Read The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One for Free Online

police officer were numbered, that was an obviosity, if there was such a word. Since Nelson G. Netherby had assumed office some eighteen months earlier, investigations of the type confronting Lockington had been fixed—Netherby dictating verdicts long before they were officially arrived at. The procedures had been given an appearance of authenticity by the retention of traditional trappings—the highly-publicized selections of blue-ribbon panels, the haggling, the haranguing, the disputes, but the proof was in the pudding—not a single verdict had gone in favor of the accused. To the discerning eye there was no disguising it—the mavericks, or those perceived as such, were being systematically cut from the herd, branded as unfit, displayed as pariahs in this, the brave new era of sweetness, light, and gross permissiveness. Lockington saw his chances of acquittal as approximating those of a crippled rabbit at a timberwolf reunion.
    Three months back, Matt Ryan had been canned for busting the jaw of a prominent alderman in a Wilson Avenue brothel. Two weeks earlier, Ace Webster had gotten the axe on charges of driving his police vehicle sideways into the rear end of Cardinal Tom Keough’s brand-new Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot of Economy Liquors, this at a time when Ace Webster had been working on a bowl of chili at Mexican Joe’s across the street. And on Monday last, Mule Merriam had been booted off the force for hopping into bed with the wife of a city councilman, the matter exacerbated when the cuckolded councilman had opened fire on the fleeing Merriam, blasting a hole in the radiator of an approaching sanitation department truck. The good old days were gone—the situation had degenerated to the point where a Chicago cop could be fired for scratching his balls in his own bathtub.
    There was however one bright splinter protruding from the wreckage of Lockington’s police career, bright only by contrast to the gloomy bulk of the ruins, but a notch better than nothing—his suspension hadn’t been without pay, the usual sop thrown to those about to be pink-slipped, and he’d have a measure of adjustment time, possibly as long as six weeks, before his dismissal went into the books. Beyond that projection, Lockington’s future was far too dim to contemplate—he’d been a cop for more than fifteen years, and police procedures were virtually all he knew. But there’d be severance pay, he’d receive six months of Illinois unemployment compensation, his pension fund would be available in a lump sum, and while he wouldn’t be eating particularly high on the hog, it’d be a while before he starved to death.
    The Wednesday morning was dismal, quite cool for a Chicago August, gray, damp, with billowing black clouds mushrooming ominously to the southwest of the city. If there wasn’t rain, he’d probably accomplish something of breathtaking consequence later in the day, providing he could find something of breathtaking consequence to accomplish. Lockington considered his potential for breathtakingly consequential accomplishment and smiled wryly, hoping to Christ that there’d be rain.
    He watched a silver Toyota Cressida ease to a halt in front of his apartment building to spook the pigeons of Barry Avenue, sending them flapping northward to Belmont Avenue. A great grayish glob of pigeon dung splashed audibly against his window pane, sticking there, partially obscuring his view of the thirtyish young lady who departed the expensive Japanese automobile to prance primly to the sidewalk. She was five-six or so, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and cuter than a termite’s nightshirt. She was pert-nosed, full red-lipped, jutting-breasted, narrow-waisted, slim-hipped, long-legged, and she moved with the fluid grace of a young jungle cat. She wore a gauzy powder blue blouse with a navy blue tie at its collar, a pleated, short navy blue skirt with powder blue belt, three-inch-heeled powder blue pumps with navy blue bows at the