This is where the editing nightmare occurred. This chapter has been tossed around and removed/remixed/mashed several times you wouldn't believe it. Let me know what you think.
THANKS for the REVIEWS AND FOLLOWS!
SNATCH
4:03 p.m. – London
"What have you got for me Magnus?"
The forensic examiner spun in her chair towards the entering Detective. A smile curved on her lips as she picked up a folder and handed it to him.
"The gag was a match."
Detective Wolcott's brow arced. From years of working with the detective, Magnus understood that to be his excited face. She continued with her own findings.
"But also here is the information on the hairs found in the closet," She slid a microscope towards him and gestured for him to have a look. His face twisted slightly as he leaned inwards to view inside the lens.
"The one you're looking at is the darker strand which shows signs of radiation."
"Really?"
He adjusted the lens on the scope to view the strands closer. After a few more seconds, he stood up and blinked his eyes. Dr. Magnus slid the scope back over to her side of the table and pulled out an analysis sheet.
"Extremely high levels of radiation," Dr. Magnus said this as she handed him a sheet to read for himself. "I'm honestly shocked that whomever this person is even alive."
The detective glanced upwards from the sheet to discover Magnus wearing a somber expression. "If they are alive, my best bet is that they may be very sick. Radiation on these levels normally can cause cancer or organ failure."
Wolcott closed the document and tapped the file to his palm, "But it's not Myka Bering's?"
"No, she's a brunette. The age of the hair consists with the possibility of it belonging with one of her captors, see the state of the follicle? It's not dried out. This person has dark hair, black in fact."
"What of the other hair?"
"It was synthetic. You know those extensions the teenagers like to wear? Those kinds that are pre-dyed?"
Wolcott grimaced. "Those horrible things Erica likes to put in her hair?"
"Exactly, from the description your witness gave, it could belong to the young woman who answered the door."
"Intriguing,"
Detective Wolcott had been in the business for eighteen years. This wasn't the first time he worked a wealthy hostage case and thanks to his report, it wouldn't be his last. He was a bore and bred East Ender, he knew crime from the cradle and he knew how to handle the most asinine situations. In fact, it was his beginnings that helped him solve his first ever kidnapping. A young girl was kidnapped from her million dollar home in Manchester.
He pieced the puzzle together and deciphered not only the how and why of the crime, but most importantly- the where. In thirty-six hours, he and a team of twelve saved the little girl from a duo of thugs who were in fact furious ex-employee ground keepers for the family. They felt they weren't treated right and didn't like the minimum pay they were receiving from the rich bastard that hired them, so to exact revenge they took his daughter and held her for a million dollar ransom. It was an open and shut case.
But something about this particular case made no sense.
Wolcott's cell phone rang and he dug it out of his coat pocket to check the caller, it was Erica his daughter. The detective pointed a finger to Magnus in pause then turned sideways to answer the call.
"Yes?"
"Dad?" Erica's voice sounded hurried on the other end, immediately, Wolcott switched to panic.
"Love, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just wanted to tell you that I'm taking the bus with Ashley and Jaime to the movies."
Releasing his breath, Wolcott looked down at his wristwatch. In a few more hours he would be off the hunt. Considering he only got weekends to spend with his daughter, he was looking forward to sharing what little of his time off with her. Now that plan was out of the window.
"Wait, I'm close to there, give me thirty and I can take the three of you instead," Wolcott's face lit up at his swift thinking, "Free ride in a copper's car, movie and dinner included!"
On the other end of the line, his daughter gasped and broke into a sputter of mortification.
"Dad, I'm fifteen years old! I know how to get by just fine, we don't need you to chaperone us!"
A wince bought onto his face and Wolcott shook his head as he imagined his daughter's expression. In the background he heard giggling, it must be the girls.
"Erica listen to me, be careful. There are some bad, bad people out there. Keep your eyes open, pay attention to the details."
The teenager groaned. Though she didn't live with her father, she had heard him say this more times than she could count.
"Ok..." she huffily replied. "Just don't embarrass me again like you did last time and keep texting me at every stop, Leslie Harold was sitting next to me and she wouldn't stop laughing every time you did it."
Even his face colored at the memory. He just wanted what was best for her. Anya had gave him an earful that night telling him to quit being so "paranoid" all the time.
"Alright, I won't, back by seven?" Wolcott said.
"Nine," Erica shot back.
"Eight,"
"Eight-thirty,"
The detective closed his eyes and imagined the night. Tonight was going to be quiet and safe. There weren't any big games this weekend and the carnival had left just a month prior. If anything, the girls would only run into a few hobo's on the trip, maybe a few of their school friends. Wolcott opened his eyes and spoke.
"Deal."
Erica exclaimed and excitedly shouted something to her friends. The detective listened as the other girls yelped too. He wasn't sure whether it was a good or bad thing that they were so enthusiastic about the prospect of him not being around. They were just teenage girls, what could they possibly get into?
Magnus raised an eye to the detective after he hung up. She was wearing a smirk.
"That age?" she said.
"Of course," the detective sheepishly scratched his chin, he appeared dazed. "Sometimes when I speak to her, I swear I can literally feel myself growing older in the bones."
"You're not that old Wolly," said Magnus.
"But I'm getting there," Wolcott straightened his tie on his neck, "I'll contact the Berings, you might want to send their lawyer a copy of the findings." The detective swallowed as if he had a bad taste.
"The Senior Bering is a bit… difficult."
The examiner snorted as she met his eyes, she was holding a vial of clear solution and a cotton swab. "I'm sending a fax when the rest of the samples are finished, maybe in an hour or so, what time is it there? About ten? Before lunch seems like an appropriate time to drop a bomb."
The detective's face twisted, from the examiner's interpretation, it was his laughing face.
"You are one strange woman Magnus," he finally said.
"Say's the even stranger man."
The duo shared a laugh. It was warm and type that only friends would only understand. Once it was over, the examiner handed Wolcott a folder of copies and pressed her hand to his forearm.
"Don't let this case drive you too crazy Wolly, something tells me everything is going to end well." she said.
Wolcott's clear eyes searched her face. He never liked making predictions about a cases ending. It was too much like jumping the gun.
"How can you be so certain?" he asked.
Magnus didn't reply. Releasing the detective, the examiner about faced and returned to her microscope. It was her dismissal.
"If I find anything else, I'll call you, the boy's are still going at the rest of the samples and may find something."
As the detective saw himself out, Magnus' voice rang out from the side of the room.
"Freshen up a bit and take the rest of the night off, will ya? I think Erica would appreciate it."
Two hours later, Wolcott called it a night.
He and Detective Aarons had closed off the final half of a robbery case they had been working that evening. It was a success. Though the owner of the shop had been murdered at the crime, his wife and daughter would now rest certain that the men who committed the heinous act were now behind bars. A sad story with an almost happy ending.
On his way to his flat, Wolcott called the Bering's lawyer, Arthur Nielsenn. It was his fourth time calling the gentlemen and as the prior attempts, it was futile. Unlike the answering machine that responded previously, this time a secretary answered and told him that Mr. Nielsenn was unavailable and to try again if it was important. The indignant detective only snorted at the line. He was trying to alert the family of the findings, how important did the news have to be? If the billionaire and his lawyer didn't see this news as important, Wolcott wondered just what were the family's priorities.
It wasn't till Wolly opened his front door did he remember the state of his home before he had left morning.
Dirty laundry and piled dishes made up the stench of the quarters. He kicked himself. Just a few days ago, he swore to have the place cleaned in time for his daughter's arrival. Because they only got weekends and holidays together, he made it an effort to keep things in order for he didn't want her to see what a sty he allowed the house to become in her absence. He didn't care enough about himself to worry about living in the filth, but when she was around – he wanted it special. But as usual, work got in the way of his planning.
Kicking his way through some trash, Wolcott swore as a tray with grey meatloaf leftovers spilled out onto the rug. It was already moldy in some spots and left a nasty grey smear on the cream colored flooring. The detective dropped his suitcase and placed the trash back into the bag and placed it off to the side to take out later. From there he went to the bath for a quick wash and discovered a Tesco sticker clinging to the side of his pants leg. He remembered it from his purchase of chips the other night, and how he stopped in to grab a ginger ale for his stomach and some kid was passing them out. How it got stuck to his clothes and how long it had been there baffled him completely.
No wonder she wanted to go out with her friends so badly. I really am embarrassing.
He thought.
Thus, Wolcott dried his hands and tried to make more work of the rest of the house. He barely stepped into the kitchen when he came upon a basket of clothes in front of the breakfast table. These he had attempted to clean a while back, he couldn't remember when. Seeing it was blocking access to his makeshift "office" he tossed the laundry into the wash then settled down.
When Erica wasn't around, he liked to use the kitchen for his case files. He would spread them out against the table and open each file so the contents would display. As he had a little time till she got back, Wolly did this with the Bering files he had acquired. He removed all of the snapshots of the crime scene in Paris, the shattered car window, the smashed cell phone, and the broken heel of a stiletto from its folder and mixed it with the shots of the inside of the London loft.
Wolcott lined each of the photos so that it would be arranged how he imagined each event carried out, starting from the Parisian club all the way down to that cherry red ball gag in the London closet. As the night progressed, he would rearrange each shot and try to image each scene from a new angle of what if's. With each new angle came a new story, in each new story, he tried to imagine himself inside not only the victim's mind- but the assailants. Being a detective, he had to know what made people tick, why did they react the way they did, and most importantly, what they were planning next. This method wrought heavily on any sane minded individual, but as any detective would've told you- it was how most worked. As he laid out the last of the paperwork, only briefly did Wolcott wonder what Magnus would say upon seeing him working from home, but this got squashed with his worrying reminders.
To help himself relax a bit, he decided to make himself a drink. The detective opened his fridge and shuffled through the contents. Most of everything was child friendly- apple juice, milk, and a few bottles of water. As strange as it was, the sight of this gave him relief. That was one thing he got right. He didn't like having alcohol in the house during his daughter's stays. Some could call this being cautious, others may say he was overprotective for it, as for Detective Wolcott himself, he didn't give a damn what anyone thought. Too many teens ended up in his station for drunken shenanigans, if he could save his daughter from it he figured the best place to do it was to start from home.
Wolcott chose juice and poured himself a full glass.
"Detective Parker Wolcott,"
A voice that sounded disembodied rose from behind the open fridge door, instantly graying detective startled and his glass of juice sloshed out over his front.
"Jesus, Mary, bleeding Christ!" He squeaked. "Who in the hell—
Wolcott swiftly whipped the door closed and his face turned pale. As the figure drew from within the shadows, he hurriedly wiped his lips on the back of his hand and straightened his posture.
"Mrs. Frederic!" he exclaimed.
Mrs. Frederic nodded her head in a curt signal of acknowledgment and daintily crossed her hands around her front. For a woman he hadn't seen in years, her gaze was as steely and unnerving as it had been the first day they had met. He got goosebumps just thinking about the first encounter.
"For a detective, Wolly, it always surprises me how easy it is to break into your apartment." Mrs. Frederic said.
And she was right. In his everyday life, Detective Wolcott was a cautious man. Four padlocks on the front door. Double locks on the windows with heavy duty enclosing. A gun was hidden in every crevice, one in the lamp, another on the side of the fridge, three others scattered strategically throughout the house.
Thinking of it now, he could see why Anya left him in the first place.
"This is about Bering isn't it?" Wolcott asked.
"Why? Would it be about anything else?"
The detective didn't respond.
Mrs. Frederic pulled a seat and sat down. Despite the squalid kitchen, she looked as if she were perched atop of a throne. Now hyperaware of the state of his house, Wolcott was embarrassed and wished he hadn't been ambushed. He would've at least taken out the garbage!
"Do you have any ideas to anything as of yet?"
The stubble there made a rasping noise.
"Uh, yes, we swept the scene and only hard evidence we did find was a gag. Magus ran an analysis and it was the Vic's. I just got the results."
Twenty four hours gone, Myka Bering was already labeled a Victim.
Mrs. Frederic nodded, "Good, what else?"
The older woman's reaction led him to relax a little. Wolcott pulled the chair out across from her and sat down. His hands were twitchy with nerves.
"Well some hairs were found, but they weren't hers. We need more hard evidence to place her at the scene though, so the sinks were checked. She had a lot of hair, hopefully she used the loo at some point to freshen up…" Wolcott's face became sheepish at the gaffe. "What am I saying, kidnapped girls don't freshen up!"
For some odd reason, Mrs. Frederic's presence always made him feel young and slightly insecure. He knew he was a good detective, he had plenty of success to prove it, but one moment in her presence he felt like a greenie out on the field again. It was a humbling experience and made him realize just how much more he still needed to learn. Wolcott swiped a palm across his face and took a heavy swig from his cup. He forgot it wasn't scotch and was surprised by the flavor.
"No, I think it's a wonderful idea Wolly," Mrs. Frederic said.
Instead of replying, Wolcott stared at her.
It was here that Wolcott first began to wonder if Frederic was patronizing him. Mrs. Frederic was the only person who could ever catch him off his A – game. The woman was a force of her own in the American CIA, and as a young detective, he had seen her work firsthand. It was a case involving international drug cartel. He had stumbled across a find bigger than the local yokels and even Scotland Yard could handle. The CIA ended up getting involved when it was discovered that the very man he had tagged as being responsible for a European drug craze, was in fact an US informant with ties to the Middle East. Tossing him in prison meant not only a bunch of angry drug lords, but also one furious Shah. Talk about a sticky situation.
Wolcott pushed his empty cup off to the side and folded his hands.
"I don't want to be rude, it's always such a pleasure to see you Mrs. Frederic but…" his throat bobbed, "Uh, why are you here?"
" I thought you retired?"
Mrs. Frederic's mouth twitched, a shadow of a smile on them. "Agents never retire Wolly, nor do detectives. Didn't they teach you this in the force?"
The gray detective's lips cracked showing his teeth. Frederic placed the envelope on the table and eyed the detective. Across from her, Wolcott sat upright, his pale eyes alert.
"I'm here because I have something to give to you."
Wolcott's eyes dropped to the orange envelope. It was pouch like and shaped like a long rectangle.
"Now this information in here is very important and time sensitive, you may need it and you may never ever use it." Frederic direly stated.
"Listening," Wolcott said.
The older woman leaned forward ever so slightly, she pressed a finger to the corner edging the package closer to Wolcott. The detective palmed the envelope and hefted it in his hand. He couldn't tell what it could be.
"The last time you dealt with a case with the CIA, you were given instructions, no?"
Wolcott nodded his head.
"And you followed each one to the letter am I correct?"
"Of course!" Wolcott's eyes snapped up to hers, he sounded scandalize.
"Good."
That one word again. For the first time in his life, Wolcott saw Frederic do something that scared him more than anything in his life, the corner of her lip went up into a genuine smile. Wolcott shivered but hid the motion by running his hand over his neck.
"In a few days you will receive more information on this case, when you do, I want you to open this envelope hear me?"
The detective's face colored with irritation.
"What do you think, I'm some schoolboy?" Wolcott's voice was tinged with frustration. "What's the big deal? Why can't I open it now?"
"There are things in here you won't understand as of now," Frederic seemed to waver here but she caught herself. "But if my suspicions are correct, and I do mean suspicions, I need to know that all of our p's and q's line up."
Wolcott didn't quite get where she was coming from, but he trusted Frederic. Probably more than he was willing to admit.
"Ok."
Frederic stood but her eyes were focused onto his.
"Continue to utilize Mr. Lattimer, Detective Wolcott."
"I am," Wolcott affirmed.
"Do please, he is going to be valuable asset to your boys at the station and I think you'll regret losing his service,"
Insecurities creeping in again, Wolcott's face darkened.
"You don't think I can handle this Frederic?"
In typical Frederic fashion, she calmly evaded answering the question outright.
"We all can use a little backup every now and then Wolcott,"
The cryptic look she gave him made Wolcott feel ants all over again. He awkwardly cleared his throat and fiddled with the package.
"So hypothetically, let's say I never have to open it. What do I do with it then?"
"You will know when the time comes."
Frederic turned to the living room and looked around. Her eyes fell onto the windows.
"Nice drapes," Frederic said.
Without looking in her direction, Wolcott replied. "Thanks Erica helped me pick them the last time she was—
He looked up to meet her face and discovered she was gone.
"All right then," Wolcott murmured.
Wolly continued to gingerly thumbed the envelope. His palms were steady but had broken into a cold sweat. Whatever was in there was calling to him. And whatever it was, it was something ugly. His instincts were going off and in his chest and his heart had begun to race. Whatever was in the pouch, he wasn't prepared for it. He knew it.
The detective shoved the envelope into a cereal box and stuck it onto the shelf all the way in the back. He grabbed a mop to clean up the spilled juice and drew the sink. Erica was going to be back home in mere minutes to spend their allotted weekend time together. Hopefully he would have the place clean by then, and if she wasn't too tired they could go back out and grab an ice cream and go for a walk.
As Wolcott dragged his hands across his face, he just so happened to glance down at Myka Bering's photograph. The irony of the moment popped into his mind and caused him to wearily shake his head. He's solving a mystery involving a missing daughter, and here he is looking forward to spending time with his own.
Life was strange.
NOTE:
Not going to promise, but seriously, Wednesdays are a day to check for updates. Too bad Halloween is on a Thursday this year...