Chapter #12The Girl, Most Likely by: Seuzz   You stare at the blurry photo, and at the puncture wound that's been driven through it. You stare at it, and don't look up at Cox. Still, from the corner of your eye, you can tell that he's also concentrating on the photo, and on not looking at you.
Knotts doesn't say anything, and she doesn't move. It soon becomes clear she's waiting for someone else to speak, to make a confession of some sort. Likely Cox knows it too, which is why the color of his face begins to slowly change.
Knotts takes a keep breath. "I guess someone had really bad aim," she murmurs. "I wonder we didn't notice before. Well, I guess we'll take a replacement shot the next time the moon is full." She returns it to the wall.
"You're not going to push it down the line?" you ask.
"Why would I do that?" she asks.
Now you do glance at Cox.
"Oh, you mean that girl in the security footage," Knotts says with brittle nonchalance. "No, I just wanted to check her face against ... his. In case there was a resemblance." She walks briskly away.
Again, you and Cox glance uneasily at each other, then hurry after.
Back in her office she rewinds the footage and the three of you pore over it. The time stamp has it at 2:37 when Chernov and the girl appear. At 3:09, the girl leaves. In between, at 2:46, an appearance by the security guard.
There's little to tell about Chernov, beyond the fact that he trips slightly at one point, and he sways a little as he walks, as you'd expect someone fighting alcohol and the day's exhaustion. As for the girl:
"It's a wig," Knotts declares. "Her hair's too thick, too unnatural. It matches the sunglasses." She points at how much of the face the latter obscures. The girl is also wearing a short, black leather jacket (tightly cinched at the waist) with matching miniskirt, and black fishnet stockings, and Knotts freezes the frame to point to the high heels. "Oh, that fuck," she spits. "It's Boris and Natasha."
"He was into the role-playing," Cox says. "That's why he joined Diana."
"Was he scoping her out as a possible tat?" Knotts snarls.
"Spy on spy. That's my read on it," you say.
"Why couldn't he have fancied an exhibitionist?" Knotts mutters as her phone tweets, and she cusses before answering it. "Yeah? Well it's about fucking time." She turns back to her computer. "No, I do appreciate it. I'll send you roses next Valentines Day. But I don't expect miracles, just timeliness." She drops the phone to the desk. "Hermod. They finally got me the data off Chernov's cell."
You and Cox pull up close as she opens up an emailed document. With one finger she traces down a list of cell numbers, and with the other she taps on the screen of her own phone. "Hey, it's me again," she coos. "Can you add a couple of numbers to your search pile? You can? You spoil me." She reads off a string of digits. "If you can tie any of those to Cindy Sonya Cooper, even if it's through a brother's sister-in-law's cousin's best friend's— No shit? I'll be thinking of you when I finger myself tonight. Keep looking." She drops the phone. "The number he was texting with last night?" she says. "Argus pairs it with a cell bought a month ago with a fraudulent card whose number goes with—"
"—Cindy Sonya Cooper," all three of you finish at once. Knotts scrolls through the screen. That cell number pops up every couple of days in Chernov's log, going back a month. "Raid the Barracks," she tells Cox. "Get everyone in here."
"Be faster if we went over there," Cox says as he gets up.
"But scarier if we haul 'em back here," Knotts says. "What do you think, Kips," she asks when Cox is gone.
"I think you've got a better relationship with Argus than Hermod."
"Because it's Argus. The see what I'm like when I'm mad. I mean the girl."
"I think I want to talk to the girl."
"Assume you can't. What do you deduce then?"
You deduce you want a cigarette, for the few seconds it could give you to think. "If I'm CID, I assume it was a contract hit. The story you told them fits."
"Yeah, how about that?" she says, shaking her head. "Could it have been?"
"Pourquoi? We turn everyone inside out before we let them in. If he had a history that just caught up to him, we'd know it, we'd never have given him a card."
"It sure looks like a stereotypical hit," Knotts muses. "Maybe that's it, maybe someone wants it to look like a stereotypical hit, because it's actually—?"
"If you're asking if someone was making a personal appearance—" You run the tape back. "She's too tall to be Firecracker. Too short to be Hotchka. Too willowy to be Brunhilde. Too feminine to be any of the others."
"Except maybe—"
"Don't say it. Don't say his name," you remind her. "And you didn't see a resemblance when you looked a few minutes ago, or else you'd have moved him up a space."
"It takes two witnesses. Would you concur?"
"You don't need me. Cox would concur."
Knotts turns a grave face on you. "He's not the jumpy type," she tells you in a very firm tone.
"I know." You hesitate. "Look, there's something I have to tell you. I'm not trying to get my story in first, but you have to talk to Cox. Tell him I did my best to do justice to his side of things." You relate the gist of your confrontation with him. "Cox knows what he saw," you conclude, and you're sure you believe it when you say it. "And I know what I didn't see. I don't know how to reconcile them."
"Sure you do," she says, in the same dispassionate way that she listened to the story. "You do it by going downstairs and fixing the Celebrity Wall."
"But I didn't see him, Knotts."
"No one ever does, sweetie," she says.
* * * * *
That evening you call Cox. "You wanna kiss and make up?" you ask.
"Knotts said you talked to her. I told her my side of it too."
"Naturally. Are we okay, you and me?"
He doesn't immediately answer. "I wish you'd tell me it was you on the street."
Oh Christ, not this again. "Why? Did he do something, this guy you saw? Did he make a gesture of surprise when he saw you because he thought he had an appointment with you in Samarra?"
"It would just make life simpler, you know? Because either it's you— Either it's you, because you went down to see Davenport, because you had to give him money, or something that isn't my business to know. Or it was someone who by a freakish coincidence was dressed like you and went from the Nest to the Hole and back." He takes a deep breath. "Or, you know—"
"Fine, if it's words you want from me, I'll give you words! It was me, I changed my fucking skin and pulled off my fucking coveralls and I went down to see Davenport. I didn't tell you, because I went down to see him so I could give him a fucking blow job for good luck! Are you happy now, cocksucker, does it make you feel better to fucking hear it? I'd tell you that," you continue when you catch your breath and he doesn't say anything. "I'd tell you something like that if it was even remotely true!"
You find yourself in the bedroom, in front of the mirrored sliding doors to your closet. Your hair is disordered, your face crimson, the whites of your eyes showing. You drop onto your bed and shut your eyes against a man who looks like he's set himself on fire.
"Then it wasn't you," Cox says.
"No, it wasn't me."
"And if you didn't see him, then it wasn't some random guy, who by a wild coincidence— Goddamn it, Kips, you can say you stepped away from the window, you can say you were taking a piss or you were—"
"I didn't! From the second I secured myself in, I was watching the street! I'd have seen this mystery guy!"
"Or you saw him and it didn't register?" Cox's tone turns pleading. "I mean, it's not like you were looking—"
"Christ Almighty, I thought you were the one so hot to say we made—" You suck down a hard, ragged breath. "That we made a third celebrity."
"I thought I was giving you the benefit of the doubt," Cox says. "Because if it was him, then it wasn't you I saw, and you weren't zoning out."
"Well, that's generous of you," you sigh.
"And also, I don't want to have seen him. If calling him by name is bad luck, what do you think seeing him is?"
"What do you want from me, Cox?" You fall back on the bed, desiring nothing so much as for this fucking conversation to be over. "I've given you two of your possibilities. I've told you it was me. I've told you it was him. I'll give you the third, maybe I did zone out. What do you want?"
He breathes into the phone for a long time. "I'll leave it to you," he says. "Whatever you say, whatever your memory or conscience—"
Conscience. "Fuck you, Cox. Fuck you." You hang up. At least he's smart enough to not call back.
* * * * *
But it does prey on you, during the night, before you fall asleep. Fuck Cox, but Knotts will want an answer from you, probably, and you'd better have one.
"Spoiler--3" 
So the next morning you go in to Diana early. You are half asleep on your feet, but you go in at the crack of dawn and trudge heavily to the lounge and to the Celebrity Wall. You pull down the photograph.
You almost drop it.
There's a second puncture mark in it.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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