The door creaked open, way too eerie and atmospheric for my tastes.
I should've told Wallace he was full of shit.
There he was, the suspect, looking nervous and bug-eyed. He was a white guy, skinny, twitchy, and hungry-looking.
"Yes? What is it, officer?" Green asked, looking tense and sniffing the air hard.
"How did you know I — ?"
He just looked at me, waiting. His eyes were kind of flat, I now noticed. I felt very unarmed. I mean, I'm not one of those guys that think shifters are innately dangerous and ominous and nasty. My boyfriend is a fox, for pity's sake. But the guy kind of scared me.
"Do you need something, officer?" he repeated. His fingers were twitching at his side. I had the feeling an explosion was building. What kind, I couldn't tell. Running, attacking, or…?
I cleared my throat. "Er, yeah. I'm…an associate of the fox. He wanted to apologize for frightening you. He had no idea what was going on. The precinct…intends to follow better protocol from now on." I was making that up, hoped it wasn't too much of a leap. Wallace had seemed pretty intent on it, though, and I figured the captain would go along rather than risk another shifter freak-out.
"He asked me to check on you, see if you were okay or needed anything."
Something in what I'd said was wrong. Quinn narrowed his eyes at me. "Need something?" he repeated in a flat voice.
"Yeah. Well, he wanted to apologize, but he couldn't do it himself. I'm his, er, representative." Could I just come out and say boyfriend? I'd heard rabbits were pretty traditional. And by traditional, I mean "they don't like gay people."
I mean, I'm bi, not gay. But that doesn't make much difference to most people, I guess. I was in a relationship with another man, so most people wouldn't care if I found women attractive in general as well.
He stared at me, his nostrils flaring. "Why, yes, officer. Why don't you step in and look around? Why don'tyoutell me what I need?"
I stared at him.
"Come on. Or are you afraid?" He drew back from the door and held it open, his eyes angrily daring me. He didn't seem like a scared bunny rabbit right now. Briefly, I entertained the idea of shaking my head and backing away. I didn't do it.
I stepped in and looked around. It was even worse inside, everything faded, chipped, or cracked. The stove had a couple of the knobs taped off; apparently only half the burners worked. The fridge would've been old a few decades ago. The table bore scars and had a folded magazine shoved under one of its feet to keep it even. The floor was slightly uneven, just enough to make everything feel off, like a dream. Or a nightmare.
There were two lights in the kitchen, and one of them was burned out, leaving the room feeling even darker than its depressing interior would've. The windows were open, without curtains or blinds, but they provided little light, somehow, in this haze of desperation.
Quinn got all up in my face and pointed a finger at me, hard. "You guys drag me away from work, you make me look bad in front of my boss so he decides to fire me, you scare my kids half to death, and what, I'm just supposed to, I don't know, beg? How am I supposed to feed them, huh?" He poked me in the chest with the finger, hard.
"Sir," I said, using my cop voice. "Calm down."
"No. You calm down." He moved away from me, facing out the window, his head bowed, his whole posture defeated. He was breathing heavily. I thought he might be about to cry. That would be just perfect.
"Can you tell me what happened at your job?" I was still speaking in cop-voice, a good go-to for emergencies. I reached for a pad to write things down, and flipped it open.
Quinn Green,I wrote.Rabbit shifter.
"Yeah." He gave a faint nod at last. "I work at the gravel pit. Loading and inventory. You guys came to get me there. The boss decided…he didn't need the trouble."
"Doesn't he have to give you notice?" I wrote,Gravel pit. Fired after questioned by police. I tapped the pen against paper and looked up.
He was staring at me with a curled lip. "He kept me on just enough hours so he didn't have to pay for any health insurance. What do you think, officer?"
Just then a little kid moved past me from outside. He was one who'd run away from my car like I was a demon from hell. "Daddy?" he asked in a scared little voice.
I did a double take. He was black, with very dark skin, and he looked nothing like Quinn. I mean not even a little bit. If he was mixed race, with Quinn as his father, you'd never have guessed it from looking at him.
Quinn softened instantly, all his hard edges easing. "I'm here, buddy," he said, and knelt down and held his hands out. The little boy ran to his arms and was held close, lifted up as Quinn stood again, his knees creaking just a little.
The whole thing reminded me so much of me and my kid that I felt myself softening. Eli's the kind of boy who needs a lot of reassurance, and is always afraid I'm going to crap out on him and forget to come home, or something else horrible. He's dealt with a lot of bad things in his life, and it takes all my strength to be a good dad for him. Even then it doesn't always feel like enough.
Now I was watching another dad trying to comfort his son, rubbing his back, holding him close. His eyes met mine over his son's skinny shoulders. Understanding passed between us, although I'm not sure how. His hostility wasn't there anymore, although a weary defiance still remained. I was thinking it had less to do with me and more to do with the hand life had dealt him, though.
