Free Nailed by Joseph Flynn

“are these gentlemen from the federal government sitting in the same places where you left them?”
    “No, sir. I left them seated at your planning table.” He indicated a teak table, across the room from Ron’s desk, with six empty chairs around it. Three of the places at the table had coffee cups in front of them. Stanley continued, “I offered the agents refreshment and told them they should buzz Dinah or call for me if they needed anything else.”
    The two agents in the guest chairs had to turn sideways to keep an eye on the cops. Their boss still hadn’t given the least indication that he was willing to budge from Ron’s chair, the seat of power in the room. But he was no longer smiling. He was doing his best to look intimidating.
    “Then you didn’t invite that gentleman to sit behind my desk?”
    “No, sir. I most definitely did not.”
    The chief turned to his deputy chief.
    “Are we clear on the situation here?”
    “Yes, Chief. We are.”
    “You think that fed was poking through my desk?”
    “Hey!” shouted one of the junior agents. He might have said more but he caught sight of the frown on his boss’s face.
    “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he went through your desk, Chief. Might even have photographed everything in it with a smart phone.”
    Ron considered this possibility, then he turned to the sergeant. “Let’s get Officer Marx in here to dust my desk.”
    That finally got a rise out of the guy in Ron’s seat.
    “You can’t do that! Do you know who I am?”
    Ron continued, “And have that man fingerprinted so we can see if there’s a match.”
    Now the fed was on his feet, and his subordinates quickly joined him. “I’m Francis Horgan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office.”
    Ron ignored the man. “If you get a match, Sarge, we’ll have to consider the possibility the deputy chief mentioned about them photographing my papers, so seize their phones.”
    “Like hell you will!” Horgan shouted, stepping out from behind Ron’s desk.
    Now Ron looked at the man, looked him square in the eyes.
    “If they try to escape or go for their guns, Sarge …”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Shoot them.”
    Several more cops appeared in the doorway behind their superiors, and the FBI agents felt they were in a very bad spot. One in which there would be no explaining whatever happened next.
    What happened next was the phone rang.
    Sergeant Stanley said, “I believe that’s for you, Mr. Horgan. Probably Mayor Steadman wanting to have a little talk with you and your colleagues.”
    As usual, Sergeant Stanley had it exactly right.
     
    The meeting reconvened thirty minutes later in the mayor’s office when Clay Steadman arrived at the Muni Complex. There was no question at all who would sit behind his desk. Ron was the only member of the Goldstrike PD in the room. With Clay also present, the odds were stacked decidedly in the town’s favor. Especially after Ron told the mayor his suspicion regarding the federal agent.
    “Did you rifle Chief Ketchum’s desk, Agent Horgan?”
    The fed couldn’t hold the mayor’s glare, and he evaded the question.
    “I came here to advise the chief that the bureau will be taking over the investigation of the homicide that occurred in Goldstrike yesterday.”
    “Is that right?”
    The amount of contempt and sarcasm Clay packed into three innocuous words made the FBI men shrivel. It was the best delivery Ron had ever heard from the mayor. But then he wasn’t acting.
    “A hate crime like this, a racial killing, comes under federal jurisdiction.”
    “Well, it’s plain to see that there were some very hard feelings involved in this killing. But I’d like to know how the FBI has determined from its offices in San Francisco that the nature of that animosity was racial, when our police department, working around the clock right here, has yet to determine a motive.”
    Horgan found the nerve to sneer at Ron and, implicitly, the Goldstrike