Viggo's Break - Chapter 3.1 - Step into my parlor (Warning, Russ's POV)

Detective Russel Pierce, a corrupt cop, has just learned that a man he framed for murder has escaped jail.

To know more, read Chapter 2.2.

I apologize for the racist and sexist parts. They are supposed to reflect my character's views and beliefs, they in no way reflect mine.

The first journalist called before Detective Russel Pierce left for the station. Her name was Marcella Beck, she went by “Mark”. She was a sweet kid and it had always appealed to him. He had been thinking about Mark Beck a lot for a while. She blushed and flirted in her innocent way, ripe for the plucking. He hadn't come across so tempting a fruit since the early days with Nyssa.

Of course, such fruits rotted even faster. Women were tiresome, Russ reflected. Take Nyssa for example. The deceitful little bitch, all smiles and honey so long as he couldn't fuck her and, now that he owned her, the little slut couldn't be bothered with decent underwear or makeup.

He ignored Mark Beck's call. As much as he wanted to take her for a test ride, it wasn't worth the hassle of talking about Peter “Tight-Ass” “Viggo” Carlsen. Very few temptations were worth talking about the bastard. Eight years after getting him locked up tight, it still gave Russ stomach cramps. Carlsen had been such a fucking preacher, curling his lips at him, getting stuff, women Russ wanted.

But Russ got what he wanted in the end. Always. He had said Carlsen's name once, during sex, breathing it into Nyssa's ear to see if it got a rise out of her. It had been like kicking a puppy. People said that like it was bad. Freaking social conditioning. Once you stopped making yourself feel wretched over hurting something small and vulnerable, it was orgasmic.

Orgasm was one thing he hadn't gotten out of it. The moment he had uttered Carlsen's name, he had gone limp, remembering the fucker’s face as they had dragged him out of the courtroom. Those blue eyes were those of a sniper and Russ could tell he was in his cross-hairs. That day in the courtroom, he had stood up without thinking, which – wasn't that ironic – was exactly the problem with Carlsen.

Russ had a strong personality. He had, as he liked to call it, charisma. He exerted a pull of a sort on people and could bend them to his will. But he had never been able to bend Viggo fucking Carlsen. The guy had the scintillating personality of a nail but had proved abnormally resistant to the pull. Despite all and any effort to the contrary, he had remained the proverbial straight arrow. Even worse, he had exerted his own draw on Russ and sometimes made him do things he didn't want to.

That scared Russ. And it was a rare person that scared Russel Pierce. His mother had been a doormat. By the time he was five, he could wrap her and every adult in a three miles radius around his fingers. Only his grandfather had been the plague of those early days.

Colonel Maximilian Pierce, rigid and forbidding, had always seen right through his crap. A great believer in caning, he had forced his grandson to walk the straight and narrow. Calling him “sir”. Obeying. Russ got sick with anger whenever he remembered the humiliation of it all. He was nonetheless grateful to the old man for teaching him self-discipline – teaching him shooting too. God knew the patriarch had gone to his Maker regretting ever giving him those lessons.

Hunting accidents…You just had to love them.

Now, Russ smiled. Carlsen too would soon become a bad memory. For eight years, Russ had been tormented by the knowledge that Carlsen was still alive somewhere. The bastard had cost him too many a night of tossing and turning, unable to sleep, worried. Even torturing Nyssa wasn't a true relief. Even there, he was haunted, he couldn't take it too far. Whenever he came close, he remembered Carlsen's warnings – don’t touch her, don’t fuck her, don’t hurt her. His hands around her neck, he couldn't squeeze, couldn't break her for good. Cold sweat drenched his body, dread uncurled in his stomach.

They had still been partners and best buddies, but there had been a stillness to Carlsen's big body as he had warned him off. That stillness had scared Russ shitless. For that reason, he had never damaged the girl permanently. Her every breath was a testimony to Carlsen's continued capacity for nuisance.

Shaking off those bitter thoughts, Russ stepped into the station. It was a boiling pot of humanity, but no more than usual. There were no frantic uniforms running around with maps and pictures of Carlsen. Everything was – relatively – calm and quiet. He passed a waiting room on his way up. The one working TV was turned on, playing out clips of the earthquake to the empty chairs while a lone officer drank a cup of tea standing in the doorway.

The medias hadn't yet heard about the escape or the news would be all over the building. Shaking his head at those oblivious morons, Russ sought out the one person in the whole place who had to know. He knocked on her door. A voice rose, so low and hoarse it almost sounded male, “Come in!”

He did. The office was bare – no decoration except for the sign on the desk that read, “Captain Breen Cordello”.

Cordello, a heavyset woman in her forties, had the looks of a wetback mother of eight. Looks were misleading: she had inherited an Ivy League education, along with the silver spoon jutting out of the corner of her fat lips, from her surgeon of a father and her federal court judge of a mother. She still had the voice of a lifelong smoker and all the spare grease of a taco truck, Russ thought with malevolent glee.

She looked down her nose at him. The disdain was mutual. He had no time for petty pencil-pushers who hated straight white men. She resented that he was smarter and a better player. On the upside, she had never liked Carlsen either.

She had been diligently working her way through a pile of files but, now, she sat back and crossed her arms under her plump breasts. “You heard?”

“They called me,” he replied.

“Close the door.”

He did, thinking all along, I’m not your flunky. But he gritted his teeth and he sat down.

“I gave your number to the sheriff office,” she told him. “What did they want?”

“My help figuring out where Vig…where Carlsen's headed.”

“Were you any help?”

“Not really. Who knows what the hell he’s thinking? I sure don't.” He shrugged. “I never did.”

He must have sounded suitably bitter, because Cordello nodded.

“I'd like to join the manhunt up there,” he told her.

I’d like to kill Carlsen. At long last.

“No can do, detective.”

“But…”

She shook her head. “We’re all cleaning up after an earthquake. The last thing we need is a lone ranger riding halfcocked on a personal vendetta.”

“With all due respect, ma'am…”

“With all due respect, Pierce, one cop isn't going to make much of a difference.”

He took a breath, released it, annoyed. The stupid bitch didn't understand! He needed to be there. He couldn't rely on the sheriff to get rid of Carlsen.

“Then I'm going to take a few personal days,” he began.

“No, you're not. You’ve already taken all the personal days you could. Sick leave is always an option, of course, but I'll make sure you spend every day at home if I’ve got to send officers to check up on you every half an hour.”

“But, Captain…”

“No, Pierce. You heard me, I won't change my mind.”

Damn the bitch. He breathed in and out slowly, imagining her blunt face dissolving as she screamed her throat raw, and the smell of burnt flesh and acid.

“Regular updates from the sheriff’s office, then?” he choked out.

“Done. They'll keep us posted. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.”

“Why?”

She sighed, and her shoulders slumped a little. “I get the feeling that our friends in the sheriff's office are more concerned about the rescue effort. It sounds like the State might be liable for the way the penitentiary collapsed all over the inmates. Pressure is huge to get survivors out of the rubble. We’re already lucky to know Carlsen's escaped. If not for that prison guard…”

“But that gives us a head-start. They can't waste it!”

“They're doing everything they can. They can't set up roadblocks while rescuers are still driving back and forth but they've got people and dogs on the shore, looking for the place he swam to. They'll find him eventually. He's got no support, no plan.”

“But he's smart, Captain, crazy smart and devious. He used to be a cop, one of the best. He understands how we work. And we never got to the bottom of his criminal activities. We can’t know all the associates he had or what kind of money he made. We never found out.”

“So?” she grunted.

“So, I'm telling you, ma'am, if they don't catch him now, chances are good that he'll just go poof.”

She got up and paced behind the desk, the way she always did when she was thinking hard about something. He had at least shaken her up.

“Alright,” she said, and she nodded sharply. “We’re not getting involved. Not yet. But I'll make a few calls. Maybe I can get the FBI involved. They can relieve the sheriff’s office of part of the search effort.”

It wasn't good enough – far from it – but he nodded. Better than nothing. The important thing was to neutralize Carlsen as quickly as possible.

To know what Russ plans to do to Viggo, read Chapter 3.2.