I didn't know detectives were funny

===39 Winter 1395==========

“Hey Bersk?” Erskine asked, and then there was a short silence before I looked up from my paperwork a moment later to see why she wasn’t talking.

“Sorry Ersk,” I said, giving her a little smile to apologize for not getting to her right away. “I forgot you’re the only one on the unit who actually gives a shit if you’re interrupting somebody. Everybody else just starts talking soon as they walk up. What’s going on?”

“I was wondering…” Erskine glanced apologetically toward the small waiting area at the front of the main office. “Is there any way you could take the victim statement for my burglary from last week? He was supposed to be here tomorrow afternoon but there was a mixup and he came early, and my witness for the Kournegay case just got here.”

I checked the clock. “Sure. Is it that chemist shop mortuary thing? That one?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the file?”

Erskine handed it to me and I opened it up. “Anything I should know?” I asked, skimming the incident record. It was a very thin file.

“I don’t give it great odds we’ll get anywhere,” she sighed. “Most of the stuff taken was the kind of supplies carried by two dozen other shops in the area. Not exactly identifiable items. But maybe he's thought of some details since the scene statement.” She shrugged, a little awkwardly. “Thanks for doing this. I really owe you one.”

“No problem. Knock 'em dead.”

I picked up the file and went over to the waiting area, where a trim, impeccably-groomed man with a tastefully understated aesthetic was waiting, posture straight, reading from a small book. “Excuse me, sir. Are you Roland Quint?” He closed the book and slipped it into his interior jacket pocket, then looked up at me with almost startlingly green eyes.

“Yes, I’m waiting for Detective Erskine. Is everything all right?”

“Mostly,” I told him. “Her diary had you down for tomorrow afternoon, but since you’re here now instead, she has a conflict. I’m Detective Bersk, and I’ll be filling in for her to take your statement, if that’s all right with you. Or if you prefer her, you’re also welcome to come back tomorrow.”

“Gods, no,” Quint said, then hastily added, “I meant that about coming back tomorrow, not about Detective Erskine. My mother is minding the shop right now and I hate to ask her two days in a row.” He gave me a rueful, almost little-boyish look that made me smile.

“I knew what you meant,” I told him. “Consider the ice broken. Come with me?”

He returned my smile and stood up. “By all means. Lead the way.”

I took Quint back to my desk, then huffed with irritation when I saw that someone, probably Baggett, had replaced the spare chair Curry and I used for our interviewees with the wobbly-legged one that mostly lived in Blankenship’s office but made regular rounds of the office. “Don’t sit in that,” I told Quint as he moved for the chair. “Some jokester took the good one and replaced it with that.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said politely, taking a seat, then startling when the chair promptly lurched forward, spilling his weight and forcing him to catch himself against my desk before he pitched out of it altogether.

“Yeah you do,” I said as he righted himself. My usual chair was nowhere in sight. “Here, stand up. I have a pretty good idea who decided it was my turn to pass on the dud.” I exchanged the broken chair for Baggett’s desk chair and offered that to Quint.

“Why not just fix it, or replace it?” he asked, with genuine puzzlement. It was a reasonable question.

“My personal theory is it’s been here so long that if it ever leaves the Watch will owe it a pension they can’t afford to pay out.”

He gave a surprised, richly mellow laugh, pleasant to the ear. Like Curry, he had the kind of laugh that made one want to be amusing just for the delight of hearing it. “I didn’t know detectives were funny,” Quint said.

I motioned to Curry’s desk, then Baggett’s, and mine. “He, he and I are. Erskine’s earnestness hasn’t worn off all the way yet but she’s learning. The other—” I motioned at Anders-Croix’s desk next to Baggett’s, “—somehow manages to be a treat in spite of his appalling sincerity. Everyone’s up in the air about the new kid. He might be a lost cause but he surprises us sometimes.”

Greeley, the only one of these people actually in the office right now, looked up from his desk and made a face at me. Quint twisted and tracked my gaze as I smiled brightly at Greeley, who was twenty-six but looked about seventeen.

“New kid, I take it?”

“Yep.” I flipped open the file and skimmed the first pages of the incident record. “Erskine’s notes say she asked you to bring an inventoried list of known missing items—do you have that?”

“Yes, right here—” He broke off and reached into his jacket, taking out a folded piece of paper, which he handed to me.

“Great. We’ll go over this in a minute. Since I wasn’t the responding detective, I hope you’ll excuse me for first reviewing a few of the basics on your case before we dig in on your formal statement.”

“Of course.”

“You’re the owner of Quint Chemist and Mortuary Supply, located at Locke Street number eight, Fourth Ward, is that correct?”

“Actually, the shop is number six. Number eight is my residence.”

“Ah, thank you.” I made a note in the file to this effect, then proceeded to confirm the remaining case details, no others of which required correction. “This question always sounds a bit dumb if you don’t have an answer ready for it,” I said finally, pulling a blank statement form out of my desk and getting into my center drawer for a fresh pencil. “Do you have anyone in mind who might have done this?”

He laughed quietly. “I wish. I felt stupid enough with how little I could tell the detective before. I’m slightly better prepared this time, in that I brought the list. I’m guessing I’ll prove just as disappointing to you.” He offered me a good-natured little smile.

“That’s all right. Most overnight burglary of a non-residence is like this, honestly. You can’t see what you weren’t there to see, you know?” I skimmed the incident sheet again. “Erskine's notes indicate the theft occurred overnight. Do you have any sense for a more specific time frame?”

“I worked a little late that night, maybe went home about seven.”

“And home is next door? Any chance it happened before you turned in for the night—you might have heard something but perhaps dismissed it as street noise or a neighbor?”

He considered, then shook his head. “I doubt it. Both buildings are brick and plaster so the sound doesn’t carry too well.”

I nodded and wrote this down. “And what time the next day did you discover the theft?”

“About six-thirty.”

“Any employees?”

“Just me.”

“Have you seen anyone unfamiliar around recently? Or seen anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood the last few days?”

“Unfamiliar people, sure… the street gets a lot of commercial traffic. So I doubt I’d have noticed anything. Anything out of the ordinary—there was a cart crash down the street a couple days before. Hard to imagine it could be related, though.”

“Yeah. Probably not.” I made a note of it anyway. “Doors and windows—all locked and shut?”

He nodded. “There’s a door to the alley and the lock on that was damaged. The patrol guard officers said it looked like somebody failed to pick it and decided to break it instead.”

I took a few more notes. “Was there any other damage to the premises?” I asked a moment later.

“None to speak of. I didn’t even notice at first, until I found the back door standing open and then had a better look around.”

“How long after that until you notified the watch?”

“Maybe twenty minutes. Not long.”

“I’m assuming there are no sentinel devices installed, correct?”

“Correct,” he sighed. “Considering it now, though. Probably lost more in inventory than one of those costs to maintain. Hindsight, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, they’re expensive,” I sympathized. “I understand people trying to get by without one. You have insurance? And are payments up to date?”

“For the property damage, and a percentage of the inventory. It’s something, anyway. And it’s kept up, yeah. I at least have that much for brains.” He shrugged ruefully, then raked his hand backward through his glossy black hair, which fell perfectly back into place.

I made a note about the insurance. “Any repair people hired recently? Peddlers stopping in to do business, anybody other than your regular customers?”

“I buy all my organic stock from a cart vendor. Assorted herbs and other botanicals. Some odd items from another fellow. All of them, though—” He spread his hands in an out-of-luck kind of gesture, “—known them all for at least a few years.”

“Do you know their names? People like that make terrific witnesses sometimes—they’re all over the place and nobody pays them much mind. Sometimes cart vendors wind up being the key to recovering stolen property.”

“Sure. I can just write them down, if that works.” He took a small paper pad out of his jacket. I fished in my drawer for another pencil and handed it to him, and he wrote down the names in a firm, decisive script.

I took the list of missing items out and skimmed it, wincing slightly. “I’m not seeing much in the way of uniquely identifiable here,” I said, feeling a bit sorry for him. “Nothing recognizable taken? Nothing that couldn’t be mistaken for anyone’s but yours?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged again. “That’s how it goes sometimes, I guess. At least I’ll have the guard report for insurance.”

“Yeah. There’s that, anyway.” I tucked his inventory list into the file and dated it for Erskine. “Let me take a few minutes finishing this up and I’ll let you sign off and be on your way,” I said.

“Sure.” He took out his book and opened it up.

It took me less than ten minutes to finish writing up such a short statement, and when I was done I reread the thing for accuracy, then presented it to Quint. “Read this, if you will, and then sign here and here to indicate that you’ve agreed this is an accurate representation of your statement. And don’t worry yourself over whether you got everything perfect. If you remember anything else later we can add it to the case then.”

He nodded and pulled the page over to him to begin reading.

Curry came in, still dusting snow off his short cloak, and immediately planted himself in front of the radiator closest to our desks. “Ugh—is it snowing again?” I asked, getting up to join him while Quint finished reviewing the statement.

“Changed over to sleet just as I was getting in,” he grumbled.

“Even better. I’m sure that’ll be a joy to get home in.”

“Tell me about it.” He stood there rubbing his arms and shivering. “Didn’t expect it to get so cold so quick, or that I’d be out in it so long.”

“Hey, I’m just finishing up a victim statement for Erskine. You warm up and I’ll go find you something hot to drink, once I’m through.”

“Did I ever tell you you’re the absolute loveliest person alive?” Curry inquired.

“Well, don’t get ahead of yourself,” I told him. “I didn’t say just what I’d warm up for you.” He made a face and I cuffed him lightly on the shoulder.