On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 197, of 240 so far.

In Evidence

The good thing was that Morris had at least been expecting this.

In fact, when the door of the captain’s office opened to reveal not only the man himself, looking troubled and angry, but also two of the weasels from Internal Affairs who were standing just inside the door, Morris only nodded to himself before locking his computer screen the way they were all repeatedly taught to if they were going to be away from their desk.

Only the captain had actually exited the room, but Morris could now see that there was a fourth person standing behind him: the defence lawyer called Traynor, who had been gunning for Morris since the infamous case four years earlier. He was still sore about it, and by the look of things, he’d finally found a way to get his revenge.

“I need a word,” the captain said, looking straight at Morris. He wasn’t speaking loudly, but every eye in the bullpen was already on him, so everyone heard it clearly. A few glances were exchanged, and Morris’s junior partner, Blane, made a show of putting his hands on his hips — perhaps just a tad too close to his service weapon.

“No problem,” Morris said, looking at the captain but also telling Blane to stand down.

There wasn’t a detective in the world who liked the people on the legal side, and the ones who defended the scumbags were amongst the most despised. In Morris’s opinion, they were all climbers and liars and politicians and deal-makers, where they should instead be focusing on getting criminals off the streets. But such was life.

He stood up, taking a moment to lift his suit jacket from the back of his chair and put it on, then he walked calmly over to the captain’s office door, pausing only to smile in mock greeting at Traynor, whose lip was curled in an operatic gesture of disgust — but there was a predatory glint in his eye, too. He had something.

Morris went in, nodding at the IA boys, then sat down in one of the battered chairs in front of the desk. The seat cushion was warm, and Morris was glad that whoever had recently been there would now have nowhere to sit.

The door closed, and Morris kept his expression neutral as the chief settled back in behind his desk, his brow still creased. A vein was pulsing in the centre of the chief’s forehead, and Morris immediately understood that, as expected, the man was on his side but his hands were tied by whatever nonsense the others had come up with. Morris’s mind flashed back to the case that had been the likely genesis of all this.

As it all finally came out, a very wealthy man named Sanger — who was a life-long friend of Traynor the lawyer — had been implicated in arranging to have a member of his own household staff, a maid, kidnapped and taken back over the border with a dire warning never to return or to contact the family again. The reason behind it was that the maid was pregnant by Sanger’s son, then a newly-arrived law student at a very prestigious university that was also his father’s alma mater. The whole thing was potentially a huge embarrassment, and it became much more so when Morris had exposed that the kidnappers were not, in fact, people-traffickers acting alone, but were paid by Sanger himself. The man escaped any imprisonment because people like him always did, but the scandal had all but destroyed him.

Now, apparently, it was finally time for payback. Whatever crap Traynor had managed to cook up had certainly caught the interest of IA, and they were opening an investigation into him. No matter the outcome, that carried its own kind of stink. There would be tough questions, probably modified duty, and a lot of time-wasting at the very least. So be it.

“Not sure how much I need to say,” the chief said, tilting his head towards the IA vultures hovering somewhere behind Morris.

“You should open a window, chief,” Morris replied. “Something in here reeks to high heaven.”

“That’d be you, detective,” Traynor said, but Morris didn’t give him the satisfaction of glancing in his direction. Besides, Morris had an ace up his sleeve, and he really needed Traynor to make his move first. He didn’t have to wait long.

“We’ve got some very interesting eyewitness reports of you associating with known criminals, and there are allegations that you’re taking money to look the other way, Morris,” Traynor said. Morris didn’t bat an eyelid.

“How much does it cost to buy those kind of witnesses these days?” he replied, and Traynor flushed from his expensive shirt collar to his receding hairline.

The chief stood up, to head off any violence, and put his palms flat on the desk surface. “They’ve got a warrant for your phone,” he said, speaking evenly and only to Morris. “I’ve got to ask for it now. You understand.”

Morris nodded, glad that his intuition was still in good working order. They wouldn’t find anything on his phone to support their fabricated claims, because there was no truth to any of it; it was a harassment technique, intended to inconvenience and embarrass. And it would work, too, though not in the way Traynor intended.

Morris took his phone from his pocket, disabled the passcode and biometric locks, and handed it to the chief. The other man blinked at the device, then slid it into an envelope and placed it in a drawer behind him.

“Just like that?” the chief asked, and Morris nodded. A look of understanding passed between the two men, and the chief shook his head. He was smiling, though.

“I think everyone in this room knows who’s really associating with criminals and taking money for it, Traynor,” Morris said, “but if I were you, I’d be more worried about your little arrangement with the cartels to sort out alibis for distributors and enforcers. I also wonder if your wife might be upset about that mistress of yours on the east side.”

To his credit, Traynor only paled for a moment before putting on his best poker face again. “Thing is, Morris, allegations need proof.”

Morris smiled, then he pointed to the drawer the chief had closed a moment ago. “It’s already in evidence,” he replied.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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