You Choose

Chapter 3

Chapter 3The temperature had changed during the short time Falcone had been inside the precinct. Maybe Falcone just felt colder after having the newest assignment handed down. The sky, a blanket of grey clouds now, threatened rain. It didn't mean it would rain, just the threat seemed a constant in late October. Soon the threat wouldn't be for rain, though. If they were at all lucky there were still four or five weeks before the snow started. Rochester spent five to six months under layers of snow, long after Christmas snow was no longer welcomed in the city. Regardless, winter demanded more than its allotted four-month reign, and rarely relinquished its icy hold until mid-April; insistent on dominating the end of Fall and the beginning of Spring, as well.

Farrah Richards drove. Falcone knew the reason. Back a few months when they first met, she'd smelled booze on his breath. He knew he wreaked. It was one of those mornings where he should have stayed home and called in sick but didn't. She never said anything about it, but just took the keys from him, and gave him one of her looks. He hadn't known her well at the time, but he understood the glare. The look dared him to complain about her taking the keys. He knew better, and kept his mouth shut.

Maybe it had been more than one time when booze was on his breath. The last few months were somewhat cloudy. Maybe he had smelled so bad the one particular morning she finally took steps to block, or stop, him from killing them on the roads?

Whatever. She wasn't wrong for reacting the way she had, and he hadn't protested. What leg did he have to stand on? The answer was simple. None. She drove from that day on. He was okay with her driving, but knew he needed to get his s**t together. Someone will only tolerate a drunk partner for so long. Contrary to popular belief, cops often turned each other in for such reckless violations. The job was about going home safely at the end of the night. No one could be expected to put such a goal in jeopardy day in and day out. No one should have to, and Falcone understood her position perfectly. He just wasn't sure he could do much about it at the moment.

She knew his history. There wasn't an officer in the department who didn't. Drinking might be a problem, but he did his best to limit its negative effect on the job. It was harder still when he was home with his wife, and son. At times he felt as if he needed to set aside periods of time where he could act irresponsibly. It sucked his calendar didn't have space to allow room for binge drinking. Overloaded at work, and busy with the family when not on the clock ate up nearly every precious minute. Eventually, he figured he'd pencil in time for a nervous breakdown. It was coming, he could feel it. Falcone just couldn't afford having one now.

The best he could tell, Farrah and he hit it off. He liked having Richards as his partner, but whether she appreciated the pairing, he couldn't say for sure. It was new, the two of them. They were placed together about three months ago. At the time she worked first platoon, covering midnight to zero-eight-hundred hours. She swore the overnights were better; days at the office were ruled by politics. Richards hated politics. He wasn't much of a fan, either. The overnights, when he worked them, clearly took years off his life. So had working sixteen hundred to midnight. In fact, the day shift wasn't much better, either. The idea of an early grave didn't scare him much, he just didn't think there was space on his calendar enough for death. Not with so much still to get done.

“Read me the file.” Richards pulled out of the parking lot. Lights flashed, and sirens screamed. This type of response was what they called “going seventy-seven” to the crime scene. Getting there fast wouldn't change a thing. The three dead people would still be dead when they got there. The priority, at this point, was maintaining the integrity of the crime scene. The other reason they hurried across the city was the simple fact Byron Franks had been one of them. How could they stop at red lights when a brother-in-blue, his wife and his son had just been murdered?

Falcone reviewed the few things they did know. He shuffled through the contents of the folder. His eyes scanned over the information written in Garcia's pen, and then basically regurgitated the points Garcia shared moments before Richards came upon their conversation inside the precinct.

“Mother, father, son?” Her eyes kept going to the cup holder where her Tim Horton's got colder. I reached over and peeled back the plastic lip and handed her the cup. She took a sip and set it back in the holder. Driving fast and drinking coffee was iffy. Hit a bump, spill some, make a mess. Coffee stains were a b***h to get out of white blouses.

“Definitely sounds brutal.” Falcone lowered the passenger window with one hand, while he fished a pack of cigarettes and his lighter out of a pocket with the other.

“I don't like you smoking in front of me, or in the car. We're not supposed to be smoking in here. It's against policy. I shouldn't have to remind you of that. And besides, it's freezing out.” Richards forced a shiver, an illustration toward making her point.

Policies. Falcone reached forward, cranked up the heat. “You think a burglary went bad? Or Franks lost it? Killed his wife and his son, and then took his own life?” Falcone thumbed open his Zippo, rolled the thumb down the wheel, and held the flame to the end of a cigarette. He wasn't really asking a question but was, more or less, just talking out loud. The two of them did that. Put ideas out there and thought on them without an immediate need to comment. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled a plume of bluish smoke aimed out the opened window. Resting his arm on the door, he flicked away ashes. Most of the ash blew back into the car, and he casually brushed them off his jacket with the back of his left hand.

Farrah glared over at him. Silent.

“I'll get the vehicle detailed.” He arched eyebrows, as if that settled that, and then took another drag.

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Nothing awkward about it. There was nothing they could talk about. No plan could be formed, or action taken until after they viewed the crime scene. The drive might be considered the calm before the storm. The file in Falcone's lap was thin. Bare bones only. It was their job to gather more information and fatten the folder up with facts, and evidence.

Falcone took one last drag before he flicked away the butt and raised the window.

“Thank you,” his partner said.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“I said, 'thank you.' You say, 'you're welcome.' Not to mention, I know you're not sorry. You do this every time. Every day I ask you not to smoke in the car, and every day you do. Then after you've had your nicotine fix you look over and apologize. When someone says they're sorry, it kind of means they're not going to do what they just did again. When you say you're sorry I know it is only until the next urge comes and you disregard my protests all over again.”

“I know it wasn't sincere,” Falcone said. “I know my smoking bothers you.”

“It does, all of the time. But it even more so when I have to freeze because of it, but my thank you—that was sincere,” she said. “What's eating you today, anyway? You okay?”

Falcone gave her a shrug and looked away. “Not looking forward to this case.”

“That would fly if you weren't already acting off this entire last week.” Richards had no issue with calling bullshit when she saw it. Sometimes Falcone appreciated it, or at least he did when it was someone else's bullshit she was outing. When she pulled insightful crap on him it was a different story. “Want to tell me what's going on?”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “It's nothing.”

“You said 'it's nothing' which means it is something, but you're just choosing not to tell me.” She read him better than he read himself at times. A scary fact. Three months together and she had his number. Most of the time his wife couldn't figure out whether he'd had a good or bad day at work, or if she could she just didn't care. Which was always a possibility, too.

When they turned onto Byron Franks' street, Richards didn't have to ask which house. Three patrol cars sat out front of the house halfway down the block, and on the left. Yellow crime scene tape squared off the perimeter. The tape wrapped around the sole maple tree, mailbox, and was secured to posts that officers must have hammered into the lawn. The entire front yard looked successfully quarantined.

One house past the patrol cars, and along the right curb, sat the tech and forensics vehicles. The white vans boasted the department logo on the side panels and housed expensive equipment inside. The county crime lab was state of the art. Wasn't long ago a new building on W. Main Street was put up specifically for the criminalists. Falcone knew teams would be assembled inside snapping photographs and creating a complete inventory log of everything. All of the evidence would go back to W. Main for under-the-microscope analysis. It could be days before any results trickled through the department.

Richards parked the car. They climbed out of the vehicle and walked on the sidewalk stopping at the Franks' driveway, before the crime scene tape.

“Officer Parker.” Falcone held out a hand. “How've you been?”

“Good, sir.” Michael Parker, about twenty-three years old, had been with a field training officer, an F.T.O., up until last month. It was probably because his training had so recently completed that the sergeant tasked him with checking up on Franks. Gopher work went to new guys. Had always been that way. Falcone couldn't imagine something so engrained ever changing. Parker glanced around the crime scene, and added, “All things considered.”

“How's the ol' man?” Small talk might seem trivial with time being of the essence. Seeing a body, much less three, was disturbing as hell. If responders didn't try keeping things as normal as possible, they'd lose their minds. Slow setting post traumatic syndrome. The disorder became a little more embedded each day, a little harder to cure, and a little more crippling whether a person realized it, or not. The only people who truly understood were other first responders. This was why so many of them fooled around with each other. There was the unspoken bond, and it, perhaps too often, became a disabling attraction. It was why so many had a dark sense of humor or couldn't function well at family gatherings. There was a high percentage who got mixed up in drugs, and a few who took it a step too far and simply committed suicide. Although there was nothing simple about the act.

“Loving retirement,” Parker said.

“You tell him I said he's too young to sit home in some rocking chair. Have him give me a call. We can all go for drinks.” Falcone grinned. The smile was forced, but the sentiment sincere. Thing was, he knew Parker's father would never call him. They'd never meet for drinks. The two were never that close, and Parker's father was probably thrilled having his service days behind him. Why live in the past? The guy was probably fifty-five years old and thrilled to be retired.

Richards did not smile back.

“You know my partner? This is Investigator Farrah Richards.”

Parker shook her hand. “I know who you are, ma'am. We've never been introduced, though.”

“Not ma'am. Richards, or Farrah is fine.” Now she smiled, but at Parker. Not at Falcone.

“Spent some time sitting in a squad car with his father, back when we'd ride two-badge,” Falcone told his partner, and made it sound as if it had been the highlight of his career.

“Who's the scribe?” Richards asked, all business.

“I am, ma'am. Uh, Ms. Richards.” Parker held up his notebook. “Recording anyone who steps on this side of the tape, the time, their badge, and verifying it against I.D.”

Richards flashed her badge, and city I.D.

Parker blushed and lifted the tape for the investigators to duck under. “I don't need to see that. I know who the two of you are.”

Falcone, now on the opposite side of the tape, stood beside the officer. Richards stayed put. “Do you want to be reprimanded?” She asked.

The color drained from Parker's face. “I'm sorry, reprimanded for what?”

“That notebook is an official document used in this investigation. No one crosses this line unless you use due diligence, and record everything. Everything. I expect you to question the hell out of Chief Tunsil if he shows up to look around. I want every I.D. checked. Verify with dispatch if necessary. No one, I mean, no one gets past this crime scene tape until you've done everything you can to substantiate who's who.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Parker said, not correcting himself this time. He stood straighter and stiffer than before. He was clearly at attention.

Richards lifted the yellow tape and crossed under. “Falcone, show the officer your badge and I.D.”

Falcone tried not to roll his eyes, but obeyed the command because, ultimately, she was correct. Defense attorneys were like vultures. Birds of prey started digging into the a*s orifice of a carcass and tore into it making the opening bigger and bigger until it could then easily devour everything inside. Give an attorney a loophole, regardless of how small, and they'd keep at it until everything else evidentiary fell apart.

Falcone leaned in close to the officer. “You good?”

He remembered seeing his first murder scene. The memories were never far. They stayed in the mind. Blood on TV was nothing like actual blood. A lifeless body, eyes open … It haunts. Nothing outdid the smell, though. Death stunk, but the corpse of a murdered person was something else altogether.

“I'm good, sir.”

Falcone leaned inward. “You tell your father I said hello, and I mean what I said about that drink. When this mess wraps up, you have him call me. We'll set something up. Okay?”

Michael Parker gave a tw0-finger salute, which looked corny as hell, and the investigators turned their attention to the house, the reason they were there. Falcone sucked in a deep breath and exhaled. They weren't here for the house. More specifically, it was the bodies inside they'd come to see.

Falcone winced against a knot twisting about in his gut and placed a useless hand across his belly. The dull ache persisted. “Not looking forward to going inside.”

Richards's cell phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket, looked at the display. “Why did you invite that kid out drinking with you?”

“What?”

“I knew his father, too. There's no way that man is going to want his son out drinking with you.” She looked down at her phone once more. Falcone saw her shoulders sag and the somber expression consume her face before she slid up on the screen and put the phone to her ear. “What's up, John? I'm working.”

Richards waved Falcone on. She pulled the phone away from her ear and placed a hand over it. “I have to take this. I'll meet you inside.”