Page 23 of No Surrender
“I get what you’re saying. I don’t like it—but I understand.”
“Don’t tell Simon,” Vic said. “I will. I swear. Just—not yet. I need to work out the details first.”
Ross scowled. “Okay. Just don’t let it get too far. Simon loves you. He deserves the truth.”
“He deserves everything,” Vic replied. “Don’t worry—I’m not going to fuck this up.”
“Humph. That remains to be seen.”
When they went into the station, Vic found a storage box on his desk and saw that the ticket was gone and an evidence receipt was in its place. “Wow. They turned that around mighty fast. I guess the cold case folks weren’t busy today,” he said, reading the list of contents. “Looks like all the files. They must not have bothered digitizing that far back.”
Ross went to get coffee for them while Vic logged into his Springsteen fan accounts. He spent the next hour chiming in on conversations, pretending to be excited about an upcoming concert. When Vic signed off, he felt a mixture of triumph and nausea. Putting himself in the crosshairs might be for a good cause, but it sent an alarm through all his well-honed defensive instincts.
“If you’re done painting a target on your back, let’s see what’s in the box,” Ross said, setting two steaming cups down on their desks.
“Let’s split up the focus. How about if you track down the law enforcement involvement? See if anyone who worked the case is still alive and how to get in contact. Maybe there’s something they didn’t put in the notes.”
“That’s a long shot after all this time,” Ross warned. “If they were older than rookies, they’ll be in their eighties by now. They might not remember the case at all, let alone the details.”
“Worth a try,” Vic replied. “I’m going to go over the victim files and see if there’s anything Walt missed. He’s a good reporter, but he’s working from different source material. There might be something he overlooked.”
“Unless the cops at the time didn’t bother taking down any information at all,” Ross pointed out.
“God, you’re such an optimist.”
As the end of the day rolled around, Vic’s vision blurred from the yellowed pages, bad typing, and lousy handwriting of detectives from a prior generation. He set down his file, blinked, and squeezed his eyes closed, then gave up and rubbed them. “All cops should be required to take penmanship classes,” he groused. “Their side notes are chicken scratch. Small, blurry, faded chicken scratch.”
“Pick up on anything else?” Ross rubbed his temples which was a sure sign he had a headache.
“There’s not much more than the original intake form for most of these.” Vic’s disgust for the laziness of the cops at the time was clear in his voice. “But on a couple of the reports, someone actually bothered to go beyond the basics. They didn’t make a big effort, but they at least did more than fill out the paperwork.”
“Anything useful?”
Vic sat back in his chair and stretched. “All young women who worked hospitality jobs. They didn’t work at the same hotels or restaurants, and many of the places aren’t around anymore. Some are—and since those are family-owned, we might find someone who remembers.”
He sighed. “I’ve got a gut impression that the hospitality piece is important. I mean, it makes sense. They probably had late shifts, coming home alone, living in cheap apartments that catered to people who didn’t stick around. They weren’t from here, so they didn’t come back to the family house where someone would notice right away if they were late.”
“Odds are that they knew the killer—at least tangentially,” Ross speculated. “Security guard, night clerk at the 24-hour diner, taxi driver.”
“They didn’t live in the same place, so it’s not a doorman or desk clerk,” Vic mused.
“And if they worked in different places, it’s not a creepy co-worker. Now we’ve got to look for points of intersection. What did they all do?”
Vic glanced at his watch. “I haven’t figured that out yet, but it’s going to wait until tomorrow. It’s my turn to pick up dinner.”
They packed up the box and secured it in Hargrove’s office. To Vic’s relief, the reporters had given up, and they didn’t have to maneuver past a crush of people waving microphones and sticking cameras in their faces.
Vic had ordered dinner online before leaving the precinct house. Picking up Chinese food from their favorite place guaranteed a good start to the evening, and he added extras he knew Simon liked but often didn’t request.
I am not bribing him. Oh, what the fuck am I saying. I am totally planning to ply him with food, wine, and sex and then tell him I’m playing bait for a psychopath. I’m going to be sleeping on the couch for a month.
Maybe if I pick up flowers…
He arrived at the blue bungalow with shrimp fried rice, Hunan beef, scallion chicken, hot and sour soup, egg rolls, and Crab Rangoon. The weather had turned colder—a relative statement given that Myrtle Beach’s winters were often the same temperature as Pittsburgh’s summers.
Vic bought a bouquet of brightly colored flowers from the grocery store, a mix of pretty blooms that he knew Simon would enjoy. While he was there, he also picked up a Key Lime pie, one of Simon’s favorites.
I am so screwed.
