"Nothing out of the ordinary, eh?"
Putting the R&I file back down, Mike sighed, then glanced at his partner sprawled out in his guest chair, seemingly close to an exhaustion induced coma.
"You need some more coffee, Buddyboy?"
"No. No I am good.", Steve countered wearily and rubbed his tired eyes, before looking back up at the Lieutenant, "Granted, I haven't had much time yet, but I have rattled a few cages about her and…well…I can't find any dirt."
Andrea Williams was as ordinary as they came.
No record, regular family history, no violent behavior, a few trips to Europe to account for. There was nothing in her slim record that could indicate a killer. Then again, a clean past and a hankering for murder weren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Running a hand across the painful gash on his temple, Mike helped himself to another sip of coffee, trying to ignore the throbbing in his skull and the sore muscles that were making his workday relentlessly dreadful.
"What does your heart say?"
The question seemed to throw Steve off and he leaned back in the guest chair, one hand running across his chest as he pondered about an answer.
"Well, I guess…she seems trustworthy. Not afraid of our questions. Unless she's a real good liar, she's been…scarily honest with us, for better or worse."
The pitch in Steve's voice changed when he said that, and the young Inspector glanced down at the carpet for a moment, working hard to hide whatever was bothering him about the Psych Reader behind a well masqueraded smile.
"Is that so, eh? Well, what did her latest vision tell us about our case, do you know?"
"Something about a cabin with a shingled roof overlooking the ocean, sitting on a meadow someplace nearby. And rocks and seashells. I haven't really been able to make much sense of it."
With a frown, Mike rested his hands in his lap, eyes studying his partner intently.
"Could be one of the condemned buildings in the Potrero perhaps? There are a few on the east corner of 23rd overlooking the bay."
"I don't know…it seemed more…rural than that, the way she talked.", Steve argued and ran a hand over his 2-day stubble, "She said something about solitude and that this whole lead with the animals might have something to do with it. Now I've seen a lot in the Potrero, but no goats or sheep lately."
"Mhm…"
Pursing his lips, Mike glanced down, his mind going through decades of related information, trying to find the needle in the hay stack. So many names, faces, walks of life…so many changes that had happened to his city over the years. And yet, despite all his hard work, all the improvements in their processes, the addition of laws to keep those with questionable intentions at bay; the battle between good and evil, right and wrong seemed fiercer than ever.
His hesitation seemed to have piqued Steve's interest when the young Inspector leaned forward, a worried set of eyes staring back at his partner.
"Are you doing okay? I can drive you home if you want to take a nap or something. Are you still taking those pain meds Dr. Ford gave you?"
"Those things make me too loopy and I can't afford that when I am trying to do some work.", Mike countered cantankerously, his eyes softening somewhat when he noticed that the tone made his young partner flinch, "Wipe that glum look off your face, Buddyboy, I am fine. Let's ehm…let's see if we can get a hold of Cappy. I think he will remember a lady that years ago used to be part of a travelling circus type that visited San Francisco a few times out of the year. They used to play down at the Cow Palace. I think they eventually quit doing it and a lot of the members came back here. This woman used to be a palm reader and did a lot of community work. She might know of some esoteric place like the one Andrea described. Coming to think about it, I don't know about chickens but they used to have goats and sheep at the circus. Maybe that guy stayed behind too and decided to keep the animals somewhere in the outskirts of town."