Page 16 of Pursuing the Egoist
“Slow down.” Tobias swirled a finger in the air. “Who’s Greta?”
Greg touched the laptop again, and a picture of a young, pretty woman covered in ink appeared on the screen, but it didn’t grab Yugo’s attention. His mind circled Greg’s words about someone influential, someone hidden, wanting this detective in this unit, maybe even on this case.Who?
“This is Greta Schmidt. We use her bar to collect and launder money from dealers. She was supposed to flirt with Schwanzer. Let some information slip, not much but enough to make him believe her. Apparently, the police already had someone working that bar, so Schwanzer never showed up. But he–” Greg pointed at the projection, “–is a regular in the bar, according to Greta. He always speaks to someone. Yesterday, he approached her, saying that he’d heard about the upcoming redistribution between dealers and that we look for new people with clean records. He said he already works for someone and has a base of clients he can bring with him if we offer him a bonus. The thing is, this is the exact information I leaked to Schwanzer through the Chief of Police.”
“Did she engage?”
“She did, figuring that if she didn’t, Schwanzer wouldn’t turn up.”
“Did Schwanzer show up at all?” Yugo asked and tugged at his tie again. Staying in the room any longer seemed torturous.
Greg shook his head.
“Fuck Schwanzer. Try someone else.”
“I did.” Greg thumbed a touchpad. A screen showed a picture of a warehouse. “Just to try things out, I asked the Chief of Police to tip Detective Huber, my second choice, about the location of the warehouse I intended to use. Huber came, but since the warehouse is empty, he didn’t stick around for long.” He thumbed the touchpad again, and the projection changed, now showing Leiris snooping around. “But he did. After chatting all evening with Greta at Lax he spent the night in his car, watching the gates as if he had nothing better to do.”
Nodding a few times, Yugo said, “I want his dossier on my desk. Now. And I want to know who protects him.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Is he tailing anyone?”
“Not to my knowledge. It’s underground fighting season, so Greta was busy collecting bets and can’t remember who he was with. I checked the footage, but Lax only stores video records for a couple of weeks before deleting them. Due to the illegal activities, they erase them even faster. I couldn’t find anything, except that he talks to a lot of people.”
“Everything is on hold until future notice.”
“Really?” Rudolph scrunched up his nose. “Just because of this kid? What can he even do? So what if he is poking around?”
“Even the smallest fly can spoil the soup,” Yugo said, approaching the door. “I said we wait.”
A BROWN FOLDER SLAPPEDagainst the desk, making Yugo lift his gaze from his laptop to the black, crumpled suit and higher, to the grayish chin of his subordinate. Hands in his pockets, Greg stepped aside and looked down at his military boots, displeasure written all over his face.
Somehow, Greg’s unwillingness to admit failure amused Yugo, and he opened the folder.
For a long moment, he examined the face of the young police detective before rereading his name. “What kind of name is it?”
“I think he is half-French,” Greg lifted his hand and scratched the back of his head; his unbuttoned jacket gaped open, revealing a knife strapped to his side and a gun under his arm. “Hard to say. His biological parents died when he was a kid, and there’s no digital information about them. Do you want me to dig into the archive?”
“Not yet.”
Yugo’s eyes skimmed through the dossier, picking up pieces of information. No parents, siblings, children, or spouse. A small apartment, an unremarkable car; the pitiful state of his bank account informed Yugo that the man didn’t come from money.
If someone like Kuon disappeared, no one would ever notice.Then why does the Chief of Police say not to touch him?
Turning the page, Yugo read the service record. A mediocre list of arrests, mostly cases of domestic violence, didn’t catch Yugo’s attention until his eyes froze over ‘The Gardener’ case.
He read it twice before the details sank in.
“So, this is what makes him a big deal, hm? The arrest of that serial killer?” He looked at Greg.
The meaty palm migrated from the back of Greg’s head to his grayish cheek and scratched there, as Greg worked his mouth left and right. “I don’t know. There is something off about all this… He shot at the suspect, missed, but still. There was some investigation, but no anger management classes followed, no serious consequences, not even a psychological reevaluation. Charges were never pressed, and instead of being fired or transferred to a less stressful department, he was accepted by the Organized Crime Unit. None of the women the Gardener killed belonged to influential families, so that isn’t it.”
“Are you saying that someone wants him to be exactly where he is?” Propping his elbows on the desk, Yugo rested his chin on his interlocked fingers, looking up at the brutish face of his subordinate.
Greg shrugged, dropping his hand alongside his body.
“Do you think he’s dirty?” Yugo squinted.
