CHAPTER 4

I was still upset, still worried, but I felt much better. When I walked into the office I saw that Maya and Phoenix were asleep on the couch. It looked as though they had been attempting to do research as books and maps were strewn around them and Maya's head was resting on a legal pad with notes written all over it. I wondered how many nights they had shared like this trying to solve the seemingly unsolvable. I hated to wake them up but they roused as soon as Trucy and I walked up.

"She's alright!" I said.

Phoenix jumped up from the couch, "You found her?"

I shook my head.

"No, but we think she sent someone to get her some supplies. The police are making a composite drawing of the person right now. They'll fax it over when they're done."

"Great!" said Maya running over to the fax machine even though it was obvious nothing was coming through yet.

Vera's message to me had achieved its purpose. She knew me well enough to know I would be completely freaking out so she was trying to reassure me that she was ok so I would focus more on finding her and worry less about the worst-case scenarios that were constantly playing in my head like a scratched record. Like Phoenix had told me before, Vera was a smart girl.

As we waited for the fax Trucy made us all ramen and we picked at it. We were all still too nervous to really want food even Maya, but none of us wanted to be rude to Trucy. After all, she was only trying to take care of us.

My cell phone rang. It was Mr. Brushel. He informed me with a hint of irritation in his voice that nothing unusual had been going on at the museum and that we would be graced with his presence soon.

I groaned both because he had failed to turn up anything and because he was unwilling to leave me alone.

"That was Spark. He got a whole lotta nothing at the museum. Security's tight and nothing seems abnormal. So I think that's out… other ideas?"

Trucy shrugged, "I guess we just have to wait till we see the suspect."

"But it will only be one of the team that took her and I'm guessing the person playing gopher isn't high up in the plot. It may not do us a lot of good."

"Don't be so pessimistic, Apollo. Ema will come through." Phoenix said with confidence and I caught the briefest grimace of irritation upon Maya's usually sweet face as he spoke of Ema. It was hard for me to believe that Maya was still worried Phoenix had feelings for Detective Skye.

"Maya," he said wrapping his arms around her. "I didn't mean anything by it." And I heard Maya make a sheepish apology to Phoenix.

Trucy flicked on the TV. It was almost news time. The sensationalized teasers were on.

The search continues tonight for missing artist and convicted local felon, Vera Misham. Hear the latest in the case!

The fight is heating up over a new tax bill. Find out who could be hit the hardest!

And finally what truth lies in the accusations of bribery against Incumbent Susan Bennett?

All this and more, plus sports and weather when we come back.

Since the art show looked like a dead lead. I was puzzled by what else someone would want forged. Vera wasn't a counterfeiter, she had never created fake bills or coins, so what else could be so important, I wondered. Maybe a deed to a piece of property or a will…or….

I heard the fax start making it's obnoxious chugging sounds and dashed over to stand beside Maya as the composite sketch came through. Maya grabbed it and I looked over her shoulder.

"Damn! That dude looks like about 45% of the population! This doesn't help!" We already knew the suspect was a white male from the description the clerk had given us and the picture was about as generic as one could get.

"It can't be that bad. Let me see," Trucy announced confidently. "Oh…you're right. We saw twenty people who looked like this on the bus today alone."

I felt discouraged. This was our only lead and it didn't seem promising.

"Wait!" said Maya. "It says here he had a tattoo of a gun wielding dragon on his hand. That's pretty distinctive don't you think?"

"Pretty tacky, too." said Trucy.

Maya nodded her agreement. "What would a dragon need with a gun?"

"Why would a samurai need to be half robot?" teased Phoenix trying to lighten the mood. Maya took the bait and launched into a lengthy detailed explanation of the Steel Samurai and the Nickel Samurai's back-stories complete with references to both the TV show cannon and that portrayed in the manga.

I wasn't feeling particularly comforted knowing that Vera was being held by someone whose idea of accessorizing was having something like a mythical creature with an AK-47 permanently inked into their hand, but I tried to focus on the good in this. At least the tattoo separated this guy from the millions of other white males out there and I was fairly confident that this wasn't a tattoo you could just walk into a parlor and choose off the wall display.

After Maya's diatribe on the Steel Samurai we refocused on the suspect. Phoenix mentioned that the police kept a log of convicted criminal's tattoos and unique markings so I called Detective Skye.

"Ema?"

"I know you're calling about the tattoo. I'm working on it, Apollo; I'm working on it. These things take time. I'm only one person."

She sounded stressed and I couldn't hear her munching so I figured she must have been working as hard as she could.

"We'll come help you." And looking straight at Maya I added, "All of us would love to help you."

At the police station we were led to a room similar to the one in the detention center where I interview my clients except this room had no glass divider wall. It was just an ugly bare room with a big eight-foot long table in it. Ema Skye was seated at the table but was barely visible behind a stack of three-ring binders and loose papers.

She looked more frazzled than I had ever seen her. She glanced up and pointed to a stack of at least fifteen binders at the end of the table.

"Each of you take one and start looking. Each criminal has a page. I know I've seen that tattoo somewhere before…"

As I grabbed one of the thick notebooks I marveled that all this information hadn't been entered into a computer database. What decade did our police force think we were living in? If Vera didn't get back because of this I'd raise hell.

We rifled through notebooks for hours. Each page had a mug shot, rap sheet, and a "distinctive markings" section each typed onto the form the old fashioned way. After a few hours of this I knew more about the birthmarks, moles, scars, and tattoos of every thug in the tri-county area than I would have ever wanted to know, but still had found no dragon with a gun. At one point Trucy got excited thinking she had found it, but then she realized she had misread the form and it said, "Sun dragon".

Every couple hours I'd get up for a break. I'd walk out into the hallway and get a drink from the water fountain, go to the bathroom, and close my eyes for a few minutes. I wished Vera would send us another message, but maybe she had and we weren't clever enough to have gotten it. Knowing I might never see her again made me wish that I had been more romantic with her. On my third break of the day I called Prosecutor Gavin.

"Apollo? Herr Forehead? Shouldn't you be out looking for Fraulein Vera?"

"That's why I'm calling. I was wondering- you know people in the radio business right? Can I have you do me a favor? Can you have a song played on the radio in case she's listening? I'd like her to know I'm thinking of her."

Klavier was the last person I had expected to come through on a favor to me; I mean this was the guy who rewarded Trucy and I with tickets to his concert at a percentage off instead of actually coughing up comp VIP passes. But it was my only chance and I knew that if I never saw her again at least I could feel like I tried one last time to get the message to her that I loved her. I couldn't give up hope, but as the time since her abduction lengthened I had to be honest with myself. The longer she was away the less likely we'd get her back alive.

I hung up with Prosecutor Gavin, took a deep breath, and headed back into the room to read more intimate details about criminal's physical markings.

"Yes!!!" Ema jumped from her chair. I had never seen her so excited. I ran over next to her.

"You found him?"

Her eyes had a kind of crazed glee as she tossed the notebook down.

"We got him! And we know who he works for! He's a member of the Rivales gang."

Everyone jumped from the notebooks they had been studying and crowded around Ema's. Staring back at us was the mugs hot of Ricky Rockwood, low man on the totem pole of the Rivales organized crime family.

"That's great! But what would the Rivales want with Vera?" Maya asked having at least temporarily set aside her jealousy of Ema.

"I dunno, but we'll find out scientifically."