On the Prowl

by Matt Lincoln

  Over the phone, I could hear some rustling and the sound of keystrokes, which made me think he must be using his laptop to email me the photos.

  “That’s great, Agent Chapman. I’ll get right on it,” I replied, ending the call and opening my email to wait for the files. It wasn’t until then that I realized that I’d ended the call without saying goodbye or even giving any kind of warning. I felt my face getting hotter in shame. I hadn’t meant to be rude. I was just shy by nature and had a tendency to mess up when it came to social interactions. I’d been rude to the other new guy earlier, too, when he came in to introduce himself. I hadn’t even shaken his hand. I’d been making such great progress coming out of my shell with Miranda and Naomi that I thought I’d gotten over my social anxiety. I was clearly wrong, though, since I managed to be a jerk to both the new agents on their first day.

  Before I could get too down on myself, I heard the low-pitched tone that indicated I’d received a new email. I shook away the negative thoughts and refocused on the task at hand, opening the files one by one.

  The two field agents had been spot on. The writing was definitely Greek, which explained why I’d been having so much trouble locating any suspicious activity originating from South America. Preliminary reports from animal control had indicated that the animal they picked up was a Peruvian Puma, a type of large cat similar to a lion and native to the Andes mountain range. Therefore, it had been the most logical conclusion to assume that it had come here from South America. The fact that they had found Greek shipping information on the cargo container clarified the mystery of where the cat had come from, but it opened a whole new series of questions.

  Why go through the trouble of taking the cat to Greece first? The Peruvian Puma wasn’t native to Greece at all and could only be found in South America. This meant that someone had first brought it to Greece and then back into the United States. But surely bringing it straight up from South America into North America would have been easier and less risky than crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice?

  I leaned back in my chair, racking my brain for logical answers. The only conclusion that made sense was that we were missing a vital piece of the puzzle. With that in mind, I ran a search tracing incoming shipments from Greece, but it was a fruitless endeavor. Almost everything that came into the United States from not only Europe, but the rest of the world, had to pass through customs in either New York or Chicago, and from there they’d disperse and move on to the rest of the country. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Even if we were to put alerts on every incoming shipment from Greece, we’d have to sort through thousands of units daily.

  The sad reality of the matter was that thousands of illegal shipments came onto American soil every day. Federal and local governments did what they could to stop it, but there was just such a massive volume of imports and exports moving through the country every day that keeping track of every single one was impossible. We’d either need to find a way to narrow down the search or change tactics completely.

  I went to examine the crime scene photos Chapman had sent me again, hoping that there was something I had missed that would lead us in the right direction. It was on a photo of the shipping crate they had transported the cougar in that I first noticed it: a small, looping symbol that had been burned onto one corner of the crate. I hadn’t noticed it at first, my brain automatically dismissing it as just another piece of shipping information or even just a smudge or damaged spot. From this distance, I couldn’t quite make it out, so I clicked through the rest of the photos, hoping Agents Chapman or Hills had managed to capture it more clearly.

  Finally, I found a clearer image in the corner of a photo showing the port address they had shipped the crate from. It looked like a flower but made up of interconnecting infinity symbols. What struck me as odd was that, unlike the rest of the markings and writing on the crate which had been stamped or inked on, this symbol had clearly been burned. The edges were fuzzy where the wood had singed, and even from the photo, I could tell that the area around the image looked slightly raised.

  I felt a thrill of excitement course through me at the discovery. This symbol definitely wasn’t a part of the Greek alphabet, and something about the way they branded it onto the crate instantly made me think there was something significant about it.

  I cropped the symbol from the rest of the image and used an editing program to isolate the symbol itself from the surrounding wood of the create. After creating three mock-ups of slightly different size and shape, I ran all three through a reverse image locator. The program began scanning billions of images, from those that had been uploaded to social media to those that had been captured via CCTV or security camera. It was a little scary sometimes to think about how much information they stored online that most people didn’t know about. Luckily for me, this made finding instances of the mysterious image much easier.

  I watched as the program scanned through hundreds of images every second, the completion bar at the bottom of the screen crawling its way across agonizingly slowly. It was an incredibly powerful program, but even the best technology had its limits, so I leaned back in my rolling chair again, staring up at the ceiling of my office as I waited for the program to finish its scan and present the results.

  Just as I was considering going to find something to snack on from the break room, a tinny jingle alerted me to the completion of the image search, which had apparently yielded just three results. I raised my eyebrows in surprise, as three images out of millions was an insanely low number. The first two had apparently originated in Japan, but I brushed those off as both seemed to have come from the social media of teenage girls decked out in colorful, frilly, and generally over-the-top costume dresses. The third, however, came from the social media page of a teenage boy named Andy Gilford. A few days ago, he had uploaded a photo of the symbol spray-painted onto the wall of what appeared to be a shipping warehouse, as I could see similar warehouses as well as a large truck in the background of the photo. The location data embedded in the photo’s files confirmed that someone had taken the photo here in Las Vegas.

  Now, we were getting somewhere. I ran a deeper search on Andy and discovered that he worked part time for a trucking company, mainly loading and unloading shipments.

  “I think I’m starting to figure out how the cougar got here at least,” I said aloud to myself, an old habit from my childhood.

  “What?” I heard a voice behind me say, and I jumped, not having expected anyone to answer me.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Fiona. I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Naomi as she approached me, my heart rate slowing now that I knew it was only her.

  “It’s okay. And it’s nothing. I was just talking to myself,” I said honestly, pushing away from my desk and turning to look at her.

  “All the best of us do,” she said back, and I was once again glad to have met her. She and Miranda never seemed irritated by me, and on the contrary, sometimes seemed just as weird in their own ways. “Anyway, Miranda and I just got back from wrapping up our case, and we were going to have some lunch in the break room while we waited for Hills and Chapman to get back. Would you like to join us?”

  “I’d love to,” I said, getting up. “Let me just give Wallace an update over what I found, and I’ll be right there.”

  She nodded and left my office, no doubt going to make sure Miranda didn’t eat everything herself without us.

  I smiled to myself as I gathered up all the notes I’d made before heading toward Director Wallace’s office.

  10

  Charlie

  The girlfriend, Carmen, lived in a noticeably nicer area than the victim. She lived in a house rather than an apartment, complete with a flower garden and a little picket fence. The paint on the fence and on the house was peeling, and there were weeds poking through between the flowers, but still, the difference was significant enough to indicate that there was most likely a disparity between their incomes.

  “You
think maybe the girlfriend’s the one who paid for the cougar?” I asked Junior as I pulled the car into the narrow driveway.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked as he unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the passenger side door open.

  “Well, by the look of this place, she has more money than he does. Maybe not a lot more, but definitely more,” I said as we made our way up the porch steps and to the front door.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I kind of got the feeling maybe she wasn’t pleased by the cat, to begin with. I mean, Maude said that the victim got the shipment, and a few days later, he and his girlfriend had a huge fight. I dunno, that’s just the way it felt to me.” He fidgeted a little as if he was afraid I’d disagree with him. He had a point, though, and his analysis of the situation made sense.

  “Well, guess there’s only one way to find out what really happened,” I said, knocking on the door.

  The woman who answered was tall and pretty, with tan skin and long dark hair. She opened the door with her arms crossed, chin up in the air, and eyes narrowed and defiant. I opened my mouth, ready to begin the interrogation right there on her front porch, but before I could get a single word in, her bravado crumbled, and she burst into tears.

  I looked over at Junior as if to confirm that he saw the same thing I did, and sure enough, he was looking down at her with the same expression of bewilderment I was sure I had plastered over my own face.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cried between sobs, hiding her face in her hands and falling to her knees. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t mean it! I was just trying to scare him!” She continued to cry, her words barely decipherable over the sound of her ragged breathing.

  Junior was quicker to react than I was, taking her gently by the elbow and guiding her inside and onto the couch in the living room. “It’s alright, just take a deep breath. Can you please tell me what’s going on?” His voice was as calm and gentle as it had been when he’d been speaking to Maude earlier. I had to hand it to him. He was great at keeping his emotions in check and communicating calmly with both victims and suspects. That being the case, I decided to hang back and let him do most of the talking, fearing I might say or do something to mess up the cooperative back and forth they had going on.

  “We should have been saving up to have a baby! We were getting married. I told him I couldn’t raise a baby in Las Vegas. I knew he was a moron, but I never thought he’d do anything this stupid!” She was less crying now and more screaming, clearly angry about whatever it was that he had done.

  “You never thought who would do what, Carmen?” Junior asked her quietly, in stark contrast to the high pitch and volume of her voice. It seemed to calm her a little as she started breathing more evenly and lowered her voice.

  “My dumbass boyfriend, Dean. He took all the money out of our joint savings account. I told him if we planned to get married, we needed to save some money to move to a bigger house in a nicer area, so we got an account together. I knew he was bad with money, but I honestly didn’t think he would just steal my money like that.” She was speaking more quietly now and seemed so sad. I felt a pang of sympathy for her. If what she was saying was true, then Dean had really screwed her over.

  “What did you do when you noticed the money was gone?” Junior asked, his voice even and soothing.

  “I went to ask him about it. I was hoping it was some kind of mistake. Maybe the bank messed up, or maybe someone had stolen his bank card. I was so stupid… I got to his apartment, and he’s all excited. Tells me he bought a cougar. I’m thinking he’s talking about some kind of car or a video game or something, and I’m already pissed off because he went and used our money for something dumb, and then I realize, no, he bought a wild animal cougar. A cougar! What in the hell does he need a cougar for? So I started yelling at him, and he’s getting mad, saying I just don’t understand and he can resell it for double the price and we’ll have the money for the house. I just left. I couldn’t even look at him.” She huffed, crossing her arms and slouching back into the couch cushions.

  “Is that the last time you saw him?” Junior asked, and suddenly I realized where he’d been going with his conversation. I turned to look at Carmen, who’d gone white as a sheet and looked like she might start crying again.

  “I went back last night,” she said, her eyes going vacant as if she saw something far away. “I couldn’t believe he would destroy all our plans like that. I couldn’t believe he would steal from me like that. So I went back around midnight. He was asleep, so I just… I opened the bathroom door, where I knew the cougar was. Then I just left.”

  Any sympathy I’d felt for her evaporated as she finished her story. Her eyes were dry, and she didn’t seem angry or even sad anymore, just blank. Fury was boiling in the pit of my stomach, threatening to spill over. She’d killed him, so easily, over some money? Sure, he’d been wrong, but he didn’t deserve to die.

  I was grateful then that Junior calmly began to explain to her what would be happening next. She just nodded along, not bothering to protest or make excuses. I knew that losing my temper wouldn’t do me any good, and I needed to remember that, working for MBLIS, I would be dealing with people committing atrocious crimes for petty reasons regularly. I couldn’t afford to let myself get worked up over every case.

  I could hear Junior and Carmen talking quietly behind me. Junior was explaining that the police would be coming soon to take her into custody, and to her credit, she seemed to understand and wasn’t making any excuses for what she’d done. A moment later, I heard footsteps coming toward me, and then Junior was beside me but still turned so he could keep an eye on Carmen. She didn’t seem like she’d try to run, but it was always better to err on the side of caution. You never knew what a suspect would do when backed into a corner.

  “Well, the police are on their way,” Junior said after ending the short phone call he’d just made to the local police. He sounded almost disappointed, and I was about to ask him why that was when something shiny in the backyard of the house across the street caught the corner of my eye. It was a quick glint, like sunlight reflecting off glass, but I couldn’t see anything in the yard that could have caused such a bright shine. In my defense, the yard was pretty overgrown with weeds, bushes, and a few stray tree limbs, so it was difficult to make out much of anything.

  I could hear Junior saying something beside me, but I didn’t actually hear the words. Something about that glint had raised my hackles and rung alarm bells in my mind as if there was something extremely important I was missing. I leaned my head forward and a little to the right, trying to get a better angle to peer around a particularly thick tree limb. I saw the glint again, and in the same instance I did, I heard a pop like a firecracker and the sound of glass cracking and felt a rush of heat bloom against my left cheek.

  “Get down!” I screamed, realizing immediately what the glint had been. A bullet had just shot through the window mere inches from my face. If I hadn’t moved just a second earlier to try to get a better angle, it would have hit me directly in the eye. Junior must have realized what the sound was as well because before I had finished yelling, he was already halfway across the room and tackling Carmen to the ground.

  Carmen was screaming in shock and confusion at having just been thrown to the ground, but just a moment later, her screams were drowned out by the sound of glass shattering and wood splintering as bullets began to rain through the window and embed themselves into the walls and furniture of the house.

  I lifted my head up off the ground as far as I dared. Without knowing how many attackers there were or how much ammunition they had, it was foolish to try to fire back. For right now, all we could do was stay low to the ground and protect Carmen. I glanced over to where she and Junior were lying on the ground in front of the couch. Carmen was still screaming but didn’t seem physically harmed, and Junior looked alert and unharmed as well.

  Just a few seconds after it began, the gunfire stopped, and th
e silence that followed was so heavy it felt suffocating. Even Carmen had stopped screaming and was now quietly sniffling beside Junior.

  An instant later, Junior was on his phone with dispatch, relaying what had just happened and calling for immediate backup.

  “You go. I’ll cover you from here and guard Carmen,” Junior said, taking a position by the window. I got up and moved quickly toward the backdoor, edging around the side of the house and being careful not to leave myself open to direct fire. The shots had stopped, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t start again. I moved around to the front of the house and ran to duck behind our car, using it as cover.

  From here, I wasn’t sure how to make it across the street to the other house. There was nothing for me to take cover behind out in the middle of the road, so I risked being completely exposed. I could wait for the police to get here, but doing so would give the suspect time to escape. I had to take the risk. Knowing that Junior was still by the window and would cover me, I steeled myself, jumped out from behind the car, and made a mad dash toward the yard where I’d seen the initial glint.

  As I made it to the yard, I managed to hear someone swear and then what sounded like something metallic being thrown. I knew that I was reckless now, as there was no way Junior would be able to still cover me, but I ran toward the sound anyway, further into the overgrown weeds of the yard. A few feet away from the back door of the house, I found a sniper rifle discarded in the grass. It looked as though the suspect had been in the middle of reloading it and had decided to abandon it when he’d heard me approaching. Looking around quickly to try to figure out where he’d gone, I noticed the back door was actually ajar. It wasn’t a guarantee, but my gut told me that’s where the suspect had run, so I hurried inside.