The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.08 The Good Boy

June 5, 9:52 pm

"A little late for you, isn't it, Detective?"

Carla Grayson looked up from her phone. She smiled at the security guard at the door to the prisoner wing of the Salt Lake County Detention Center.

"Well, you know how it is, Mike. Never enough hours in the day."

"Here to see the kid again?"

The guard's smile seemed just the slightest bit patronizing to Detective Grayson, but she had indeed been spending a lot of time visiting Howard Gunderson. It wasn't surprising that the staff at the Detention Center had noticed, and she could only imagine what they said when they saw her coming.

There's Grayson, she imagined them saying. No kid of her own and looking for another lost cause to fix...

"Yeah, one more time, I think," she said, forcing a smile for the guard. "I came by earlier, but he was sleeping."

"Well, that's very kind of you, not to wake him up" the guard said, his sarcasm now in full flower. Carla just smiled and handed him her bag, badge and gun before passing through the metal detector. The guard scanned Carla's ID and passed her a visitor's credential. "Although it seems open and shut to me. Kid just wanted to pop somebody at random. Happens like that sometimes. Probably a gang initiation thing."

Carla smiled, but found her patience was wearing thin with this guy. He knew nothing about the details of Howard Gunderson's case, and she didn't want to get into it with him. She was tempted to tell him he should just keep his opinions to himself, but she knew these late night guys had little to do but gossip amongst themselves like a bunch of old hens.

"Yeah, probably," Carla said. The guard handed back her bag and badge. "But we'll see."

"Should I hold on to your piece?"

It was forbidden to carry a weapon into the detention center, but it was courteous for the guard to ask. She wondered what he'd say if she asked for it back.

"You bet. I don't think I'll be long. Like you said, it's late."

"Sure thing."

The guard waved her through and she headed deeper into the labyrinth of the detention center, while he went back to the glass cubicle, surely to crack jokes with his shift partner. Probably about what a lost cause Howard Gunderson was, and what a fool she was for spending so much time on him.

She wasn't sure they were wrong.

Carla had been the first Detective on the scene after the murder of Richard Pratt. Even before speaking to the officers on site, she'd known that the boy with the lost eyes and the pale look was the one who had fired the gun that had killed the professor. But even on that first night there was something haunting about Gunderson. Something that she had been struggling to put her finger on ever since.

After passing through the second checkpoint, Carla picked up the security escort that would take her in to see the prisoner. And to her relief, it was a friendlier face.

Melvin Delgado had worked with her when they were both beat cops in West Valley City. He was a heavyset guy and could be a bit of an ass, but he also had been good friends with her late husband, and he'd been willing to do her a favor. She'd asked him to call if Gunderson woke up, no matter how late.

"Hey Mel. Thanks for the call. I got here as quick as I could. I appreciate the heads up."

"I took some doing," Mel said. "It's way too late for visitors, normally. But I can bring the kid into one of the interrogation rooms. He seems alert enough."