“Sorry, Detective, no can do. We’re backed up till Monday, and the chief made it clear that no one gets to reorder the schedule until we’re back on track.”
Will ground his teeth. “I’m not asking you to test anything. I just need someone to make me a list.”
“Which takes time,” the tech replied. “And time’s exactly what we don’t have.”
“Are you guys smoking the evidence down there?” Will yelled. “I didn’t just pull a twenty-four-hour shift ’cause I felt like it. People are dying! I can’t wait till Monday. I need this now.”
“Sorry, man,” the tech said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’d help you if I could, but my hands are tied. Chief Korigan was very clear: no more messing with the schedule. You’ll just have to wait. Other departments have priority cases, too.”
Not like this one. But ticked off as Will was, badgering the tech was pointless. If he wanted to actually push anything through, then he was going to have to take this to the man who actually had the power to make things happen.
He hung up without even wasting the breath to say goodbye, ignoring the worried looks from his fellow plainclothes detectives as he stormed out of the vice office and down the hall to the elevator that would take him straight up to the chief’s floor.
Even as he slammed his thumb down on the button, Will knew this was a bad idea. Technically, this was a problem he should have taken to his superior, but the idiot paper pusher Chief Korigan had put in charge of the vice department didn’t work nights—God knows vice doesn’t happen at night—and Will wasn’t about to let this sit until morning. Besides, this confrontation had been a long time coming.
In the ten years he’d worked for the department, Will had outlasted seven police chiefs, all of whom had either been drummed out on corruption charges or sleazed their way further up the political chain. It was all business as usual for Chicago, but even in the cesspool that was Illinois politics, Victor Korigan was in a class by himself.
A former military contractor, Korigan was different from the usual brand of incompetent hack or crooked city government crony who traditionally passed through the revolving door of Police Chief. Both he and the mayor—who’d practically handed Korigan the job on a silver platter—had expertly dodged all questions about his past, but Will (being Will) had done some digging, and hadn’t liked what he’d found.
In the very few comments he’d made about his past work experience, the mayor had called Korigan a “hardworking immigrant and veteran of the Bosnian War who understood what it took to keep a city safe.” But while that made a good sound-bite and was technically true, Will’s research had uncovered that Korigan’s military career during the conflict had been firmly on the Serbian side, often as an officer commanding suspiciously undocumented “civilian detainment” units.
There was no direct evidence linking him to ethnic cleansing or any of the other war crimes that had shadowed that horrible conflict, but the connection was still too close for Will’s liking, and the picture only got worse when you added in the unpleasantness Korigan’s private military company had been involved with since. The man seemed to be playing war-zone-tragedy bingo with jobs in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Now he was heading up the police here, and while Chicago was the most dangerous major city in the US, Will didn’t think bringing in a man with hands as bloody as Korigan’s was going to make things any better.
But, of course, no one else had seen it that way. According to the mayor, Korigan had been brought in to bring “private sector efficiency” to the eternally overbudget Chicago PD, and for all his other sketchiness, Korigan had done just that—mostly by slashing the budgets on every part of police work that actually mattered. This crap with the lab was a perfect example. Rather than hiring more techs or expanding the lab to deal with the overflow in casework, he’d just ordered everyone to wait their turn. Screw priority, screw the victims, screw actually solving cases. No, even knowing that there was often a tiny window after a crime was committed to solve the case, cops were expected to take a number, like the forensics lab was a deli counter. But it had put them back in the black, which meant the mayor was now holding Korigan up as the genius who’d saved the Chicago PD from themselves. Meanwhile, the people of Chicago were paying the price in backlogged cases and cops too hamstrung by budget cuts to actually do their damn jobs.
It was directly because of Korigan’s cut-and-burn policy that this new drug cartel had been able to grow as fast and big as it had. Will had been warning the department about it for weeks now, but no one had listened. Now, things were going even crazier than he’d predicted, and it was only fitting that the chief bear the brunt of the mess he’d created when he’d decided to put money before people.
He just hoped he didn’t get canned for saying so.
Will quashed the nagging doubt with a sneer. He’d always prioritized the case over his job, and he’d yet to be fired, because he got the job done. Even for a golden boy like Korigan, it was hard to sack a detective with a case-resolution rate as solid as Will’s, and that knowledge gave him strength. By the time the elevator reached the top floor, he was almost looking forward to the fight, and he got off with a spring in his step, half jogging down the carpeted hall.
Unlike the rest of the bustling station, the top floor of police headquarters was dark and empty. This was where the bureaucrats nested, the army of lawyers and experts and overpaid managers who got to do their police work in tidy nine-to-five chunks. The only people up here at this time of night were Will and the janitors, but he knew from months’ worth of department emails that Chief Korigan was a night owl. Sure enough, there was light shining through the expensive frosted-glass door when Will reached it.
At least he hadn’t walked all this way for nothing. With only a cursory knock, Will grabbed the door and shoved it open, exploding into the office only to stop in his tracks when he saw Police Chief Korigan sitting at his desk in a tux and white tie like he was on his way to the opera. It was so unexpected, Will was actually struck speechless, but if Chief Korigan was surprised or angry to see a detective storming into his private office at one in the morning, he didn’t let it show. He simply folded his hands on his brand-new custom glass desk, smiling through the frame of his perfectly groomed goatee as he said, “May I help you?”
The genteel question snapped Will out of his shock, and he met his boss’s smile with a feral one of his own. “You sure can,” he said. “I need you to put the new drug case back on priority right now.”
“Is that so,” Korigan said slowly. “Why?”
“Because we’ve got addicts going nutso and killing people all over downtown,” Will snapped. “Sounds like a priority to me.”
Korigan shook his head, leaning back in his leather chair to study Will’s face. “You’re Detective Tannenbaum from Vice, correct?” When Will nodded, the police chief glanced at his computer monitor. “I presume you’re talking about the new overdose cases?”
“They’re not overdoses,” Will growled. “I keep telling you, this isn’t a standard drug case. Whatever’s causing this, it’s something new, and it’s killed nine people, including one of our officers.”
“I am well aware of the situation,” Korigan said. “But while I agree it is very tragic, that’s no reason to disrupt the order and efficiency of this office. We have procedures in place already that—”
“Screw your procedures!” Will shouted. “We’re talking about what could be the beginning of an epidemic here!”
“First off—watch yourself. I respect your passion, but I have no problem docking your pay until you remember your place in this department. Am I clear?”