Chapter 3

Cal entered the lab with much the same swagger he had entered the bar the previous night. It was Saturday, mid-morning, so he expected to have to power on all of the equipment himself given that Gillian had insisted on going to make herself some coffee since he had insisted on coming in to work to pass the time, bringing her tagging along.

Instead, he found Eli Loker parked at his usual corner of the room typing away at his laptop with all of the lab machinery in full whirl.

Cal took in the expanse of the room as though in a museum. Finally, he focused on Loker.

"Why are you wasting my electricity?"

Loker jumped in fright, placing a hand over his heart and, as a split-second afterthought, securing his mug of coffee on the desk in front of him.

"I'm working on my doctorate."

"You don't have electricity at your place to work on your doctorate?"

"I focus better here, plus I was going to use the equipment to run some tests and go over the deception training again, to keep fresh."

Cal raised his eyebrows in mock haughtiness, not wanting to suggest to Loker that he was satisfied with Loker's explanations, and then moved over to the desk he typically occupied in the centre of the room when reviewing a case.

"Well, since you're here, come on and give us a hand with this pickpocket case."

Loker made a start at a motion to protest the request and changed his mind before he could even get the first sound from his mouth.

"What do you need?"

"I need that footage from the surveillance on the bar last night."

"Ugh, you're not gonna make me watch you and Foster flirting again are you?"

"Hey!"

The objection came from Gillian who had just entered the room, a mug of coffee in one hand, tea in the other, balancing a small plate with a croissant on the top of one of them.

"Sorry."

"What are you doing here?"

"Helping, apparently."

"He was running up my electric bill to do his school project."

She gave him the patented good humored Gillian Foster 'you screwed up' glare and said, "You mean our electric bill?"

He turned sheepish once more as he replied, "Of course, darling."

She threw him an unimpressed squint of the eyes and a "hmm", moving to sit behind him at the desk that lay at an angle from the large projector wall and sat their beverages down carefully.

Loker pulled up the footage from the bar and, desperate to move the conversation on, asked "So, what are we looking for?"

"Anything that looks out of place. Someone that might be working with our master thief. An operation like that, she's not just showing up every weekend and picking out her marks, she's got to have help. There could be more than one of them, working the room together."

Between the three of them they poured over the footage collected from the two cameras that had been planted by the police in the bar, taking their time and making sure to review every potentially suspicious motion frame by frame. Knowing what to look for, it was perfectly clear that the red headed woman was checking out all of the couples in the bar for those who would be distracted by one another. She was subtle, the cops never would have spotted the signs, nor were they likely to have spotted the moment that she struck, taking the man's possessions with practiced ease.

Aside from the man that she had been chatting with, a decoy completely unaware that he was being used, the woman could not be seen to make eye contact with anyone else present in the place. She hadn't been wearing an earpiece or any kind of wire when the cops picked her up. They began looking at the behaviours of everyone else in the room, not having found anything to go by with their suspect.

"Is there any way we can get footage from previous nights at the place? Do the cops have that, or is there CCTV?" Cal asked his two companions.

"CCTV is grainy at best, and mostly focused on the exits and cash registers. The cops had their cameras set up two days previously. But all of the thefts were reported by people who had been there on weekends, so they only used it for test recordings. They called us in for the first night of surveillance," was Gillian's reply.

"Did we get a police report in yet? Any witnesses, regulars maybe, claim to have seen the same woman there on the other nights?"

"Nothing. But I would guess she changes her look a little each time so she doesn't get recognised. She's definitely not a natural red head, pretty sure that's a wig."

The two men looked at her in brief surprise at that, neither having considered the possibility. They all turned their attention back to the large screen on the wall again for a moment until Cal decided that they had done enough.

"Right, lets get what little we have over to the cops, we can pick this up on Monday assuming they haven't got a full confession by then," Cal said, checking his watch and standing to leave.

He wanted to be home for when Emily got in. They had been working for a couple of hours and had made very little progress, their work could wait for now.


"How'd it go?" Cal asked as Emily threw her keys on the kitchen counter and dropped her bag on the floor.

Emily began to shrug and Gillian stepped in. "How do you feel about it?"

Emily looked to Gillian with some gratitude for the change of approach. "Ok, I guess. I have no idea how it went. I'm just glad it's over."

"Do you want to go out for dinner with us tonight? Might help you relax."

"Um, thanks Dad, but I was actually thinking I might head out with friends. I was thinking about what you said yesterday, and now that the test is over I can relax a little before finals in a few weeks."

"Oh. Alright, have fun," he said, feeling dismissed and looking to Gillian for support. She could only shrug in defence of Emily. They both felt that she deserved to spend the night however she saw fit.

Emily's cell phone ringing interrupted any continuation of the discussion on Emily's plans for the evening. She answered with a "Hey Mom!", and an apologetic glance at her father for the disturbance as she wandered off upstairs to update her mother on her day.

Silence reigned in the kitchen following the sudden departure of their focus of attention for a moment. Not wanting to linger too long on whatever Emily had planned, Cal turned his thoughts to the other activities of the day. Incapable of being idle when he was worked up, an idea dropped into his mind. He turned to Gillian, who had moved to the stove to heat the kettle, and he checked her out briefly.

"How about a night on the town?"

Keeping her back to him, she craned her neck around to look at him with unbridled suspicion, one eyebrow raised and a cunning smile pulling at her mouth.

"We are not spying on your daughter."

"No, no, not that," he rejected the notion, then considering why she might say such a thing added, "Why, do you think she's up to something?"

Gillian's unamused stare forced him to shelve the idea again.

"No, that's not what I was getting at."


They walked into the hotel bar hand in hand, their bodies aligned perfectly, her other hand pressing briefly against his stomach as she indicated a vacant table over near the window. With an affectionate squeeze of her hand and a quick peck on her mouth he nodded his agreement at the location and told her he'd join her there in a moment once he got their drinks.

Parting ways, they moved separately through the room with each of them taking in as much detail in the faces and voices in the bustling bar as they could. Gillian sat and arranged her bag and coat carefully and allowed her eyes to follow her partner as he caught the attention of the bartender. It was the same man who had served them the previous night. He had tensed up at the sight of Cal before relaxing his body into a deliberate aloofness. His expression briefly pinched up in discomfort at whatever it was that Cal had asked him before smoothing out deliberately, although tension remained in his jaw.

While Cal went to work on getting their drinks and as much information from the man in their limited interaction as he could, Gillian resumed her assessment of the rest of the room. She didn't yet recognise anyone else from the previous night.

Cal joined her after a few minutes and set her glass of scotch down on a coaster close to his own.

"Anything?" he asked.

"No, nothing. Just the bartender seemed a little off. What did you get from him?"

"Well, he recognised me. I'm sure of that. Which is unusual don't you think? I mean, he saw me for about half an hour last night, and you were definitely more to look at than I was," he continued oblivious to her delighted but shy smile at his complement, "I imagine he see's hundreds of people over the course of a weekend, every weekend. I'd expect him to recognise the regulars, and the people who stand out, but not someone he saw chatting up a woman for half an hour."

"Maybe the accent stood out to him?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I'm sure he recognised me before I said anything."

"You do have a rather distinctive posture."

He looked at her, trying to figure out if she was insulting him. She just smiled at him, letting him know that she loved him regardless of whether he knew how to stand up straight or not. So he continued.

"Yeah, well, either way, he spotted me a mile off and he didn't like it. He's definitely got something to hide that's making him worry he's being watched."

"You think he has something to do with the case? He didn't seem suspicious last night, or even on the tape this morning."

"Could be. Could be something else entirely."

They sat then in companionable silence, sipping their drinks and taking in the room. After a short while, Cal started to make casual observations on the patrons, mostly just to make her laugh. She would scold him half-heartedly when he went too far. He pointed out who he thought was having an extra-marital affair, and who was working as an escort. He pointed out who was desperately looking for an excuse to break up with someone, and who was desperately trying to pluck up the courage to ask someone out. Eventually they delved into small talk about people they knew, cases they were working, Emily's dreaded upcoming trip to Cancun, and any manner of things that occurred to them.

When their bartender went on his break, or perhaps finished his shift, he pointed them out to his colleague using only the deliberate motion of his eyes. He made similar motions for several other couples in the bar and a few singletons. They both made a mental note of each person so that they might review the footage from the previous night again and see if there were repeat visitors tonight. The replacement bartender looked at them quickly and then looked away so as not to be caught, as he did with all of the others. He asked something of his departing colleague and received a negative shake of the head in reply before the man walked out of the bar and into the main lobby of the hotel.

"That was interesting."

"Yes, it was."

"Could be nothing. Let's have another look at them though."

They sat a while longer, enjoying each other's company and learning what they could about the goings on of the busy bar, until Cal's cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and turned the phone's display towards Gillian in surprise. It was Wallowski. Gillian held her hand out in a palm-up pushing motion and slight jutting of her chin and brief shrug of the eyebrows, suggesting silently to Cal that he should take the call.

He pressed the receive button and held the phone up to his ear, speaking to the detective but never taking his eyes off Gillian. She read his every expression and pitch of his voice but struggled to hear the words that had caught him so off guard in the noisy environment.

Cal stood and held his hand out to Gillian suddenly while still on the phone. He inclined his head in the direction of the door, so Gillian took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet, and collected her things without question. As soon as she had her bag and coat secured over her arm Cal led her from the bar out onto the street.

He finished his conversation while they stood outside the front of the hotel building and disconnected the call with a quick thanks. Gillian looked to him, expectant and he faced her then, pausing briefly before delivering the news.

"Our pickpocket was assaulted in her cell tonight and now she's refusing to even sit in an interview room, and she's told her lawyer to bugger off."