Maybe you can ask the cops why they held off for so long, Jack said. Ramirez rubbed her hands over her face as she walked up to the door leading into the squad room. Good question. She'd been wondering about it long before she'd caught part of the interview in which Jack had made that comment. In fact, it had been on her mind since she arrived at the scene.
She could understand the need to exercise caution, but the situation should've been resolved before Hammer and the others got involved.
She wondered if she would ever find the answer. This wasn't the first time the NCPD had been interfered with. Ramirez had worked in several other cities, and none of them had functioned quite the way this one did.
If a word like "function" could even be applied to the NCPD. Ramirez and her partner, Enrique Montoya, had transferred here less than six months ago, and already they'd both learned that the megacorporations that had built this city could do whatever the hell they wanted. The biggest ones had their own internal security forces and enough money to throw at all the right politicians when necessary. When an investigation led the police to someone high up in one of the big companies, it was like slamming into a brick wall.
Not all the companies based here threw their weight around, of course. Most of them rarely screwed anyone other than their own employees, but the ones at the top -- the weapons manufacturers, the bioengineering companies that had created the chimeras, the cybernetics and military hardware builders -- they were altogether different.
She'd heard rumors about this place before moving here, but hadn't believed them. She'd thought they were exaggerated at best, and accepted the transfer because it had seemed like a hell of an opportunity. Better pay, warmer and drier climate, and a better location -- an entire city that had been built on the cutting edge. But half a year later …
Now? Not so much. She sighed and stopped in front of the metal detector built into the gate between the lobby and the squad room. Maybe it's time to look for a different line of work. It's been years since I've felt like I made a difference, anyway.
She took a quick look into the squad room. Same thing she saw here every day -- cops, both uniforms and plainclothes, seated at their desks and talking or throwing paper airplanes back and forth. Most were making phone calls or were busy with the computers on their desks, but she wondered how many of them were actually doing real work.
She tried to shrug it off and took her gun out, passed it and her spare magazines through the slot in the side of the cage, and a uniform took them. He nodded at the metal detector as if she didn't know what to do next. She had to fight the urge to flip him off.
She stepped through the door and a shrill alarm went off. The rest of the cops whirled around, dived behind their desks and reached for their weapons.
"Oops," she grumbled, holding a hand up. "My lighter." She took it out of a pocket, tossed it onto the counter, and walked back through the metal detector. The alarm remained silent this time.
She came back out, picked up her lighter and collected her gun from the officer in the booth, and headed for the vending machines lined up along the wall near her desk. She lit up a fresh cigar and inserted several dollar bills into one of the machines. She punched in her selection and a paper cup dropped into sight and filled with shitty coffee. She glanced into the cup and grimaced. The last time she'd seen liquid that color, it had been in a urinal that hadn't been flushed in two weeks. She sighed, added sugar, and leaned over to pick up the cup.
Something pointy jabbed into her ass. She whirled around as the people nearby laughed. A paper airplane lay on the floor, its tip crumpled by the impact. She swept her glare over everyone. Some of them kept on laughing, but others fell silent when they met her gaze and a few looked away. Several others, farther away but still close enough to see what had happened, shook their heads and rolled their eyes.
More of this shit. Terrific. It had been sporadic when she first transferred here, but it had grown worse over the months -- just like the bullies she remembered from school, the more they got away with it, the more they wanted to try. A paper airplane in the ass was a small annoyance, but the more she let slide, the more they would escalate.
She picked up the airplane, took the coffee out of the machine and sipped it as she walked slowly toward the other cops.
"Who hit me with this?" she finally said, letting some of her anger through but keeping it tightly coiled. A few more people turned away and pretend to be absorbed in their work. When no one answered, she ramped up the anger and repeated the question.
"Alright, alright." One of them chuckled. "It was me."
She turned and saw one of the uniforms raising a hand in a half-assed sort of way. She locked her glare onto him and walked over to his desk. A glance at the tiny plate above his right breast-pocket showed her his name -- Cordova. He leaned back in his chair, feet propped on his desk and crossed at the ankles, balancing the chair on its rear legs. He stared up at her with a smirk that made her want to punch him right in the throat.
"Think you're funny, do you?"
"Yep." Cordova chuckled again, and several others laughed along with him.
"I thought it was funny," one of them said, but Ramirez kept her gaze aimed straight at Cordova.
"Ah, I see. An amateur comedian." She placed her coffee on the corner of his desk. "I've got an idea for a bit of slapstick you could work into your routine." She took the lighter out of her pocket, set the end of the paper airplane on fire, and waited a moment to be sure that it would keep burning.
Then she dropped it on Cordova's lap.
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