Internal Affairs Ch. 12

"So what did you want?" Peter asked Trish.

"I wasn't kidding. I want to be part of your group," she answered.

"Don't you get it? There is no group. I'm just looking into this case in my spare time. Which you are taking up. I had permission to work till on it till the end of the day. Anything we do after today is off the books and will screw up your recommendations from Iva. This is not some glamorous revolution. It's just a lark," Peter replied.

"Deacon, it's something that isn't just a piece of paper being moved from one place to another," Trish seemed to be almost begging. "I need the real life experience for my resume."

"That I can believe," Peter said. "Okay ask Helen to put you to work finding out how Water's really met Vickie. I'm thinking an earlier call. No one checked because no one questioned his version. Cops work in sectors. There is a good chance he had an earlier call at her house."

"Why don't we go talk to the neighbor who gave you guys the other information about shouting in the house?" Trish asked.

"That's a good idea Trish. If the cops had been called before, we might get a time line maybe even someone who saw Waters there. Helen is looking for patterns in his spending. I'm going to squeeze in a visit to Water's Ex today.

Rachel Waters was working at a call center. It was a slightly better than minimum wage job. It meant that Peter had to visit her at home. According to her neighbors she was home usually after 6pm. Helen dug out all of that for him.

"Trish, you want to help. I will take you to dinner after work, if you drive me to an interview with the former Mrs Waters," Peter suggested.

"Where are we going for dinner," she asked.

"I don't know, somewhere not to formal. Otherwise it's up to you," Peter said.

"Do you like ethnic food," she asked.

"TEX-MEX is about as ethnic as I get," he replied. He would have added Big Macs from a trash can was as far down as he ever got. He would have told her, except he knew that he would have to explain it.

"Would you try Chinese, if I order for you?" she suggested.

"As long as it doesn't have any chicken, I can do it," he said.

"The rest of the day passed with nothing new to add to the file. Mostly because Helen was put to work by Iva on the case of a black man accused of robbing a convenience store.

Peter was sure the kid was guilty after reading the files. He told Iva that the odds were about a 100 to one that there was any police misconduct or any misinterpreted evidence.

"He should have plead to it for a shorter sentence," Peter said in conclusion.

"You don't make those decisions," she said. "Just give me your opinion on the police reports," Iva the ugly demanded in an equally ugly tone. You are still looking into the Water's thing aren't you?"

"I'm not going to lie to you. I am not," he said telling her a blatant lie.

"Good," she said.

There was some truth to his story. He hadn't look into it for over an hour, he thought.

"It was 5:45 by the time Peter had secured his three wheel scooter. To his surprise Trish showed up with boxes of take out. He had been standing by the front door for about ten minutes thinking he would be running out to the street to jump in her car. She ambushed him from the rear instead.

"I thought it might be more fun to see your apartment," she said not acting one bit different from her office persona. Cold and unemotional.

"Good, come on we will try the elevator. It is powered by a burro in the basement." he said.

Upstairs her comment on his apartment was, "Very minimalist". She brought two sample plates from a Chinese restaurant. Each had a one serving of four different menu items. They shared them all, but only after he settled up the bill with her.

"You don't have to do that," she said.

"Sure I do. I invited you to dinner," he said.

"Okay, but you didn't really," she said. Her voice never changed. It wasn't exactly a monotone as much as a lock of emotions. Nothing showed any emotion when she spoke. She seemed to be struggling trying to find just the right word and tone. He thought she might be trying to cover her lack of emotion with some kind of intellectual decision that certain situations needed a particular emotion.

After dinner they drove to the home of Rachel Waters. The house was no doubt a rental.

"It looks a lot like the house I rent" Trish said coldly.

Rachel answered the door to their knock. "Hi Miss Waters my name is Peter Sims, this is my colleague Trish. We are would like to ask you some questions about your ex-husband."

She looked back into the house before answering, "Could we talk out here? My son is in the house. It rather him not hear all the things I have to say about his father," she said.

"Would you like to get your coat. This won't take long, but it's cold as hell out here," Peter said."

"No like you said, it won't take long," she said it as a warning.

"Okay let me get right to it then. In the months leading up to your divorce, was your husband acting any differently?" Peter asked.

"Different?" she asked.

"You know like being gone after work for hours, or any new hobbies?" Trish asked with that phony concern in her voice. "Long periods of time where you didn't know where he was?"

"Anything like unexplained charges on his credit card?" Peter added.

"Why are you asking all this?" Rachel asked.

"To be honest we want to know if he and his present wife were having an affair. We are really investigating her for the family of her deceased husband," Peter said.

"Oh I see," Rachel said. "I don't know who it was, but it could have been her. Someone rode by the house almost every time he was home at night. You know he worked rotating shifts. He was only home two out of three nights. Even then he found excuses to be gone after our son was in bed. There was always a cop who needed to move something. He also got a lot of text messages," Rachel suggested. "He even went fishing with his friends on his four day break once or twice. Just a couple of days at a time," she explained.

The boy came to the door. "If that's all? I need to fix dinner," she said.

"Of course," Peter said. Peter and Trish both said goodby and thanked her for her time.

"Well what do you think?" "Trish asked.

"Oh he was definitely having it off with someone," Peter said.

"Yes I got that impression," Trish said. "You do know that only officers or employees of the government need a warrant to get phone records. If we can get them legally, we don't need prior approval."

"Trish, they are confidential records and someone would get their ass in a sling giving them up to us," Peter.

"If we paid for them, that would be the sellers problem. If we cooperated but honestly didn't know who was providing them, we could wiggle out of the charge."

"I am going to assume that you know someone at the phone company?" Peter asked.

"I do, if he was a Nationwide Cell network user," she said with a smile.

"Get me his data for the time we are interested in and I will change my mind about you being a fluff headed debutant," Peter said.

"You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet. I know a man who knows a man who knows a phone number," she said.

"Give me the information and I won't give you up," Peter promised.

"By end of business tomorrow I will know if I can do it." Trish promised.

"Maybe we won't need it, but better to have the number and not use it than to needed it and not have it," Peter said.

"How about inviting me up for coffee," Trish asked when they were parked outside his building.

"Sure, but as you saw earlier, there are no comfortable chairs," Peter added.

"Well Deacon, I sure we can figure out something," she said

Once in the apartment, she sat on the folding chair while Peter made the coffee. He used a plastic measuring cup with a handle to boil two cups of water a time in the tiny microwave. The water was poured into the tall plastic funnel with a coffee filter and two table spoons of coffee grounds inside.

The resulting coffee draining into a second plastic measuring cup. Peter poured coffee from it into a Styrofoam cup for Trish and a hard plastic delta cup for himself. His cup came from the thrift store. It had some medical clinic's advertising on it.

"That is really good coffee. I have only one complaint. Your cup is much cooler than mine," she said. Her voice was again measure and pretty much fake. He had decided early on that she wasn't talking down to him, even though it seemed that way.

"So I see you have the small screen TV," she said.

"I have to be able to carry whatever I buy up the stairs," Peter explained.

She looked at him very seriously, then out of the blue she asked, "Do you want to have sex with me?"

"I really don't know. Is that a lawyer's trick question." Pete said.

"Of course not," Trish said with almost some emotion.

"How about telling me Trish, why did you ask that?" Peter said.

"A simple no would have been sufficient," she said.

"Okay, not right now," he admitted.

"Then I should go," she said. "I'll get that number for you."

"Trish are you okay?" Peter said.

"Sure in spite of what they say men can say no. At least they can to me," she said.

"I would say no to anyone tonight," Peter said. He was trying to be nice.

"I hear that a lot as well," Trish replied.

Screw it, he thought "Come here," he said pulling her against him. He kissed her gently the it got rough. Their clothes went away. Trish was actually quite thin without her clothes. Peter liked that about her.

He also liked that she was obviously enjoying it, without making a sound. She was very much in control but not controlling. She just gave into it while restraining herself.

"You okay," he asked after it was over. She was sitting up in his air bed on the floor trying to determine which of her clothes were suitable to wear out. Since her bra and panties were damaged, she wore one of his recently purchased sweat shirts under the jacket of her little power suit. It was a strange looking Trish who left his apartment.

Peter walked her to her car with the intent of kissing her goodbye, but she had other plans. She got into her car and drove quickly away. "Damn," he said to no one. Then he laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

Helen greeted him the next morning with, "He answered two previous domestic disturbance complaints at her house." She said. "Beautiful, let's ask Martin if it's enough." Peter said.

"It's a start a damn good start, but it just conjecture. He is going to say, I don't remember ever seeing her before. I might have been off those nights. The unit could have had a different driver, or she didn't make an impression." Martin said.

"Yeah, he would be too smart to fold his tent on that little bit of evidence," Peter said. "We are not going to be able to interrogate him, so it's going to have to be locked down tight for the DA's man or enough to get the IAD involved..

"Okay we need something more," Peter said leaving Martin's cubbyhole. He resisted the urge to kick a chair on the way out.

When Peter passed Trish, she didn't even acknowledge his existence. It was like she didn't recognize him. The worst thing he realize, was that she wasn't trying to avoid the truth, she just had no further interest in him.

Peter walked back to his cubbyhole to read another file looking for police misconduct. It was one which had been reviewed by both Martin and Trish for legal issues. They had found nothing. Peter review the report on the evidence and the police department's conduct of the investigation. At the time of his review DNA was the hot button. The questions were mind boggling. Was there DNA present and whose was it. Were the places where DNA should have been found, but it wasn't. If not why not. All those questions came into play in the review Peter did. His greatest value to the team was he knew what cops were capable of, so he questioned everything. If something seemed a little out of plumb, he wanted to know why. He had begun to lose my blind faith in the cops when he witnessed them selling cocaine from squad cars. The final straw was when his house was burned. Or maybe it was when he discovered a hit team was on the way. A hit team dispatched by the FBI agent sent to keep me alive.

His skepticism made him the ideal person for the job. The 'Just Act' case on his desk seemed to be both plumb and level. His recommendation was going to be, tell the kid convicted in the death of another kid whose only crime was not being a street thug, That his DNA was everywhere since he cut himself while stabbing the victim. His blood was on the victim's clothes and even in the wound. The knife had his DNA and bloody finger prints on it. The kid doing the time was lucky the cops didn't turn him over to the victim's family. The Detroit cops had a Public Relations problem more than anything else.

"You have to face it Iva," Peter said. "Most of the time the cops get it right."

"That's not been my experience," she said.

"This time they did, so don't waste your time and reputation on this one," Peter said.

"I'm beginning to wonder about that fit thing you talked about. You have reviewed two cases and upheld the cops both times," Ugly Iva said.

"I'm not going to call a spade a heart just because that's what you want. If I do, then no one will take me seriously, and rightly so."

"I left her office at noon feeling pretty down on the whole operation.

"Waters was careful but you can't fool all the people all the time." Helen said.

"Do we have him," Peter.

"According to his ex wife, who called Trish this morning while you were involved with Iva the terrible, She remembered a three days fishing trip Officer waters took the year before the fatal shooting. She remembered it because the fishing lodge charge on the card was for over two hundred dollars per day. She thought that was too much for a fishing trip at a lodge.

I called the lodge and found out the dates that Waters party was registered. They even sent me the video from the hold up camera. It is the only camera inside the lodge.

I found Vickie the tramp and Officer waters checking in. I also found them on the parking lot camera several times over the next two days."

"You got his lying ass," Peter said.

"We got him," Helen corrected him.

"Truth is, you and Trish got him. Now the sad truth is we have to give it up to Internal Affairs." Peter said.

"There are two things I want for all my hard work." Helen said. One is to see Waters charged with Murder. The other is to see a comfortable chair in your living room. Trish told me that you have nowhere to sit, when we come to visit. God knows every gang needs a club house," She advised him.

"We are not a gang, and my place is not going to become a clubhouse for you fucking misfits," he Peter said with a smile.

"Maybe we could get a tax exemption as a religious order." Helen suggested.

"I know I would make a terrible monk, and most likely you are no nun," Peter suggested.

"You know first hand that our Trish is no virgin Mary," Helen replied sounding almost jealous.

"So Trish kisses and tells," Peter suggested.

"Oh yes and you only got a 7 from her," Helen added.

"Seven, I intend to appeal that," Peter replied.

"Do you get the impression Trish has a filter on her emotions," Helen asked.

"That's a kind way to put it," Peter replied. "She may bring an assault rifle to the office and wipe us out someday," Peter admitted.@@

"Then you need to have me over for breakfast soon. First buy a chair and a bed. I can't get up and down off the floor. Bad knees, I did too much running when I was younger," she said.

"So do you have a picture of yourself in the spandex shorts and tight top," Peter asked.

"Of course I do. I even have one of me laid out on the ground with the marathon EMTs checking me for a heart attack. You can see them when we go out."

"Well then I will go buy a bed and a chair, but it will have to be a small bed," Peter replied.

Let's Meet with Iva the terrible and have her put Internal Affairs onto Waters, then you can take me and Trish to lunch," Helen suggested.

"Sounds good," Peter said.

When He and Helen informed Martin of the information, he and Trish, Peter and Helen met in the coffee room, where Iva joined them. They braced for the inevitable ass chewing they knew was coming.

"You know you were told to drop this, so there is no need to explain that you are guilty of using our resources to conduct an unauthorized investigation. I could fire you all, and I would if you were paid employees. Since all of you, except Helen, are volunteers, of one kind or another, it would be shooting myself in the foot. So I will just say, good job everyone."

"Who are you and were is Iva the terrible?" Peter asked jokingly.

Watch your mouth Deacon you are still on probation," Iva said with a smile.

"Of course the month isn't over yet," Peter said.

"So what's next for you," Iva said. "How about trying to look through that backlog of files."

"I take care of them as soon as Martin and Trish finish their analysis," Peter said.

"I will set a meeting with the IAD people for tomorrow." Iva said.

"You are about to see your working relationship change. Cops don't like people who stand up to them," Peter said.

"You do something about that bed situation tonight," Helen demanded once the meeting broke up. "I have a terrible itch and I think you have the cure. Besides Trish and I need something in common to talk about," Helen said.

"Good lord tell me you aren't thinking about trying to be girlie with Trish. As far as I can tell she has even less of a personality than me," Peter said.

"Not girlie as in switching teams. She just seems to need a friend and maybe some female advice," Helen said. "Funny, she was here when I came six months ago, I have always avoided her but today she caught me in the break room. She wanted to discuss you."

"I have no idea what that is about," Peter replied.

"It was about her trying to fit into the 'team' as she called us. "Did you really sleep with the cold bitch?" Helen asked.

"You know what they say about men with a stiffie having no conscious, well it's true," Peter said.

He went back to reading the newest file to cross his desk. He stayed at it till five even though it took three cups of coffee. At five he left the office parking lot on his bike. He rode straight to the consignment shop. What he found there was a nylon comforter and a camp bed sort of thing. The metal bed frame with folding legs was the size of a standard bunk bed. Which turned out to be only a couple of inches narrower than his twin airbed.

Peter paid for the comforter and two larger pillows, which he rolled together then secured it using his belt. He managed to tie it onto the frame of the scooter. It was a tight fit but as expected he made it home.

Once at the Don Juan, he stored the bike in the basement after removing the battery pack. He lugged the batteries as well as the comforter up to his apartment. When he arrived, he plugged the batteries into the charging station. He also took a moment to throw the comforter and pillows onto the floor.

He was back on the street dressed in his heavy parka but without the other two layers of outerwear.

Peter made the two block walk to the consignment shop before he got too cold. Walking double time made it a little easier to bear the cold it also kept him out in the cold a shorter amount of time. At the shop he paid twenty bucks for the bed frame it was complete with one inch wide strips of steel for springs. He paid and carried the heavier than it looked frame home. It was a cold dark and miserable trip but he made it. He stopped in the small lobby to warm by the radiator before climbing the stairs dragging the bed frame behind.