Chapter Six

Realizing they're being framed along with Griffin, the team scrambles to gather evidence to prove their innocence.

“What do we do now?” Lisa asks, her hand tucking her short bob behind her left ear as best she can.

            “Well we can’t be each other’s alibis. So we’d better work quickly to find some evidence that keeps us out of this investigation before they can arrest us or bring us in for more questioning.”

            “This is nuts... We sound like f*****g fugitives,” Greg says as he swipes and taps away at the screen of his iPad, already getting to work according to Cooper’s directions.

            “If we don’t find something soon, we very well may become fugitives. Dig.” That’s all Cooper can say before his heart begins racing and he returns to his desk. His eyes clamp shut, his eyelids wrinkling from being forced together so tightly. He removes the key from his pocket and, concealing it beneath his desk, he begins to run his finger over the ridges once more.

            Under any normal circumstances, this would work. His breathing should be stabilizing by now, his heart rate returning to normal. But between the shouting, the bickering and the panicking in the room he can’t calm himself down.

            ‘Don’t do it, Cooper’ he thinks to himself. He repeats this over and over like a chant. A mantra. Ultimately, he caves and he rises to his feet before disappearing through the door to their office space and down the hall.

            Patting himself down in the elevator, he slaps his palm over every pocket he has on his person. Shirt pocket, all four pants pockets. None of them seem to have what he’s looking for as he drops his head in defeat.

            With the keys in hand, his thumb now dances over a key with a Volvo emblem on it rather than the standard house key he had been playing with earlier.

            Three minutes and several flights of stairs later, Cooper arrives at his black, mid-sized SUV located in the parking garage right next to their office building. He unlocks it, headlights and taillights flashing as he yanks open the passenger side door.

            He pulls a carton of cigarettes and a small American Flag lighter from the glove box before closing the door again.      The carton he plucks a cigarette from seems somewhat faded. The red print is now dull, and the once white packaging is now a greyish-yellow. An unpleasant grimace appears on his face as he places the white stick into his mouth, but he ignores whatever it is that causes it.

His thumb rolls over the metal wheel before pressing down on the red button behind it. Rewarded with the flicker of a small flame, Cooper brings the light to the tip of his cigarette, effectively lighting it.

A shaking left hand nestles into the nook where the bicep meets the forearm, his right hand keeping the cigarette in his mouth.

Inhale, exhale.

The older man coughs, his senses having seemingly forgotten the sensation of cigarette smoke. It doesn’t deter him, though, as he continues to remove it from his mouth only to place it there once more.

Inhale, exhale.

Another standard. Unhealthy, but still uniform. There’s only one way to smoke a cigarette, and it’s that complacency that is slowing Cooper’s heart rate right now when his other methods failed him.

Tapping his finger twice against the skinny body of the cigarette, Cooper washes as the ashes fall away from the tip, some falling to the ground while others are carried by the wind, disappearing over the edge of the parking garage wall.

Cooper follows them, gazing at the sky before leaning over just slightly to peer down at the street that was the scene of such chaos just hours before.

In his mind, he tries to replay the events from this point of view. Using the newscasts that he saw as reference, Cooper envisions the President’s limousine and draws comparisons to the distance of the window Griffin supposedly shot from.

There’s something blocking his mind, neural obstacles refusing to grant him access to his full brain capacity. Be it the stress from the high stakes of this particular case or simply the lack of practice in recent months, Cooper can’t focus.

Every scenario he comes up with leads him to a dead end before he can come up with a plausible solution to the puzzle that’s been harshly dropped at his feet.

As if this isn’t enough, a dull bang pulls his attention away even more. It’s distant, but he can’t quite place a cause with the sound. Probably just some punk kid that tried street racing and their exhaust pipe wasn’t in agreement.

That’s his deduction anyway. It’s a realistic one too, and it makes sense to him.

It’s not until he sees smoke rising in the distance that he begins to doubt his theory. ‘That’s a lot of smoke’ he thinks to himself. He stares with a blank expression at the billowing grey cloud.  Even if the entire car that may or may not exist exploded, it wouldn’t create that much smoke.

As a vibration diverts his eyes to his pocket, he jams the butt of the cigarette into the cement wall before dropping it on the floor, taking his phone into his hand instead.

“Cooper here.”

“Coop,” Greg responds, his tone not as arrogant sounding as usual. He said one syllable and Cooper can already tell that good news is not about to follow. “Where the hell are you?”

“I went to get some air. Everything alright?”

“No. It’s not,” the younger man on the other end of the call sighs before continuing on. “There was an explosion at the precinct.”