“Yes and no,” Reed said, raising a hand on edge and wagging it before him. “I do have a small favor to ask, but I have a feeling this one might fall into the category of things-you’d-willing-do-for-free.”
Bushy eyebrows rising beneath a plume of hair, Deek dropped his chin a half inch to better look at Reed.
“I’m listening.”
“KCBS,” Reed said, pushing the letters out without preamble. “Earlier today they ran a report about a floater we found in the river last night.”
Behind the desk Deek remained motionless, not responding in any way as he waited for Reed to continue.
“A report based on information we believe was sent to them by the killer.”
Again the eyebrows rose just a bit.
“You believe?”
“Yes,” Reed said, having saved the kicker, the part he knew Deek wouldn’t be able to resist, until the end, “because it came from a CPD email address, and we know damned sure it wasn’t one of us that sent it.”
Pursing his lips together, Deek blew out a low, shrill whistle. He extended the note a few seconds in length, exhausting his air supply, before saying, “Okay, you have my attention.”
“And for you, I got Grimes to clear the usual consulting fee plus holiday pay,” Reed added.
A small smile tugged at one side of Deek’s mouth as he shifted his focus from Reed down to Billie.
“I think you’re making your partner soft here, Miss Billie. No way the guy I first met would have gone to all that trouble just for my help.”
“No way that guy would have asked for your help to begin with,” Reed countered.
The comment pulled the smile up into a full grin, Deek’s head still rotated down a bit as his eyes flicked toward Reed.
“If it makes you feel any better, the feeling was mutual.”
This time it was Reed’s turn to react, coughing out a laugh, shaking his head just slightly.
The first time Reed had made the trip he had done so with extreme reluctance, the fact that nobody was better in the area at what he needed than Deek being the only reason he had gone to the effort. With each passing request it had gotten easier, now to the point that Deek’s cyber skills were becoming an essential part of his investigative technique, coming in second only to Billie and the unique abilities she possessed.
Taken together Reed still would have preferred to be spending every day crammed into the sedan with Riley, but given the circumstances, his landing had been much softer than he ever could have anticipated.
“Give me everything you’ve got,” Deek said. “I should be able to get you an IP address on it easily enough, whatever else I can pull as well.”
“Appreciate it,” Reed said.
“What kind of timeframe you looking at?” Deek asked.
With the clock already well into late afternoon and tracking on toward evening, Reed had no pre-determined table. There was still one more thing he wanted to follow up on for the evening before heading home, knowing that he needed to be back in time for dinner, that there was only so long he could keep his parents waiting, investigation or not.
“Not this instant, but soon. Tomorrow?” Reed asked, very much a question, letting it be known that he wasn’t sure how long such a thing would take.
“Oh,” Deek said, his features crinkling slightly as he moved a hand from behind his head and waved it at Reed. “Done. No sweat.”
“Many thanks,” Reed said, raising two fingers to his brow in a small salute. Turning toward the staircase, he slapped at the side of his jeans, the sound of his palm hitting the denim ringing out, pulling Billie along beside him.
Just a few steps in he turned, continuing to drift sideways for the stairs.
“Oh, by the way, do you happen to know a Jeff Park over at KCBS?”
On the opposite side of the screens Reed could see Deek’s face twist up, his lips moving slightly as he said the name a couple of times, trying to place it.
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Should I?”
“Naw, not necessarily,” Reed said, placing a foot on the bottom step and looping his wrist over the rail running alongside it. “He just seemed to know you when I mentioned having an independent expert look at this for me.”
For a moment Deek’s mouth opened to respond before pausing, a self-satisfied smile crossing his face.
“Yeah, well, you’ll get that.”
Chapter Twenty
The precinct wasn’t as full as Reed’s previous pass through, but nowhere near as empty as his first trip of the day. At a few minutes before six most of the regular day staff had either already left or were drifting that way, a handful of them exiting the front door as Reed pulled into the front visitor’s stall and parked.
Pretending to be checking his phone for a moment to allow them to pass, he turned over his shoulder to regard Billie, her muzzle just a couple inches from his face, warm breath passing over his cheek.
“Ten, fifteen minutes tops, then we go see the folks. Deal?”
The only response was a pink tongue flicking out over her nose, a quick splash of color against a solid midnight hue.
“Yeah, I’m getting hungry too,” Reed replied, pushing the door open and stepping out. Knowing better than to bother with the rear door he stood off to the side and waited as Billie followed him through the driver’s seat, not affixing a leash to her as they headed inside.
Without the benefit of daylight the ambient temperature had dropped more than ten degrees, the outside air every bit as cold as the night before. Matching plumes of white extended from both of them as they moved quickly for the front, Reed jerking the door open and each going in as fast as possible.
A few errant sounds could be heard as Reed pushed straight for the staircase, Billie leading the way before him, taking the steps with great bounds. By the time he reached the second floor she was bouncing on all fours waiting for him, the effects of a long day starting to become evident, his partner ready to be done.
Pausing just briefly at the top of the steps, Reed turned to his right and raised a hand high overhead.
Having taken over for Lou a few minutes earlier, Jackie was already in position behind the desk, her hair teased out into a wide halo around her head, bright pink lipstick covering much of the bottom half of her face.
Leaning against the opposite side of the desk was a young uniform Reed had not yet met, his posture suggesting he was interested in far more than an update on any calls that had come in. At the sight of Jackie standing up tall behind the desk and returning Reed’s wave he made a show of openly turning to scowl, his gaze making it as far as Billie before turning back to face forward.
“How you, Sugar?” Jackie called, her voice thick with syrup, loud enough to be heard throughout the entire building.
“We’re getting by,” Reed replied, trying to keep from smiling at the action of her newest possible suitor. “How are things around here tonight?”
“So far, so good,” she replied, wagging red-tipped fingernails at him in a fluttery wave before returning to her seat.
Taking the movement as his cue to go, Reed again pushed back toward the left, the room appearing as if he had been the only one present the entire day, not a single thing out of place.
Given how shorthanded they still were following the early retirements of Iaconelli and Bishop a couple months before – two longtime detectives that had both been injured on the job – that wasn’t terribly surprising.
Following his partner, Reed went back to his position in the corner, the files from Earl and the ME both still stacked where he’d left them. Bypassing the crime scene workup entirely he went straight for the report from Pope, flipping it open and extracting the thin stack of photographs from within.
Fastened together with a small binder clip, there were nearly a dozen in total, starting at the macro level and moving inward. The first few were of the entire body, shots taken from the front and sides of the girl, showing her full stature. After that they worked
their way through the obvious injuries, several focusing on the hands, just as many displaying the interior of her mouth.
Not until the last two did Reed find what he was looking for, two close images of the bottoms of the girl’s feet.
His original intent had been to dig on the tattoos much earlier, his entire afternoon getting derailed by the news report. In his haste to get downtown after realizing that the photos had come from the killer he had rushed out without checking up on this angle, not expecting a great deal but needing to be thorough just the same.
Right now he had one lead, that being whatever Deek could find, but it was far from definitive. Internet access was near universal these days. Finding an IP address or even where the false email had been created would be a start, but the more likely scenario was that it would lead to a public library, or an internet café, or even a Starbucks, the options for finding free wireless bordering on infinite.
Instead of leaning on that entirely he was hopeful that the tattoos might tell him something, perhaps even the girl’s name.
Not likely, but it was worth looking into.
Choosing the second of the two images, one that had been blown up to a higher resolution, Reed lifted it from the desk. Holding the edges of it in either hand he raised it to just a few inches short of his nose, squinting slightly.
Never before had he had any experience with Chinese characters, though he tended to agree with Pope that that’s what they appeared to be. Constructed from short solid lines arranged in various patterns, there looked to be seven different ones present - one of them repeated twice, another repeated three times – for a total of ten.
Split evenly into two groups, five were present on the sole of her right foot, five on the left, all etched into the soft skin of her arch.
Reed himself had no tattoos, but he’d accompanied Riley to get a couple before. Clearly in his memory he could remember one of the toughest people he’d ever known wincing as the needle entered her skin more than eighty times a minute, the first trip being for a cross on her left shoulder blade, the second for a bit of Latin script on the inside of her bicep.
Neither had seemed especially pleasant.
He couldn’t imagine what getting the soles of one’s feet done must have felt like.
After the second tattoo was applied Reed remembered the heavy bruising on the soft skin of the arm’s underbelly, a cornucopia of black and blue appearing overnight and remaining for the better part of two weeks. Not once had Riley complained about the self-inflicted discoloration, though often he could see her clenching her teeth or hear her drawing in a sharp breath of air, the pain she was feeling obvious.
Given that there was no bruising present on these tattoos, it looked as if the ink had been applied long enough ago to allow for full healing.
Not yet old enough to have begun fading, Reed guessed them to have been applied no more than a couple years before, just as Pope had alluded to. The lack of any cracks or stretch lines seemed to indicate they had been done after full growth was achieved, though without knowing the girl’s age, that did little to narrow the scope.
Placing the photo down on the desk before him Reed called his computer to life, a single twitch of the mouse dissolving the black screen, the blue backdrop of his desktop staring back at him. Pulling up a simple search engine he type in “Chinese alphabet,” clicking on the first entry returned.
On screen before him a grid of traditional Chinese characters appeared, the background colored to resemble parchment paper, each figure given an individual box to clearly delineate the meaning.
Holding the paper up beside the screen, Reed slowly scrolled down through the vertical list, using the pad of his index finger to roll the wheel atop the mouse.
Two or three letters at a time the list moved down the page, Reed’s gaze shifting from the photo to the screen.
Not a single image matched.
“Shit,” Reed whispered, dropping the photo down on the desk. He ran his palm back over his forehead, surprised to find it come back wet, not realizing he had been holding his breath, that he was sweating.
“Okay,” he said aloud, turning to look at Billie, her chestnut eyes matching the gaze. “They aren’t Chinese letters. What else does that leave us? Another language?”
For a moment he considered the notion, trying to think of how many different languages used similar characters, how long it would take him to check each one, when a thought came to mind.
Backing out of the webpage, he returned to the search engine and deleted the second half of his entry, changing his inquiry from “Chinese alphabet” to “Chinese numerals.”
A moment later an entry from the same source came on screen, this one bringing a smile to Reed’s face.
“Jackpot.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The scent of charred meat greeted Reed and Billie the moment the door to the sedan was opened, carried to them by a puff of chilly breeze. Faint yet unmistakable, it swirled through the confined space of the car, immediately setting both on edge.
“Smells like someone braved the cold to light the grill,” Reed said, unable to stop the smile that tugged at his lips as he climbed out, Billie again nosing her way through the front seats and out past the steering wheel.
Making no effort to stop her, Reed watched as she shot out around the side of his farmhouse, her dark form moving from dog to shadow to non-existent in just a matter of seconds.
Shaking his head slightly at her ebullience, Reed reached back in and grabbed up his files from the passenger seat, tucking them under his arm as he slammed the door and headed for the house.
It was hard to tell if the day had been a good one or not, most of it spent checking off all the investigative essentials but not gaining an enormous amount of information in the process. Never before had he worked a case where even the name of the victim still evaded him a day later, not sure what to make of things as he stepped up onto the back porch to find the source of the smell along the rear edge, a tendril of smoke rising from either side of the grill cover, the sound of meat sizzling just barely audible.
Walking in a circle around it was Billie, her body coming in and out of view as she paced, her nails clicking against the boards beneath her.
“You need to use the bathroom?” Reed asked, watching as the question barely penetrated his partner’s psyche. “Or is there no point in even asking until that steak comes off the grill?”
He paused for a moment, waiting for a response he knew was not coming, before turning toward the door.
“Come on, let’s get in out of the cold.”
A small whine was the sole reply as the sound of her paws indicated she had raised her pace into a jog, following him toward the door. Pushing it open he stepped aside, allowing her to pass before following her in, a plume of aroma that made the steaks seems mild by comparison engulfing them.
“Hey, buddy!” his mother called, turning over a shoulder to look at him. Dressed in a red apron over jeans and a sweater, she stood in front of the sink, the water running over a head of lettuce. “Hope you’re hungry, dinner will be ready in just a minute.”
Taking a few steps forward Reed dropped the files on the table, letting them hit with an audible slap.
“I didn’t invite you here to cook for me,” Reed said. “I would have done all this.”
“Oh, nonsense,” she replied, turning off the water and giving the lettuce a few good shakes, the sound of droplets hitting the steel basin audible. “Besides, you made it easy for me, everything was already in the fridge. It was like paint-by-numbers cooking.
“Even your dad could have done this.”
“Let’s not go getting crazy,” Rhett replied, appearing instantly at the mention of his name. He stood in the open doorway connecting the kitchen and living room, leaning with one shoulder against the wall. “You know my forte is consumption, not preparation.”
“Yes, dear, we know,” his mother said, her back still turned, her voice co
nveying that she was rolling her eyes as she spoke.
Not even attempting to hide his good humor at the interaction, Reed unloaded his keys and badge, looking up at his father.
“Good day?”
Pursing his lips slightly, his father replied, “No complaints. What time did you guys head out this morning?”
“Early,” Reed replied, not quite certain what the time was when they left, just knowing it was well before sunrise.
“Worth it?”
For a moment Reed paused, considering how to respond. Already that morning seemed like a long time ago, the read-through of Earl’s report containing very little information, every step since having been a painful slog forward.
“Slow going,” Reed said. “Every little bit has been pulling teeth, no pun intended. We don’t even know the girl’s name yet.”
Remaining in place, his father said nothing, looking down at Billie for a moment as she presented herself at his feet before deciding there was no food to be found there and going back to the opposite side of the room.
“Yeah, we saw the news earlier,” his mother said, starting in on a tomato to add to the salad. “Made it sound like you guys don’t have anything yet.”
Reed knew she meant nothing by the comment, was only reporting what they had seen, though he couldn’t help but feel a flash of animosity. Despite their existing relationship with KCBS, the station had felt no remorse in painting them as incompetent at the first possible turn.
The fact that it had now been more or less proven that the information they received was heavily slanted by a killer with an agenda was irrelevant. There would be no way for people to forget what had already been said.
“It’s not quite all bad,” Reed said, flipping over the cover of Pope’s file sitting on the table.
The Partnership Page 10
