Free Fruits of the Poisonous Tree by Archer Mayor

you?”
    “Didn’t see the point,” he admitted. I turned to face him, feeling free at last to vent some of my rage.
    “How about now that she got her good fuck? Were you thinking about filing a report now?”
    He looked both surprised and angry that he’d been set up, predictably missing the point. “It was the local nut case shooting his mouth off, Lieutenant—it didn’t mean anything.”
    I threw the door open and swung out, welcoming the fresh air on my face. I leaned back inside the car where Santos was sitting stiffly, his eyes straight ahead like an adolescent wishing all adults would vanish. “You know that for a fact, do you?”
    “Yes, I do.” His voice was barely audible.
    “You better hope you’re right, Al, or we’ll talk again with more company. Don’t ever pull this kind of shit again.”
    My fury grew exponentially as I walked back to the office—not just at Santos, whose error had been no worse than Billy’s laxity, but as much at myself. Instead of immediately seizing Al’s information as the possible lead it was, I’d used his procedural sloppiness, and his predictable sexism, as a target for my own frustration. Knowing what Santos and his buddies would later make of this episode made me feel exposed and did nothing for the professional demeanor I was struggling to maintain.
    I headed back to the squad room reluctantly, wishing I could invent some excuse that would keep me on the street, at least for the rest of the day. What had happened to Gail was just a few hours old—a fresh crime with fresh leads. Statistically, that gave it “quick to solve” potential. People’s memories would be sharp; any covering up would be either ongoing or slipshod; and the combination of Gail’s status and the SA’s political needs would allow for a no-expenses-spared, all-out investigation. That was the good news.
    The downside was all inside me and had been building steam since Tony had pulled up to my place this morning. That part of me didn’t want to work around the clock, finding the man who’d turned Gail’s life upside down. It just wanted to spend time with her, helping her to rebuild her equilibrium. I could rationalize that one role fulfilled the other—I was on the case, after all, at Gail’s insistence. And I knew that giving her psychological “space” was not only sound, it was out of my hands. But none of that addressed my own emotional needs.
    Nevertheless, as I reentered the Municipal Building, I began feeling slightly better—or at least more in control.
    Harriet Fritter, not surprisingly, seemed to sense some of what was chewing at me. The even-tempered matriarch of an enormous gaggle of children, grandchildren, and at least one great-grandchild, she was a veteran observer of us all, and her sympathetic smile as I walked in was enough to move me up a few more notches.
    “I got hold of Lou Biddle at Probation—he’s calling a special intelligence meeting at Rescue, Inc. in forty-five minutes. He thought it might be more efficient for you to brief the whole group, instead of relying on phone calls or faxes.”
    The intelligence meeting was normally a monthly arrangement—a gathering of law-enforcement representatives from all the surrounding jurisdictions. It had operated discreetly for years, meeting on neutral ground, and served as an informational conduit that both cut the red tape and made for less formal relations among the participating agencies. That Lou had called them together—and in no time flat—was testimony to the support we could expect on this case. Brandt had been right about how Gail was being viewed, at least by those who wore a badge—she might as well have been my wife.
    I thanked Harriet and asked her if either Sammie Martens or Willy Kunkle had reported back in from their respective sweeps of the town’s nether reaches.
    Sammie’s head popped up from behind one of the soundproof panels that separated the four desks set up in the middle of the