Childtime Institutions (continued)

“We have a problem,” the sergeant began.

His voice almost echoed in the nearly silent room. Perez tried to remember his name, and he sat too far from the sergeant to read the name on his badge. Heads turned slightly and faint whispers rose, ending abruptly when the sergeant opened his mouth again.

“Two of our patrol officers have disappeared,” he said.

Voices around Perez began to rise again.

“Disappeared,” the sergeant repeated. “Dis-a-ppeared,” he enunciated. “Your fellow officers,” he went on. “Without a trace.”

Conversation rose around Perez. He heard the high pitch of rising panic in some of it.

“The fourth pair in two months,” the sergeant amended with emphasis. “Without a trace.”

He tapped a control and the panels behind him filled with images. One of them, Perez saw, displayed scrolling lines of text. Although he could not read them clearly from where he sat, he suspected that they showed either a timeline of the events or a relevant excerpt from the dispatch transcript.

The full impact of what the sergeant had said hit Perez. Eight patrol officers had disappeared during the past two months. Eight. Armed officers.

“So far,” the sergeant continued. “We’ve identified no clues as to how or why. There have been no witnesses—at least none willing to come forth.” He gestured toward the panel that Perez had been studying earlier. “All communications were routine,” he reported. “Until they failed to check in.”

One of the more senior officers seated toward the front of the room raised his hand. The sergeant’s eyes flickered toward her for an instant, but he did not acknowledge her. Perez suspected that he already knew what question she was going to ask.

“All of the . . . disappearances,” the sergeant went on, “happened throughout the city. There’s nothing—so far—to suggest that they are associated with any particular neighborhood.”

The officer’s arm dropped to his lap. Perez took a slow breath. It was the one of the first questions that he would have asked—that, and whether the missing officers had anything in common. He was certain, though, that would have been one of the first things that the department would have investigated. If they had found something, Perez guessed, this briefing would have an entirely different tone and topic.

One of the lieutenants leaned forward and whispered something into the sergeant’s ear. The sergeant listened for a moment and then nodded. There was no change in his expression.

“We’re short on facts,” he announced. “We can’t even tell you what to be on the watch for.” He looked grim—an expression that Perez felt seemed uncharacteristic for the man.

The sergeant’s gaze swept the officers gathered in the room. “Be more than careful,” he said. “Be more than vigilant,” he warned them. “Call in everything,” he told them. “No matter how minor it might seem.” Voices began to rise again. “We’ve brought in relief dispatchers to handle the load,” he said, and the noise level subsided.

“Now get out there,” he instructed them, much his typical gruffness returning. “And be safe.”

Perez rose and looked around, searching for his assigned partner. Although he still could remember his name, he was pretty certain that he would recognize him on sight. It was difficult, though, to make out a single face among the small crowd of uniformed figures. Most of the officers were heading toward the two exit doors, one on each side of the room on either side of the podium. Perez was about to give up, trying to decide which hallway might give him better odds of locating his partner, when someone tapped his shoulder.

Startled, he nearly stumbled over his chair. A low chuckle sounded from behind him. Perez was certain that he recognized its source. His stomach knotted and he tried not to grimace.

“Were you looking for me, Jose?” the voice said.

Perez turned slowly, forcing his expression into a rigid mask.

“No,” he replied flatly, somehow managing to not grind his teeth together as he spoke.

He looked up into Brandt’s face. The other recruit had at least five centimeters on him, as well as weighing in at least an additional twenty kilos. From the first day that Perez encountered Brandt at the academy, he postulated what he, in his head alone, called The Mind-Mass Ratio. His theory went along the lines that a person could have both body mass and brain mass, but there was some biological law that dictated the proper ratio for each. He had never calculated any kind of value for it, although he guessed that a logarithmic scale was involved, but considered Brandt as the prime example to prove his hypothesis.

“Too bad,” Brandt grunted. It would have been stereotypical, Perez thought, for Brandt to also sneer, but that is what he did.

Must have a very limited set of operations.

“Ferrero transferred out,” Brandt told him. “To Tennessee . . . or Minnesota, or somewhere like that.”

Perez nearly bit his lip, failing to see how those states were even remotely related. They clearly were in some way in Brandt’s mind.

“Okay,” he responded cautiously.

“So I’m your partner.” Brandt grinned. The expression completely failed to put Perez at ease. “For today.”

Perez suspected that Brandt meant to imply something ominous with that statement. While it did little to put him at ease, it did give Perez hope that he would only be stuck with the behemoth for a single shift.

And if someone decides we’re the next ones to “disappear” . . .

He hoped his temporary partner’s size would prove to be a sufficient deterrent. Perez tried not think about whether any of the missing patrol officers might have been about the same size.

“For today,” Perez agreed, trying to sound deferential.

Brandt grinned again and aimed a slap at Perez’s shoulder. Fortunately, Perez saw it coming and was able to lessen most of the impact. As a result, he only jerked forward slightly and did not nearly tumble to the floor. Brandt seemed disappointed, but let it pass.

“Let’s move out, partner,” he announced, quite a bit louder than was necessary.

Perez turned away so that there was no way that Brandt could see him sigh.

It’s going to be a long night . . .