FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

William out the door when my phone buzzed. Keven had left a few of hours ago, right after our long shower. The wolf had hung around to help me clean up. I checked the display.

"Give me a call later in the week, we'll meet up for dinner."

He nodded and waved as he disappeared down the stairs. "Hey Raph," I said in the phone as I closed the door.

"Hello Denton," the rat answered. "We didn't find the briefcase."

"I was afraid of that. Means he had it with him when he was mugged." I sighed. "Which means it could be anywhere in the city. Where was he staying?"

"At The Grand Guignol."

I whistled. "His form had to be picking up the tab on that."

"I expect it's their policy."

"Do you know where the mugging took place?"

"A block away from the hotel. In the alley leading away from the parking structure."

"Okay, thanks. I'll go take a look."

"My team already checked the area. There's nothing there."

"I don't doubt it, but I want to see for myself."

I thought I heard a muffled sigh of exasperation on the other end. "All right. Do you want a list of what the police has collected once I'm in possession of the evidence?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have a people on their way to the police station. I should have all that within the hour."

It only took me a moment to realize the stupidity of that.

"Call them back."

"Denton, I know you feel we shouldn't interfere in police matters, but MM&J works with a great many of the families withing the Society. I can't risk undue attention being drawn to them."

"Yes, I don't like it, but that isn't why you can't do it."

Raphael sighed. "Fine, and why can I not do my job?"

"For one thing, unless you've rebuilt the processing labs, you can't do anything with it. Finger prints and DNA might be the only way we have to figuring out how mugged him, and has the briefcase. Secondly, my name is linked to Winthrop, and my old partner is the one working the case. She's church, if you come in and take the case away from her, like Max did to me in the spring, the first thing she's going to think is that the Society has something to do with it. It's going to make her work at it even harder, and she'll be looking for a link to us. With the church backing her up, you won't be able to get her to drop it, even if you have the commissioner talk to her directly."

"You expect me to just let her go where the evidence leads her?"

"Unless you know something I don't, this is just a random mugging. They happen all the time, the department can't afford to spend a lot of energy on them. So long as we don't give Alice a reason to keep looking into it, she won't have a choice, she'll have to drop it for more important cases."

"All right. I'll contact MM&J, make sure they have a boring reason for Winthrop to have been in the city."

"No. Have them say they don't know why he was here. If he was here on business, then the attack might have something with his job."

"He works for them, it would make sense they sent him here."

"Yes, it does, but then they'll have to hide the fact he

came here to see me. Even if they manage to cover their tracks completely, If they have all the answers to all the questions, that's going to make any cop suspicious. Just make sure their records show he took a few personal days."

"Then why did he come here?"

"They don't know, that's what personal days mean. I told the detective he was looking to hire me. I didn't tell him why, and I won't. If you want, have one of his buddy, from outside his work, remember her said something about going for a few days, and he thought he was taking a vacation."

"How do you explain that his ticket was paid by the firm?"

"He used his corporate card. When the bill hits the firm's accountant, he's going to mark it as an unauthorized trip. He won't be the first one there to have done it, I can promise you that."

"You seem to have answers to every questions, even if your answers leave holes in the story you want me to create."

"Every story has holes in it. People don't remember everything, they make mistake, they exaggerate. That's why witnesses are unreliable. When a story is perfect, that's when cop look closer at it." "I don't like it."

"I know, and I get it. You want to swoop in, take everything away, make it as if nothing happened. But I'm telling you, in this case, you do that and Alice is going to come down on us hard. Just make sure there aren't any glaring connection to us for them to uncover with a quick look and it'll go away."

"Fine, I'll trust your expertise on this. And I'll reiterate I could use that expertise working for me."

"Right, anyway, I need to get going. I'll let you know if I find anything your guys missed." I disconnected before he could reply. I hadn't meant to be snarky, I guessed his insistence in getting me to work for him rubbed me the wrong way.

It was the late afternoon, there wouldn't be a lot of light left by the time I made it downtown, but the odds were that if the scene was still cordoned off, it wouldn't be for long. I showered, got dressed and ate two more slice of veggie pizza before heading out.

I detoured by my office to grabbed the stunner from under my desk. I'd preferred something that had the option of bullets, out of habit more than anything else, I'd never fired a bullet in all my years in the force. Still I wanted the protection, just in case the mugger decided to come back for seconds. * * * * *

I parked half a mile away because I wasn't putting the kind of money the meters asked for around those expensive hotels. It didn't matter that I could afford it now, it was theft, pure and simple. I didn't mind the walk.

The cordon was still up, and I almost crossed it before I caught myself. I wasn't a cop anymore. I'd trigger the sensors.

The common person could get away with it, but Alice wouldn't let me.

I considered stepping out of my body, but even if I could find a spot to meditate until I was relaxed enough to do it, It wouldn't help. Only sigils showed up when I was out of my body. The rest was translucent. That didn't lend itself to seeing details.

I shone my flashlight around. I was wasting time. Really, I have no business being here. The crime lab had swept the alley, and if they'd missed something, Raphael's men had gotten it. Even if by some miracle I did see something they'd missed, I couldn't get it. If I crossed the cordon, Alice would jump on me and accuse me of tampering with her investigation.

I looked up the walls. Of course there weren't any cameras here. The city's riffraff knew where all the holes in the camera net were.

Lowering my flashlight, the beam fell on an old rusted shopping cart on the other side of the alley, beyond that cordon. A wheel was missing. It had probably been left there by one of the many homeless people that populated downtown.

And I realized that could help.

I knew a lot of the homeless in this area, from back when I was in uniform and this was my regular beat. One of them might have seen something. I shone my light on the steam wafting across the alley mouth on the other side. There was a heating vent there, and I knew who always took possession of it when the night got cool like it had last night. Jenny would have been here. It was just a question of finding her.

It was close to seven. She might still be having dinner. So which restaurant might she have gone to tonight?

I found her at he fourth one I checked. 'Exhalta' was an Asian fusion place that did good business, the food was decent, but way too expensive for me. She was dumpster diving. He shopping cart was next to the container.

"Hey Jenny."

She screamed, jumped out of the dumpster and planted herself between me and the cart. "It's mine! You can't have it!"

I shook my head to clean the ringing. I'd forgotten how loud she could be. "Easy Jenny. It's me, Denton. I'm not after your cart."

Her hand went to the breast pocket on her jacket. An old navy one she wore over at least four layer of clothing. "I'm clean! You can't do nothing to me. You ear me? I'm clean!"

Damn, I didn't remember her screaming so much before. "It's okay jenny. I'm not going to take anything you have. I just want to talk."

She squinted at me. "I know you. You aren't no cop no more.

I don't have to say no nothing to you."

"That's true, but I'm hoping you want to talk with me." "What about?" Her tone was suspicious.

"For starters, what's in your pocket?"

"You can't have it! You're not no cop no more."

"I don't want to take it. I never took it, remember? Even back when I could, I always let you keep it. I just want to know which one you have this time."

She glared at me, her hand worrying at the pocket. "You ain't gonna take it?"

"I promise."

"It's the yellow."

I nodded. Yellow Wave. The third version of the drug. Blue had been the first, showing up on the street ten years ago. Five years ago Green had appeared, and blue slowly vanished, now yellow. I wondered what those making it would do when they'd crossed the rainbow. Granted, that was twenty-five years down the line, if they kept to the apparent schedule.

Vice had been trying to shut down the production ever since it appeared, but they hadn't succeeded. There was always a new lab each time they shut one down. Wave just kept on coming.

"Did you sleep by your heating vent last night?"

She snorted. "Sleep? You think I went and got any sleep with the racket they were making?"

"Who?"

"Dunno, two fancy types arguing and fighting."

"Fancy types?"

"Expensive coats."

That didn't make sense. This was suppose to be a mugging.

"What happened after they argued?"

"One of them fell down. The other took his stuff."

"Just his pockets?"

"No he took a box too."

"A briefcase?"

She thought about it. "Yeah."

"Where did he go?"

She pointed down the lane. "Then right."

She didn't mean here. She meant the alley. He'd left it on the main road and made a right. So he hadn't gone to the parking lot.

"Did you check out the body?"

"No, no. I'm not stupid. I touch it and you say I did it. I went to the heat and slept. Then the lights and sirens woke me.

More people got there. I left." "You didn't talk to them?"

She glared at me. "You think I'm stupid? They had uniform. They aren't like you, they're not nice. They take my things. I don't take to them."

I nodded. Not every uniform officers cared about those too poor to be able to look after themselves properly. We all started caring, usually too much, but at some point, it became too much.

I took a twenty and placed it under a broken brink. "Thank

you for talking with me Jenny. You should go get some real food." I stepped back.

"Food here's real enough." When I was a dozen paces away she rushed, grabbed the bill and went back to her cart. She looked it over. "It real?"

"Yes, it is. When have I ever given you a fake?"

She snorted and pocketed it. She didn't move, her eyes fixed on me as I continued backing up. She was still looking at me when I turned the corner.

I waited a few seconds then peaked back. She was climbing back in the dumpster. I knew the money wouldn't go to food, but at least I'd tried.

I walked back to the alley, and continued past it, in the direction the fancy attacker had walked in. If this wasn't a mugging, what was it? It had to be the briefcase, I couldn't imagine someone following Winthrop all the way here on a personal beef. Going through his pocket had been to throw the police off the trail.

I passed another hotel, crossed the road to a block of high end stores. Clothing, jewelry, electronics, food. Where could the attacker have gone from here? He could have turned in any direction and I had no way to know.

I looked up at the stop light as I waited to cross. It had a camera, all I had to do was check last night's records and I'd know. Except I couldn't. Civilians couldn't access the city's cameras.

I'd have to involve Zee. I cursed and turned around. I wasn't going to involve him in this. He had a good life with Marcus, I was going to keep them as far for, the church as I could. I'm have to find another way to get access to those feeds.