[Sodium_noir] Friday Afternoon to Evening

[Hope Zagorski]

  Hope Zagorski

  Mortal

  St. Bridget's

  While Hope seeks wisdom from her God, she feels something vibrating.
  She looks down to see her cell phone vibrating a third time, her
  conference with the Divine interrupted once more by the demands of
  the Mundane. She takes her phone from her pocket and looks at the
  number. If it was her mother again, she was changing her number. 

  The number was local, and the very familiar prefix used by Gotham PD.
  As she watches, the phone stops vibrating. She puts it away, but gets
  up from the kneeling pad. She feels the phone vibrate once as she
  starts to leave the pew, a sure sign that whoever it was, they had
  left a message. And who would be calling her? Was it Brannigan
  breaking the restriction against talking to her? Pretty risky, using
  the phone at Headquarters to do it.

  As Hope leaves the church, a stray bit of sunlight assails her eyes,
  forcing her to squint. She takes the phone out again and checks her
  voice mail, skipping over the message left by her mother in favor of
  the most recent message.

  The voice she heard was the last one she’d expected. “Detective
  Zagorski, this is Detective Millet from Internal Affairs. I’d like to
  meet with you this afternoon. Please call me back. He repeats the
  number for his direct line twice, but Hope had already committed it
  to memory.

  “God
bless it.” Hope says, remembering that she was standing outside
  a House of God, and such blasphemy would mean another trip to the
  confessional. She terminates the call, and then calls the detective
  back. Keeping IA waiting tended to be very hazardous to one’s career,
  and she was already on thin ice.

  The call goes immediately to the detective’s voice mail. Crap. If
  there was one thing she hated, it was playing Phone Tag, especially
  on something this important. Hope leaves a message, and decides to go
  for a stroll up the block to clear her head, putting her cell phone
  back on ring, trying not to focus on what this call might mean.

  Ten minutes later, Hope’s phone begins to play a cheerful tune.
  Checking the display, it was another local number with the same
  prefix as before. She opts for answering it professionally, as
  opposed to casually. She takes a deep breath and accepts the call.
  “Zagorski.” She replies.

  “It's Detective Millet. Thank you for calling me back so quickly,
  Detective Zagorski.” Hope rolls her eyes. It wasn’t like she had a
  choice in the matter, and she wanted it over with. “I wanted to
  schedule a meeting with you. Will five o’clock work for you?”

  Five o’clock. That was several hours from now. How like them, to
  arrange it late in the day and make her spend the time between
  sweating and waiting for the verdict. “That will be fine.” She lies,
  knowing it didn't really matter what her answer was, as long as it
  was yes. 

  “Good.” Millet replies. “I believe you know where our offices are.”

  Hope winces. He couldn’t resist the small dig, to remind her that she
  had been under investigation once before. She doesn’t bother to
  respond. “See you then.” With that she hangs up. It may not be a dig,
  but it was the last word.  And today, she would take her small
  victories where she could find them.  

  [TBC]

-- 
_______________________________________________

Search for businesses by name, location, or phone number.  -Lycos Yellow Pages

http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://elsinore.net/pipermail/sodium_noir_elsinore.net/attachments/20060420/e860c68e/attachment.htm