Chapter 6

He was being called on the carpet. Again. He heaved a huge sigh of disgust. The cost of doing this job and doing it the way it was supposed to be done meant pushing limits, pissing people off at times and at others, bending the rules just a bit.

He tried to smile at Michelle, to offer a little comfort. There wasn't any reason that she should be there. He was the one that had decided to not call in the crime scene guys right away. He didn't follow procedure. He was primary, his decision so he should take the fall, not her.

The envelope had hit him hard. He should have expected it. Someone who was sick enough to leave something as grisly as the bodies, smart enough to cover himself with the lack of evidence, he should have known that he was going to need the extra stimulation and bring Nick into the game. He was going to be used as a pawn, a game piece that was expendable though useful. The killer wanted to make the police force look like fools, wanted to make him look like an incompetent idiot, and he was doing a good job of it.

He shifted uncomfortably in the stiff chair in the waiting room outside the Sheriff's office drawing a look of sympathy from Louise. He didn't want sympathy, he wanted the hell out of there and the license to do his job the way he saw fit. He wasn't used to having his methods and motives questioned. He'd always done things the way he'd seen fit and gotten the job done. It was the way he worked.

Michelle put her small hand on his forearm and squeezed slightly, drawing his attention back to her.

"What can he do? I mean, it isn't like your name isn't out on the air, the news people know who is running the investigation. He had the victim's property; her driver's license, door keys. Why wouldn't he do something like this." She was running thoughts, just talking because it helped her calm down. She knew she was on her way back to a uniform and disgrace.

Nick took her hand in his, and caught her eye, making sure she understood what he said. "No matter what is said in there, you were just following my orders, okay? That's all. Don't try to stand up for me or take any blame. You did what I told you to do."

She nodded unhappily. She didn't like it at all. She didn't want to feel like this. She HAD done what he ordered doing, mostly because what he wanted done was done the way she would have done it herself. He asked, he didn't order. He suggested. And she was learning from him, learning a lot.

She could understand his wanting to go through an apartment himself instead of seeing second hand through crime scene photos. Why would getting personal property after it had been covered in print powder, lasered, and pawed through by God knows how many other people be better than seeing it firsthand? Her father always said that a good cop knew his people, his area, and knew what was right and wrong. How was it wrong to want to know the victim of a homicide as personally as they could so that they could understand why a killer would take her?

She was still thinking things through when Louise got up and opened the Sheriff's outer office door, waving them in. She gave Nick's arm a small pat as he walked by, not caring if her boss saw her do it. Nicky was a good cop and a good boy in her book. Not many people cared enough anymore to do the things that he did. Not many people cared enough to want to help an old woman when she needed help. He did. And she would tell the Sheriff so as soon as he had a second for her, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Louise closed the door behind them with a bang. Nick looked around the room. He was as uncomfortable in this room as he had been in the waiting area.

The Sheriff's inner sanctum had changed a lot over the past year. Old football and bowling trophies had been taken down and stored away, pictures taken with 'regular' people replaced by those taken with the Governor and the Mayor. Special citations reframed from cheap black to polished wood and rehung against newly painted walls.

The old comfortable chairs were gone, replaced by three that were new smelling, stiff leather. They were a trifle too low, leaving the person sitting in them feeling disadvantaged in their campaign with the Sheriff. The colors had even changed, the tan, brown and gray metal replaced with burgundy and green, trimmed in dark old wood. It displayed nothing of the cop and everything of the politician, from the new American and Michigan flags in the corner to the expensive leather blotter that was the only thing on the Sheriff's desk beside his nameplate and a phone that had more buttons than Nick's stereo.

Sheriff Williams was standing behind his desk, hands clasped at his back. He looked as rugged and unmoving as the vehicle he was nicknamed after. He didn't offer them seats, didn't offer his usual bluff and toothy smile. His demeanor was grave, his attitude that of the disapproving elected official. He eyed them both, trying to put Nick in his place once more.

Nick stared right back, refusing to be cowed by a politician. He stood erect, but not at attention, hands sliding casually into the pockets of his dress pants.

Beside him, Michelle was tense, her body almost brittle in it's posture. He wished that he could reach out and touch her, to tell her not to worry. She had a long and illustrious career waiting for her. She would make detective one way or another no matter what happened today. She was just too good a cop not to.

Michelle felt the Sheriff's mean little eyes roam over her like invading ants and resented it. She tried desperately to keep her feelings hidden, she disliked this man and had since she had started working here. He never said or did anything that was disrespectful to her, but she felt the disrespect anyway. She knew he resented her, resented having to open up his station to women, even though there was another woman officer who had been hired before her. She represented change, and not in any way that he would consider good.

Williams cleared his throat, the sound gruff and loud in the stillness of the office. Before he could say anything, Nick jumped in, feeling first shot was best shot.

"Sheriff, I'm not sure why you've called us in here."

The sheriff laughed, the sound sharp and staccato and disbelieving.

"Well, for one, you went to a victim's apartment and didn't inform anyone of that fact, endangering both yourself and Miss Parsons."

"It's Deputy Parsons, Sheriff," Michelle could have shoved her fist in her mouth the instant she heard what she said.

"Yes, well, for now it is."

Score one for the sheriff.

"You could have contaminated the scene. Deputy Parsons is not trained to collect evidence, or to distance herself from that same evidence to prevent inadvertent contamination." He held up his fingers as if counting out the points. "Finally, you went over my head and didn't keep me informed on a serial murder investigation."

Nick couldn't help himself, he rolled his eyes and scoffed earning a hard look from the Sheriff.

"So which pissed you off more, Sheriff? The fact that we didn't tell you that we had an ID or that you missed out on a photo op." His career was gone, he would be washing rear bumpers at the carwash on Main Street before the afternoon was over.

Williams face turned beet red, a very scary shade for a human being. Michelle stood there silently, amazed beyond shock that steam wasn't streaming out of his ears. Even more amazed that Nick had been brazen enough to say what had been firmly entrenched in her own mind. She smacked him on the hip with the back of her hand and gave him a disgusted look, told him with her eyes to stop being confrontational. He gave her an innocent look that wouldn't have fooled a blind man.

"Are you saying that you think I care more about publicity than this case and what is best for my COUNTY?" The sheriff's voice raised slowly as he spoke until he was almost shouting.

"No, Sheriff, I would never say that." He might think it though and often did. "I'm saying that this is the very first break we have had in a case where the only thing we have had to go on are two nameless bodies and one trace fiber that could possibly have come from a high end piece of wool fabric. We don't even know if that fabric was a pair of pants or somebody's couch. We got the ID and I decided to run with it."

He wasn't apologizing for doing his job. He refused to do that. He'd give up his badge and his gun first. He'd soap bumpers before he did that.

"Sheriff, our subject has decided to pit himself against Detective Saint," Michelle butted in, sensing the beginning of another outburst. "He sent Detective Saint a letter to the house of victim two, Sheri Meridian." She purposefully ignored Nick's outraged look, instead speaking only to the Sheriff.

"What?" Williams voice was barely above a squeak.

"The letter is running through the lab right now. We felt it prudent to have it at least x-rayed, and the envelope fingerprinted before anyone decided to open it." She could feel the tension coming off of Nick now and barely managed not to jump when she felt him pinch the back of her forearm. "That's where we were when you paged us to come in here, sir."

"Have the lab guys found anything else at the apartment?" He spoke to her now and completely ignore Nick's presence in the room.

"They are still going through the apartment."

Nick's voice was low and dangerously calm. Michelle knew he was mentally counting to ten. And then continuing on, if the waves of anger she could feel radiating off of him were anything to go by.

Shit. Either way she had a feeling she was back in uniform. Nick had told her to keep quiet. She had disobeyed him, he was a superior officer, her superior officer. If he was taken off the case, she was back in uniform too, none of the other detectives would want to work with her. Her heart sank. All she wanted was to keep him from going for the Sheriff's throat. She knew he hated the politics of the place. He knew as well as she did that the Sheriff would back him as long as he was getting somewhere, but the instant the public was in an up roar, Nick would take the fall. Not the Sheriff. Either way the case went, the Sheriff came out smelling like roses.

And she was now in it all the way to her neck. "Someone had trashed the victim's apartment pretty thoroughly, sir, before we got there. Probably the subject. It could take a while to find anything pertinent."

The Sheriff calmed down and sat behind his desk, wiping off his forehead with a snowy white handkerchief that he pulled out of one of his desk drawers. He didn't speak, but stared down at his desk in thought. The tension in the room was dark with undercurrent, rank with the things being left unsaid between the two men.

Williams would like to see Nick fail. Well, as long as it didn't do anything to disturb his own rosy future. He had hired Nick as a way to let the county know he wasn't afraid to call in the big dogs to protect his own. He thought that he could control the man and use his name and reputation to further his own. But Nick wasn't usable. He didn't want to be a pawn in someone else's chess game. He refused to be in front of the press, allowing others to do that for him.