Page 81 of Girl, Sought

‘A blue sedan? Are you sure?’

‘Sure as I am that in need a smoke,’ she said as she grabbed her partner’s arm and pulled him down the stairs. ‘Good luck, mister.’

‘Thanks.’ He waited until the couple shambled past, then squared up to the flimsy fiberboard of apartment 3C. The first kick trembled the frame, the second blew it off its hinges in a sadly-anticlimactic burst of wood and aluminum. Luca swept inside with his Glock leading the way.

‘FBI! Winters, Come out with your hands up!’

The living room was a depressing affair - stained carpet, sagging futon, an ancient TV squatting on a particleboard entertainment center. The kind of bland, characterless decor you'd expect from a guy whose only real joy in life came from getting elbow deep in other people's viscera.

He cleared the place room by room - kitchen empty, bathroom clear, bedroom devoid of life. Just the sad detritus of a life lived in margins: frozen dinners in the trash, generic furniture, walls bare except for a single framed accounting certification.

But the bottom line was that Lawrence Winters wasn’t here.

Back in the living room, something caught Luca’s eye. Something he'd missed on his first pass because his brain had been too focused on threat assessment.

The glint of glass and splash of color that that didn't fit with the beige-on-beige banality of the rest of the place. Luca edged closer, weapon still at the ready, every nerve thrumming with vigilance.

It was a curio cabinet. The kind of thing you'd see in an old woman’s living room.

Luca's breath punched out of him in a sharp, shocked grunt. He knew, on some level, what he'd see, but knowing and seeing were two different animals.

A porcelain doll with arsenic-laced eyes. Eleanor's pride and joy.

A massive preserved spider in a wooden box. Alfred's prize specimen.

And centerpiece of it all - a medieval crucifix that could only have come from Joseph Carpenter's collection.

‘Oh sh….’ The words rasped out, numb and distant to his own ears. His fingers shook as he fumbled his cell back out, nearly dropped it twice before finding Ella’s number. She picked up on the first ring.

‘Hawkins, you at Winters’ place?’

‘Ell, I’m here, and the trophies are right in front of me. Doll, spider, crucifix. I’m looking at them right now.’

Silence on the line. A breath, two. Then: ‘We found our unsub.’

‘Yeah, but he's not here. Place is empty.’

Ella's indrawn hiss was sharp as a whipcrack. ‘Damn it. Okay. He can't have gone far. Not this soon, not with us crawling up his ass. He's got to have a safehouse, something off the grid where he can get his head straight. We know he can plan things down to the last detail.’

‘Right. I’ve got uniforms out there searching the streets, but what if it’s not enough? What if he’s gone underground?’

‘Then dissect his apartment from top to bottom. Something in there will give away his location.’

‘Come on, Ell. Our guy is as organized as it gets. If he had a hideaway, he wouldn’t keep notes about it.’

‘Hawkins, you saying you can’t outsmart an accountant?’

‘They’re smart people. They can do numbers way better than me.’

‘Probably, but they can’t do detective work like you can. You found Winters. You know this guy. Start searching.’

Luca huffed a breath. ‘You gotta stop with these pep talks.’

‘They work.’

‘That’s the problem. Is Vanessa doing okay?’

‘Yeah, she’s with the EMTs. Stable.’

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