Cocoa Tales

Episode 15

A week later–my time–when I felt like going at this again, I returned to find Harold waiting for me, patient as ever. "Shall we continue?" he asked.

Fine, I replied. Glad to see you haven't turned on me.

"Turned on you? Why?"

When I leave you guys alone for a while, sometimes you turn on me.

"What does that mean?"

Nothing. Let's move on.

"Okay," Harold said in a nervous tone. "What's next?"

Floyd arrived at the precinct sans Faber who was, at that moment, exploring his refrigerator for any potential intoxicants. Floyd was wishing he could imbibe an intoxicant or two but, doggonit, the poor fellow had a solid work ethic.

"Floyd!" the chief hollered, and Floyd froze in place. "Floyd, get your butt over here!"

Turning slowly, Floyd approached the chief and said, "You're back, sir. Thought you were at ground zero."

"I thought you were with Faber," the chief replied.

"He," Floyd said with a shrug, "went home...sick, I guess."

The chief nodded. "Probably for the best. Listen, Floyd: she's back."

"She?" Floyd was confused, but only for a second. "Jessica Holiday?"

"Is that her name? I can never remember their names. They all look the same to me, those FBI types. It's the redhead. Wanna distract her again?"

"Sure," Floyd said with an exasperated shake of the head, "but do you know what she wants. I mean, what she really wants?"

"All I know," the chief said turning from Floyd, "is the FBI is trying to rain in on our parade again. Don't let them. And when Faber feels better, tell him he's fired. Understand?"

"I understand," Floyd replied, making a mental note to add a check mark to the number of times Faber'd been fired that week. "Where is Jessica waiting for me?"

"Who's Jessica?" the chief asked as he was walking away, as though what he said was not a question at all but an expression of his lack of interest in anything FBI-related.

Floyd sighed. Redding being bombed back to The Stone Age and he gets to play babysitter to the FBI. Again.

"She's probably in the meeting room again," Floyd muttered and he started across the upper cubicle room for the conference room. And even before he was inside, he saw her, Jessica's straight, bright red hair announcing her presence like a lighthouse.

She was seated at the desk, for once not rifling through paperwork. She was waiting patiently for Floyd's arrival. And as he stepped into the room, she said quickly, "Close the door."

Floyd obliged, but said nothing.

"Where's...the other one," Jessica asked.

"Faber?"

"Yeah, him."

"He's home sick."

Jessica nodded, inhaled slowly through her nose and said, "I should probably tell you, Detective Floyd, I wasn't really here to find the Redding Bomber."

Nodding once, Floyd said, "You don't say."

"I was here because I had reason to believe an assassin was in your city. An assassin who calls himself 'The Sandman' recently booked a ticket to a large, far northern California city, and Redding fit the bill. I had planned on coming here even before the explosions started happening. The bombings, I hate to say it, were a convenient cover story."