“How many cells in here?” Frank asked.
“About fifty-five,” Flynn said. “We’ve rearranged it some, but not much. At least they gave me another place to put the bicycles. Twelve hundred stolen bicycles a year. You think the guy who designed these cells was thinking, ‘Gee, I better leave room for twelve hundred bicycles’?”
The former cells were converted to hold evidence and other property under police control. Where once women inmates were held, there were now bags, boxes, and bins of evidence, and bunks had been converted into wide shelves. Each bag or box was sealed with red tape; some were also sealed by the lab’s blue tape. Affixed to one corner of each of the containers was a computer-printed tag with an evidence number, case number, booking and citation numbers.
Wondering if the Randolph evidence had been tracked by computer, Frank asked, “When did they stop using a manual system to keep track of all of this?”
“Nineteen eighty-three,” Flynn said. “I don’t even like to think about what it was like back then.”
“You’ve been in charge for what, four years now?”
“Yes. I came in here, there were no video cameras, you could have a single individual working the desk, you had unescorted personnel wandering back through here, no motion detectors — a damned mess. You want to know something crazy?”
“What?”
“I made most of my improvements based on the suggestions of a dead man. Trent Randolph.”
Frank stopped walking.
“Come on, we’ve got to put on a nice show here. Our voices aren’t being recorded, thank the baby Jesus in his diapers, but they’ll be watching.”
“They don’t trust their boss?” Frank asked as they passed an area holding televisions, radios, and stereo equipment.
“You’re the hot topic of gossip in the department these days,” Flynn said, taking out another set of keys and unlocking a door to another hallway. They passed cells containing weapons. The cells were locked.
“Tell me about Randolph’s suggestions. Did you know him?”
“No, not really. But he wrote this set of papers for the commission about how screwed up things were around here when it came to evidence. Guess it caused a hell of an uproar among the brass at the time. You know, here he was a newcomer, and the first of these papers says, ‘Hey, fellas, your department is HUA when it comes to evidence control.’”
While Frank doubted that Randolph literally reported that the LPPD had its “head up its ass,” he could imagine how unwelcome any civilian newcomer’s criticism would be.
“You weren’t in charge here until long after Randolph was killed,” Frank said. “How did you see this report?”
Flynn smiled and said, “I had the good fortune of taking over from a guy who wasn’t organized and who never threw anything away.” He paused and opened another door. “Don’t slip here in front of the ding cells. The floor is wet. We had plumbing problems thanks to those assholes upstairs. Next week we’ll see an end to that.”
The “ding cells” — Flynn’s old-fashioned slang for a cell where an inmate was kept if she was “dingy” — were the former isolation lockups, solid-steel cells with tiny, thick-plate viewing ports, now used to hold low-value drugs. The plumbing leak had been caused when the inmates of the men’s jail on the floor above had pulled an equally old-fashioned prisoners’ trick — stuffing blankets down the jail’s toilets for the amusement of seeing the chaos it could cause when the plumbing backed up. The department was about to install what amounted to a gigantic garbage disposal to chew up the blankets before they clogged the lines.
“You were telling me about finding Randolph’s report,” Frank said as they continued on.
“Yeah — well, I vaguely remembered something about it from when Randolph was alive. Chief Hale was pissed as hell about it, but Randolph had been his ally on some other matters, so he was in a tough spot. Plus, Randolph was tight with this old geezer on the newspaper, and nobody wanted that kind of trouble.” He paused. “Sorry — forgot about your wife.”
They were walking near shelves filled with small boxes. Frank thought his pager went off, but when he checked it, there was no new message. He heard the sound again. He looked up to see Flynn smiling. “We keep all the beepers and cell phones in this section. Listen.”
Within seconds, another pager sounded and then another, first from one unseen but nearby location and then from another. Soon, it seemed as if they were surrounded by them. It was as if they had entered a forest full of strange crickets that chirped only one or two at a time.
Flynn laughed. “All the damned drug dealers’ customers, still trying to get ahold of them.”
Frank smiled. “Just think — in the course of a day, you’re hearing thousands in lost sales.”
“They’ll find someone else to buy from, but I’m happy to know that the previous owners of these things are missing out. Anyway, I was telling you about this report. So, I didn’t remember all of this history at first, just that there had been some big brouhaha. But that was enough to make me decide not to mention to anybody about where I’m getting all these notions for improvements. And I know Trent Randolph is long dead, so he isn’t likely to speak up and tell everyone I stole his ideas. But then I guess my conscience starts to bother me, so I go to Hale, and that’s when he tells me that Randolph was his friend and it’s great that I have this report and did I find any others.”
“Others?”
“I guess Randolph had the fire of a reformer — you know, he had ideas about everything. All excited about applying scientific principles to the way we do business around here. But I only found the one report.”
They entered a room that held several large safes, including one for cash and others for the most valuable drugs. Two large walk-in freezers stood nearby, one with a rosary on it. The homicide freezer.
“You didn’t want to tell me about Randolph in front of your staff?” Frank asked.
