The Shimmer. Carsten Stroud

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Redding watched the dogs, both big German shepherds. They were both fighting to get free of their leads, barking furiously. The handlers were pulling them away from the truck, the dogs resisting as hard as they could, straining against their harnesses. Both handlers were looking confused, angry, fighting the dogs.

      “What the...” said Redding, walking across to talk to one of the K-9 handlers, a serious heart-attack blonde named Jennifer St. Denis. St. Denis had the dog under a tight grip as Redding reached her.

      “What’s with the dogs, Jen?” Redding asked.

      St. Denis shook her head, looking exasperated and puzzled. “I have no idea.”

      Now her dog, a big muscled-up German shepherd, was staring up at Redding, panting heavily, gazing up at him as if he knew him, which he did.

      He’d once spent nine months with this fine dog before he’d handed him off to another K-9 officer, the one before Jennifer, a guy who was KILO now, killed in the line of duty, after which this same dog, Killington, had mauled the shooter so badly he lost his left ear, most of his left cheek, all of his left eye and over two quarts of blood from his ripped-out carotid. Killington’s DNA made him nothing less than an apex predator.

      Guy later sued the Highway Patrol and the State of Florida for Excessive Use of Force. He was on Death Row at the time. He lost. A while later they spiked him dead and buried him in unconsecrated ground.

      The dead K-9 officer’s friends took Killington out to the convict’s grave every now and then and they’d stand around drinking beers until they were all charged up, at which point everybody would unzip and piss on the grave, including Killington.

      Redding bent down and offered a hand to the dog, which took some nerve, even if they were old friends.

      “Hey, Killington. What’s up? What’s the problem?”

      Killington twitched his ears and then whimpered, showing the whites of his eyes. He ducked his head and then licked Redding’s hand.

      “What’s with Killington?” he asked.

      “You ask me,” said St. Denis, in a low voice, “I’d say he doesn’t like whatever he can smell in that vehicle. I’ve never seen him do this. Never.”

      Across the road the other K-9 guy was putting his shepherd into the back of his cruiser. He glanced across at St. Denis and Redding, shaking his head, lifted his hands in a WTF gesture.

      “Got a feeling we’re not gonna get a lot of help from the dogs today,” said St. Denis.

      One of the forensic guys walked across to Dixon and got into a close conversation with him, Marsh and Halliday listening in.

      Redding said goodbye to Jennifer, ruffled Killington’s neck again and walked across to hear what the techie had to say.

      “I don’t get it,” Dixon was saying.

      The tech, Redding didn’t know his name, a skinny kid with glasses and large ears, shook his head, staring down at something in his hands, a small digital camera. On the screen, a picture of a steering wheel with black smudges all over it.

      “No prints, but it hasn’t been wiped.”

      “You saw the woman, Jack, when she hopped out of the truck, didn’t you? Was she wearing gloves?”

      Redding thought about it. He had a good memory for things like that. And you always looked at the hands first. He went back for the image, concentrating on the brief glimpse he had gotten.

      “No, Mace. Hands were empty. If she had gloves, they were pink. Skin colored.”

      He glanced at Marsh, who grinned back at him.

      “Okay, white skin colored,” said Redding.

      “So maybe latex?” Dixon asked.

      “Not latex,” said the tech. “We’d have residue. Anyway, there was fresh sweat on the wheel, which you wouldn’t get if the driver had been wearing any kind of gloves.”

      “Human sweat?” Marsh asked. Of course everyone stared at him like he was totally bats.

      He sent the vibe right back.

      “Hey, she fucking disappeared, into thin air, like she was a fucking ghost. Didn’t she, Jim?”

      Halliday wasn’t backing away from it either.

      “Well, we were right on her ass, Cap, and she broke outta the trees and... LQ’s right. It was like she just...vanished. I’m just sayin’.”

      “Lousy visibility with this rain,” said Dixon, and then there was an uneasy silence.

      “Ghosts I don’t know about,” said the tech, after a moment, and mostly to himself, as if the idea was a new one to him. He smiled.

      “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll run it for ghost DNA.”

      “You do that,” said Marsh, not amused.

      “And while you’re doing that,” said Jack, “run it for real DNA too, see if she comes up on any database. Tell the lab we want this done right away, not a week from next Tuesday.”

      The tech promised to push it to the top of the list, and then Dixon’s duty cell phone beeped at him. He glanced down at the screen, gave everybody the “sorry, gotta take this” look, stepped away a couple of yards.

      * * *

      The three of them, Marsh and Halliday and Redding, watched the accelerating activity that was buzzing all around them, and the people on their porches and under their garage roofs, staring out, watching. Getting it all on cell phone cameras.

      The block was swarming with uniforms, the tan and black of the County guys, the charcoal gray of the Highway Patrol, the OIS people in their white pajamas. The rain was tapering away and far off in the west the sun was threatening to show up for a brief appearance at the tail end of the afternoon.

      “What do you want us to do?” asked Marsh.

      Redding considered the girl in the backseat of Halliday’s squad car. She was staring back at them, gunning them, a fixed and angry scowl on her pretty young face.

      “Jim, you drive that...creature...to see the docs, but don’t Mirandize her yet. You follow? No Miranda. It’ll just get her attention. Get her to Immaculate Heart ER, have her checked over, and then get her admitted into one of those secured rooms on the fifth floor. Put a PW into the room with her. Tell her she’s in Protective Custody until we can figure what’s going on. Tell her it’s because her kidnapper is still on the loose. She’s in our care, right? Not under arrest. Here’s why. She’ll likely end up being charged with Resisting Arrest with Violence, Battery on a Police Officer and Attempting to Elude. Accessory to Attempt Murder of a Police Officer, if I have anything to say about it. But she’s a kid, a yoot like they say in the Bronx, and I don’t want her skating on some fucking juvie technicality.”

      “I ran her ID,” said Halliday. “No hits other than a misdemeanor shoplifting beef СКАЧАТЬ