a preacher don't steal - 13. bud

by nick nelson

part thirteen of 32

detective technician bud rogers had been late for work, by about ten or fifteen minutes, almost every day for thirty years. a succession of supervisors had attempted to reprimand him for this, to no purpose. a few had attempted to have him removed from his post, but he appeared to have the proverbial friends in high places, and they quickly abandoned their attempts. bud had never actually missed a day in the thirty years. on the evening of the day young yancey clevenger took his ill-fated walk towards the north side of town, bud reported for work at his usual hour, only seven minutes late. bud’s first stop on reporting was always the morgue, to see if anything new requiring his attention had arrived. bud never bothered to check his phone until he got to work. if there had been a priority call his phone would have beeped, and it had been years since bud had been given a high priority assignment. he had two customers this afternoon, waiting in drawers c-9 and c-10 in room a. each drawer contained the body of the customer, the clothing they had been wearing when found, some photos of them taken by the responders, and most important, a slip of paper with their p-99 code. neither had been identified from items found on their persons. if they had been, there would be nothing for bud to do. it was bud’s humble job to identify customers who either had no i d at all , or no numerical i d and very common names. this day’s two customers were both women in their thirties. one had been strangled, the other killed with a single small shot to the back of the head. one had a handbag with the initials y c. the other had no id at all. they looked enough like that they could have been sisters, even twins. bud decided to take just one picture of each, and the slips with their p-99 codes, up to the semi-max terminal on the fourteenth floor. he could come back for more, but this was unlikely. it was all routine. bud often daydreamed of someday actually “cracking a case” like the detectives on t v. but on this particular evening his thoughts were on the previous night’s game between the tigers and the wildcats, where the tigers had won but had, to bud’s discomfiture, not covered the spread. as usual in these situations, the fault was with the referees, and the people who programmed the referees. but life was unfair. bud accepted that. he had been born knowing that life was unfair, and he had never found reason to change his mind.