Chapter #14The Missing Policewoman by: Seuzz   Your palm itches: you very much want to call Knotts and ask her what it is you're supposed to be investigating, and what it is you should be worried about. But Knotts doesn't send her people out unprepared, so if she didn't tell you anything it's because she herself barely knows what might be wrong.
"Start over," you tell Elliot. You've not worked with him before, but he seems useless even for a zampo. "I know Stanfill's playing a policewoman, but what's her bio?"
"Sarah Curwood." He gives you the cursory information he had gleaned for Stanfill.
"And why are you here instead of monitoring Lamb? He's the one handling the actual investigation."
"That's my business, innit? Look, the tec's the one who's in deep. The girl's just there to fill a hole. So if anyone's watching 'em, they'll be watching him. So, he gives his stuff to the girl and she gives to me and then I send it back along to ops management."
"And who came up with the idea for that little monkey vine?"
"You like it?" He grins. "I'm gonna patent it."
You roll your eyes. "So what have you got to send back?"
"Nothin'. Your mate went off duty almost right after he swapped in for the girl. So he goes home and finds out she's got a roommate. He goes for a walk for a bit, goes home, hides in the bedroom. Roommate goes out on a date, doesn't come home till seven o'clock."
"And you know that because you've been watching from across the street all this time."
"Just one of the many services I provide." He grins.
"And what service did you provide when Stanfill went out at four o'clock this morning?"
His grins sharpens. "Ah, not so smart and careful as we think we are," he gloats. "There's a reason they put you lot under one like me. You forget to ask what happened between last night and this morning."
Christ, this one is even worse than Davenport. "So are you going to tell me, or save it for your memoirs?"
"Clever," he sneers. "Hafta remember that one next time I wanna be taken for Oscar Wilde. Mizz Knotts came out a little after nine, talked to me, said she wanted to talk to 'Sarah', and I told her where to find her."
"And?"
"And she went in and talked to her for, oh, twenty minutes, I'd say. Came out and left without so much as a thankee or nod in my direction."
"And then what happened?"
"Nothin', for about six hours, 'cept I popped me some uppers." He shakes his head. "I don't care what the docs say, them ain't natural. Anyway, 'round about four I notice this bird in a yellow dress with a newspaper over her head, 'cos it was raining a little right then, she comes tottering down the street on these heels, and she goes into the building. I watch for a bit, because I couldn't see her face but her skirt only rode down to here." He drops his hand under the table. "And I liked what I could see of her legs." He rubs his mouth. "Skinny, you know, but in a waif-like way. Well, I watched close for when she came out again—"
"She wasn't one of the regulars in the building?"
"I'd not seen her go in or out before. But she comes out with my boy, which I could see because of that light over the door, and he had an umbrella up high to keep the water off. Well, they come down and go off around the corner."
"And then?"
"I tried calling, to see what was up, but he had the phone off. I got the car going to follow 'em, but they'd disappeared, down some stairs or up a stoop or somethin'. I prowled around, but got jammed up on the turnaround when a coupla street sweepers came outta nowhere. Got back, parked, texted my boy, waited." He shrugs. "I got a text back an hour later saying he'd be going straight to work and would talk to me when he came home at noon for lunch."
You stare. "And that's all you did?"
He turns a little red. "I'm only the OIC. If you lot think you can manage without me, you'll try. I'm supposed to be invisible, even to you, so I keep my head down."
"You mean you didn't ask Stanfill where he'd been or what the emergency was?"
He shakes his head in a way that suggests he hopes that something awful has happened, so that he can point to your teammate's fate as a cautionary lesson. "You lot don't want me botherin' you when you're on a job, and we're not even supposed to be using our cells. I think I did the maximum you lot would let me do under the circumstances."
"Did you at least let operations management know?"
"Uh huh. About eight o'clock, when I figured they might be awake. They told me someone would be around to advise." He leers. "And here you are. So tell me, what do you advise?"
You'd like to advise him to change jobs, preferably to one that involves rectally pleasuring himself with a fragile glass reproduction of his own cock. "I'm only here to get a report," you say, and go back over it all carefully with him, wondering what it means. No good answer emerges.
* * * * *
There is some chance, you suppose, that nothing janky is going on, so you kill the time until the noonday hour by interviewing the neighbors in the building. You spoof them with a story that you're a friend of Sarah Curwood's, and that you're trying to find her after she made an emergency call to you at four o'clock in the morning. No one indicates that they heard Sarah's departure, and no one indicates any idea of who might lure the girl out at that ungodly hour.
A little before twelve you finally knock on Curwood's door. It takes two more knocks before it's opened by a sleepy-headed and rather irritated twenty-something girl. "Is Sarah in?" you ask.
"She's at work." The roommate leans across the doorway, blocking you.
"She left the key for me, then?"
"What key?
"Oh, I'm her friend, Theresa? Theresa Kinnock?" The roommate doesn't even blink. "She was looking after my cat while I was out and she's got the key to my place. I just got back and I need to pick it up."
"She didn't tell me nothing about it."
"Look, can I come in? Maybe she left it out?" The girl shrugs and stands back. She's in a sweatshirt and shorts and woolly socks, and stands to the side blinking stupidly while you look about a disordered living room. "Oh, Christ," you moan. "Maybe she left a note?"
"She didn't leave nothing I've seen. What'd you say your name was?"
"Theresa. Look, she said she'd have it for me when she got back for lunch—"
"She don't come home for lunch."
"Well, for me she said she was coming home. Can I wait?"
"Whatev."
You pull out a chair in a small dining nook and sit down. "Mary," the roommate says when you ask her name, and she watches you closely but dully for awhile and only grunting in answer to your queries. Eventually, she seems to decide that you won't be stealing anything, and goes into a back room and shuts the door. You make a quick search of the place, but turn up nothing related to Stanfill.
You wait until one, but Stanfill never shows. You never hear from the roommate either, even when you shout that you're leaving.
On the way out you stop to harass Elliot again for taking up space, and lean in to tell him to call Diana the moment Stanfill shows up.
"Can't win in this game," he mutters.
* * * * *
Chernov's cell log is on your desk when you get back, and you glance through it on your way up to Knotts's office. It doesn't show much: a call from the mystery girl to Chernov at least once a week, sometimes twice. Text messages that are pretty anodyne: "Loved last night." "Call me soon." "Meet me Saturday?" There's nothing definitive, but they look like they're all addressed to Chernov rather than to a skin. Maybe Muniz is right, and she was into his tats.
You hope she wasn't into Diana operatives.
Knotts is calmer but her expression is still very dark when she sees you. "Stanfill left at four this morning with a girl, and texted his zampo an hour later saying he'd go straight to work and would be home at noon," you tell her. "The neighbors and Curwood's roommate don't know anything, and Stanfill hadn't returned by one."
"I knew that much," Knotts says. "Give me the gory details." Halfway through, she spots someone passing her open door and catches him: "Oi, Stoddard!" She fishes that scrap from the garbage can and presses it on him. "Go find the zampo that's camping out here, tell him to get back up here to see me six hours ago." She lets you return to your report.
When you're done you ask her to explain what it's all about. "What it's all about is that Stanfill didn't show up at work this morning. It was Lamb who noticed, but since the girl's in a different department he couldn't do anything except mention it to me and prod the girl's department over it."
"And there's been no word from Stanfill?"
"No. He's new but he's not green. Why would he leave without telling anyone, that way, under those circumstances?"
"The girl told him a story he couldn't refuse without corpsing?"
"No story's that good. We hammer that into them when they're still jeeps, you know that. When flying in fog, avoid all risks. He'd corpse before going out. So what happened?"
You chew it over until Elliot shows up, and that's when it all turns bad. Knotts shows him the footage of Chernov without telling him what he's seeing. "That's her," Elliot says. "That's the girl my boy ran off with. I'd know them legs anywhere." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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