Clarence Delaney

Clarence Delaney

"This case is done for you"

Jenny Larson

The course texture of the leather chair made Clarence feel more at home usually.  But today it smelled like wet dog and seemed to warp and bubble with every movement he made.  He took a pay cut coming out to the Information Inspector and Offices location in Nearport.  The staunch, regal desk before him was all but the only reason Jenny Larson needed to convince him to come south with her though. He looked over his glasses that laid low on his nose at her.  She wore a white button down shirt and a long floral skirt that ended at her shins.  She had received a huge pay bump in helping set up and manage the new satellite office. 

“Fine.” Clarence said throwing up his hands.  Larson nodded and turned on her heels out of his office.  Her shoes were muffled while on his carpet floor but clanked against the aluminum floors once she reached the hallway.  The building for the IIO’s headquarters was air conditioned and had water coolers.  The Nearport location on the other hand had been an airport hanger not fourteen months ago and lacked for any hint of an office.  Human resources compensated with old leather chairs, desks that were too big, which is a good problem, and beige carpeting that ended just before the hallway.

The conversion of the airport hanger and sudden expansion into the south earlier that year had been based on a hunch somewhere up the ladder about an attack from the Grey People or the Americans.  The Grey People or the Greysians as they were also know were almost never heard from: a distant group of native people west of the pan-Atlantic and west of the mountains. And the Americans were a mixture of independent states and territories that strove to only best each other in sports and cultural affairs.  Their involvement was unlikely. Why would they go up stream through the pan-Atlantic to do…to do what?  Clarence didn’t even know what, but it was his job to find out.

Larson had come in this morning with such a large smile Clarence knew it was a peace banner.  His leads and subsequent investigation into the shooting and death of Senator Baxton Milton III began taking him to higher, stranger places.   When ‘Friendly’ Jenny Larson got wind of what he was stepping in she never stopped looking over his shoulder.  Her announcement this morning hadn’t been a shock but was still a disappointment.  He brought back the words and let them replay in his head, “You are to redirect your efforts and resources towards the recent disappearance of a native in Sam’s town.” Sam’s town was a small town, a three hour trip south and it would be long term, he knew, he would have to move there.  He would have to stay there and come back to Nearport on the weekends Donny would be heartbroken.  But that wasn’t his first concern.

“And stop investigating the biggest case this little detail has had in its short life?” He had asked.

“Don’t even, Clarence! I don’t even know why you or how you got into this.  Tell me how you got a lead on Baxton’s case and if it somehow actually involves the southwest region I’ll let you keep going.” Larson scolded. Clarence winced and poured pity into bent eyebrows and his long brown eyes.

“I can’t,” he said shaking his head. “But don’t you see, this could start us off right.  And just,” he couldn’t say anything more. “And why are we deciding to redistribute our resources as such?” He knew the answer before he finished the question.

“Our resources,” her response was defensive and cold, “Are to be utilized by the acting head as he sees fit.” Ah so it goes that high at least.  John Bellman was the acting head while Alice Macecampell was in Europe.  He must have enjoyed that revelation for too long because Jenny was watching him and she recycled what she said a second ago with instead a more genuine, grievous tone, “It doesn’t matter who commands it except me.  The case for you is done.”  She placed the thin file of his new case on his desk. He allowed for a long pause and then said, “Fine.”