“She picks up the ticket, bags it, and keeps walking… CCTV crapped out after that and she doesn’t show up anywhere again that we could find, yet.” Frank grunts, ignoring me and concentrating on replaying the part of the clip he’s brought me down to see.
Setting it to loop, playing out over and over again.
“Crime scene’s theory is the ticket blew away after John Doe succumbed. And it doesn’t take Nostradamus to see it’s potentially the same ticket our millionaire for a day was carrying.”
“How far?” I start to ask.
“Three blocks. Wind was southeasterly, they have a computer program that maps that sort of shit out… That’s how they knew which cameras to check,” he says, shrugging a little again.
Looking like a man who might be outta work if all this computer intelligence can do the work of twenty personnel in a fraction of the time.
That 21stCentury? It works fine, just not for everyone. Sorry, Frank.
“Where is she now…?” I ask. My words trailing off as I zoom in on the video footage.
Her whole rear end fills the screen once I keep zooming.
Feeling something I know I shouldn’t, especially in a morgue.
Maybe I’m just bringing a stiff of my own to this party…
The footage of her has more static than a bag of cats in a tumble dryer, but I can see that ass just fine.
That and her cute little pink suitcase.
“Find her Harry, if anyone can it’s you,” Frank orders me, breaking my reverie.
The effect of seeing her, whoever she is, gives me an instant and already feeling like an all-day hard-on.
The kind of fire I can only put out by putting myself inside her.
“Plus its forensic evidence she’s carrying, or did she throw it away? Got brain and moosh all over it. It’s the only link to all three victims and crucial to finding out if there really is another player at work... Could be a god damned serial killer,” Frank clips, glancing at his watch again.
A bad habit when you know the first forty-eight are crucial in any case.
Never fully closing the door in his mind either, maybe, just maybe I’m somehow involved. And more than just buying the clerk a scratch ticket.
“You think she’s number four?” I ask aloud. Not meaning the question for Frank.
Already praying she’s not.
Deciding she won’t be.
I won’t let that happen.
My own attraction starting to mix with that alarm in my gut.
That overprotective urge I got, focusing on her now like a laser beam.
“For Chrissakes, Harry! How many times do I have to tell ya? That’s why I need you and the thing you do,right now… And she does too.”
The tone in his voice lets me know what all good cops know.
Sometimes, not every time. But just every now and then. We can’t save ‘em all. But we get a chance to save one.
And this one’s all mine.
Theone.