Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

little past halfway. I remembered again the night I got drunk and turned Frank’s office upside down, pulling each drawer from their cabinets and scattering the contents across the room. It was after that night that I decided not to drink for a while. I made it a habit and kept with it till Tina came and stayed with me and all that nonsense between us started.
    Frank looked up at me and gestured me in with a quick wave of his hand. His eyes stayed on me for only a second. I closed the door behind me and leaned on the wall near it, my hands in the pocket of my denim jacket. I let the warmth touch me and looked down the length of his office, toward the narrow window at the back that overlooked the parking lot behind the police station. Then I heard the sound of a car door closing coming up from the street outside the large front window. I went to it and looked down at Main. One of the patrol cars parked outside the Village Hall was backing out into the street. It paused for a moment, the reverse lights went out, and then it headed north, into the direction from which I had come. I didn’t know which place was more unsafe for me, the street below or this office above it.
    I half-listened to Frank’s side of his phone conversation while I waited.
    “I don’t care,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Do what you have to do. Yeah. Just let me know. As soon as you can.” He turned his hand and glanced at his watch. “Yeah, that’s fine. Okay. Okay. Let me know.”
    He hung up the phone with his left hand and laid down the file with his right and looked at me.
    “You look like shit, MacManus.”
    I ignored that. “What’s going on, Frank?” I didn’t look at him, but from the corner of my eye I could see him close the file and stand and return it to the open cabinet drawer. He slid the heavy drawer shut, locked it and pocketed the key, then picked up a paper to-go cup of coffee from his desk top and took a sip.
    “I don’t know what you know,” Frank began, “so if what I’m telling you is old news, bear with me.” He paused a moment. “From what I understand two men tried to sack Augie at his house a few hours ago. He shot one of them in the chest twice. He’s dead. The other took off. Right now there’s a lab crew at his house, gathering evidence. All I know is they took Augie in for questioning, after which they booked him on the charge of manslaughter.”
    I thought of the trail of bloody footsteps I had left through Augie’s house.
    “Apparently, he shot from his front door an unarmed man standing on his lawn, twenty feet away.”
    “Augie said the man drew a weapon.”
    “Well, the Chief’s boys are saying different. They found no weapon, nothing, not even an empty holster. I’ve sent a lawyer to meet Augie for the arraignment. I think we should be prepared for the worst, considering the personalities at play here, considering what’s going on behind the scenes.”
    I turned my head and looked at him then. “Have you talked to Augie?”
    “Briefly. He called me when they booked him. He said they questioned him for maybe twenty minutes and then the word came down to book him.” He took another sip from his coffee and rested the cup back on the desk top. He was wearing dark wool pants and densely knit fisherman’s sweater and dark shoes. None of them looked cheap.
    “Is he okay?”
    Frank shrugged. “Yeah, he’s fine. He’s been in worse places.”
    “Do you know about the accident?”
    “The girl, yeah. I was told Augie pulled her out of the water, but I assume you were there and just took off before the boys showed up.”
    “We went back afterward to look around. Augie was convinced the police did a half-assed job investigating the scene. He said it seemed to him that they were cleaning up more than anything else.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I didn’t see anything, except for what looked like the marks left by a spike strip.”
    “Anything else?”
    “After Augie dropped me off I got jumped by someone who tried hard to convince me to mind my own business.”
    “And when Augie got home the same thing was waiting for him. Except for him they sent two.”
    “It seems so.”
    “Did you get a look at the guy who jumped you?”
    “Not at his face, not enough to recognize him if I saw him again. He’ll probably be walking with a limp for a while, that’s all I can tell you. Do you have any idea who the girl in the Corvette was?”
    “Not yet. From what I’m told they