every extracurricular event Iâd involved Trey in that somehow also involved Phoenix. Iâd created 302s on car chases and boat chases, skulls and reticulated pythons. They felt old hat to me now.
âI assume youâre doing this from home since you canât drive,â I said.
âI can access the Phoenix data bases remotely, but to get a full background, I need to access LINX, and to do that, I need to be at the field office, and I canât do that until Monday.â He threw himself in his desk chair, drummed his fingers on a legal pad. âYou said Garrity had heard nothing from the Savannah detective on the case, correct?â
âYep.â
âOr from the prosecutor?â
âYep again. But Iâm not surprised. Savannah Metro is fruit-basket turnover right nowânew police chief, new recruits, new procedures, all of them pushing that whole âracist bad cops in an underground militiaâ stink as far away from themselves as possible. If they could mash a button and make Jasper and all his co-defendants go poof, they would.â
Trey had a mechanical pencil in hand now, beating a steady tap-tap-tap against the wood, and he was spinning the chair in a tight arc, back and forth. I recognized the look in his eye. Perseveration was the clinical term, but it meant that once Trey caught the scent of something, he became incapable of dropping it. It wasnât all due to the accidentâGarrityâs stories of the pre-TBI Trey revealed an individual with a sharpened sense of focus, an extreme talent at concentrating. It had served him well as a sniper, and it served him well now, even if it stuck in high gear sometimes.
I stood up. âRegardless, nothingâs happening today. So stopâ¦oh heck, hang on.â
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sighed. Kenny. I put the phone to my ear, but he started jabbering before I could even say hello.
âMiss Tai! I canât find the tent!â
I pressed a hand against my forehead. âCrap. I forgot. Raymond Junior across the square borrowed it for some party heâs having at the restaurant.â
âWhat am I supposed to do?â
âBring the back-up tent.â
âButââ
âAnd bring the mail! Donât forget the mail! Even if you forget the tent, donât forget the mail!â
âButââ
âYouâll be fine. I have faith in you, Kenny.â
I hung up before he could work himself into a lather. I propped a hip on the edge of Treyâs desk. He was staring out the window, tapping the pencil, two seconds from lather himself.
âWas there a letter?â he said.
âI donât know. Iâll check when I get there and call you back.â
âYou should have asked him now. I need to put that information in the report. You should haveââ
âNo, no, no. We are not doing this.â I put my hands on his shoulders and looked him square in the eye. âYou are grumpy as hell, and there is not a thing I can do about it. And if I donât get out of here, I am going to grumpy up too. And then it will be the OK Corral of grumpiness, and neither of us will walk away unbloodied from that.â
He narrowed his eyes. âA point.â
âI will call when I get there. And then Iâm going to watch the Blue and the Gray pummel each other. And you are going to take some more oxycodone, wash it down with that nasty anti-inflammatory tea Gabriella left, and lie down with the ice pack. And then maybe, just maybe, you and I can have a civilized conversation when I get back. Deal?â
He started to fold his arms, then winced. âNo, it is not a deal. I have a 302 due by five today.â
âLucky for you, youâve got a proactive girlfriend.â I pointed to his desk. âEverything I could find on Lovett and his investigator, printed and stapled and tucked into folders. All it needs is a summary and some collating,