Free Lemons 03 Stroke of Genius by Grant Fieldgrove

turned back to the detective.
    “Look,” I continued. “It’s a win-win for you. If we don’t solve anything, you’re out nothing, and if we do come up with something or even solve it, we give you the arrest. It’s all you. We don’t need fame or publicity; we just need our cases closed so we can move on to the next. We’re good, sir. I can promise you that.”
    He sat silently at his desk for a few moments, contemplating his decision. Finally, he agreed.
    “You’ve got a deal. But! But, you have to get yourself officially hired on, on the hotel’s behalf.”
    “Deal.”
    We stood up to make our exit. I handed the detective one of my cards and assured him he would be hearing from us very soon. He gave us a friendly nod and we were out the door. Back to da hotel!
    12.
    We returned to the front desk of our crappy, over-rated hotel and again asked to speak to Mr. Adams in security. He was still on duty, luckily for us. We took a brief meeting with him and spelled out our situation. He agreed to let us meet the in-house detective. Things were looking up.
    We were lead down a corridor of offices completely hidden amongst the hotel’s walls, and were told to take a seat in a small, cluttered office. We heard our detective being paged. Fifteen minutes later the door opened and in walked the house dick.
    “Hello, my name is Garret Mulroney, how can I help you two?”
    “Hello sir,” Elise said. “My name is Elise, this is Archie. He is a private investigator from Bakersfield, I’m his assistant.”
    “Partner,” I interrupted. I flashed him my license.
    “Partner, assistant, whatever, right?” Elise tacked on. “We’re here working a death that was ruled accidental and we kind of stumbled upon another case that we believe may be intertwined with our own. We understand you had a rather nasty allegation of a rape and abduction having occurred here?”
    “Yeah, that’s right. Some lady is saying she was abducted from our hotel, but we’re calling bullshit on it. We think it’s a scam. We pretty much think everything is a scam.”
    “Understandable,” Elise said, with a faint smile upon her face, but I could tell what was really going on behind it. She wanted to gouge this cocky asshole’s eyes out and spit in the sockets. Another typical case of making the victim the suspect. We do it in our profession, but it’s a whole other thing when the victim is raped, beaten, left for dead and only discovered upon pure chance. She continued, “but we were wondering if perhaps you could take us on, maybe allow us to work both cases? Security has already granted us access to our client’s victim’s room, but the coincidence of both events occurring on the same day, around the same time, is just too great for us to ignore. We really feel like we would be a great asset to your team.”
    “Well,” Mulroney said, “I don’t have a team. It’s just me and I’m in charge of this hotel, and I think I do a pretty goddamn good job at it. We’re being sued by this lady, ya know. Like it was our fault. Nonetheless, I still have to get to the bottom of it. I don’t have the time or the energy to babysit you two. I can’t just go-‘
    I interrupted, “We’ll do it pro-bono. You can call a detective in Bakersfield by the name of Anderson, he will vouch for us. Not only that, but whatever we find goes through you first. We solve it and you get the glory.”
    “Deal.”
    Well that was easy. Didn’t even have to offer him five bucks. Whoop!
    Thirty minutes later we are in the surveillance room, looking at a huge wall of televisions, people filling every screen from all angles. It’s overwhelming and hard to take in. Mulroney tells us to take a seat so he can share with us what he has so far. I can feel my heart pumping hard in my chest. I can’t wait.
    “All our cases are labeled and saved,” Mulroney said. “We actually have your case here, too.”
    “We’d love to take a look at everything you have,” Elise