Alex stood up and set the pill bottle on the island in the kitchen. She heard what Lester and Ranger had said, she knew Ranger was on the phone with Morelli. She didn't hear what Morelli said. Alex walked out of the kitchen through the dining room and back into the hall. Lester likes me. He said he did, but likes me how? Joseph Morelli calls Ranger. They know each other. Things to think about. Alex thought as she opened another door and found a bathroom that looked normal. What no sex toys, guys on guys? They actually have a normal room that doesn't involve sex in this house. Alex walked over to the medicine cabinet and opened it up. Oh the shelves inside were boxes of different condoms, lubricants and other things. Maybe not. She left the bathroom not wanting to open anything else.
The next room was dark and Alex turned on the lights. Two floor lamps in the corners came on. The room was stuffed with all sorts of farm animals. Along one wall was a projection TV. Alex went inside the room. To her right was a wall of bookcases. She gravitated towards them. She liked to read, liked being taken away in a book, liked being able to escape at least in her mind the reality of her life. She started reading the titles: Training dogs: A Girls Best Friend, A Guys Tightest Pleasure; 1001 Uses For a French Tickler; Fowl or Foul: Diary of a Duck; Sex on Trains, Plains, and Automobiles; Guys on Strays. Alex pulled the book of Guys on Strays, she wanted to know what the strays was. The front cover had a guy holding a big black cat which he was petting. Alex flipped the book over and read the caption: Read my story about how a stray pussy came into my life. She turned to the page the story was on and saw a picture of the guy having sex with the cat. "Eww!" Alex shoved the book back into place. She glanced at the other tittles that were left.
She walked away from the bookcase all the other titles seemed to be in the same venue of the others. Alex walked out of the room not bothering to turn off the lights. Lester and Ranger had entered the hall. Looking over at them, Alex blushed and skirted away from the room as fast as possible. She opened another door and entered the room.
Lester looked at Ranger, "Wonder what that was about?"
"Don't know," Ranger told him. "I bet it is in that room though."
They both headed to the room where the lights were still left on. When Ranger entered it he started laughing.
Lester said, "Vinnie is sick."
Ranger looked over to Lester, "I think he kept his sexual trophies."
They moved in the room both splitting up and looking for any clue that Bobby could have left.
Alex turned on the light in the room she was in. She looked around and saw a huge four-poster bed. The covering was a deep rich royal blue, with dark purple pillow throws. The furniture pieces extensions to the bed was mahogany with crafted gilded hinges. From the other rooms she had been in, Alex didn't want to look at the hinges, but curiosity got the better of her as she went to the dresser. Her eyes fell onto the hinges which had gilded breasts in the center of them for the pull clasps. Alex shook her head, this was the first womanly thing she had seen in the place. She crept closer to the bed and glanced at the night stand. Laying on the nightstand was a book, this one had the title Lady Chatterley's Lover. Alex picked up the book, it looked old, the binding around the edges starting to fray, the pages turning the yellowish tinge of an old well loved book. She opened the soft bound cover and looked for the copyright date. It was written back in 1928 by D. H. Lawrence she didn't see any other copyright dates on it, so it was printed back then as well. Alex turned and headed back into the hallway with the book, she sat down just outside the room. Everything faded away as she read the first few words, back into the world that was now starting to form within her mind.
Lester looked over to Ranger, he had been walking around the room shaking his head at seeing the goat and became revolted when he saw the way it was stuffed with the openings at the back. Vinnie is one sick twisted bastard. I bet he still…ugh, not going there. Lester thought. "I don't know, this is just too strange. Bobby would have left something."
Ranger glanced up at him, he put his hand down on the cases and hit the remote for the projection TV. "I know…" he stopped he couldn't believe what he was seeing on the screen, other than the blatant sex act with animals. He gave a nod towards the TV and Lester turned. AC could be seen from the projection and hiding parts of the scene which played in the background. Lester walked over to the projection lens that sat on the floor and bent down.
AC was painted in nail polish on the lenses. Ranger picked up the remote and cut the TV off. "AC." He placed the remote back down. "What is AC?"
"I'm not sure." Lester stood back up. Vinnie would have a fit if he knew this happened. Lester thought. It gave him a good feeling inside. He wasn't going to remove what Bobby had done to the lens.
"We know Bobby isn't in charge. We know Stephanie is." Ranger had to laugh, the picture of Bobby was in his back pocket. Lester laughed with him. "The carburetor." Ranger laughed even more. "Shit! Stephanie did that to Morelli, that was when I had to go rescue her from her…" Ranger stopped.
"From her what?" Lester asked.
Lester could see Ranger was reliving something, and he could see the wistful look on his face. He had never seen Ranger with that look before; he knew Ranger loved Stephanie. All of them knew how much she meant to him. But when it came to Ranger, you couldn't just tell him these things. They had learned long ago that Ranger would discover things on his own in his own time and being told didn't help at all.
"Ranger." Lester said, getting no response from him. "Carlos!"
Ranger blinked and came back to the land of reality and out of his longing wistfulness. "What?"
Lester snickered. "What did you have to rescue Stephanie from? From her what?"
"Never mind that, it's not important. Let me think." Ranger told him as he started pacing around the farm animals.
Never mind my ass! Lester thought. He had to do something for her and I bet it was damn good too. I need to find that out, maybe after we find Stephanie, Lula and Bobby. See if I can't make something happen on that front.
Lester continued to watch Ranger pace in and out and around the stuffed farm animals. He moved over to the book case and started reading the book titles Vinnie had. Vinnie's taste in reading went from hot and wild to the ultra bizarre, the books being in hard bound leather all the way to copy pages that looked to have been printed from off the internet.
"Atlantic City." Ranger spoke out making Lester turn to look at him.
"Are you sure?" Lester asked.
Ranger nodded. "Stephanie coming here was a place for her to think. She needed to get Bobby under control. Stephanie likes blackmail, she uses it to her advantage. Let's roll."
Joe and Antoine were sitting back at their desks in the central police station. The DNA test was going to be worked on. Antoine looked back up at Joe and leaned across his desk so he was closer to him so no one would overhear. "Getting parking tickets removed is not quite legal either for getting him to do the DNA screening." Antoine told him.
Looking up Joe shrugged, "I don't have a clue what you mean, Forester doesn't have any parking tickets." Joe kept typing away on the computer, deleting one ticket after the next. "You need to live a little, lie a little, hell, we need to really get you shit-faced tonight. You'll forget all about this little scratching of the backs."
"How often do you do this scratching of the backs?" Antoine asked.
Joe looked back to him, "Only when I have too, only when its necessary, and only when a life is at stake."
Antoine nodded, "Okay I can deal with this." He sat back in his chair and opened up the computer. "You want me to start looking for runaways first. I think they'll be the easiest to go through."
"Just put in her info, black hair, blue eyes, fifteen years old, run the search a year older and a year younger incase someone lied about her age." Joe told him.
"What about the tattoos?" Antoine asked.
Joe shook his head, "Not relevant. Those are recent. Do the runaways first, I'll start the missing children. We don't get any possibles, we'll dig into cold case files on murdered children, she could have been swapped."
Antoine looked from around his computer at Joe, "Do you know how long this is going to take?"
"Yes, get busy. You said you wanted to work with me, well get working." Joe told him, as he booted up the program for missing and exploited children.
Chief Pantangelo walked out of his office. He looked over towards his detectives desks and saw two of them working furiously away. Shaking his head he walked over towards them. "Joe, you are supposed to be on vacation. You know, go home, get drunk, play with the girlfriend, play with your dog."
"I am on vacation." Joe told him. "Finishing up some paperwork."
Pantangelo grabbed a chair from another desk and turned it facing to the two that were shoved together. He sat down straddling the chair and leaned his arms against it. "What are you working on? I know you, you get into a case and it goes wrong and you don't give it up until you have all the pieces to it."
Joe looked to Pantangelo, "It's just paperwork."
Antoine had kept his head buried down in front of the computer terminal he was at. Pantangelo looked to Antoine, "What about you?"
"Paperwork." Antoine said.
"Joe, quit training my detective, one of you like this is bad enough, I can't have two of you in the department this way." Pantangelo said.
Joe gave a bark of laughter, "I don't know what you are talking about. I'm not training anyone."
"Bullshit!" Pantangelo reached for the spiral notebook on Antoine's desk and looked at what he wrote on it, Antoine made a grab for it and missed it. Pantengelo read the tid-bits of information and saw what programs Antoine had listed and checked for which the information had been put into. He tossed the pad back to the desk. He looked over to Joe, "This has to do with Ramono doesn't it?"
"That kid doesn't belong to them." Joe said and kept working on the computer opening up another database while the one he just finished with was still running.
"Do you have proof, or are you working on one of your gut feelings?" Pantangelo asked.
"Gut feeling." Joe told him.
Pantangelo hung his head, "I hate your gut feelings, they always turn out to be right." He looked back over to Antoine, "You want to work with Joe on this, I'll let you. Make sure you keep a copy of all the paperwork on the murder cases the feds are going to come demanding on Monday." He stood up, "We get anything coming in and I can't shuffle desks around, you two are going to have to put this on hold."
Joe looked up at the Pantangelo, "I'm on vacation. I have a week, unless something comes up that you need me for, other than Shiropolli, vice has been a little slow. Guns R Us and Drugs R Us have been keeping quiet."
"Working vacation it is for you, I hate when you do these working vacations." He looked at Antoine, "Don't think you can get away with this shit. You have to prove yourself to me first."
Antoine nodded.
Pantangelo put the chair back behind the desk he retrieved it from. "I'll leave you two at it." He walked away.
Antoine looked at Joe from around his computer and saw that Joe had a grin on his face. "How often do you do things like this?" Antoine asked him.
"Often enough. Notice he didn't say I couldn't do this." Joe looked at Antoine, "Just get those programs running and we'll take the printouts and go do something while we look through all of them. I'm not staying in this station the rest of the day. Anyone comes in and sees me at the computer all day and it'll tarnish my image."
"We wouldn't want that." Antoine chuckled and went back to hitting keys.