Unfortunately, I don't get the chance to hang with Munch so much. I am normally out with Elliot or Olivia, but when the rare day comes that I get to investigate with John de Munchie (As Olivia and I sometimes call him) It's pretty fun. His particular brand of dry, cynical humor is a lot more ticklish to me than some of the one liners Elliot pulls on the job. He has a penchant for sweets, cookies and donuts in particular. At least every other time that I show up at the station house, Munch has ordered donuts for the entire squad.
"Where's Fin?" I now called to him as we descended the stairs, and headed out to the main lobby.
"Apparently he caught a cold from running around yesterday, looking for Veronica." Munch threw over his shoulder to me, "He sounded pretty bad when I talked to him-but personally I don't think it's all that-"
"Cold…..?" I gasped as we threw open the front doors. A wall of biting, stinging New York air hit me like a physical blow as we stepped out side. It was certainly colder than it had been all week. I pulled my jacket closer around me as the snow swirled in intricate patterns.
"Lovely morning." Munch said briskly. He pulled a chain of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door to the car, "Come on, let's go kid, before I turn into an old man."
I bit my tongue before I could say anything stupid.
It may have been freezing outside, but when we stepped into the SteelCo steel mill, it was warm, and loud. Hot and deafening, let me be more precise.
Munch and I talked to the head honcho there. David Vander Dyke. The guy looked to be in his mid thirties, tall, broad shouldered, lean, with a runners body.
"You don't look like you're the type of guy who should be doing this sort of job!" I shouted at him as we wound our way through the factory. Dave was a busy guy, and had agreed to talk to us, only if we kept pace with him, and wore safety helmets. I dearly wanted to take a picture of John walking around in a suit with a yellow plastic hard hat on, but for professional sake, I kept that urge at bay.
"I wanted to be a photographer!" David admitted. We walked past a screaming machine that tossed a handful of sparks at us, and I let a 'yip!' out before throwing a hand across my mouth to prevent any further outbursts.
"Why aren't you?" Munch asked, apparently unfazed by all the internal clanging around the three of us, "Guy like you, you seem like the type that could pretty much do anything they wanted…"
"It's my dads buisiness, I have to keep the family spirit going on…and on…and on…" Dave grimaced, obviously lacking the very thing that he was speaking of, "You said that you wanted to talk to me about Daniel Stemple?"
"Yeah, we did?" I said in a softer voice, looking carefully around, making sure that there wasn't going to be any beasts of metal nipping at me anytime soon, "Were there any problems with the guy? Was he out of the ordinary?"
"Nah, he was a good kid!" Dave said. At that moment we walked past the biggest, loudest, screechingest machine yet. I choose to take a slight detour that brought me around the other side, yet cut off from Munch and the guy.
"BLAST!" I muttered, clambering over the piles of discarded scrap metal.
I made it back to where the two of them stood, in time to hear David reply, "…always punched in and out…worked overtime some times…never had a problem with him, nope! In fact, today was the only day that he hasn't shown up for work since he started here…."
I gave a derisive laugh, "He's the biggest suspect in a kidnapping right at the moment. Reason he didn't come to work, is he's locked up at SVU at the moment."
"Oh my goodness!" David covered his mouth with his dirty hand, and I had another random urge to smack the guy. Ah. Gee. I gotta keep those under control, or I could get into some serious trouble.
"Now….You said that you have Stemple's signature on his punch out sheet, right? Saying that he left on lunch break?" Munch asked, cocking his head slightly at David.
"Yeah, yeah!" David said, nodding enthusiastically.
"He said that he didn't go anywhere, though!" I said, watching David's face carefully for signs of buried emotion, "But we have his signa-…"
My voice trailed off, and I guess my mouth sorta dropped open. My mind went blank, and for a moment I couldn't hear all the banging and clanging an hullabaloo in the background anymore.
"Umm….Darlene?" Munch waved a hand in front of my face, "Darlene?"
I snapped back to reality due to a particularly nasty shriek from the random machine to our left, and I jumped about a foot in the air.
"We took copies of the punch sheet, I know that…." I said, my brow furrowed, "But can we see the real thing a sec? I want to follow a hunch!"
"Sure!" David said, seeming eager to please. He started one way, but I said quickly, "Hey-can we go the other way? Please? "
"Yeah…sure…..why?"
I refused to look at Munch as I said the following, " I really don't want to go past that one big monster type deal that likes to throw sparks."
