Howe smiled in relief as he followed her out of the bedroom and saw what she daintily held in her fingers for him. "Thank you," he said, taking the keys from Amina and winking at her as he quickly rushed out the door.
The station was a buzz of activity and even though it often was when he arrived, because of the way he'd started his morning, Howe felt out of sorts, like he was struggling to catch up. Finding Tallen on the third floor where their unit was stationed, he met the dark-skinned Frith in the hallway. "Hey, alright, I'm here," Howe said with a short sigh. "Where we at?"
"We've got a team of 7 Enforcers going in," Tallen said with a nod. "You and me are leading. The Chief is going to brief us in a few minutes." He gave Howe a look up and down and finally said, "You should run to the showers first."
"What? Why?" Howe asked, frowning in confusion.
"Because you stink of sap," Tallen said emphatically. "I mean, like, it's really strong, man." For a moment, Howe froze, guilt like a hot washcloth on the back of his neck, searching his partner's face for any clue as to what he thought. Did Tallen mean to imply--? Did he know? Giving a quick look around the station room, it felt like everybody could see it - or
smell it, rather - what he did. That they knew, he was just like the man they were going to bring in tonight. "What were you doing?" Tallen asked, scrunching up his nose. "Bathing in breakfast?" He didn't know. It was a relief...but not much. Giving Howe a shove in the back to urge him towards the locker rooms, Tallen coughed and said, "Seriously go. I'll stall him for 5 minutes longer."
"Okay, thanks, buddy," Howe said, turning stiffly as he headed towards the locker rooms. That feeling of paranoia stayed with him as he walked the halls of the station, feeling like all eyes were on him, that they could smell Amina's sweat and pussy on him.
In record time, he was back for the briefing and then the team of Enforcers headed out before 8 at night. They were a military grade force of Frith, trained to fight and subdue other Frith. To kill them even, if need be. When they stomped through the doors of the establishment in question, Sap Heaven, done up in riot gear with guns pointing at anything that moved, shouting for all civilians to get on the ground, Howe forgot about his worries about Amina and their illicit relationship. While his comrades handled the front of house, Howe moved smoothly past the tables in the main dining area, to the sap quarters in the back. He was fixated on finding that scumbag, Remus Cholton. The sick freak who'd eluded their grasp before. But not anymore; deviants like him didn't get second chances.
Howe kicked open each of the doors as he passed them in the cramped hallway. Most of them were empty but a couple of them held Frith who were with saps. They startled when he'd bust the door in, but keeping his cool in the face of such depravity, Howe called them in on his com and moved steadily ahead. Down at the end of the hall, Howe found the manager's office, a redhead female sap startled as she sat alone on a cot in the corner. There was a back door that led outside but when Howe opened it, his eyes met nothing but the dark parking lot. A second passed and something showed up but it was just another Enforcer on their team, having rounded the perimeter of the building.
"Anything, sir?" the other Enforcer asked him.
"No," Howe sighed in disappointment, gritting his teeth. "The Light-blasted bastard got away!" Cursing, he lowered his gun and punched the wall, startling the female sap but she remained quiet.
All in all, it was a "fair" night, they conceded. They didn't apprehend their quarry but the raid on Sap Heaven led to the arrest of 4 other Frith who were engaged in illicit conduct while the raid had been underway. Not bad but still, it held the sting of defeat and Howe was subdued and brooding when he and Tallen returned to the station to start filling out their reports and conducting the interviews. Of course, all 4 of the abusers they found were unrelated and none of them personally knew either of the owners - neither the actual restaurant owner, nor Remus Cholton, the secret benefactor of the place. They were just what they'd expect to find; deviants of course but just customers with no background and no priors. And the actual owner of Sap Heaven had no idea what Cholton was up to or where he was. Just a guy helping his friend out, giving him a place to hide out and retrieving his money-making saps for him. That was all, he swore. He wanted nothing to do with what Cholton was into. But since the money was on the books as being filtered through Sap Heaven, and things like that occurred under his roof, they were of course going to charge him.
"Don't feel bad, man," Tallen said, sitting at his desk across from Howe. "We'll get him. Guy's like Cholton...they don't stay buried. They can't help themselves." He shrugged and laughed incredulously, "You'd think it'd be simple enough to just not stick your dick in something but apparently not."
There was a small wash of guilt that swept over Howe as he listened to his partner dump all over the deviants they hunted every night, feeling a bit of that condemnation and judgement run off onto himself. Of course, Tallen had no idea how what he said wounded Howe. "Don't worry, we'll catch him," Tallen reassured him. "He'll show up again."
"Yeah," Howe nodded with a heavy sigh. "Next time...we'll be on time."
"Man, why you gotta beat yourself up?" Tallen clicked his tongue at him. "It's not your fault."
"He was right there, Tal," Howe refused to be comforted, grinding out his frustration over not only this situation but his own hidden sins. "That sap wasn't in that room alone. She had no fricking reason to be back there like that. No, he was there
minutes before we arrived. If I'd been here on time, we would have gotten briefed much earlier. And he would have still been there." Howe shook his head while his friend just stared silently, not willing to argue but definitely not conceding either. "We would have had him. And then I could have pushed Dr. Powell down the stairs. ...metaphorically."
Tallen broke an easy-going grin, "And literally."
"And literally," Howe agreed reluctantly. "Quit trying to cheer me up."
Howe turned in his chair, leaning back with a sigh, still fighting with himself inside even as he relaxed a little. Looking down the hall, he watched as the - now - 8 female saps that were confiscated from Sap Heaven were escorted from the medical examiner's office towards the holding cells, where they would stay until they got sold at the auction again. As each of the girls passed by, Howe thought about the differences between himself and Cholton. For one thing, he didn't need all those saps; he was just in love with one. And even though he could understand why Cholton and the others would fuck a sap, there was no empathy inside him as he watched the girls move through the hall like beaten dogs. The redhead from the manager's office was the last out of the medical examiner's office - where the medical examiner would confirm that they'd had recent sex with Frith, since cold cock left a signature when it entered a sapien's vagina. She glanced into the main station room but her eyes danced over Howe without recognition, like she was just looking at the space in a general way. That's when it dawned on him...he and Cholton weren't that different after all.
With a sudden new fire burning within him, Howe turned to his desk and opened the files on his comp, searching through the last processing report for when they raided Cholton's previous restaurant. The redhead's name was Dawn, apparently, and when Howe looked over the files, he noticed that last time they'd been found, all of the other girls had been in rooms with clients; Cholton had been with Dawn behind the main counter of the establishment. He'd been bartending and she'd been hostessing. How very strange. Why would Cholton trust a sap to do that? Having a hunch about it, Howe turned to Tallen who was typing away and finishing his own reports of the night's events.
"Hey, I think I got something," Howe told him. "I need to interview one of the girl's we found. The redhead, Dawn."
"A sap?" Tallen asked, his face contorting in confusion and then skepticism. "You know they're pretty dumb, right? They don't know anything. Even if they did, they wouldn't tell us the truth. They're manipulative little liars."
"Just trust me. I've got an idea," Howe said. "What do we got to lose?"
Agreeing to that, not because he believed Howe's logic, but moreso to watch and see what would happen for the entertainment value, Tallen ended up in one of the interview rooms that they used for Frith suspects. Dawn sat across the table from Howe while Tallen stood just behind his partner, legs spread and arms folded as he watched the proceedings with an air of doubt.
"Hello, Dawn," Howe said conversationally, looking over a tablet with her file on it.
"Sir," she said respectfully.
"Dawn, when we found you in the office at Sap Heaven," Howe began, licking his lips nervously as he got started. "Cholton was there with you, wasn't he?" She shrugged. "But he left before we got there?" Again, she shrugged. "Where did he go?"
"I don't know."
"I'm so glad we decided to do this," Tallen whispered to him glibly, Howe forced to shush him in front of the sap.
Howe paid close attention to the details, having learned from Amina that even when saps didn't say very much, they said a lot with their bodies and facial expressions. Dawn had strawberry blonde hair, hanging limp and disheveled on her shoulders. The outfit she wore was a sexy version of a shift, lacy bits bordering her breasts. Yet despite her smudged makeup, she looked surprisingly healthy and her hair was simply mussed from the chaos of the night's events. And that shift wasn't cheap synthetic material like sap clothes; it was a Frith clothing fabric called silk. Even though her voice and expression were deadened, her eyes looking through the table unseeing, there was something about it that he remembered Amina doing: this was a passive-aggressive rebellion. She was...disgruntled about something. But what?
"Why were you by yourself in that office?" Howe asked her.
"Because he left," she murmured.
Howe laughed a little at that. "But before he was gone, he was with you. Alone?" She nodded. "Why?" She shrugged. Howe pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I think you do know. Something interesting I found from our records. You were a hostess at Cholton's old restaurant, The Vial?" She didn't shrug but didn't respond; her head cocked to the side, like she was waiting. "You ran the front of the house. Why would Remus do that, Dawn? You're just a sap. Were you his favorite? Awfully big responsibility for him to trust you like that if you were just his favorite toy. I mean, heh, it's not like he
loved you." Howe glanced over his shoulder at Tallen who smirked in agreement.
"He does love me."
When his attention was back on her in a flash, she was looking at him, steady green eyes holding his gaze disrespectfully. Bingo. "I don't think so," Howe shook his head. "If he loved you...wouldn't he have taken you with him?" He could see he'd hit gold, her eyes growing glossy and her gaze looking away towards the wall as she tried to hold her composure. Howe waited, like a patient fisherman but she took a long time. He was about to speak when her voice came back.
"He was going to take me," she said, looking at Howe again. "We were going to run away together. He's got a place near the ocean in SoCal. We were going to live there where nobody would bother us and we wouldn't have to hide anymore. But...he couldn't. He wanted to. But he didn't have enough money to take care of me. And he promised that I didn't have to sleep with the other men anymore."
Howe listened to her heartfelt story dispassionately. "He abandoned you," he shrugged.
"Because of you," she accused, no malice in her voice but just simple blame.
Standing up and gathering the tablet, Howe said, "He discarded you like trash, Dawn. You're dead weight and you would always be that to him."
Having what he needed, he was turning to leave, Tallen opening the door and leading the way out, he stopped when she said, "Remmy does love me! Why is that so hard for you to believe?"
"
Because you're a sap," he said with cold indifference.
Even still, as her eyes filled with moisture and her chin wobbled with pain, guilt stung him and he turned away to leave the room, unable to face her any longer.
In the hall, Howe handed Tallen the tablet and told him, "Find that house in SoCal she's talking about. It could be a fairytale, something he told her to make her easy to fuck but it could be real. Let's find it. If he's headed there, we can beat him to the punch." Giving him a triumphant clap on the shoulder, Tallen hurried to his desk to do as instructed.
Howe got home around 3, his usual time, still feeling the weight of defeat on his shoulders but a little more optimistic with the new lead they had. They would follow up with it over the course of the next few days and once they had it hammered down, they'd put a stake out force on it to wait for Cholton to show up. As he walked from his car to the front door, Howe let his tense shoulders relax as he thought about the young woman waiting for him inside. Stepping past the threshold, Howe called out, "Amina?" in a hopeful tone, his eyes scanning the lit room for her.
