I woke early the next morning with Amber snuggled up and around me. It made me wonder why I had waited so long to broach the subject of a relationship with her. I inched out from around her and went about my morning routine.
I wanted to leave early and swing by Blue 22 on my way to the station. Well, not actually Blue 22, but the businesses near by. I was hoping to find one or more that had exterior security cameras that may have caught our suspects on film.
After canvassing the area, I found only one business with exterior cameras. The pawn shop sat almost directly across the street from the club. I went in, flashed my badge, and asked if the owner or manager was available. The guy behind the counter was a big dude, bald, goatee, with tattoos on his arms. Looked the classic biker. He looked me up and down, eyes pausing on the scars on my face.
"You're lookin' at him."
"Morning, Detective Braeden." I held out my hand. He eyed me again and then shook it.
"Clif Harrolsen."
"I noticed you have a security camera out front. I was wondering if you'd let me see any footage from yesterday evening."
"This 'bout that dead girl?" He seemed to physically relax once I told him what I wanted. I'm sure not everything that goes on here is above board, but sometimes you've got to let the little fish go, in order to get at the big ones.
"Yes it is." I answered him. "If you'd let me have it or make a copy of it, it could help."
"Yeah sure. I doubt you'll get anything helpful off it." He slipped out from behind the counter, locked the front door, and flipped the 'open' sign to 'closed'. "I'm alone here today. Don't wanna leave it unattended. Come back here."
He led me to the back of the little shop and through a door marked with dings and scratches in which you could see layers of varying colors of paint. Through the door was a small office with a metal desk and metal shelves, one of which held a small microwave and a radio. Sitting on the floor was an old tv, complete with rabbit ear antennae. Clif's size dominated the small room.
He turned immediately to the right. There, in the corner, was a cabinet, of sorts, with wire mesh doors. He pulled out some keys and unlocked it. Inside was his antiquated security system. He ejected a VHS tape and handed it over. I looked at it and then up at him, raising my eyebrows.
"What?" he says.
I clear my throat. "Ah, nothing. Thank you, sir, for your time and cooperation."
"Yeah sure."
I took my new found relic out to my car, chuckling. Now I had to find a working VCR.
0000OOOO0000
As I walked into the office area for my department, I could see Tom was already there.
"Where have you been, Braeden?" It sounded like a scolding, but I knew he was just messing with me.
I held up my prize and answered, "Look what I scored this morning."
He looked at the VHS tape with a frown. "An antique?"
"This, my friend, is the security camera footage from the pawn shop across the street from Blue 22."
"Which is useless to us if we can't find some ancient device to play it on..." Tom grinned at me.
"Yeah, well, there's that. If I can't find anything around here, I bet the library has something."
"Well, Ben, while you were out clubbing this morning, I looked into your missing persons idea." Tom held up a piece of paper and waved it in the air.
I made my way over to his desk, set down the tape, and snatched the paper out of his hands. He made a grab for it but was too slow. "You're getting slow, old man." I grinned as I read over what was a missing persons report.
"Hey, watch it! I'm only five years older than you, you punk." He sat down at his desk, leaned back in his chair and set his feet up on the desktop. "So, as you can see, we do have another missing persons that coincides with the second murder three weeks ago. Steve Marks. College room mate reported him missing. Said he'd gone out for a drink after bombing on some big test."
"Him? You think it ties in with our case? All our vics have been female thus far." I pursed my lips together in thought.
"Quit duck-facing, Braeden..."
I smiled. I often pursed my lips together in thought, often not realizing I was doing it. It was one of my few quirks and he liked to razz me about it.
"Anyway, I don't want to discount it, just in case. He was last seen at Oscar's Pub which is about two blocks down from Blue 22. It is within the area that our suspects seem to be focusing on."
Tom turned to a map he had on his PC that he had added little pins to at each of the scenes. All the sites that we had found victims were within a three block radius that was in the heart of the club district. The area included shops like the pawn shop, but there were a lot of bars and dance clubs, the few adult video stores and even a couple strip clubs as well. The dance clubs drew a lot of the kids from the local college and the rest drew in the adults. Drugs and prostitution were an issue in the area as well. Now, don't get me wrong, the area was a great place to go out and have a great time. A lot of the clubs had live entertainment and the drugs and prostitution tended to stay to the one block near the strip clubs.
Tom pointed to his map and there was a green pin set on the right side of the map. That was his missing persons spot. I noticed there was another green pin next to the red one at Blue 22 for Rae.
I opened my mouth to ask him something. "Before you ask, I already called down to the pub about it. After the normal complaints of having already told the police all this once already, they told me that Steve left with two guys. That's all they could tell me. You're duck-facing again..."
"Do we have descriptions on our suspects, yet?" I asked.
"They're working on it as we speak."
"Okay, cool. I'm going to see if I can hunt down a VCR."
"Yeah. Good luck with that."
So I spent the next hour and a half hunting around the station. I popped into the lab and said hi to Amber. Even though everyone knew, by now, that we were together, we were very careful to keep our work relationship strictly work. She had no idea about any VCR's and wished me luck on my quest. I found an old storage closet in the basement that actually had a VCR in it, but it was missing some cable it needed to actually hook it up to the tv in the break room. So, after two hours wasted, I grabbed Tom and we headed over to the library.
I knew I could count on the library. Publicly funded and therefore not caught up with all the latest, it had a VCR and tv ready to go. We commandeered an office, for privacy, and settled down to watch. Almost immediately, we knew we had nothing. The angle that the camera was set up at only showed from about the knees down of anyone across the street.
"Well, this is shit." griped Tom.
"Tell me about it. I thought I'd finally found something that could catch us a break." I sighed.
We watched it through, anyway, and did eventually identify our suspects by the shoes of our vic. What did we learn? One of our suspects had a thing for cowboy boots. We thanked the nice people at the library and headed out for a bite to eat.
"This is one of those cases, Ben." Tom eventually said around a mouthful of hamburger.
"What kind of case is that?"
"The kind that either makes you, or breaks you. The kind, that if we can solve it, we'll be heros, get promotions, the whole nine. Or, we have some serial killer run rampant all over our town and our careers get flushed down the crapper. Along with Sarge's career, the Captains, hell, maybe even the mayor."
"Great and I was just getting started." I said with a sarcastic whine. "So what do we do next?"
"I guess we wait, hope Amber can come up with something from that blood drop, and pray there aren't any more murders before we can get some sort of lead."
Just then my cell rang followed closely by Tom's. We looked ominously at each other and answered our respective phones.
"Breaden."
"Heya Ben, Amber. I got something on that blood drop."
"Thank God. That's just the news we've been waiting for!" Finally a break in this god forsaken case.
"Well, I'm not sure if it's the kind of break you're looking for. Listen I'll tell you guys all about it when you get down here."
"Amber, hold on a second." Tom was waving his hand at me, trying to get my attention.
I raised my eyebrows at him to let him know I was listening.
"Fuck it, Ben, we got another one."
"Son of a bitch. Okay." Turning back to my phone I said, "Listen Amber, put your news on ice. We've got another body."
"Already? Seems a little fast."
"Yeah. Haven't had two in one week before. Talk to you later, we gotta go." I hung up, grabbed what was left of my drink and tossed my garbage from lunch. Tom was already waiting at the car.
"Where to?" I asked as I climbed in.
"Dumpster out by Bosco's."
"Hmm, not the usual M.O. Bosco's doesn't cater to the young college crowd does it?"
"Nah. It's your typical bar. Couple pool tables, a few tv's with sports or whatever. Draws mostly older locals."
We were silent for the rest of the drive.
Only one difference in this body from all the rest. It was male.
"Well...that's different..." I said. The local officer at the scene gave me a look. "Sorry. All the other vics have been female. Wasn't quite expecting this."
Tom was looking at the wound on the neck. "Same wounds, same apparent loss of blood. I would have to say it's the same guys. We haven't released the blood loss thing to the public, so it can't be a copy cat."
There was no real crowd gathered around, like the last scene. Middle of the day, people were at work, going about their day to day lives. We asked around inside the bar. No one really remembered anything strange. The guy came in for a few drinks, watched some of last night's b-ball on the tv, then left. We went back out to the scene and Grady had arrived.
"So, you got anything?" Tom asked.
"Seriously? Guys, I just got here! Give me a moment." He looked past us then and frowned. "Crap. You guys better put your game faces on. Feds just showed up."
Tom turned around and looked back towards the road. "Shit. I guess it was only a matter of time before those fuckers had to come sniffing around. Don't turn around Ben. Just act cool and don't offer them any more info than what they ask for."
"Tom. Aren't we all on the same side here?" I said.
He just chuckled. "Oh kid, they treat us like back woods village idiots. They want to steal the case and the glory of a capture, make them do it on their own and not on our backs."
I then hear a familiar, rough, gravelly voice. "Special Agents Dresden and Murphy. Hear you fellas are having some trouble."
I start to cough hard in an attempt to cover my initial reaction. I don't want anyone to see me show in any way that I already knew these particular agents. I bend over at the waist, coughing. Special Agent Dresden pounds me on the back hard enough to practically knock me to the ground.
"You okay, there, officer?" he asks.
I stand up, look him in the eye and say "That's Detective and yes, I'm fine."
Agent Murphy speaks up. "So, same cause of death as all the rest?" He bends down and checks out the wound on the vic's neck.
"Yeah. Throat torn to shreds and body drained of blood." Tom said. "Lab guys just got here, so nothing yet on that front."
"Is it true you've found nothing at any of the scenes, other than a screwy print?" Agent Dresden asks.
Grady took offense. "There was nothing wrong with that print, damn it!"
"Chill out, Grady. There was a drop of blood at the last scene that they just processed." I offered. Tom gave me a look. He apparently did not approve of my sharing that info. I knew these 'feds' weren't out to steal the case, though, but I had no way to tell him that.
"And?" the agent inquired.
"Well we were on our way back to the lab when they called this in. We haven't seen the results yet."
"Well, maybe we'll just follow you back to the station and check that out with you." Agent Murphy said.
Tom grumped, turned, and headed towards the car.
"Sure that would be fine." I answered, trying to be polite to our 'guests'.
0000OOOO0000
Back at the station, Tom waited at the entrance for 'those blasted Feds' to show up, while I headed down to the lab. I wanted to give Amber a heads up.
"Hey, Amber, on your toes, we've got company coming."
Amber turns from whatever she had been working on. "What? Where?" She looks past me into the hall.
"They aren't here yet, but the Feds showed up at the scene today."
"Oh, crap. How's my hair?"
I laughed. "Seriously? You might recognize these two. Please just act like business as usual okay?"
She frowned at me and was about to question me when we heard Tom coming down the hall.
"Right down here on the right."
Sam and Dean walk in, dressed in their suits, and Amber started coughing hysterically.
Dean looks at Sam and then at me. "Is there something in the air around here?"
The funniest part? Amber actually reached up and checked her hair. I just smiled.
I handled the 'introductions'. "Agents this is our Queen of the lab, Amber. Amber these are Special Agents Dresden and Murphy."
Sam offers his hand and says ma'am and Dean leans against her desk and says "Queen huh?"
"Don't lean against my desk." She crosses her arms and gives him the stare down. He quickly stands up again.
"Uh, yeah. We don't call her the queen of the lab for her winning personality. Her rules, her way. Although she has a great personality when you follow her rules."
"Nice save, Braeden." she smiles at everyone. "So I'm assuming you're all here regarding the blood drop results. I wish I could give you something better than yet another mystery, but this one might be solvable." She turns around and pulls a sheet of paper from the printer behind her. "The drop of blood belongs to none other than David Marshall."
"Uh, are we supposed to know who that is?" Tom ventured.
"Yeah, not ringing any bells here, either." I say. Sam and Dean remain stoic, waiting.
"David Marshall is a missing person. He's been missing for thirty four years. Presumed dead."
Tom throws his hands up in the air. "Seriously? That's just about as good as the finger print from the guy that died eight years ago! Come on, Amber, that can't be right. Run it again."
"Tom, I did. I ran it three times, in fact! I even had Grady check my work before he left for the scene earlier! That is 100% correct! Don't you come down here and question my work! I don't go to crime scenes and tell you how to do your job!"
Dean raised his eyebrows and smirked. "I like her."
I just grinned. Nobody steps on Amber's toes in her lab and gets away unscathed.
Tom raised his hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. It's been a rough case. I'm sorry, Amber, you're right. I'm just frustrated is all."
Sam kind of raised his hand before speaking. I had to laugh, Amber threw her weight around and now Uncle Sam was walking on glass.
"If you don't mind my asking, do you know how old this David was when he went missing?"
"What a great question, Agent...?"
"Murphy, ma'am." Sam smiled sweetly at her.
"Let me see, he was...twenty six years of age."
"Hmm. Thank you. Now the last report said you actually had an eye witness?" Sam turned to me. I think he didn't want to deal with Tom after what just happened.
"In a manner of speaking. She said four guys hit on her and her friends. She left to go to the bathroom, when she came back they were gone as well as her friends."
"Well, we have some other things we need to check into. I'm sure we'll be talking again. Thanks for your time."
When they turned to leave I met Tom's eyes and he was making a snarky face, imitating Sam. I laughed. He really doesn't like the FBI. I wished I could tell him they weren't really Feds, but that would get me into a ton of shit I'd never be able to crawl out of.
