Flash Fiction: Noir Story

Chapter 8

My first stop of the night was back at Annie's place. I grabbed the spare key out of the loose piece of molding where she stashed it, and let myself in. I had a computer, an ancient piece of shit that I had bought when I first joined the force. The thing actually plugged into my phone line, but I hadn't really paid the bill since I had gotten a cell so I rarely used the archaic piece of shit. Annie had a nice set up; DSL, processing power, web cam and the like. She sometimes ran some side business on the web stripping and such on a pay site for some extra cash. It was another one of those things that we should probably talk about but didn't.

I only had one lead, Roger Horner, as Else Lomack's last known boyfriend. There were a couple of people I could talk to, but the easiest thing to do was hit the Internet first. I grabbed a cold beer out of the fridge and ate some stale pretzels out of a bowl on the counter before I settled in. As I fired up her PC I grabbed my cell and made a call to Mike Cruz, my former partner.

Mike was one of the few guys on the force that didn't turn on me after the trial. We had been partners in Vice for a long time, him having been assigned to me right out of the Academy. We were the youngest team on Vice at the time, and we always looked out for one another. After I had passed the detective exam, we still stayed close, though he hadn't the tenure to take the exam with me. After the trial....and all the other stuff that went with it, Mike had stuck by me. He eventually did make detective on his own and we still touched base every once in a while. I sent him information that would help on cases, sometimes he'd run the Police Database for background stuff for me. I figured this was as good a time as any.

After the computer finished loading, I took a pull of my beer and started digging up all I could on Roger Horner. Mike also answered his phone and promised to meet me after his shift at our usual haunt, so that meant just after the midnight changeover. It was perfect, a few hours with Mike, hopefully grab a few leads, then I could pick up Annie and make up for fucking up last night so royally. If only it had been that easy.

End of Line.
Gerrad!