AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

They look OK.”
    Yamaguchi got out of her car and approached the LeBaron. The driver side window rolled down. She pointed her flashlight at the side view mirror and the reflection lit the face of the driver — obviously a young kid. As she came alongside, she flashed the light at the passengers and saw two more nervous faces.
    “Could I see your license, registration and proof of insurance, please?” she asked.
    The young driver nodded quickly and reached for his wallet — or a gun. She had no reason to believe this, but her right hand rested lightly on the butt of her gun. Then she saw the wallet in the young man’s hand and relaxed. Been a while since I did this, she thought.
    He pulled out his license and gave it to her, but then began a conversation with one of the young men in the back seat. She quickly glanced at the license and saw that it was issued in Chihuahua, Mexico. This won’t be easy, she thought, Mexican driver’s licenses are impossible to run.
    “Do you have registration and insurance?” she asked the driver again. He looked at her nervously, nodded his head and turned to face the other occupants. A quick conversation in Spanish appeared to center around one of the men in the back, on the driver’s side, who appeared to be sleeping, or passed out.
    “Alex, is he dead, the one who’s asleep?”
    “No, he’s alive. His heart is still pumping. I think he’s passed out.”
    The other passenger in the back started prodding the unconscious man, who was now moaning, and then started rolling him. Yamaguchi took a cautious half step back. Damn, I’m jumpy.
    “What’s he doing to that man?” she asked the driver, who failed to hear her. She tapped the driver on the shoulder. He jumped and so did she. She repeated her question.
    “We’re trying to get his wallet. It’s his car.” The driver said. His English was good, far better than her Spanish.
    Eventually a registration and insurance card matching the car was produced, and the unconscious man’s license also matched the registration.
    “What’s the matter with your friend?”
    “Too many beers. His boy … son died.”
    “What’s in the back? Is that a baseball bat?”
    “Yes. The Rockies. Palo conmemorativo de béisbol . It’s for his son.”
    Yamaguchi was confused, but intrigued. “When … how old is his son?”
    The driver asked the question to the others in the car. “Twelve.”
    “And when did he die?”
    “Last year. On this night. Víspera De Navidad … ¿Cómo usted dice víspera De Navidad? ” he asked his fellow passengers. They answered back “Christmas Eve,” while Yamaguchi silently mouthed the words as well.
    She found herself asking the next question reluctantly. “Is the bat a present for this year?”
    “Yes,” the driver responded. “He ask for it this year.”
    Yamaguchi remained silent. She was startled when she heard Munroe’s voice in her ear. “Give him a break.”
    She looked again at the driver’s license and then addressed the driver. “Mr. Rivera, you drive safe, OK? Get your friends home. And tell Mr. … uh, Garcia, to get his plates renewed.” She handed everything back to him and walked to her car. After a few seconds, it pulled out and continued down Speer.
    The rest of the night passed uneventfully. They’d gone to back up another officer at a bar where a patron was reported as drunk and disorderly but by the time she got there, the man was just plain drunk and no longer disorderly. She left that because someone reported hearing shots fired at the Pepsi Center, but when she got there, the vast parking lot was empty. There were no events scheduled at the sports arena that night. She drove around the building and found nothing except a private security guard asleep in his car. She woke him up and he said he’d been there all night and had heard nothing. After that, she went to the 16th Street Mall to take a report about an incident involving a mounted patrol officer — a man claimed the horse bit him. But bystanders said it was more of a kiss than a bite and the man decided not to file a complaint.
    “Oh God what a boring night. Kill me now,” Munroe said after she got back in and they were moving again. “Can we go yet? It’s almost the end of the shift and we … you still haven’t had a lunch break. And we’re just a couple of blocks away.”
    “All right you big whiner. I’ll call code 7 and we can go to your thing.”
    She drove down to the LoDo end of the 16th