The people who manned the evidence locker were starting to give him funny looks, which was worrying because everyone was more paranoid than a cold war spy with a canister of microfilm, these days. If they found his behavior suspicious, he could easily find himself in an interrogation room, or worse. That would be… inconvenient. So, he waited until there was someone on duty that he knew, at least in passing, before he headed down to the desk to check in.
“Hey, Ryan. I’ve certainly seen your name on the log down here a lot lately.”
“Hi Daniel,” Ryan put on his most casual smile. “Yeah. I find myself between cases, while my partner is on leave. I’ve been looking into a couple of cold cases, in my spare time.”
“Gotta keep busy somehow, eh?” Daniel seemed to relax, Ryan took that to mean that he believed his explanation.
“Yup,” he replied cheerfully. “I’m just going to go in and check a couple of things out. That alright?”
“Of course, just sign the sheet and go on in.”
Ryan smiled and waved as he walked into the evidence locker. Inside, he pulled out his list, all the samples he wanted to take, the items he needed to collect. He pulled the boxes from the three old murders and brought them to a table. They were light, that was never a good sign. He had known that there was little evidence in these cases, but it was disheartening to actually see it in person. The first thing he wanted to find was the shirt that Ferrier had been wearing when he was stabbed. Hawkins had suggested taking samples of the blood on the shirt, to look for any that didn’t belong to Ferrier. Stabbings were messy work, and it was always possible that the perpetrator had injured himself in the process. After the Ferrier murder, the killer had stopped using knives and switched to shooting his mugging victims, if things had gone bad with the stabbing that might explain why he had changed methods later. He examined the shirt carefully. It was covered in old blood, of course, mostly centered on the holes torn by the knife. Ryan looked for anything unusual, anything that didn’t fit the pattern. He needed to limit the samples he took, he could only impose on Carson so much, after all. He found a couple of places that might be promising, a smear on the collar, where he might have been grabbed by his assailant and a couple of smudges on the sleeves that looked like fingermarks, too smudged for prints. He took samples and moved on to the rest of the evidence. There wasn’t much. But he took all of the papers from each case and tucked them into his bag. Hawkins wanted to look them over herself, and no one was going to notice that they were missing. No one had looked into these cases in years. Closing his bag, he put the boxes back where he had found them and headed back out.
“You find what you were looking for?” Daniel asked.
“Nah, nothing there. Maybe they’ve already destroyed it all. I’ll check the records and try again later.”
“Good luck,” Daniel waved.
Ryan waved back and walked away. He needed to get to the basement, he had a favor to beg for.
Ryan found John Carson eating lunch at his desk. He hesitated to approach him. He needed these tests done, he couldn’t do them himself and they couldn’t bring anyone else in on this. But Carson had already done them a big favor and he had no reason to give the man to convince him to do another. He was just going to have to hope that the promise of a future favor would be enough incentive. He knocked lightly on the office door. Carson put down his sandwich and looked up, then beckoned him in.
“Hello, Agent Stone. Back so soon?”
“I… uh, I wanted to thank you for before. It… it really helped.”
“And you were hoping I could do you another favor, right?”
“I’m that transparent, am I?”
“Like plastic wrap,” he balled up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it in the trash. “What is it?”
Ryan produced the samples he had retrieved from the evidence locker. John took the cuttings and looked them carefully.
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“Is this blood?” he asked.
Ryan nodded, sheepishly.
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask where it came from?”
Ryan shook his head silently.
“Right. Well then, tell me just one thing. How much trouble are you and Taylor in, exactly?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Ryan rubbed the back of his neck.
“Of course not,” John sighed. “Look, I’m not stupid. I can tell that you are involved in something you shouldn’t be. I also give it ten to one odds that Taylor is the one that dragged you into it. If you don’t want to tell me what it is, then I can’t force you. But if you want my help, at least tell me how big of a deal this is. Either that or you can leave and take your samples with you.”
Ryan paused,
“Big. Life or death big,” he said at last. “Hawkins and I, we could be in a lot of trouble if this doesn’t work out. And not just the kind of trouble you are thinking.”
Carson took a deep breath,
“All right. I will do this one last thing for you. But know that I cannot jump this over all my other samples this time. The Parabellum case takes priority. I will do what I can, but it might take several days for me to get back to you.”
“That is more than fair,” Ryan wanted to shout that this was the most important evidence in the Parabellum case, but he couldn’t, so this would have to be enough.
“Just tell Taylor that she owes me for this. Both in favors and explanations. And I won’t wait forever.”
“I’ll let her know. Thank you for this, John.”
“Anyone but Taylor, I wouldn’t even consider it. But I know her, as well as anyone does anyway, and I know she wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for the right reasons. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, for now.”
“I’m sure she appreciates it.”
“I’m not so sure about that, but it is nice of you to say so,” Carson laughed. “Now get out of here before somebody gets curious. I’ll call you with the results.”
Ryan nodded, and hurriedly left before John Carson could change his mind. Hawkins would be expecting him back with the rest of her evidence by now.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Ryan looked at his partner with surprise.
“I’m going to be gone for a few days,” Hawkins repeated, packing the papers he had just brought for her neatly into a large knapsack.
When he had arrived at her apartment, she had already been finished packing everything else, her small overnight bag filled with personal items was dwarfed by the volume of evidence she seemed to be bringing along.
“I’m going up to a rental cabin, taking a little vacation. I have to go through all of the evidence you brought, but I can do that up there. Should keep me busy for a while.”
“No offense, Hawkins, but this still seems like a really odd time for you to take a little trip. I mean, I know you are feeling a cooped up here, but…”
“You know that I was kidding about the vacation thing, right?” Hawkins laughed. “That is just what you are going to tell people. This is work.”
“What are you doing?”
“I did some checking while you were gone. The detective who worked the Ferrier case retired and moved out to the Muskoka’s. That case is our best lead, and I need to talk to him and find out what wasn’t included in the file. It would look suspicious if I drove out there just to meet with him. So, I rented a nice little cottage, I’ll go out there for a few days, go over the evidence, and I’ll find a way to talk to him in secret while I am there.”
“OK, that makes a lot more sense,” Ryan acknowledged. “But, I can’t exactly get off of work for a few days.”
“I don’t expect you to, I’ll be going alone.”
“What? Why?” Ryan was a bit hurt that she was leaving him behind, now that they were so close to the end game. This was his case too, and this might be the evidence that would lead them to the most prolific serial killer in NIA history.
“Easy, Stone,” Hawkins comforted him, though he could tell that it was somewhat tongue in cheek. “I need you here. Too much is happening now for us not to have a presence at the agency. You need to call me if something of consequence happens on this end, especially when Carson gets us our results. You get in touch with me the instant we have the data, alright? I’ll process it and send it back for you to run. And if I find anything on my end, you will be the first to know.”
“Alright,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll keep on top of things here.”
“Just remember to keep your ear to the ground, and tell me if there are any new developments with Ethan, alright? Anything at all, no matter how trivial it seems. Watch out for him for me, eh?”
“I got it. Just hurry, ok? We don’t know how fast Parabellum is going to move now. He must know that they suspect he is an insider, and that is going to put more pressure on him, so he may be accelerating his usual schedule.”
“I know,” Hawkins bit her lip. “Be careful, ok? The closer we get to Parabellum, the more dangerous this gets. He can’t know that you are involved in investigating him.”
“What, are you worried about me, now?” Ryan chuckled. “I can handle myself. Just go.”
Without another word, Hawkins grabbed her gear and ushered him out of the apartment. Locking her door, they both went their separate ways. All Ryan could do now was wait. And Ryan hated waiting. He wished that there was something specific he could do, something to keep his mind occupied, because when he had too much time for idle thinking, he started to worry about all of the things that could go wrong, and all the ways that this could blow up in his face. With a sigh, he watched her car pull out into the night and then he headed for home.