Suspect

As Rik tells it, the Chief and him were tight in high school. She was one of those superhot chicks who left a lot of the guys in heat just by walking down the hall, and Rik was her assigned lab partner in Bio who was basically no threat. (Besides, he had already pretty much bonded for life with Marnie, his wife, a fact that, frankly, makes my head explode. At thirty-three, I still regard one person forever as impossible, let alone coupling up before you're old enough to drive.)

Rik introduces me as his 'ace investigator' and the Chief offers her hand. Even today, many police brass have no taste for people like me, inked from neck to ankle and with a magenta Mohawk (and a blue undercut on one side). But Chief Gomez comes on warm as a kindergarten teacher, with a smile that's 100,000 lumens of pure light, and—get this—dimples. A police chief with dimples!

I have a kinda/sorta ex who never unfriended me and was on the job in HI last I checked. Just to give myself some cred, I ask about her, Tonya Eo.

"Tonya's the Real Police," the Chief says, which is top praise. "Just made detective sergeant. Friend?"

"We were cadets in the Kindle County Academy together."

"Back more than a decade? Did you get sworn?"

"No, I fucked up," I say. I flamed out on a drug test, the last week. "Story of my life."

I receive a sweet, sympathetic smile. I'm getting a positive feel about Chief Gomez, which is kind of a surprise. I don't really like most people to start, and they definitely don't like me. I tend to get up in their grills almost as soon as we say hello. It took me a while—and a therapist or two—to realize I'm still basically a kid, scared of strangers.

First thing, she slides an envelope over to Rik.

"I took a second on my house, Ricky. I hope you're worth it, man."

The Chief is in her dress uniform in Highland Isle's puke-worthy shade of blue green, which I would call Sick Teal. The long jacket, which is probably covering her weapon, has gold braiding on each shoulder and double-breasted rows of brass buttons, and her actual police star, also gold, over the left breast. The light in here is not what they would choose at the beauty counter: harsh fluorescents and no windows. Even so, in the flesh, Lucia Gomez is prettier than she appears on TV, although, just saying, there is a fair amount of flesh. I make her as five two and maybe 150 pounds. She has a round face with movie-star cheekbones, huge dark eyes and great skin, 'Warm Beige,' as they call the shade at Sephora.

Just to get rolling, Rik starts by going over her biographical details. After high school, they pretty much lost touch, and even once they found each other again here in Highland Isle, their contacts have generally been limited to lunch every now and then. Still, given what most cops think of defense lawyers, Rik isn't surprised that in the current crisis she's turned to someone she's known forever.

As for her background, the Chief grew up in Highland Isle, with six brothers and sisters in a three-bedroom bungalow with one bath. Dad was a welder, Ecuadorian, Mom Mexican, and both are gone now. The Chief enlisted in the Army a month after high school graduation, because she figured the GI Bill was the only way she'd get to college. After surviving Desert Storm, she enrolled at Greenwood County JC, which was where she heard about the veterans' preference on law-enforcement hiring. The Kindle County Unified Police Force offered her space in the academy.

"I never made you for a cop," Rik says.

"Me neither. But I loved it from the start—except riding with the Ritz, who was my first training officer. But I felt like this is what I was meant to do, something where you could make a difference every day. I took the time to listen to everyone—the victims, the witnesses, even the dude in cuffs."

She kept going to school at night, got a BA in criminology, then a master's, and made detective in Kindle County in less than six years.

"They were looking for women by then." She offers a humble shrug.

She married another detective, but the fact that she was moving up faster than Danny created issues. Hoping to save things, she left Kindle for Highland Isle, where the marriage cratered anyway, while her career continued to boom. She reached commander, number two in the department, in record time.

When the old chief, Stanley Sicilino, got the boot twelve years ago from Highland Isle's first reform mayor, Amity DeFranco Nieves, the Chief became the consensus choice to replace him. Latinx. Raised in HI. Strong educational credentials. By now, she says, she's made her share of enemies, but that's how it goes.

With that soft start, Rik turns to the real business, the P&F complaint. Pops used to tell me that clients come in two flavors: the ones who can't talk about their cases enough and the others who will do anything to avoid the subject. You might think the talkers are innocent and outraged, but Pops said a lot of bad guys think the next best thing to not having done the crime is to make somebody else believe that. By contrast, the wrongly accused—a smaller group, frankly—are often struggling to get a grip.

The Chief definitely has not been looking forward to this conversation. Once she hired Rik, she took off two weeks for her older daughter's wedding and promised not to think about any of this, and clearly meant it. Rik says he had to call her four times to get her to come in.

For me, though, it's easy to see why she'd be having a hard time dealing with the charges, which have seemed totally sketchy to me since Rik first explained them.

'Why's that a crime?' I asked him. 'Hooking up? What's the US Attorney investigating?'

'Because she's a public official,' Rik said.

'Because she's a woman, Boss. Men still hate it when a female does what she wants with her body. These dudes' stories make no sense. Yeah, okay, men can get raped or assaulted, but not usually when they're carrying a .38. Not to mention the basics: If winky-dink doesn't want to come out to play, there's no game. So how'd she force them?'

'They say they didn't want to.' Rik shrugged.

At that point—the day Rik met the Chief for coffee a month ago—all we knew were the few details that had been leaked to the Tribune. Even so, it was clear that somebody canny about election-year politics was involved. The P&F complaint, which was filed a few days later, was clearly timed to put maximum pressure on Mayor Nieves, who's running again, to fire the Chief. Instead, the mayor, who's learned how to swerve after twelve years in office, said she would leave it all up to the Police and Fire Commission. Rather than give in, the Chief declined to take a leave.

"This is all horse hockey," the Chief says now. "I wanna see those jokers up there testifying to this crap, that I supposedly said, 'Sex or else.' This is just typical police department baloney. Cops think the worst of everybody, especially half the officers they work with, and are always making up shit about them."

"Okay," says Rik. "Okay." He nods several times, clearly trying to determine how safe it is to probe. "But all three of these guys got promoted, right?"

"Sure. And I signed off. But there was a good reason in each case."

Rik asks her for a thumbnail on the three men accusing her, 'the allegators' as Rik calls them in the typical grim humor of the world of criminal defense.

"Well, two of them," she says, "Primo DeGrassi and Walter Cornish, were in Narcotics together for years, until I moved them out. Cornish retired last year, and DeGrassi left about twelve months before. I can tell you right now, if you dig around"—she points straight at me—"they're both connected to the Ritz. He's behind this."

That's the second time she's said 'the Ritz.' Part of what freaks me out about other people is how often I can't follow them or make the connections everybody else sees as obvious. I can remember watching TV when I was a kid and being so baffled about what was happening with the characters that I'd ask my younger brother, Johnny, to explain. 'Why did she just say she hates him? I thought she liked him.' 'She does like him. That's why she said she hates him. Because she's real disappointed.' Even now, I often find myself feeling lost and a little panicked.

"The Ritz?" I ask, although Rik prefers I just listen. "Like the hotel?"

She smiles, nicely. "It's a nickname for a really bad guy."

Rik lifts a hand so he can continue to direct the conversation. He wants her to tell us first about the third officer in the complaint.

"Blanco?" she asks. "We call him Frito around the station. He's the big mystery. Former altar boy and Eagle Scout. Bronze Star in Afghanistan. Quiet. Never gets excited. A coppers' cop. And I been so good to him. I got no idea why he's making up this shit."

Rik jots another note and then says, "Okay, I'm with Pinky. Who's the Ritz?"

The Chief responds with a bitter laugh.

"Everybody around here knows who the Ritz is. Moritz Vojczek?" Voy-check.

"The property guy?" I ask, proving her point. Vojczek's name is all over. His company seems to manage every apartment building in town, including mine. He owns the biggest real estate brokerage in Highland Isle and is clearly the busiest developer. If you see a hole in the ground in HI, odds are there's a sign in front that says 'Vojczek.' Definitely a local power.

"I read in the Trib last year," says the Chief, "that the Ritz is worth about 300 million dollars. And he owes it all to me."

"To you?" Rik asks.

"Cause I fired his ass from the police force as soon as I became Chief. Well, not fired. Suggested he resign."

"Didn't you say you rode with the Ritz in Kindle County?" I'm still confused.

"Right," she says. "We both started out there. I could take all afternoon telling you stories about the two of us, but the long short is simple: He'll spit on the ground I've walked on because I canned him. Not to mention that I still have my eye on all the dirty shit he's got going around here."

"What kind of dirty shit does a real estate mogul have going?" Rik asks.

"A lot. When the Ritz was in Narcotics, everybody knew he was dealing himself. He's better insulated now, but he's not changing his spots. Fentanyl's the money drug right now, so he's probably got some angle there. I mean, I'd be happy to testify about all the bad blood between us."

Rik spends some time shaking his head.

"Lucy," he says, "you're not going anywhere near a witness stand for a while."

Rik details the odd procedural footing of the P&F case. Because of the political heat, the city attorney, who acts as the prosecutor, has agreed to convene the hearing so the three accusers can tell their stories in public. But because of the Fifth Amendment, the Chief won't present a defense until the US Attorney has cleared her.

"Which is the best of both worlds for us," says Rik. "We chew holes in these guys' stories, using all the great stuff Pinky is developing." He shoots me a smile, and I know better than to gulp. "Once the Feds decline to prosecute, if the City hasn't dismissed the case already, then you get on the stand and say, 'This is all bull-pucky, I never had sex with any of these guys.'"

The Chief takes a long time, but the dimples are gone.

"Well, maybe that's not exactly what I'd say," she finally answers.

"Oh," says Rik eventually.

The Chief studies her watch and says, "Let's put a pin in this."

Rik asks me to walk her out. He's still at the conference room table, massaging his temples, when I return. His eyes rise to me.

"Clients," he says.

My job with Rik is probably the first time in my life I've headed for work in the morning without feeling like I'm going to prison. (Hanging around with Pops was always cool, but my job there was an eight-hour day inside a fortress of paper.)

Years before, I had been pumped at the thought of being a cop. I was sure I could be less of a jerk than the guys who'd harassed me when I was in my super-druggy phase, right after I broke my back and had to give up competitive boarding. And the squinty-eyed distrusting way cops look at other people is, frankly, pretty close to my basic attitude toward everyone. Crashing and burning at the academy left me feeling for a long time like I'd missed the chance to be myself.

Becoming a private investigator never occurred to me. It was my grandfather who thought I might have a talent for it. When Pops and my aunt, who were law partners, decided to retire, they offered to pay for a PI training course for me as outplacement. I was like, 'Why not, okay,' but I had no clue how much I'd get into it.

Yet here's the truth—I love to snoop and pry. I get a butt-tightening thrill out of it. Maybe some of that has to do with how often I miss signals. Investigating is like being the Invisible Man—not the one from the book I had to read in high school, but the old movie, somebody who can drift around and look in on people without ever really being seen. Oh, I think often, oh, so that's this chick's deal.

And when I'm being a PI, I can do stuff that's hard for me ordinarily. I don't have to grope for the words with strangers, because I'm there to ask, 'What do you know about Joe Blow or Clown Brown?' I don't care about the usual judgy thoughts people have about Crazy Pinky, because I've got a job to do.

At night, I spend hours watching YouTube and visiting obscure sites, trying to master what I call the P.I. BOT. The PIBOT has nothing to do with algorithms or robots. It means the Private Investigator's Bag of Tricks. That started with a concealed carry permit, training included in my PI course. Now I'm always reading about and practicing skills—surveillance techniques, disguises, clever ruses to get people to talk.

But none of that has helped me learn much about the weird guy next door. I've taken to scribbling notes, guesses and whatnot, so I can review every little detail and put together two and two, but so far nothing is really adding up.

Tonight, after our meeting with the Chief, as I approach the apartment building, The Weird One (or TWO, as I've started calling him in my own brain) is in the old tiled foyer, on his way out. He is a creature of unvarying habit. Judging from the yellow plastic bag he comes back with every night, he's on his way to Ruben's, a little Mexican storefront two blocks away, where the whole family cooks.

TWO has got manners, I'll say that, since he holds the door open as he sees me headed up the walk. Then again, it gives him something to hide behind. He's literally shielded by the beveled glass panes of the old entry door as I pass by.

"Hey," I say. He doesn't answer, doesn't smile. Not even a nod. He's gone as soon as I skinny past.

Through the so-called wall, substantial as a communion wafer, that separates our units, I thought I heard voices not long after he moved in around March 1, and I immediately decided to eavesdrop. The old tricks from 1930s movies—a glass against the wall or a stethoscope—do pretty well, but they have nothing on today's amplification apps, which both increase the sound and cancel extraneous noises. They are also purely illegal, which means I've never told Rik about them. In PI school, they always reminded us that your employer can be held responsible for whatever you do. Which led me to adopt what I regard as the PI's Golden Rules. One: Don't tell your boss more than he needs to know. Two: Above all, never get caught.