Burnout (Goosey Larsen Book 1)

by James Vachowski

  I made my way toward my desk, where I spotted an entire stack of those little pink While You Were Out message slips waiting for me. Now I’m a pretty calm guy by nature, but when I saw all those messages I swear I could feel the constriction of my veins as my blood pressure shot up. To make my morning even more unpleasant, it looked like some worthless bastard had made off with my rolling chair so I snatched Debbie Carlson’s from behind her desk and plopped down before anyone noticed. I was probably doing her a favor by encouraging her to stand up more often, since that girl had been looking thicker than ever. She’d only just transferred into Central a few months before but by the looks of her tight skirt, she was really enjoying the long lunch breaks that came with being a detective. To be fair, though, she’d always been a bit on the heavy side. Her first radio call sign had been One Twenty Four, so all the other Team One rookies had dubbed her “One Chunky Whore.”

  As I flipped through the messages, I got a sinking feeling in my gut. It looked as if most of the day would be spent at my desk returning calls and trying not to make eye contact with Clyde Edwards, the soulless slave of CPD, and the best I could possibly hope for was to duck out for an imaginary interview during the afternoon.

  I glanced at the first message slip before punching in the number for the county coroner’s office. The call had come from Katie Maslow at around ten o’clock the night before, and it shocked me that somebody had actually still been hanging around our office to take the message. Me, I always tried to be at home by five o’clock every night, parked on my couch in front of the television with a beer in my hand, but it takes all kinds I guess. The receptionist picked up after a few rings and quickly patched me through to Katie.

  “What’s up, Doctor Death?”

  She laughed at the nickname, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe none of the other cops had ever said that to her face. “Doctor Death? Larsen, that could be your new nickname. Two bodies in two days, you’re single-handedly keeping us in business over here. What’s up, are you trying to steal Rothschild’s job out from under him?”

  I shuddered at the thought of moving up to working major crimes. Going to bed every night with one eye on the pager and pretending to care about drive-by shooting victims was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my career. Abbie Rothschild, CPD’s crusty old lead detective, was tasked with working all the murders and most of the violent crimes downtown. Judging by that dude’s wardrobe, it’d be a safe guess to say that he’d been going strong for at least twenty years. Rothschild wore the same pair of polyester pants every day, along with a short-sleeved dress shirt and a clip-on tie.

  “Don’t curse me, Katie” I said. “I’m a great cop, but there’s no way in hell I can compete with Rothschild. I’m just not in that guy’s league.”

  She laughed again, and I couldn’t help wondering if she was flirting. I knew that Katie had dated a few cops before so I probably had a shot if I wanted, but morbid obesity had never really been one of my turn-ons. On the other hand, just talking to her made me hungry for a big chunk of sliced ham, so I guess the girl had her share of redeeming qualities.

  “Hooks’ autopsy is at one o’ clock today,” she said. “Should I reserve your usual chair?”

  “Not no, but hell no.”

  She went silent for a second, and I got worried that I might have hurt her feelings. You never want to be on the coroner’s shit list, or else your requests for information might start taking two days instead of two hours. I had a sudden vision of me having to help the EMS guys carry out a dead body when the coroner’s goon didn’t show up to a crime scene, so I blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. “I’d love to, but I’m just swamped with work today. It looks like I’ll be tied to the desk most of the afternoon, too.”

  Clyde Edwards was walking back to his desk, his hour-long coffee break apparently over. Clyde overheard my last comment to Katie and rolled his eyes, so I slumped down low in my chair and gave him a quick kick in the ankle. As he bent over in pain and grabbed his leg, I grinned and turned my attention back to the phone. “Besides…no one ever gave a crap about Hooks when he was alive. Why should things be any different now that he’s dead?”

  She laughed again, and I couldn’t help being suspicious at the fact that she was in such a good mood so early in the morning. “Good point,” she said. “I’ll just send the results over to your office.”

  I sighed. “Thanks a million, Katie. It’s just been one of those weeks.” Clyde Edwards sat down at his desk and shot me a glare. With any luck, he’d be too pissed off to talk to me for the rest of the day. “Oh, and while I’ve got you on the line, please tell me I’m all set to close out the Encienario case.”

  She paused for a second. “Well…yes and no.”

  That’s never the answer you want to hear, since it usually means that more work is on the way. “Okay, what’s the problem?”

  “Well, everything on the body looks good for an accidental death, so my ruling still stands. “The lungs were full of chlorinated water but just to be a hundred percent certain, I took fluid samples from the body and compared them to a sample of water from the pool. Both had the same concentrations of chlorine, as well as identical Ph balances.”

  Debbie Carlson walked into the office and stood in front of her desk. She had her hands firmly planted on her wide hips as she took a long, slow look around at everyone else’s chairs. I hunched down over my desk like I was busy taking notes and did my best to avoid making eye contact. “Uh huh.”

  “So based on that, it’s my conclusion that Encienario died by drowning in the pool where he was found.”

  No shit, I thought, as I wondered about how many years of college was required to become a deputy coroner. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I wouldn’t quite call it a problem,” she said with a sigh, “but the lab technician ran his bloodwork last night and got some abnormal results back. There’s some chemical in his system that wasn’t identified by the toxicology report.”

  “What do you mean, you haven’t identified it?”

  “That’s just what I mean,” she said. “It wasn’t anything that was immediately recognizable. The computer analysis even broke it down to a molecular level and the closest resemblance we have on record is from a synthetic dopamine precursor.”

  I scratched my head, then self-consciously checked my shoulders for any falling dandruff. All clear. “What’s a dopamine?”

  Katie fell into a kind of stunned silence, almost as if she had encountered some rare kind of ignorant species on the other end of the line. “You’re kidding, right?” she finally said. “Don’t they cover drugs at the Criminal Justice Academy anymore?”

  Now I’ve never been one to take any crap, especially not from a damned civilian, so I had to work hard to bite my tongue. Just as tactfully as I could manage, I said, “Do you know how long it’s been since I was at the Academy? I was policing while you were still waiting tables to pay your way through med school! Besides, I specialize in missing persons, you know? Crack, cocaine and heroin are someone else’s problem. What’s the version for dummies?”

  She chuckled. “Okay then. Dopamine’s a hormone in the brain which allows it to release the chemicals which produce the sensation of pleasure.” Katie was speaking in this slow, sing-song voice that you might use when talking to little kids. “It also combines with other hormones to numb pain.”

  I snuck another glance across the office. Debbie Carlson was marching into Big Jim’s closet like a woman on a mission, so I put my feet up on my desk and leaned back in her chair. “So the guy was on a drug binge. Huh. I guess that explains why he went missing. Maybe the dude was so high that he lost his balance and just plain fell into the pool.”

  “Well…” she said, and I could tell that bad news was on the way. “It’s more likely that he was on some kind of a prescription drug regimen. See, our standard toxicology tests always screen the blood for illegal drugs: cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, but Encienario was
clear for all of those. Also, most street drugs will typically produce a short, intense high before they quickly leave the bloodstream. I’m no chemist, but for someone to have such a high concentration of any one substance in their blood, I’d say that he must have been in some kind of regular treatment program. Probably a pretty intensive one, I’d imagine.”

  My detective instincts kicked in. “Which would explain why he was at MUSC wearing a hospital gown.”

  A rustling noise came across the line, almost as if Katie might have been nodding her thick head in agreement. She asked, “But your patrol officer’s report said that the hospital didn’t have any record of him as a patient, right?”

  “Nope, not one sign of him. But you know, but I’ll bet they probably just lost track of him. You know what a madhouse that place can be, especially on the weekends.” I glanced back over towards Big Jim’s office and caught a glimpse of Debbie Carlson huffing her way out of Central, churning those chubby legs of hers into the hallway. Her face was flushed red and her hands were balled up into hammy little fists as she turned right out the door, no doubt heading to see Captain Russell, the next step up in the chain of command.

  Katie laughed. “Remind me never to check in there if I need to have surgery.”

  I had to agree with her. I normally hate going to see the doctor, but somehow the picture of a trained medical worker being on the receiving end of the poking and prodding was a surprisingly pleasant thought. “So…we don’t know what type of drug it was, right? Tell you what, if I can find the time I’ll be heading down to the hospital later on today for a follow up. It would probably help me track down Encienario’s patient records if I knew what he was being treated for.”

  “Sorry I can’t be much help” she said, dashing my hopes. “I’m going to have to take another blood sample and send it to the State Law Enforcement Division’s toxicology lab up in Columbia.”

  “Not SLED,” I groaned. Those guys were nothing more than state level G-man wannabes who spent their entire careers trying to act as if their work was somehow more important than anyone else’s. “So basically, we should have the results back in about six months.”

  Katie laughed again. “Six months? If we’re lucky.”

  I ran my fingers through my thinning hair and patted around to make sure that little bald spot was still there in the back. It was. “Well, at least it’s not like the guy’s going to get any deader. Thanks loads, Katie.” I hung up without waiting for a response, then leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. I’ve found that if I look like I’m deep in thought, maybe puzzling over some detail of a case, people will generally leave me alone. Above me, the ceiling in Central was a simple flat surface made up of smooth concrete tiles, painted over in a dull shade of gray. It wasn’t the sort of thing that inspired deep reflection, but I’ll take what I can get.

  From across the room, I saw that weasel Chadwick Lyons had snuck in to show off some Polaroids. The dude had dark bags under his eyes and was smiling like a fool, a combination which could only mean he was bragging about his new baby. Moving in a flash, I grabbed the telephone receiver and punched in the call back number from the next message slip before he could look my way. The last thing I wanted was to see any more family photos from the Lyons family.

  A few years back, Chadwick and his wife had been shopping at the Dillard’s store in the Citadel Mall when they stepped into the dressing room to try on a few things. It must have been sort of a slow morning because old Chadwick decided to seize that very moment to try and rekindle the flame in his marriage by putting on a strip show for his wife. What he didn’t realize, though, was that the store had recently installed security cameras in the dressing room to catch shoplifters. The store manager saw Chadwick strutting his stuff, called 911, and the only thing that saved his career was the fact that Dookie Wilson was responding officer from Team Four. He pulled up just as the Lyons Lovebirds were walking out of the mall.

  Dookie had to have known that Chadwick was the suspect from the perfect description the manager had provided, but he walked right past his drinking buddy without saying a word. Fifteen minutes later, when Dookie finally made it inside the store after a quick milkshake break in the Food Court, the manager was beside herself! She demanded the cops do something about this crazed sex pervert who was running around on the loose, no doubt prowling the mall in search of his next victim. Dookie had no choice but to take a report, so of course he also took the store’s surveillance videotape as evidence. Now I’m not exactly certain what happened next, but the videotape got lost somewhere between the Citadel Mall and the Department and the investigation just kind of fizzled out. Dookie Wilson got promoted to Sergeant the very next month, but I’d bet he probably still has a copy of that surveillance tape tucked away for a rainy day.

  I glanced at the message slip while the phone rang. “Call Chief Detective Fred Eagen, Champaign, Illinois, PD, Re: Missing Person.” Sharon, our thick queen bee of a secretary, must have been the one who took the message because the handwriting was perfect. She wrote all her notes using those tall and slender lowercase ‘L’s that only fat women can manage to write. Now on any other day I would have done my best to avoid speaking with another detective before lunchtime, but I figured that if I sucked it up and made one more call, I could pretty much knock out my work for the entire day.

  A deep voice answered after the first ring. “Detective Sergeant Fred Eagen, Champaign Police Department, how may I direct your call?”

  I shook my head in amazement at his chipper attitude but you know what, that’s probably why I’ve never been able to climb any higher on the career ladder. I’ve just never been able to convince people that I’m happy to see them or hear from them. Who knows, things might be entirely different at a smaller department. I made some quick calculations and figured that if the senior detective was only a sergeant and if he was answering his own phone calls on top of that, the Champaign Police Department probably had about twelve officers, tops.

  I gave the sergeant a second to catch his breath after that mouthful before I piped up myself. “Hey Sarge, this is Mike Larsen from Charleston returning your call. Hope I’m not catching you too early.”

  He just laughed. “I’ve been in the office for hours.”

  That figures, I thought. The ambitious type. Come to think of it, punctuality wasn’t one of my strong suits either. The last time I counted, nearly half of all the supervisors at CPD were certified idiots and only got promoted because they had enough time in service whenever a shortage of corporals or sergeants came up. Most of these guys’ success in life came simply from showing up more often than not.

  He went on, “Thanks for returning my call, Mike.” I took note of the fact that he thought we were on a first name basis already. “I appreciate your help with Mr. Encienario, he’s been a real puzzler for the last couple months.”

  I rolled my eyes and wondered exactly what types of crimes passed for hot cases up there in Champaign. “Don’t mention it. I didn’t really do much besides fish him out of the water.”

  “What kind of bait did you use?”

  I didn’t laugh at the joke. Fred did. He was loud enough to cover us both, but at least he got back to business pretty quickly. “I read the report your office faxed over. No sign of him wandering around town before his watershow, huh?”

  I grabbed a pen and probed it around in my ear. “Nothing. The hospital didn’t even have a record of him as a patient, but since he was found wearing a dressing gown, we’re double-checking all the medical facilities on the assumption that he was a patient somewhere.”

  There was a scratching sound on the other end, like Fred was taking notes something fierce. “Well, I went ahead and broke the news to his family last night. They’ve been calling me at least once a week to check on my progress, but I just didn’t have a thing to give them until now. No traces at all since he left, not even any activity on his credit cards or bank accounts. His wife and kids are really broken up
over the whole thing.”

  I made a mental note to remember that trick of tracking someone’s bank account for recent activity. That would be real handy information if I ever did have a person legitimately go missing and somebody actually expected me to go out looking for them. On this case, the fact that the family was distressed was great news for me since it meant that calling them for any follow up questions would seem intrusive. “Well, I really don’t want to put any undue bother on them,” I said. “If any more information comes up, I’ll just relay it through you.”

  I could almost hear the sound of Fred’s smile. “Thanks Mike, that’d be fantastic.”

  I clenched my fist in victory and looked up just in time to see Debbie Carlson walk back into the office. She looked more pissed off than I’d ever seen her, with her lips pursed and her face a bright shade of red. She was carrying one of the metal folding chairs from the squad room downstairs as she craned her fat neck around, trying to make eye contact with every detective. I met her gaze, gave her a friendly smile, and leaned back in my own new chair. Her face shifted into an explosive shade of purple, so I shifted my focus back to the phone call.

  “Fred, while I’ve got you on the line, let me ask you, did his wife say if Encienario was suffering from any medical conditions, or anything else that might cause him to wander off like that?” Alzheimer’s and amnesia are two big concerns when you’re dealing with the missing persons cases. I remembered what Katie had mentioned and added, “Was he on any type of prescription meds?”

  “Nope. His wife told me he was in great shape for a man his age. She even said that he would usually go for a jog at least a couple mornings each week.” Fred paused for a second, then added, “Though why anyone would go running without somebody chasing after them is beyond me. Who knows, maybe Leonard was just plain crazy.”