TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed

Seven - Digging the Grave

“Why are we all gonna die?” Z asked wearily, hoping he’d finally say something of value.He scoffed, or possibly choked. Seriously, having all that blood run down your throat wasn’t pleasant. “You know why. We were supposed to get the stuff to ‘em by midnight. Maybe the boss can put ‘em off for a while, but nobody fucks with those guys and lives to tell about it.”

Now that she knew he was just a junkie lackey, it was easy to interpret his vague language: “the stuff” was drugs, and the “boss” was a dealer, although obviously not a dealer powerful enough to be on his own. The “guys” had to be suppliers, or just bigger dealers that the “boss” wanted to ingratiate himself with; possibly mobsters of some variety. “You thought Gilbert had the stuff? Was he one of your boys?”

He made that noise that teenage girls made before they said something obnoxious. “No. He just stole our stuff. We figured the punk ass bitch was working for Lawson, but if you don’t even know who he is … “

“Wait, wait,” Shan said, breaking his tough guy cover for a minute. “Did I phase out, or does this just not make sense?”

“Dave over here is a runner, working for some would be drug baron. Your Boss have a name?”

Dooley looked at her sharply, suddenly suspicious. “You really don’t work for Lawson?”

“I don’t even know who that is. Rival, I’m assuming.”

“Who are you people?”

“Now, if we told you that, we’d have to kill you. As of now, I’ll settle with dismembering you if you don’t start telling me what I want to hear.”

He weighed his odds, tried his cuffs, and realized that things could only get worse from here. “The Boss is known as Fixer.”

“Fixer? You only know him by his street name?”

“It’s the only one I need to know.”

“Uh huh. Where do I find this Fixer?”

Dooley’s eyes bugged out slightly, like he couldn’t believe she’d ask such a question.

“Are you saying my neighbor was a drug dealer?” Shan interrupted.

She hated him breaking the momentum she had going here, but she could hardly be angry at him. “No. He was a runner.”

“No he wasn’t,” Dooley snapped, his voice dripping with equal parts snot and derision. “He was a bitch. He got our stuff - I don’t know how; somebody fucked up - and then he wouldn’t give it back.”

“Tried to freelance, or tried to blackmail?”

Dooley shrugged. “Dunno. We were just sent to get it back.”

“But you didn’t.”

He scowled violently, like the memory was a bad taste in his mouth. “He claimed he’d unloaded it, but if he did, where was all the fucking money? He was lyin’ his fucking face off. I thought a bullet would make him talk, but …”

“You paralyzed him.”

He shrugged, and glanced down at the carpet, embarrassed that he had made such a terrible shot.

“I bet Fixer’s pretty mad.” She knew it was an understatement when she said it, and from the way he seemed to shrink in his chair, it was even worse than she thought. “If you go back without the drugs, and without killing him, you’re a dead man. You know that. You wanna have one more chance at life?”

It took him a moment, but he glanced up warily. “What d’ya want me to do?”

“Turn yourself in to the police; give yourself up. They’re more likely to keep you alive than anyone else.”

He shook his head with increasing vehemence. “No, no, no -”

“That or die. Make your choice.”

It took him much longer than she thought, but he made the decision she expected. Some people were just so predictable.

****

After the cops had taken Dooley away - they took the gun, but she’d never turned over the butterfly knife or the drugs, figuring the existing charges against him would be enough if he lived - she retrieved her clean kit and went up to Gilbert’s apartment, to see if she could find what Dooley and Rand had never bothered to look for.

It didn’t take long.

That was why you never had amateurs toss a place. They stuck to the script, and couldn’t think around a problem. Assuming Gilbert didn’t have the drugs, and assuming he didn’t have money indicating its sale, he had to have put the drugs somewhere. Although he’d revealed himself to be an idiot by keeping the drugs in the first place, that just made him greedy. You had to be a true moron to keep your contraband in your place if there was the slightest chance the true owners might come back for it.

Rand and Dooley had made a royal mess of the place, turning over his mattress and dumping his dresser drawers on the floor, but they had only been looking for the stuff. It looked like they had just checked out the medicine chest and looked under the bathroom sink, but that was all. She looked in the toilet tank, and found a small key taped to the underside of the lid.

It was a key from the local bus station, a couple of blocks from here. A bus station locker? Very ‘50’s, and not very secure, but it probably was only a temporary solution. He probably did have some plan to sell it himself, the deal just hadn’t gone down yet.

Shan was waiting impatiently at the base of the stairs when she came down. “I knew it. I knew you were going to do it.”

“I did, and I know where the stuff is.” She held up the key.

He examined it for a moment, and then asked, dumbfounded, “The bus station?”

“Locker 57-A.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s on the key.”

“Oh.” He scratched his head, still absorbing it all, and then added, “Well, come on, let’s go. The suspense is killing me.”

There was no point in arguing with him, and besides, she knew she might be able to use his help.

No bus station was ever in a good part of town, and this one was no exception, a demarcation line between the efficient downtown core and the area that wasn’t so much depressed as ground underfoot. After midnight, even though the bus station remained lit up and technically open, the area took on a sharper, more dangerous air that sunlight would reveal as pathetic. She was surprised at how many people were actually in the station, but several of them appeared to be homeless people and runaways who had simply sacked out in the hard plastic chairs that filled the “waiting area”.

They headed back to the lockers, a separate area close to the loading bay, and it was just two walls of lockers painted barn door red that looked like high school gym surplus. She found the locker easily, and it opened with just a small punch - why did all these bloody lockers jam?

Maybe he was unconcerned about theft for a good reason: all that was inside was a Pee-Chee, the kind kids took to school. And not even a new one, a clearly used one, with doodles and obnoxious words scrawled on the covers in pen, the fold ragged from use. Inside were several sheets of paper, and when the covering sheet was removed, it revealed itself to be several sheets of thin, perforated paper, covered with big block letter E’s in neon green ink.

“That’s it?” Shan asked, sounding disappointed. “Doesn’t seem like much.”

“No, but we have no idea what the street value is. Even at twenty bucks a hit, you can almost pay your rent.” She counted the sheets before tucking the folder under her arm. “I bet there’s some missing.”

“Think he did sell some?”

“Possibly. Maybe used some as well.” But what did he do with the money from the sale? Did he hide that somewhere else as well?

As far as Dooley could be trusted, this was a new kind of e (ecstasy). It was in a liquid form, allowing it to be impregnated in paper, like this, making it blotter e as opposed to blotter acid. It was easier to control dosage this way, and much easier to smuggle - at least for now - as no one was looking for ecstasy in a paper form. Fixer was supposed to deliver it to someone called Tang as a “test”, but it was a test he’d failed in a major way.

As they left the bus station, Shan asked, “What now?”

“Now we find a copy place.”

“Er, you said coffee place, right?”

“No - copy. Then I plan to pay a visit to someone.”

Shan looked briefly confused, then totally horrified. “Oh no! You can’t be thinking of doing what I think you are.”

“Knowing me, I probably am.” From the look he gave her, he didn’t appreciate that response. “If you want to sit this part out, I don’t blame you. But go to my place for tonight, okay? You still got the spare key? Just in case Dooley shared your whereabouts with anyone.”

That stopped his snit before it could properly start. “You really think they might try to kill me?”

“We’re dealing with petty criminals here, emphasis on the petty. They could and might do any damn thing. But don’t worry about it - pretty soon, Fixer will be history.”

The word “crestfallen” wasn’t thrown around much these days, but sometimes there was no other applicable word. And crestfallen was the only word that described his expression. “Are you gonna … you’re not gonna …” he made vague hand gestures that meant nothing, but could have symbolized his inability to find the word - or say it.

“Don’t worry, Shan. These guys are like sharks. They scent blood in the water, and they will tear the weak to pieces. They expect betrayal, and one generally begets another, so they look for a patsy they can take it out on. I’m going to give them just that.”

He weighed that a moment, his glance not so much scrutinizing as it was scouring. The night was cool, and threatening rain, which she thought would be good cover. Few people passed them by on the sidewalk, and those that did paid them no attention at all. “You weren’t really a cop, were you?”

She shrugged, refusing to answer the question, but she was honestly surprised that it had taken him this long to come to that conclusion. “Come on, we have some work to do.”

She turned her back on him to unlock her car, and he asked quietly, “Are you ever going to tell me anything? Your real name even?”

“Some things are better off dead.”

“Including you?”

She swung open the passenger door for him, and said, “Especially me.”

The look on his face was so heartbreaking, she knew he’d never understand. And that’s why she could never tell him the truth. There really were some things you were just better off not knowing, whether he wanted to believe that or not.

TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed

Six - Breaking the BrokenSometimes playing dumb was the smartest thing you could do.

Z dug out her old apartment keys - she’d never gotten rid of the damn things, mainly because she thought they might be useful in keying someone’s car or breaking off in a lock. Now they had another, more active purpose. “Shit!” She exclaimed, then lobbed them over the side of the railing. They hit the courtyard below with a metallic jingle, and she raced down the stairs, cursing quietly under her breath.

By the time she hit the ground level, the beaten man looked at her suspiciously, hand hovering near his coat pocket. “Dude, seen my keys?” She asked.

He stared through her, as if not comprehending what she said. He had been trying to assess her as a threat, and her speaking to him had thrown him off. “Huh?”

“My keys. I dropped my keys. They fell down here. You see ‘em?”

“Oh, uh … dunno.” He resumed staring at Shan’s door like a loyal dog waiting for his master to return, and she pretended to look around. He appeared to be alone, and on top of being obvious, that was just unforgivably stupid.

She knew exactly where her keys were - someone’s porch light gleamed silver off the metal - but she walked slowly in the opposite direction, nearing his position and then going past it. She continued to mutter to herself now and again, making her position obvious, and he ignored her, After all, being that obvious was just idiotic, wasn’t it?

She had locked Shan’s door out of habit when she left, so the sound of the lock being thrown open made an audible click. The guy tensed, hand moving to his pocket, but he spared a glance in her direction, suddenly nervous about the potential witness.

But it was too late.

As soon as she heard the click, she darted for him, getting behind him and reaching into his coat pocket before he could. He was barely aware of what had occurred before she nestled the barrel of his own Glock snugly beneath his left ear. “Wanna blowhole in the top of your skull motherfucker, ” she whispered, reaching around with her right hand to grab his nose. Normally she’d put him in a chokehold, but his painfully broken nose was the greatest weakness he had. “Keep moving.”

He froze, shuddering slightly in pain as her thumb and forefinger lightly pinched the swollen bridge of his nose. The safety was off, and just from the weight of the gun she knew it had a full clip, although Glocks like this were so light it was often hard to tell by feel if they were loaded or not. It was locked and loaded, and the slightest squeeze would set it off; no one knew that better than him. “This is a Glock 17, isn’t it?” She said, almost conversationally. “Didn’t get the automatic safety option, huh? Single action trigger; an idiot proof gun. Good thing for you, huh?”

Her gun knowledge startled him, like she thought it might. “Who the fuck are you?”

Shan was standing in the doorway of his apartment, mouth agape. “Z, what the hell are you doing?”

“Look who came back to finish the job.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you recognize him?”

Shan edged closer, not sure who he should be more afraid of at this point. “No … do you mean the guy I faceplanted? I didn’t see him, he just called me a stupid fucker.”

Now that was irony. “Say it again,” she growled in his ear, giving his nose a tighter pinch for emphasis.

With no enthusiasm and more than a little pain, he intoned, “Stupid fucker.”

Shan’s tense body posture seemed to relax, as his fear that she had just snapped evaporated. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Pat him down, make sure he doesn’t have any other surprises.”

Shan was very good at frisking people; he was a bouncer, after all, and he’d worked events where he’d had to do just that. Although he continued to eye the man with wariness, he patted him down with brisk efficiency, to the point where even the bruised thug said, with a nasal whine, “Don’t tell me you’re both fucking cops.”

Shan pulled an extra cartridge out of his sock (Jesus, did he really think he’d have to empty a clip into him?), a butterfly knife out of the front of his pants, and a small vial of some unidentified drug out of his front jeans pocket. “I’ve never seen this before,” Shan admitted, holding the vial up to the light bleeding from his apartment. “And I’ve seen everything.”

“Let’s take him inside,” she told him. “Sunshine here has a lot of questions to answer, don’t’cha?”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothing’ ‘til I talk to my lawyer.”

She whispered savagely in his ear, “If you were really a hitman, you’d know we don’t deal with lawyers.”

It took him a moment, but he caught it. “We?” He repeated, his voice jumping up an octave in sudden fear.

She looked at Shan, and said, “Take his nose. If he doesn’t follow, twist it off.”

“Will do.”

She let go o his nose just long enough for Shan to grab it, and he did so violently, making the thug utter a muffled, nasal noise of pain, and nearly dropping him to his knees. “Keep in mind I won’t kill you yet,” she said, gaining a bit of distant, but keeping him tightly covered with the Glock. “ I’ll blow off body parts until I’m happy with your answers, then turn you over to cops and claim self-defense. Do you really think they’d buy a single fucking think you say, drongo? I’m a helpless woman.”

Shan snorted, then quickly swallowed the rest of the laugh. “As helpless as a bunny,” he agreed, dissolving into titters.

She motioned towards his apartment with the gun. “Get moving, and maybe you’ll get to leave here without bloody stumps.”

The thug gave her a baleful look, but there were tears rolling down his cheeks from the pain, and the stink of fear was starting to come off him like vinegar. He knew he was fucked, and he had just revealed himself to not even be a semi-professional; he was probably just another junkie, just a much harder one than Rand had ever been.

Too bad for him, because he was completely, seriously fucked now.

***

Shan actually did have handcuffs, but if they’d ever had fake leopard fur on them, they no longer did.

They cuffed him and shoved him into a small bamboo chair, and Z booted up the laptop again, keeping one eye on him and one eye on the computer. She had the Glock aimed at about crotch level, which had seemed to guarantee his docility - after all, hadn’t Rand already lost a ball tonight? What was one more? A little poking at his angry red nose had gotten the name David Dooley out of him.

Shan stood across the room from him, leaning against his kitchenette counter, arms crossed over his chest to show off the hard muscles, and the most unnerving, gimlet eyed bouncer look on his face. Although why they were bothering to intimidate him she had no idea; not only was his disadvantage overwhelming and clear, but everything about this guy screamed “fuck up” - he’d crumble like a bridge made out of sand whenever they exerted just the slightest amount of pressure.

“Here we go,” she announced, when the page came up. “David Rasmussen Dooley. Your middle name is Rasmussen? No wonder you turned to drugs.”

“Lots of priors?” Shan asked. He had also lowered his voice, using his gruff bouncer tone. It was hard for her not to laugh, because she knew what a softie he actually was. It was just a pose, studied camouflage that had always served him well, and who was she to blow his cover?

“A few. A lengthy juvenile record, mostly of petty shit, but his adult incarceration kicked off with breaking and entering and burglary. Didn’t do a lot of time for that, I see. You plea bargain?”

It took Dooley a minute to realize she was talking to him, and even then he didn’t seem much interested. His shoulders were hunched, his head hanging low, even though fresh blood was dribbling from his nose, sluicing down his lips and chin, dripping in his lap. “There was a fuck up in the court proceedings; they had to let me go.”

“Ah, technicality. Gotta love that. Well, there’s nothing in here that indicates an escalating level of violence, but it says you were arrested for vagrancy in Kamloops four months ago. Who the fuck chooses to be vagrant in Kamloops?”

“Now that was a mistake,” he insisted, looking up slightly. All his words sounded nasal, like he had great wodges of cotton shoved up each nostril. “It was … the cops believed my fuckin‘ bastard landlord over me.”

“You homeless, Dave? No shame in that.”

“No,” he snapped back bitterly. “I got an apartment, okay? It was just my shitty landlord.”

“Why did you shoot Bennett Gilbert?”

That made him finally look at her directly, for the first time in several minutes. “What makes you think I shot ‘im? Jack coulda …”

“I didn’t mean you specifically - I’m asking why in general.” But she knew now that he was indeed the triggerman, and the gun she was holding was probably the attempted murder weapon.

He licked his lips nervously, wincing at the taste of his own blood, and shook his head, looking back down at the carpet. “I can’t … no … “

“Look, we don’t wanna have to do the Reservoir Dogs thing to you any more than you want it done to you, so just tell us and spare him the bill for cleaning the blood off his carpet, okay?”

He shifted uncomfortably, and held his head back, like they always tell you to do when you have a nosebleed. “It doesn’t matter. We didn’t find the shit, he didn’t have it, and now we’re all gonna die.” He sniffed loudly, and in case they missed the point, reiterated, “We’re all dead. Who gives a shit anymore?”

Somehow, she didn’t think he was speaking in the “We all die someday” general sense. Which was a good thing, because if he became all philosophical on them, she’d break his kneecap.

TROUBLESHOOTER:
Countdown to Zero
by Andrea Speed
Five - Manifest Density

By the time they returned to Shan’s place, the cops had already cleared off, although Gilbert’s apartment was sealed off with police tape. Z stopped by the mailboxes on the inner side of the apartment building to see if she could get a full name, and it paid off: Bennett Gilbert. Now she had two names to run.

Once inside his cramped but oddly neat (for a bachelor) place, he said, “So, can I offer you a drink? I have … uh, shit, I don’t know what I have. Lemme check.”

“Am I right to guess you want me to stick around?” She sat on the arm of his couch, and looked up at the off white ceiling. Was Gilbert directly overhead? If there was someone in the apartment, she could hear it, and so far she didn’t hear anything.

“Yeah. I mean, if that’s okay …”

“Fine. I’ve got no plans. Can I borrow your laptop?”

“Uh, sure, it’s under the, uh … “ he kept pointing helplessly at the end table on the opposite end of the sofa, the one with the clear glass lamp and tacky beaded shade that he picked up at the thrift store for three bucks. His words had left him, or he got caught off guard by how genuinely awful the lamp was.

“Got it.” It was beneath the table, on top of a phone book, and she was surprised some genuine dust on its lid. “Wow, you haven’t been on line?”

“No. What with the nightclub and my work at the rink, I haven’t had much free time. Want some Red Bull?”

“No. So you’re porn free?”

He scoffed. “Oh, come on! Men don’t only use computers for porn. Orange juice?”

“No.” She set the laptop on the black plastic coffee table and started to boot it up. “Took too long to download, huh?”

“Yeah, that thing’s a piece of crap. Ginger ale?”

“No.”

“Margarita mix?”

“N-” she paused mid-refusal, and stared at him. “Margarita mix? Since when do you drink?”

“Huh? Oh, no, I just have the mix, no tequila.”

She suspected she was being set up for a punch line, but she had to ask anyways. “Why?”

“I like the taste. I know, I know, it’s too sweet, and nothing in life is that green without bein’ radioactive, but -”

“Okay, Shan, you’re scaring me now. Are you sure you haven’t been workin’ too hard?”

He shrugged, still searching his fridge as if for lost treasure, even though she could see from here it didn’t really have that much in it. It was nearly as pathetic as hers, but contained far more fast food packets of mustard, ketchup, and taco sauce than hers ever did. It looked like he had enough of them to build a raft. “Naw, I don’t think so. I’m just keeping’ busy, y’know …”

“Sex life in the toilet?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Coke?”

“How many fluids do you have in there?”

“Umm, that’s it, unless you count Dijon mustard. Want some mustard?”

“Okay.”

He pulled his head out of the fridge and stared at her, looking almost endearingly befuddled. “What? You’re … you’re joking, right?”

“No, set me up with some mustard, mate.”

He stood before his open refrigerator and put his hand on his hip like a Jerry Springer guest about to launch into a finger waving tirade. “Okay, I know you’re shitting me.” She let the pause drag out between them, her attention aimed at the laptop. Finally, he added, “You are, right?”

She glanced up at him, feeling just a little bit bad, because sometimes it was just too easy to get him sometimes. “Of course I am. Give me the Coke if it’ll make you stop playin’ waiter.”

He sighed. “See, was that so hard? You could just ask …”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

He kicked the fridge shut and joined her on the couch, handing her the can of Coke as soon as he sat down. “Sadist.”

“I never claimed not to be.” She opened the can and had a sip, grimacing at the both the sweetness and the acidity, which made her salivary glands hurt. Shan wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was looking at the monitor over her shoulder.

“Who’s Jackson Rand?”

“The guy whose ball you broke.”

He hissed a sharp breath through his teeth. “Ya know, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Doesn’t matter. This guy’s an asshole; he’s got a full house.”

“This isn’t video poker, is it?”

“No, smart ass. I mean he’s been charged with every drug related misdemeanor you could name, including a DUI last year.”

“So, a bad guy?”

She stared at his rap sheet, and tried to will the dull recitation of facts into a more coherent picture, but some of this just wasn’t adding up. “Not really, no. He’s a pissant, a peon, a small change kinda guy. So how did he go from a loitering charge to attempted murder and arson? That’s a quantum leap.”

Shan leaned in more, and squinted at the screen. “Holy shit, is this an actual police database? How are you in this? Aren’t these only open to cops - I mean, currently practicing cops?”

“What did I tell you about the sidekick’s mantra?”

He paused a moment to remember. “The less you know, the better off you are.”

“Too right.”

He sighed wearily, sagging back but never taking his eyes off the screen, as she entered the name Bennett Gilbert in the search engine. Noticing that, he sat up again. “Gilbert? Is that my neighbor?”

“Yeah. And he’s squeaky clean; no hits at all.”

“That’s good, right? I mean, there wasn’t a serial rapist living overhead, so I figure that qualifies this place as a good neighborhood.”

It was probably some attempt at a joke, but she figured he misfired completely. “It doesn’t make him innocent of anything, Shan - it just means he was never caught.”

“Wow, you’re a cynic.”

“We’ve been over that.” She went back to Rand’s record and stared at it a little longer, hoping it would make more sense. His last mug shot showed a plain looking man, neither handsome or ugly, with scraggly blond hair, a dark smear of five o’clock shadow, and the sallow complexion and glazed look of a hardcore junkie. The problem was, he looked like a lightweight, just like his record suggested - there was nothing that said or screamed this guy would cut your throat as soon as look at you. He didn’t even look desperate, just shagged out.

Drugs. The only reason he could have jumped the hurdle from minor crimes to major ones was his need for money to buy drugs. But where was the money here? Did Gilbert have a price on his head? Or was this some kind of blackmail? Revenge wasn’t very likely, although it couldn’t be completely ruled out yet. A quick check of his record showed he’d only been arrested with others once, for drunk and disorderly when he was seventeen. Since that was eight years ago, she doubted either of those guys he was pulled in with years ago was still an associate of his.

She glanced up at the ceiling again, wondering if they had someone watching the apartment from a distance. Probably not; she saw no telltale “undercover” cop cars in the parking lot when she pulled in. Maybe …

“No,” Shan exclaimed suddenly. “Oh hell no.”

“What?”

“You are not breaking into a crime scene. His building is perfect for me, it’s centrally located, and I need central location. You know that.”

It was important to him because his medical condition - namely the seizures - kept him from legally possessing a driver’s license, so he had to walk everywhere or catch rides. He took public transportation when he had to, but felt it was basically a special purgatory for the poor and carless, and didn’t like it very much. She couldn’t blame him there. “I’m not going to break into anything. Maybe have a look …”

“No. See, I know that look -”

He paused so suddenly she looked back at him, and found him frozen, staring at nothing, eyes slightly glazed. He was gone, and she was only surprised it hadn’t happened sooner since it had been such a stressful day. She glanced at her watch, watching the seconds fly past, then returned her gaze to the computer screen. His “spells” were getting longer and longer, suggesting he was getting worse, not better. She had thought about telling him, but he probably knew - how could he not? That’s when she discovered she could still feel some sense of pity, which was a big shock, as she wasn’t sure she could feel anything anymore, if indeed she ever had. But Shan was a rare good person, he didn’t have a mean bone in his body (former hockey player or not), but this just proved her personal theory that the nice were screwed over royal: if not by other people, by the intangible concept of life itself. If her theory held, Shan would die young, and she would live for bloody ever. Did this mean she had to start being good at some point?

She was done chasing leads on the computer, so she shut it down and sipped her Coke, once again grimacing at its cold sweetness, and waited for Shan to come back. A watch check showed it had been over a minute and ten seconds, and sixty seconds used to be the norm.

Finally, he started up again, like an android who had been rebooted. “ - and you’re going to go up there. And you can’t do that, ‘cause not only is it illegal, but ‘cause you’ll accidentally leave behind some evidence that they’ll tie to you. I’ve seen CSI, I know.”

A minute and fifty two seconds. “I have a clean kit in the car.”

He was looking around slightly puzzled. He must have realized that, last time he saw it, the computer was on. “What’s that?”

“The kit? Gloves, a hat for containing the hair, sheathes for slipping on your shoes so they don’t leave treads.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Okay, sure.” She stood up and stretched, working the kinks out of her neck. She would feel a whole lot better if she had someone to punch. “I’m just gonna run out and get my cell. I left it in the car.”

“Bullshit. You’re gonna … I phased out there for a moment, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you get some rest? It’s been a long day. I promise I won’t do a B&E upstairs.” And that was generally true, as cops rarely remembered to lock the door on crime scenes like this. You’d think it would be a given, but it was overlooked more than coppers would ever admit. Of course, they usually blamed the forensic team or coroner for not locking up, and since this was Canada, it was a good bet no one was uncouth enough to barge in past the police tape and have a look around. (She wasn’t Canadian nor couth.)

He sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes. “I wish I could believe you.”

“Sidekick’s motto.”

“What if I was a partner?”

“Motto remains.”

“Ah man, that’s not fair.”

“Neither is life. Suck it up.” She headed out of his flat, headed for her car. Should she even bother with the clean kit? Forensics might be moot at this point, especially if they’d already been through the place.

“Your sympathy is overwhelming,” he called out as she shut the door.

She considered getting her clean kit, but decided to check out the flat first. As she headed up the stairs, she noticed a shadow lurking at the end of the exposed outer corridor of the complex. She didn’t look directly at him, just kept him in the corner of her eye until she hit the stairs and lost him. Sure, he was in direct line of sight with Shan’s place, but that didn’t mean anything, as there were a half dozen units between him and Shan’s place. But something had set off warning bells in her mind, so she waited until she was on the second level, and glanced down at where the man must have been, waiting long enough so if he’d glanced up he’d surely have gotten bored by now.

He was wearing dark clothing, like a guy who’d watched one too many ninja movies, and a black stocking cap that was such an odd shape it was probably a rolled up balaclava - a ski mask. And his nose was swollen, flesh shiny and taut, a small smear of blood beneath the nostrils, all indicating the break was fairly recent. A nose was surprisingly easy to break; certainly hitting your face hard could do it.

No way - nobody could be so stupid as to return to the scene of the crime so soon, could they? And be so obvious about it?

Oh, wait, what was she thinking? Of course they could. In spite of the firebomb, these weren’t brain surgeons they were dealing with.

He was staring towards Shan’s door with great intensity, and his coat was hanging slightly off kilter, like he had something heavy in his coat pocket on the left side. Certainly a gun, meaning he was a lefty. She filed that information away, as it could be crucial in a fight.

But she had to be sure. She couldn’t go after him until she had confirmation, and damn it, she left her gun in the car. She moved back into the shadows, and pulled out her cell phone, hitting the speed dial button for Shan. He picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Shan, it’s me,” she whispered hastily. “Don’t ask any questions. Just give me ninety seconds from now, and step outside your apartment.”

“What?” He sounded both puzzled and annoyed. “Why? Where -”

“Trust me. Ninety seconds.” She then flipped her phone closed and stuck it back in her jeans pocket. Shan would probably stick to plan, although he might jump the gun - no pun intended - by a few seconds.

Now, it was time to nail this stupid bastard without getting anyone else hurt. Well, except maybe him - that guy was just asking for it.