Corus and the Case of the Chaos Read online

  Inspectors Charles and Prangnathong smiled behind Pineda. They chuckled, spun back and forth in their chairs and exchanged mirthful glances. Corus walked past them without a word. Pineda wasn’t about to stop savoring the moment. He followed Corus with a hop and a skip. He was rarely seen moving so nimbly, or moving at all.

  “Now, now! Don’t run away, Inspector. We wanna hear all about this hearing. Getting busted down two ranks! They musta really laid into you. Did Garvey bend you over his knee and give you a real spanking?”

  Corus remained silent and kept walking.

  “Ah, come on Corus. You can’t talk down to us from your ivory throne now? Can’t belittle us anymore? So all of a sudden you’re silent, Mr. Perfect? Hey, you stop! You work for me now.”

  Corus stopped and turned on a heel so swiftly that Pineda’s belly came to rest against his.

  “I most certainly do not. All investigators in a precinct work at the pleasure of the Chief Detective. Are you the Chief Detective?”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Corus’ own eyes. What if Pineda had been promoted? No. There was no damn way.

  “Not yet,” Pineda said, his flabby chest puffing up. “But who else is it gonna be? I put in my time. I’ve done my networking.”

  “Have you managed not to run over any more kids?”

  “That little shit came out of nowhere! Kids and their fucking skateboarder BS.”

  “When the promotion board convenes, let me know, and I’ll give you my highest recommendation. As far as lazy, entitled sacks of pig crap go, you’re aces.”

  Pineda smiled.

  “Well, you’ll be the first person I’ll call. If you still work here, that is.”

  Corus started to walk away, but stopped and said over a shoulder, “Let me ask you something, Pineda. What rank was I when we met?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with disdain and confusion. “We met in 2nd precinct…”

  “That’s correct. We met on my first day as a deputy. And what was your rank at the time?”

  “I dunno. Deputy Inspector? What’s your point?”

  “Just something to think about.”

  Corus opened the door to his office. A pall hung over the room. He stared into it the way one peers into a coffin at a funeral. And yet, he wasn’t sure if he was sad.

  Corus set to the task at hand and began removing the contents of his shelves and organizing them in small piles of books, pictures and various knick-knacks. He looked out the large windows that started at hip height and spanned one wall of the office. The same rain that fell during his disciplinary hearing was still going, a gentle pitter-patter. In Seattle’s suburbs, it rained like the tortoise moved in Aesop’s fable, slow and steady, especially in winter. In the army, he’d been stationed in the Midwest at one point. The rains there pounded at buildings and cars outside like they owed some storm god money. Yet, people still had the gall to tell him how it rained so much in the Pacific Northwest. Thanks a lot Grey’s Anatomy.

  Corus didn’t mind either way. He always thought he saw better when the sun wasn’t shining.

  A knock came at the door. It was Lt. Chu, now out of his dress uniform and back in his usual short-sleeved, white shirt and tie that made him look like an accounting intern.

  “Hey man. Cut that out.”

  “Cut what out?”

  “Packing up! Put your property back. Captain isn’t taking your office from you. Where else you gonna work from?”

  “I dunno, I guess I just assumed…”

  “You know how long it takes to do anything around here. It’ll take the brass two months at least to get a new Chief Detective in here.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Corus looked down at the book in his hand, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. “I think a change might do me good though, L-T. Isn’t there some dusty file room I could move to? I can’t be around these morons. Not while I’m on the outs.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Chu said. “Let’s go. Captain wants a word.”

  Corus dropped the book on top of the pile and followed.

  When they entered Captain Barbieri’s corner office, he was standing, talking on the phone where two windowed walls met in the corner behind his desk. He motioned them in, and they each took one of the simple, upholstered office chairs across from him. The Captain walked his fleshy frame this way and that as he spoke, sagging jowls bouncing on the collar of a long-sleeved shirt, slack as though it were a size too big. He couldn’t have been more than fifty, but he had aged prematurely, like fruit bought from a convenience store. He might have been handsome after a fashion in his younger years, but now he was just another fat, balding, glorified bureaucrat counting the years until the next promotion and eventual retirement.

  It was all a game to men like this, Corus thought. Get as high on the ladder as fast as you can, and when the years of service mounted to a comfortable number, you pull the trigger on your pension and get on a boat in the Puget Sound. The lack of purpose sickened him, if for no other reason than it created a recipe for political infighting. This group of strong, brave men and women meant to keep the evil in the world at bay had joined in into a political dance that only served itself, like an animal eating its own feces.

  “Ok, well I told him…I know…well we’ll just have to stay in this damn holding pattern until they figure that out. Alright pal. Yep. We’ll be in touch.” Capt. Barbieri hung up and sat.

  “I’ll get right to the point Chief Dete―er Inspector Corus. I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with your situation. I’m woefully understaffed as it is and now I’m being told that after the two week suspension you’ve been on, I’m still not getting you back.”

  Lt. Chu shot a defensive glance at Corus, but didn’t move a muscle to intervene.

  “I’ve been made to understand that your punishment will be to give your undivided attention to three cases. I personally don’t see doing your damned job as a fitting punishment for your recklessness, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  Like his promotion to Major.

  Corus liked to give any promotable colleague a wide berth. He’d learned there was very little people wouldn’t do to ensure they received another bar and a bigger paycheck. Alas, when it was your boss, you couldn’t avoid them, not for good.

  “I need my numbers up. Wasting time on three dead cases isn’t going to do shit unless you somehow get charges filed and quick. We are dealing with murders, though, so that’s at least something.”

  Murder charges carried a higher weight in the statistics, and subsequent convictions carried more weight than charges filed, or worse ― arrests that came to nothing.

  “I need to be Murder One counts. Do we understand each other Inspector?”

  “I’ll find the people responsible, sir.”

  “If you don’t see an easy conviction, then you move the fuck on, you hear me? Low hanging fruit, Mister Corus. Find the low hanging fruit.”

  FIVE

  Chu led the way into his office, stopping on the far side of his desk. “Well, that went well I think.” He nodded with eyes wide. He breathed deep and held his arms akimbo. “Yeah that wasn’t so bad.”

  “That bastard just wants his numbers.”

  Chu’s office sat on the west side of the precinct building, roughly between the Captain’s and Corus’ offices.

  “Exactly,” Chu said, “and you know what he wants. It’s easier to get on peoples’ good sides when you know how to please them.”

  “You think if he gets this promotion he’ll stick around, or move up to HQ?”

  “I heard a couple of the bigwigs are thinking about retirement, but you know how it goes. There will be the two or three others vying for jobs at HQ with Barbieri. Even if he’s a Major…”

  “He’ll be the most junior at that rank. Why did it take him so long to reach Major anyway?”

  Lt. Chu shrugged. “Maybe just unlucky. I heard Garvey has some beef with him, but they haven’t wo
rked together since the 80s.”

  “Old grudges die hard with men like Garvey…and men like Barbieri. Garvey was a Lieutenant before he moved into government right?”

  “That was before my time,” Chu said. “Not sure why he got out so early. He obviously still has clout in the department.”

  “Jim said it had to do with some particularly shady business and an insurance fire in Issaquah,” Corus said. “Either way, you’re right. Between the department and the county government, he has more pull in this area than all but the Sheriff and the County Commissioner. I bet in regards to de facto power, he has them beat in some ways.”

  “How is Jim?” Chu asked.

  “I haven’t gone to see him since the retirement party, but I bet he’s rebuilding the tower of Babel to keep from going insane.”

  “Man,” Chu said, shaking his head. “He was the last of the good ones. It was nice having him as Captain for his last few years, after he passed the Chief Detective torch to you.”

  “It was more than nice. Compared to now, it was paradise.”

  “Well, I sure as heck don’t want to be Precinct Captain someday without you as my Chief Detective. What do you say we get you to work?”

  Corus breathed deep and sighed.

  “If it gets me out of this building, then show me the grisly murders.”

  Deputy Rosen, a dark-haired younger man, arrived a few minutes later, carrying two white file boxes. He set them down on Chu’s wide, neatly arranged desk.

  “Thank you Deputy,” Chu said.

  Dep. Rosen gave Corus an appraising glance as he walked out the door, earning a small nod in return.

  Corus owed him a debt, whether or not Rosen knew it. The young deputy had foregone an opportunity to really stick it to a higher-up by describing the vending machine aftermath in a more unflattering light. There were a hundred ways to twist it. He could have describes some “crazed look” in the erstwhile Chief Detective’s eyes, misreport or reinterpret what he’d said, anything that would have given brass cause to fire him or worse, prosecute. Corus wasn’t one to seek out personal loyalty. If someone simply avoided stabbing him in the back, he appreciated them.

  People usually assume he disliked them. It was his face. He couldn’t beam smiles at all hours. When he was relaxed or deep in thought, his mouth curved down and his eyes became hooded and menacing. He’d learned this when a college girlfriend had asked him to the point of exhaustion if he was “ok.” She’d forced him into the bathroom to look in the mirror. She couldn’t make him see it. So she asked, “What’s 73x89?” As the wheels set to turning, Corus’s reflection changed like some demon gripped him. It was no demon other than his brain-at-work. Just his face.

  Funny humans. Fearing the intensity of their boss, their boyfriend, a facial expression, when they should be fearing the slow erosion of being itself.

  “What are you doing with your face?” Chu asked.

  “Oh sorry. I was just thinking about facial expressions.”

  “Ummkay,” Chu said skeptically. He slapped both hands on top of a file box. “Ready, set, murder?”

  They worked to reacquaint themselves with the cold murders, careful not to mix case content on the small workspace. Skokim Pass drew Corus’ attention most. It was the oldest and the most heinous at first glance. An entire family had been murdered in their hotel room at a ski resort.

  “You sure you want to start so heavy? If you are as low on mojo as you say?”

  “Mojo?”

  “Mojo,” Chu repeated.

  “You think I had mojo?”

  “Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Are you telling me people say mojo?” Corus’ voice grew heated. “They’ve been saying I lost my mojo?”

  “It’s just a saying.” Chu’s voice was pleading, like the whine of a teen asking to extend their curfew. “Please don’t overthink it.”

  “It wasn’t mojo, goddam it.”

  “What do you call it then?”

  Corus bent his mouth and thought hard. “Charisma?”

  “You? Charisma?” Chu shook his head. “No…Flair?”

  Corus rolled his eyes.

  “Essence?” Chu asked with a sideways glance.

  “Yuck! Fuck right off.” Corus shook his head. “Ability?”

  “A little on the nose,” Chu said. He excitedly snapped his fingers and pointed at Corus. “You’ve got the shanks!”

  “The what now?”

  “That’s it! We don’t have to name the ineffable je ne sais pas that you lost. We just have to identify its absence. The shanks!”

  “Is that an intestinal thing?”

  “No like golfers and shooters get. The shanks! They lose some sort of focus deep in their psyche and just start missing one day. Even pros. They wake up and can’t get on target for the life of ‘em.”

  “How do you get rid of them?”

  “I dunno. In the movies, you can meet the love of your life or defeat some foe. Something to regain your vitality and stop the spinning in your subconscious mind.” Chu pointed to his temple. His eyes were wide and excited, full of wonder.

  “Vitality huh?” That sounded like the opposite of death and entropy. “Chu, usually I think you are full of candy corn unicorn shit, but I’m willing to hear you out. I don’t have a foe, though, and I don’t have any love prospects. Besides, I guess I’m still married.”

  Chu nodded with his gaze on the floor. “You could solve a case,” he said with small hope in his voice.

  “L-T, that would be like the golfer getting rid of the shanks by making a hole-in-one. It’s circular reasoning. It’s a contradiction.”

  “I see. You could…no. What about? No…what if? No.”

  Corus thought about going outside and trying to smoke again, but Chu gave him a stern look as he was about to rise.

  “Corus. I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

  SIX

  Chu and Corus drove for nearly an hour, out of the city. Chu’s Kia managed the elevation change about as well as a fat kid on stairs. Once in the foothills of the Cascades, the rain turned to flurries piling on to the snow already on the ground, reminding Corus what winter meant for the rest of the country.

  “Why are you such a mule?” Chu asked. “This is the smart phone all over again.”

  “There was nothing wrong with my old phone.”

  “You play Angry Birds more than anyone I know. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  “Even when you did cave, you bought an Android just to tick me off and be contrary.”

  “Explain to me why choosing one phone maker over another is tantamount to choosing Palestine over Israel,” Corus demanded. “No wait, on second thought, don’t.”

  “Well, now you’re not rejecting my phone of choice, you’re rejecting my culture, and the culture of 1.3 billion people.”

  “I’m not rejecting Chinese culture. I’m rejecting the slow, deliberate perforation of my skin. You wonder why people look to the Chinese for torture techniques? It’s because their healing medicine looks like something out of the fucking Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Whatever roundeye.”

  “Call me a racist….”

  “You’ll see. Your chi is blocked up worse than a colon after a Super Bowl party. A white man’s party, full of cheese.”

  When they parked and got out, Corus pulled up the collar on his long, light brown overcoat to shield himself from the blowing cold.

  They hadn’t gone three steps when Chu yipped and went down hard on the parking lot.

  People said Seattleites didn’t know how to drive in the snow. Those critics didn’t know the half. If Mount Rainier ever reawakened, it couldn’t possibly have more of an effect than an inch of snow had in the city. Absolute bedlam.

  “Ah Jiminy Crackers at Christmas!” Lt. Chu clutched at his elbow, while Corus helped him up by the lapels. “That smarts. Oh jeepers, that stings.” He moved the arm around
gingerly.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Holy jumping cats that tingles. Oooh, it got me in the funny bone. Oooh, it’s not funny at all.”

  They entered the front doors of the Skokim Pass Resort and Suites, Chu still clutching his arm. “They really ought to do something about that parking lot.”

  “Jesus, it’s a ski resort. What do you want them to do? Install some sort of heated floor? Salt only does so much and it’s bad for the environment.”

  “I’m thinking flame throwers.”

  “Yeah, L-T, I’m sure you’d go for that the minute they tried.”

  Chu said nothing and continued massaging his arm.

  “Hello and welcome to Skokim Pass Resort and Suites. Do you have a reservation?” The bright-faced young woman, probably Filipina Corus guessed, stood ready to type their names into a computer.

  “We don’t, but we’re here to see the manager if you please.” Corus flashed his badge and the girl’s face went dark. She looked as if she might burst out into tears. “Umm…ok…I’ll be right back.” She skittered away like a bee-stung dog.

  Corus looked around, admiring the high exposed beams on the vaulted ceiling. The lobby let in a good deal of natural light, though it was in short supply due to the weather and the setting sun. Dull yellow light effused from sconces and chandeliers to give the space a rustic, cozy feel, despite its large size.

  An obese man emerged from a hallway to their left. He nimbly avoided a room service cart being pushed by a lanky, red-haired kid in a vest. He walked with purpose and did not let his immensity keep him from presenting himself well. His charcoal suit must have been tailored to fit him so well. It matched the color of his goatee and gelled hair.

  He extended a hand to Chu and then to Corus.