Page 10 of Pure Killers

Sighing heavily, I lean my face into my hands. I’m tired, relieved, and mad all at once now.

To think, I let myself hope for a moment, that this was it, that we'd catch him tonight. But no, the stake-out has proven to be in vain. All I have to show for it are numb fingers and a sore back from a night spent sitting up in car seats. Beside me, Dirk stretches his long fingers towards the vents, but the car is cold and so is the air coming out.

“You shouldn’t have left the car,” I say, without much spirit.

Dirk tilts his head to me with a grin. “Were you worried about me, El?”

“Yes! Actually.”

“Look, I was as bored as any man on a stakeout. Except maybe colder.”

“Serves you right,” I mutter, not quite ready to admit that nothing bad came of all my worry.

“Rest assured. My lesson is learned.”

I crack the window to let the fog on the windscreen dissipate. Light is coming fast now.

"El," he says, and I pretend not to hear him this time. "We need to call it. No one came."

I sigh, sitting heavily back in my seat.

"This wasn't it," he says by way of consolation.

"What are we missing?"

Dirk is tired, cold, and hungry, and so am I, but I have my other driver- hate. Reaching for the radio, he brings it to his mouth. "Okay, we're calling it. Go home, everyone."

Vague sounds of relief come back through with the static. I start the car, and Dirk immediately cranks the heater. "We'll get him next time, huh?"

"Yeah. Next time."

***

They're waiting back at the station, lingering on the steps with their black umbrellas open like the eaves of a depressing forest. We drive past, and Dirk gives a dry, humourless chuckle. "I'll bet we're not the only ones to work out the Needler's pattern. They'll know we tried to get him last night." Swinging his head to me, he says, "You'll have to make some kind of statement."

I shake my head. "If these people put their brains to some other use than the tabloids, we'd have fewer killers on the streets."

Dirk shrugs. "Maybe, but less people would know to look out for them too. Just keep it simple. Then we make this report and take the day off, alright?"

"Tawill isn't going to be happy that she's short on officers today for a failed stakeout."

"Most stakeouts are failures, El. She knows that."

Failures are all we seem to be getting lately, all we've ever gotten in this case.

I return the car to the station garage, and we cross the street back towards the front. The reporters are waiting. Some old hands, some fresh faces. Sometimes, as they come towards me with their microphones, I feel like I did the first time. Like picked-clean bones in the aftermath of my husband’s death. When everyone wanted their story; when grieving was no longer something private.

A seasoned police officer brutally cut down in the prime of his career, and right when he was so close to busting the Cocooner. It wasn't a story that came around often.

I fix a professional expression as they cut off my line of sight to the doors, to where Dean has just appeared. Dirk slips away, over to him, and I focus on just one of the reporters. A pretty blonde woman.

"Cars were seen leaving the old glass factory grounds at dawn this morning. Does this have something to do with the Needler case?"

"Unfortunately, the location proved to be abandoned," I say, not quite answering the question. I don't have an umbrella, and though the rain has tapered to a drizzle, I'm getting uncomfortably cold. I also don't ask how they just happened to 'see' law enforcement cars leaving the scene. It's a well-known secret that some of the more dedicated reporters know all our cars, even the supposedly undercover ones, and do everything short of stalking- and sometimes exactly stalking- to know where we are ahead of the competition.

“So no advancements have been made on the case of the Needler?”

“We are monitoring the advancements very closely.” It sounds just like the bullshit that it is.

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