Burnout (Goosey Larsen Book 1)

by James Vachowski

  My buddy took in a deep breath before shouting back, “Da hell you think I got, white bread? Goosey-G, I heard you some kina dee-tective now. That right?” He snorted. “Do yo’ damn job, son. Dee-tect.”

  I had to smile and laugh. Dookie tries to project this image of a tough black guy from the inner city, but he’s nothing more than a good ol’ country boy at heart. He’s not the type of guy that you’d ever pick to have your back in a fistfight, but I’d definitely pick Dookie to cover my ass the next time I got called into Captain Russell’s office for a disciplinary hearing. I swear, that guy just refuses to take crap from anyone.

  When I flipped out my notebook, more out of habit than any sense of duty, Dookie cut me off before I could ask any questions. “Da hell you gone do widdat? I know you ain’t about workin’ before noon!”

  Like I said, I’d worked with Dookie before. The dude knew my style. “Is this all we’ve got?” I said, pointing my foot towards the body.

  Dookie scratched his chin and nodded. “Ayuh…’cept for some of his teef, right over ‘dere.” Clearly, Dookie was in one of his more helpful moods.

  “Who found him, Dook?”

  “Newspaper man. Dat new one widdat pale face, look like gotdamn Michael Jackson.”

  “Is he still here?”

  “Naw, he done been left.”

  I shook my head, then pointed up towards the parking garage. “It looks like he jumped from right up there.”

  Dookie’s big butt stayed planted against the side of his cruiser as he hitched up his duty belt. It was a shock to see Dookie actually wearing his gear for a change, since most nights he just wore the belt to roll call and dumped it on his passenger seat for the rest of the shift. After considering my observation for a minute, he snorted, “Who you think you is, gotdamn Sherlock Holmes?”

  I shrugged it off. “You got any other witnesses, Dook?”

  “Naw, bro. I ain’ got shee-it.”

  That one sentence pretty much summed up Dookie’s entire law enforcement career. About five years ago we were both PFCs, far removed from the fast track but we’d gotten pretty good at sliding by. Dookie was a patrol cop in Team Three, out on James Island, and I was working Team Four over in West Ashley. We were always on the same rotation so we got to hanging out a lot at work, parking beneath the Stono Creek drawbridge to trade gossip.

  Dookie used to be called Boogie and I think his first name is Charlie or something like that, but I’m not sure anyone really knows for sure. He earned his first nickname because ten years and 150 pounds ago, no suspect had a chance against him in a foot chase. That guy did all the usual dumb rookie stuff, chasing petty offenders and jumping fences and crap, until this one night he was chasing a crack dealer through the trailers in Ferguson Village when he tripped on a storm drain and pulled a tendon. Dookie’s speed never came back, not even after three major surgeries, so he spent almost a year working a light duty assignment up in the dispatch center with one hand on the switchboard and another on the fried chicken. When he finally came back to the streets, that dude had absolutely blown up. Those old skeletons in the supply room coffee club still talk about how Dookie inflated himself through three uniform sizes in a single year.

  Even though he had lost a couple of steps, all the other cops still called him Boogie out of professional courtesy, at least until this one night when he went to check out a house alarm. The place was one of those custom marsh front jobs set back off of Folly Road, and when Dookie finally showed up he found that the homeowner had left the door unlocked. Even though there were no signs of forced entry, department policy says that whenever you find an open door you’ve got to check out the inside of the building as well.

  Now the way Dookie tells it, he’d just finished clearing the inside of the house and was about to get back in service when his stomach started talking to him. Maybe it was all the pain medicine he’d been on or maybe it was just the Chinese buffet that we’d cleaned out the night before, but Dookie suddenly felt the urge to go, and fast.

  Now if any patrol cop can honestly say that they’ve never pissed in some homeowner’s toilet during an alarm call, you know you’re talking to some rookie who’s been on the streets less than a year. Just give them time, and it’ll happen. The summer months get ridiculously hot in Charleston, and you’ve got to keep drinking water all day unless you want to stroke out. Even that’s not a big problem, at least until you start rushing from call to call with your Sergeant screaming at you to pick up the pace and you just can’t seem to get a spare minute to duck into a gas station or restaurant so you can take a piss in a legitimate setting. To be honest, I’ve had a couple times myself when I’ve been checking a house alarm, felt that unlocked doorknob turn and made a beeline for the bathroom, homeowners or even any burglars be damned. Besides, almost all residential alarms are accidental, and no criminals worth catching actually break into houses anymore.

  Now most cops can agree that going pee in someone else’s house is okay, mostly because it’s done out of necessity, but there’s an unwritten, unspoken code of honor that strictly forbids you from going ahead with “Number Two.” The way I see it, if you have to actually undo your duty belt and drop trousers then you’ve got an obligation to make tracks toward a public restroom. Dookie’s a shitbag, no doubt, but he’s generally an honorable guy, so when he told me that he had no choice in the matter I believed him. In law enforcement, sometimes you have to make life-altering decisions in a split second. When we talked about it after the dust had settled, Dookie swore up and down that the only options he had were either to drop a load in these rich folks’ custom porcelain toilet or to shit his pants on the spot. Taking into consideration the fact that the nearest public restroom was in the rear of the K-Mart store, two or three miles back toward the city, I think that if I were in his shoes I might have made the same call too.

  And so Dookie did his business, but what happened next is where everyone agrees that he crossed the line. If I’d of been him I would’ve done the deed as fast as possible, sprayed some air freshener around, flushed twice to destroy the evidence and gotten the hell out of there. Rushing wasn’t Dookie’s style anymore, though, taking into consideration his new plus-size form. That idiot not only took his sweet time about moving his bowels, but he also wandered down to the kitchen afterwards looking for something to eat, wearing only his uniform shirt, boxer shorts and a gun belt.

  Meanwhile, the alarm company had already called the homeowner to come back and lock up. So as it happened, this rich old white lady came walking in the front door and found fat black Dookie Jenkins leaning over her kitchen counter with one greedy hand stuffed inside a box of Snackwell cookies and the other paging through an issue of Southern Living magazine. To top it all off, the dude still hadn’t bothered to flush. In a moment that made him a CPD legend, Boogie’s nickname was permanently changed to Dookie.

  The Chief hit the roof over the whole affair, and he transferred Dookie from his quiet country life in Team Three over to the non-stop traffic of the Team Four suburbs. Dookie’s new supervisor kept up the pressure with jobs that were one step short of harassment, handing out assignments like checking all the vehicles in the Citadel Mall parking lot for expired license tags. Dookie was in the doghouse for real, but at least it was a temporary status. Once Chadwick Lyons pulled his Chippendales routine in the dressing room of the Dillard’s store, Sergeant Dookie Wilson came out on top after all.

  Dookie was still leaning against his patrol car. He was a pretty big dude to begin with, but the way he was standing with his arms crossed seemed to press his flab out to the sides and make him look even wider than normal.

  “Hell, Dook,” I said. “Big Jim’s going to be up my ass about this one, especially since the dude’s wearing a hospital gown just like that guy we found Monday. Can’t anyone ID him?”

  “Nawh.”

  I sighed, since it seemed like I just couldn’t catch a break. “All right. I guess whenever Crime Scene’s done, just tell th
e coroner’s goon to bag him up and take him.”

  “The hell you think you talkin’ to? Dem ‘yes massah’ days done been a long time gone, G-Man.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. Dookie’s never been one to take crap off of anyone, and especially not since he got promoted to sergeant. I waved for the EMS guys to come over. The impact had left a good-sized divot in the asphalt, so it took all the paramedics working with the coroner’s goon a good couple minutes just to pry the dude up and load him onto the gurney. As they were working, I took one last look around. “None of the garage attendants saw anything, huh?”

  Dookie just sneered at me. “How long you been off the street now, you ain’t know what’s going on downtown? Ain’t no ’tendant on duty after ’bout midnight.”

  “No security cameras, either?”

  “The hell you think dis place is, goddamn Fort Knox? Dem’s Volvo in dere, ain’t no gol’ bricks.” Dookie laughed at his own joke and spat a big wad of chew over the crime scene tape. It landed on the pavement with a big brown splat and I couldn’t decide which was stranger, the fact that a brother was chewing tobacco or the fact that he was doing it at the same time he was smoking a cigar.

  “Hell, don’ know what ya’ll need me for anydamnways” he went on. “Your li’l bro’s already up dere, prolly plantin’ some damn evuhdence to frame up one of my people.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You know who that be. Squealuh. Ain’t you an’ him still tight?”

  I laughed and took one last look around, mostly to give the appearance that I cared about doing a thorough job. “Like hell, Dookie, you know better than that.” I ran my fingers through my hair, which was starting to feel a lot thinner than it had in my patrol days. “Damn, I’m going to be dealing with this mess all week.”

  Dookie let out a great big “Haw!” as he held his shaking belly with both arms. “Yeah, I know ‘zactly how hard you be workin’, Goosey.”

  “Stuff it, Dook. Hey, one last thought. Can you check with the campus security and get them to check their patient logs? If they’ve got someone who’s been reported missing already, we might be able to ID this guy.”

  Dookie just looked at me with a thick black stare.

  “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” I turned to walk back to my car. “Later, Dook.”

  I’d never seen much point in wasting time at a crime scene, anyway. Most of the work is done by the patrol cops since those guys arrive first, and it’s their responsibility to write up the incident report. As long as the crime scene nerds do their job, closing a case after that is just a matter of fitting puzzle pieces together. In my time on the job I’ve learned that good detective work is mostly all about getting out of the way and letting things happen.

  Just as I was pulling open my car door, I glanced up and saw that little rat Squealer waving to me from the roof of the parking garage. I whipped out my cell phone and pressed it to my ear as if I had an urgent call, then jumped into my car before he could shout down to me. What a cheesedick, I thought. Working with him was bad enough, but having him wave hello was simply inexcusable. I swear, one little thing like that is all it takes to ruin a cop’s good reputation.

  9.

  Big Jim was waiting for me when I pulled into the Department’s back parking lot. He’d managed to stuff himself into an honest-to-god police uniform and the bulging seams gave his body the appearance of a faded blue sausage. I couldn’t help noticing that his boots weren’t shined, probably because he couldn’t look down past his big stomach to see the need. His uniform was so old that the polyester had been ironed through to a flat shine, and there were dozens of little threads hanging down from the ends of his short sleeves. The thick black gun-belt squeezed beneath his gut was hung low around his hips, making him look like an old-timey wild west sheriff. It wasn’t much of a stretch to picture him heading up a ragtag posse, hell-bent on lynching some hapless Negro criminal.

  A few other detectives were wandering aimlessly through the parking lot. All of them were wearing patrol uniforms as well, and the sight of so much blue fabric stretched over thick butts and stomachs made me feel a little queasy. It took me a second before I remembered that it was Spaghetti Wednesday, and I slapped my forehead in frustration. My forgetfulness was simply inexcusable, and I mumbled a few more curses about the futility of being on call.

  A few years back some patrol cops had busted up an armed robbery at The BlackTalian, this hole in the wall Italian and Soul Food joint in the industrial neck of the downtown peninsula. The robbers were regular terrorists, even making the restaurant manager strip down to his underwear before they locked him up in the freezer. The manager, a big black dude named Francis if you were ordering Soul Food or Frankie if you wanted Italian, was so grateful to the cops for saving his ass that he started giving us all a half-price discount on meals.

  A lot of restaurants have made the mistake of offering a police discount, especially when they first open up, but they usually knock it off once word gets out and their parking lots start filling up with cruisers. The BlackTalian was one of the few places around that still kept up the discount on a regular basis, but Francis/Frankie got wise before all the moochers ran him out of business. He knocked the half-price discount back to lunch only, one day a week, and restricted it to cops in uniform. Naturally, every Wednesday the parking lot was packed with cruisers and all of our detectives chose that day to bust out their blues.

  “Looking sharp, boss,” I said to Jim. “What’s the occasion? Taking all your nieces and nephews out to lunch again?”

  Generally speaking, only a few officers actually had the balls to try for a police discount with their families in tow, and Big Jim was a confirmed bachelor. However, there’d been at least a few times when I’d seen him leaving the BlackTalian with an armload of Styrofoam takeout trays, no doubt filled with all his dinners for the week.

  Big Jim just smiled and shrugged it off. “Laugh it up Goosey, but I’m not the one who’ll be shelling out the full four bucks for lunch. And anyway, after that jumper this morning I imagine you’ll have to work straight through anyway.”

  I just glared at him.

  Shifting his mood, Jim tried to cheer me up. “You look glum. What’s up, Loosey Goosey?”

  I was feeling the burn right then, so I really let him have it. “What’s up is the Chief’s blood pressure, or at least it will be when he sees how much overtime I’m going to be billing this week. These callouts have got to stop! I’ve been getting pages in the middle of the night for every little thing!”

  Jim threw his head back and laughed at my misfortune. With his mouth wide open, I could see past his yellow teeth and all the way into the back of his throat. His dentures were coming loose, and I had to look away as they started wiggling around on his upper gums. When Jim had regained his composure, he asked, “Since when did we start considering dead bodies to be little things? I must have missed that memo!”

  The conversation was most definitely not going the direction I’d planned. “Come on Jim, that’s why Abbie Rothschild makes the big bucks. He’s the hot-shot homicide detective, not me. I’m supposed to find missing persons and that’s fine, but I’ve got too much on my plate to be running all over the place dealing with death cases. Once someone’s pulse stops, they’re Rothschild’s problem from that moment on.”

  Jim laughed and shook his head. “That’s what I love best about you, Goosey. Your old-school work ethic.”

  I just stared at him and after a long moment, he finally caved. “Okay, okay, I’ll see who’s available to help out with your cases. Hang in there, we’ll get you back to the land of the living by next week.”

  I just nodded, trying my best to look overworked and exhausted, but I was already thinking ahead and considering which of my cases I could push off to either Debbie Carlson or Clyde Edwards.

  “So what’s up with this morning’s crash landing, Goosey? I hope you wrote the victim a citation for impeding the flow of traffic.”
>
  I rattled off the facts of the case in a no-nonsense version. “Pretty cut and dried, boss. This guy went up to the top of a parking garage, jumped over the side and died on impact.”

  He nodded. “Any reason you won’t have it closed today?”

  “There shouldn’t be. I’m still waiting on an ID in case I have to meet with the guy’s family and offer my sincere condolences, but that should be all there is to it.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” Jim reached up to flip a greasy strand of hair back into place. I stepped aside to dodge a few stray drops of Vitalis. “He didn’t leave behind a note or anything like that? Did you check his pockets?”

  I shuddered at the thought of touching an actual dead body. “No note, boss, and not even any pockets. The victim was wearing nothing but a hospital gown.” I saw how hard Jim was chewing on that fact, so I jumped in to derail his train of thought before he could pull a muscle. “Identification’s going to be tough since he landed face down. The guy’s pretty much unrecognizable now, unless the shape of his butt cheeks rings a bell with some nurse somewhere.”

  Jim pondered for a moment longer. “Wasn’t that 07 they found in the pool on Monday wearing a hospital gown too?”

  Damn it, I thought, gritting my back teeth. I could tell Big Jim was searching for a link between the two cases, and any tiny coincidence would only mean more work for me. I crossed my fingers and hoped that Jim wouldn’t try to connect the dots in some kind of wild conspiracy theory.

  “Did you find any missing patients when you went through their records yesterday?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, savoring the feeling of being one step ahead of the game. “Not a thing, boss.” I knew what he was about to say next, so I cut him off again. “Just to be certain I went down to Roper St. Francis and Charleston Memorial right after I hit MUSC. No luck at any of them, so I’ll be calling around to all the private care facilities today.”

  Jim gave me this Hmm sound, which is pretty high praise coming from him. He rubbed his hand on his round chin. “Well, make sure to do a halfway thorough job on this one. If it turns out that one of the hospitals is actually letting their patients wander off in the streets, the solicitor’s office is going to want to look into it. They’re hell on those neglect cases, especially if it’s something newsworthy.”