Chapter 4. The detective.

Eddie Bohannon munched on an apple — well, technically, it was a small bit of ImagPro that had been reconstituted to look like an apple, but it did taste just as good as an authentic golden delicious — and seemed to focus her eyes somewhere about six light years beyond the office wall.

“Let me see if I get this straight,” she said, in her best beleaguered detective-sergeant matter-of-fact tone. “Guy comes in, knocks you around, says he’s coming back and won’t stop at bruises next time, and says he’s from Creative Leisure.”

Snooky shifted uncomfortably in the big easy chair. Pete Wong reached out to hold her hand, and she shook it off. “I guess he didn’t exactly come out and say he was from Creative Leisure.”

Detective Sgt. Eddie Bohannon leaned forward at her desk and locked her fingers together. “You’re just connecting your business dealings with the attack.”

“They want to buy my place,” the barkeep insisted. “The last guy they sent in before this said something like they’d hate to use 'more persuasive measures’ on me.”

“That could mean their lawyer would call your lawyer.”

“Or it could mean they’d toss me through my mirror!” Snooky snarled. “Don’t you think it’s all connected?”

“It don’t matter what I think,” said Eddie Bohannon. “It’s what the facts are.”

“Don’t you think you’ve been watching a little too much Dragnet, Sergeant?” Pete asked.

“What the hell’s Dragnet?”

“Never mind.” Pete sometimes forgot that most people don’t watch old movies and TV shows as much as he did. “Look, what’s the point of all this extra questioning? You have our statements. Why don’t you go looking for this Hamilton guy?”

Bohannon shrugged and leaned back in the chair, tapping her pencil lightly on the desk blotter. “Because, Mr. Wong, all I got is a possible ID on Hamilton and this lady’s speculation. And frankly, that’s nowhere near probable cause.”

It was Baxter Hetznecker’s turn to stir in his chair. “The last time I saw Jeff, he was running a Special Forces camp on a moon off BD-2,” he offered. “But don’t ya think it would be a pretty weird coincidence if I think I saw him comin’ out of Snooky’s and he really is on PC-3 now?”

“Yeah, that could link him to the assault,” said Detective Sgt. Eddie Bohannon, “but not to Creative Leisure. They’ve been doing a lot of business with folks around here, and we’ve never had any kind of complaint like this about 'em.”

“OK, then, pick up Hamilton for questioning. What the hell else do you need?” Bob Whelan said with his usual tact.

Bohannon looked at Whelan and sighed. This was not what she wanted to deal with; her shift was scheduled to end in 10 minutes and, frankly, it had not been a good day.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give the shift commander your description of Hamilton and we’ll see if he turns up. You’re right — we can at least ask him if he’s beaten up any women lately.”

“I’ll do you one better than a description,” Baxter said, picking up a pen and paper. “Here’s his old Special Forces number. They oughtta have a photo of him on file.”

The bedraggled sergeant swore silently. It would take 20 minutes to process a photo and get it out on the street. “Well, sure, that’ll help,” she said evenly. “You sure this is the number?”

Baxter Hetznecker tapped the side of his ample head. “I don’t forget figgers. That’s his number, all right.”

Detective Sgt. Eddie “Don’t Call Me Edith” Bohannon took the slip of paper from the big man and tried to smile.

“Great,” she managed. “I’ll get our people working on this, and we’ll see what turns up. In the meantime, lady, this guy shows up at your bar again, you call us before he’s two steps inside the door. Got it?”

Snooky nodded, but Baxter asked, “What if he just takes the place out with a bazooka?”

Sgt. Eddie Bohannon stared at the big man, turned to his compatriots, and asked, “What is this guy on?”

“The guy’s good,” Baxter insisted. “If he wants to take someplace out, he’s gonna be thorough about it.”

“You know, if I hadn’t seen you on TV last month, I’d throw you in a cell as a nut bag, big guy,” Bohannon said. “If Hamilton — if this guy is Hamilton — if he wants to use a bazooka, you don’t have to worry about what we do next, because you’ll be dead and half the encampment, too. That’s in the old area that’s not built to be bomb-proof. An explosion would suck the air right out of here.”

“All the more reason to go after this guy,” Pete said. “An Imaginary grenade could make that place selectively dissolve, quietly and without fanfare.”

“I thought the I-bomb technology was destroyed with the moon,” Bohannon said.

“The bomb, maybe, these little Imag-Grenades, maybe not. We’ve seen those things work,” Pete said with a shiver. “It’s kind of spooky.”

“We’ll put Hamilton’s picture on the street and look him up,” Sgt. Bohannon said, and now it was getting extremely close to shift change. “Now you folks go home and relax, let us cops do our job, OK?”

“Yeah, but —”

“Let — us — do — our — jobs.” A significant pause. “OK??”

The civilians filed quietly out the door, and Eddie Bohannon sat deathly still for a moment, staring at the blank computer screen next to her desk. She reached for the pipe resting on top of the screen, pulled out her tobacco pouch and lit a bowl.

As wisps of aroma wafted over the room, Detective Sgt. Bohannon of the PC-3 Police Department sighed audibly. Something heavy had settled across her shoulders and set up camp.

Next: Chapter 5. Things that go bump on the head.