Over his desk at the Archer building, Dennis Mulhearn had a sign hanging directly in front of his eyes. His first copy in the army had been on laminated paper. When he got an office – after that fiasco in Louisiana where he’d had to shoot and kill the redhead, and he’d gotten the scar on his right cheek – he’d had the words carved into a piece of maple. Now, in his own office, in his own building, he’d had the words etched into a slab of marble.
It was the first three commandments in The Old Man’s Rules of Investigation:
Boots on the ground
Knock on doors
Ask the follow-up question
Without these first three rules, the final fourteen didn’t matter. There was something about Captain (now General) Vickers’ process that touched his soul, gave him a purpose and a way to understand life.
“Dennis, sweety,” said a voice that seemed to come from behind his right shoulder. “You have fifteen minutes until the hover arrives. You have a meeting with Gavin Columbix and your new client at the Pink Rabbit.”
“Thank you Cherry,” he said to his AI assistant. Apparently meeting at a skin joint showed the right combination of daring and sleaze to this potential client. He didn’t really need to speak out loud, as the chip in his brain would receive his mental response, but it was habit. He opened the desk drawer and took out two pistols. He put the big one in the holster beneath his left arm. When Dennis stood, he put the second in a holster at the small of his back, then shucked into his blazer and checked his reflection in the mirror on the back of the door to his inner office.
As he made his way down the hall to the stairway, he thought he’d need to keep the second three of The Old Man’s Rules in mind during their meeting.
People lie, first to themselves
Read body language
Observe people, places, and things, but most importantly – details
As long as the world kept spinning, some things remained constant.
*****
Go here to sign up to become a beta reader!