for sheriff?”
“I’m better as an appointee than as a candidate. Think about it. As chief I could make so many more men — and women — into better cops.” He waited. “Don’t you think?”
A tiny shake of the head indicated that she wanted to move on. “So what can I do for you, cowboy?”
“It’s what I can do for you,” Powder said.
“I’ve heard that from you before. Thanks but no thanks.”
“Listen to this.” He withdrew a small remote-control unit from a jacket pocket. He pushed a button. The digital recorder on Fleetwood’s desk came to life.
Together they listened as Mrs. Barry Haller said, “Between you and me, it’s the first day of deer season.”
“Ah,” Powder was heard to respond.
“He managed a day off from work to go to Hancock County with some of his buddies.”
“I got it now, ma’am.”
Powder stopped the playback. “Want to hear it again?”
“What is it, Roy?”
“Officer Barry Haller’s wife telling me that Officer Barry Haller is out hunting deer today.”
“So?”
“He called in sick with flu.”
She waited.
He said, “Haller’s flu is a special strain, Deer Flu. I was thinking maybe you’d want to consider working on a vaccine.”
“This Haller is one of yours at North?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to do what?”
“String him up. Not because he’s such a bad guy, but because he’s way not the only one. We get an outbreak of flu — or whatever they decide to call it — every year when deer season starts. There’s a department-wide blip. It happens at other times, too. Squirrel, turkey, rabbit, even crow season. There are disproportionate claims of illnesses when each hunting season starts. Deer hunting with firearms is the biggest blip, though you can see the starts of the early and late deer-with-archery seasons, too, if you look for them.” He nodded with his lips tight and took an envelope out of another pocket. “It’s all laid out here. The effects are all statistically significant. It’s costing the department serious money in overtime to replace the missing men — and women — or it results in less effective police cover when we decide not to replace those who are missing.”
Fleetwood felt the thickness of the envelope Powder had given her. “What’s with the recording?”
“Evidence. There are four other guys out today on my roll call, one of them around the corner from Haller. But this was the only confession I managed to get.”
“Hardly a confession.”
“Testimony, then.”
“It wouldn’t ever stand up in court, Roy. It’s just a woman saying something. If it’s true, it’s self-incrimination as an accessory without being cautioned. And if it isn’t true, it isn’t true.”
“I’d get you pictures of the guys coming home with twelve-point bucks on their roofs if I could. I tried last year, but either they didn’t bag any or they left the bodies somewhere else.”
“Lot of them go straight to professional skinners.”
“If you say so. I’ve never much seen the attraction of shooting Bambi.”
“My dad was a hunter.”
“And you were too, right?”
“Some.”
“What do you do now? Sit out in the yard with food on your hand and get the wild creatures to come to you? Then strangle them?”
“I leave strangulation for the workplace, Roy. So how long have you been working on this?” She held up the envelope.
“How long have I been working in the North?”
“Jesus.” Powder had been a roll call lieutenant for years now, first at Northside and then, after reorganization, at North.
“Roll call lieutenants have to keep an eye on manning levels. And womanning levels.”