19. Chapter 19
The worst thing was how unsurprised she felt.
She’d known hadn’t she? How many times over the past few days had she had to take a mental step back and think, wait -what? Lucifer’s behaviour had always been that important little bit off and she’d certainly seen and heard enough lately to put two and two together.
This was not a surprise.
Really, Chloe thought slowly, the only thing left to do was decide how she was going to react.
First off, murder was bad. She was relieved that that was still her initial reaction, and then came a rush of guilt that she was relieved. Before she’d even finished thinking that, a very unwanted second thought popped up. Malcolm hurt Trixie. He deserved it. He deserved worse.
She’d imagined what she’d do to The Collector, if they gave her five minutes alone in a room with him (Just five minutes, detective? Where’s your imagination?) and Malcolm was a man just as evil. Would she have done anything less to him, if she’d had the chance?
That led her to her quietest thought of all.
Did she care?
“Ms Decker?”
Chloe blinked slowly, and Agent Johnson’s face came back into focus. He eyed her with professional interest.
Bugger.
“Heavy thoughts?” He asked leadingly.
“Stress,” Chloe deflected flatly. “I’m sorry, I zoned out. What were you saying again?”
“You’ve performed remarkably well under stress up till now,” he prodded.
Mentally apologising to the sisterhood, Chloe gave him a wan smile, “I suppose it had to catch up with me eventually.” She sighed, ran a hand through her hair and let her shoulders droop, hoping she looked as tired and pathetic as she felt for once.
“I see,” Agent Johnson said calmly, his gaze was uncomfortably sharp.
Why couldn’t he put this much attention on actually finding Trixie? She thought bitterly, and then had to mentally apologise to him. She was sure he was doing just that. It wasn’t his fault she was acting suspiciously because she knew her partner had just had somebody freaking assassinated.
“Would you like to watch the footage from the cell? I’m sure it will prove illuminating for you.”
Trap.
Chloe knew it instantly. Johnson had never been this helpful. That footage ought to be classified. He hadn’t let her smell the paperwork – not even the slow, laborious drudgery she’d volunteered for - and now he was letting her see video evidence?
Trap. Trap. Trap.
Yet, there was only one reply she could make.
“Oh could I?” She smiled, enthusing it with a bit of genuine gratitude – anything to take her mind off that ever-ticking-clock – and hoping it disguised the trepidation.
She was sure that whilst she watched the tape, he’d be watching her.
#
“Dare I ask?” Michaels offered Beck a wan smile and accepted the proffered coffee with gratitude. He took a long, glorious swallow. It was the good stuff from down the road rather than the weak powdered kind the tiny machine begrudged them here, but it brought him no relief. If Beck had felt the need to brace him with the good caffeine, then the news was bad.
He sighed.
“Nevermind. Hit me.”
Beck did not pull her punches.
“We have a second friend online, and he’s either a white hat or very insidious,” Julie murmured to him, quietly.
Michaels closed his eyes, and took another gulp of coffee. Julie grimaced as she drank her own – larger - cup, and he felt her pain.
Their team had no choice but to continue working in the building – even if they knew it had been hacked and sabotaged.
The people, the computers, and the data – everything was here. To up and move it all would take more time than the victim had not to mention tipping their own hand too early, which left the FBI with the old school stuff; whispering in an already noisy room, paper notes and a lot of chats outside.
Beck had sworn that she’d cleaned house – or at the very least the cameras and they gotten new burner phones – but fool them once. Now it seemed like their caution had been wise.
Two hackers. Two successful hacks at least – and they still hadn’t found the girl.
They were so getting fired after this.
He tried to focus on the good part of her sentence – but he was having problems concentrating. Exhaustion was not his friend. It was incredibly difficult to fall asleep in a building where three dogs could apparently waltz in, tear a man to pieces, eat him alive, and foxtrot out again with no one the wiser.
“Why are they a white hat?”
“The email had an attachment – a massive data dump. Lists of every industrialised area within our radius, lists of every resident who purchased a shipping container within the last thirty years, a few lines implicating a certain notable family in the area, and a person of interest. You might even call it a report from another team.”
“There is no other team.”
“I know – and thus, the white hat.”
“Johnson’s going to love that,” Michaels smirked, and drained his coffee.
Beck twisted her cup into a ball. “Where is he?”
“In the blue conference room, with the mother.” He nodded in the right direction. “He’s watching the video with her.”
Beck was not a member of the team for nothing.
“He thinks she knows something,” she concluded easily. “Well, I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask her myself.”
#
The footage was just as bad as she’d been expecting. Violent and gory with an edge of pure creepiness.
Was that Lilith’s laughter? She didn’t know the woman well enough to judge – but it had to be. God, what sort of woman could laugh at something like that?
Even she herself, who had the most cause to hate Malcolm, couldn’t feel anything more than a wretched gladness that the threat to her daughter was dead. But to laugh?
It was immediately obvious, of course, that Brent had been at the data. The ‘invisible’ assailants had his muddy paw prints all over it.
“The true question here,” Agent Johnson mused aloud with all the pretence of genuine confusion, “Is why they didn’t bother to delete the records entirely. Surely that would have been easier, and they clearly knew the camera was there.”
Of that, she had no doubt. If anything, they’d seen too much from the single camera. Nothing had happened off screen, the flying viscera all flew in arcs easily depicted, and nothing had sprayed the protective cover despite the numerous arteries severed in the…melee.
Someone had been putting on a show.
She shrugged though, and pinched the bridge of her nose as if warding off a headache. To complete the scene, she rummaged in her bag for a foil tray of pills; visibly popping three and knocking them back like a pro with a dry swallow. They were only child-strength painkillers – as mild as milk really – but Johnson didn’t need to know that
“Intimidation?” Chloe offered. “Arrogance or pride?” Those were not lines, but her genuine thoughts. The best lies required truth and Johnson would realise she was faking something if she tried to rationalise and deduce like anything but a cop.
He made a little hand motion. Go on.
“Well we know the Collector likes attention. He likes the thrill – the game. He wants you to know what he’s done. He wants the power his reputation gives him.”
“What makes you think it’s our subject who did this?”
Chloe blinked guilelessly, and selected irritated exasperation. “Who else needs Malcolm dead? You saw that video – he knew something - he was ready to talk. He had to be silenced.”
“Needing Malcolm dead is not the issue. Wanting him dead on the other hand…”
Ah ha.
She rolled her eyes, and when they rolled down again they were hard. She leant forward into Johnson’s space. “Malcolm sold my daughter into slavery. Of course I wanted him punished. What mother wouldn’t? I was really looking forward to his lifelong sentence in a really horrid prison as a former police-officer.” She frowned, and made sure he could see it. “If anything – what Malcolm got was to quick. Violent, but fast. Stop chasing shadows, Agent, and find Trixie.”
#
Agent Johnson left the video room without showing his irritation. The woman knew something. She’d gleaned something from that video – but whatever it was, she wasn’t telling.
Why would she hold her tongue?
She loved her daughter, she wanted the girl back – those two items were pure fact. He had no bad feeling that she was abusive or that there was some dark secret they wouldn’t find out until it was too late.
Becks and Michaels were waiting for him. They exchanged looks, before Becks handed him the report they’d been waiting for.
Finally – a few answers.
Los Angeles Forensic Institute
Report Reference : FBI/17/DECKER/0716A357
Incident Date: ##/##/####
Incident Location: Los Angeles, Central Police Station.
CSI Team: Blue-Nine
Team Leader: Dr Carol Johnson
Summary: Thirty-seven samples taken from scene. All labels correspond to correlating crime scene photographs. After an initial examination, we deduced an animal attack, and set about searching for hairs, teeth imprints, saliva and other forensic fragments associated with the standard operating procedure. There were three individual animals identified. We performed a genetic analysis on the evidence found, and the results are detailed below.
Special Notes: Further details require Doctor-Agent conference. (Call me, Johnson!)
Ignoring the note – he recognised both the handwriting and the name at the top of the report – Johnson scanned the document for the relevant parcels.
Species : Unknown.
Johnson stared down at that and felt the unease that had dogged his footsteps ever since they stepped foot in L.A return with a vengeance.
Species: Unknown. Sample uncontaminated.
They had every breed on record. That was the point of all the databases – rapid identification. Certainty. Not another flipping question mark to go on his next briefing to the higher ups.
Genetic Analysis: 50% Wolf – British. 50% Mixed. Positive results identified from the following breeds: 10% St Bernard, 10% Irish wolfhound, 3% Alsatian 3% Border Collie, 3% Golden Labrador, 3% Greyhound, 3% Old English Sheepdog, 3% Husky, 3% Chihuahua, 3% Pug, 6% Unknown.
Fifty per cent British Wolf? Now he knew they were fucking with him. Even he knew they’d exterminated wolves across the pond centuries ago.
He dug out the new phone Becks had given him, and dialled the number he unfortunately knew from memory.
“Oh it’s you,” the familiar voice of his ex-wife said. “I wondered when you’d ring. What the fuck sort of X-files shit have you got mixed up in now?”
“What the Hell, Carol,” Agent Johnson snapped. “What kind of bullshit report is this? Are you fucking with me? Did I forget someone’s birthday?”
“Again? No you didn’t for once, and it’s not bullshit. Perfectly legit. I checked the results myself, and I did you the favour of not doctoring the results into something more easily digestible by your narrow little mind. I’ll ask again – what sort of shit are you up to now? Genetic experiments? Mutation? Illegal laboratory?”
“I still can’t – and won’t –tell you, dearest.” He snapped. “Wolves?”
“Wolf hybrid,” she confirmed seriously. “Not a fucking clue though – and trust me, we really want to know the answer here at the lab. I’ve got fifty dollars of your money on it. How do we have a live genetic sample of a sub-species of wolf that went extinct years ago?”
Johnson reached desperately for some kind of logic.
“Old bones,” he gasped in relief. “Someone must have implanted an old jaw bone onto a mutt.”
“Nope,” she replied, now sounding amused. “We have a fragment of a tooth, if you’d actually read my entire report – you’ll see that it’s 27A on the list. I had it carbon dated – and you owe me a favour for the one I had to call in to get that overnight– and it’s only nine years old. Actual tooth too, no plastic, no metal, no modern dentistry in evidence either.”
“Shit,” he swore. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“X-files? New division for you Johnson? Any obscure promotions you want to tell me about?”
“Normal case,” he growled. “Normal town, normal criminal.”
“Oh are you sure, darling? Because I’ve spoken with Mohammed from digital analysis and he told me all about that video. Which I’ve now watched. That didn’t look normal to me.”
“Clearly doctored.”
“You haven’t read Mohammed’s report either, have you honey?”
“What ever happened to confidentiality?”
“All in-house, dear,” she replied breezily. “And we both know gossip’s always been the stronger currency here. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Only when you give me something I can use.”
“I’ve given you a dozen new leads,” she protested. “Think about access to these sort of materials, the knowledge base, the money.”
“Thank you darling, you’ve made my workload so much easier.” He hung up on her with relish, only regretting he couldn’t slam this pone like a landline one for the extra satisfaction.
X-files. He snorted. Yeah right.
#
“Ah, there you are. Hello, my name’s Lucifer, Lucifer Morningstar, mind if I come in?”
“Oh god.”
“No, no, weren’t you listening? Lucifer.”
“Oh god.”
“There really is no helping your sort is there? Oh well, I just popped over for a little chat, regarding that Favour you owe me, there’s a good fellow.”
“Oh god.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Oh god.”
#