Devil’s in the Details (4 page)

I didn't look up from the stacks I was mentally organizing, "Did the old man get wind of the request?"

She shook her head, "Nope. You know he doesn't care what his freelance artists do. As long as the interests of Voltaire are kept intact, you can do whatever you want. They will just wash their hands clean of you if the time ever came."

Dani leaned forward, her green eyes staring at me until I finally looked up. "Then what is it Dani?" She was beginning to irritate me.

She smiled, "I love it when I irritate you. Anyway, the problem is a rookie detective over at the Metro Police Department. She is attached to one of the old guys going through her FTO for the homicide division and didn't quite understand why they were all brushing it off as a gang on gang crime. That those shit bags all took a little too much oxy and turned on each other. She is poking around at the morgue, noticing that the damage you inflicted was more than just high-ons bashing each other." Dani paused, "I intercepted the warrant request for the hospital security footage, rerouted it to the bottom of every pile of every judge in town. It will take her until at least next Christmas to have a judge even look at it."

I nodded, "You didn't scrub the hospital." It wasn't a question. I knew Dani would avoid scrubbing private security systems. It would draw too much attention and in a month's time, the hospital would recycle the tapes and any footage collected would be recorded over.

"Nope, more work than its worth. I figure this hotshot will keep running into walls with our guys inside the department. She’ll eventually bend and give up to the bullshit ways of police cover ups. Then she can move on to the cases she thinks she can solve." Dani stood up as she finished her sentence and smoothed out her uniform, "I have to get back to the basement, the old man has sent over a new job for you and I need to run the usual on it before I hand it over." She turned to head to the door, pausing with her hand on the doorknob, glancing over her shoulder at me, "I watched the footage before I scrubbed it. You saved that woman's life. What ever happened to your rule of never getting involved, Victoria?"

I looked up in her green eyes, hesitating to find a reason why I did get involved. Finally, I shrugged, "I just did."

Dani gave me a strange look, "Fair enough."

She pulled the door open and went to step out when I blurted out, "Can you find out who that woman was and if she's okay?" I swallowed slowly, wondering why I was asking for this information. I really never did get involved but over the last day, I couldn't stop thinking about the brunette and the way she looked in my eyes in the car. I couldn't stop thinking about her and who she was.

Dani grinned at me, pointing at me with her thumb and forefinger like a gun, "You got it Professor. I will have something for you tonight." She skipped out of my office, closing the office door behind her.

Leaving me in the cool silence of my office, I reached for the stack of papers, picked up a red pen and set to grading the essays on General George S. Patton and his influence on modern military history.

Chapter 2

"I'm sorry Alex, but these cameras ain't high grade. I can only get what you're looking at." Roger wiped at his mouth, smearing the powdered sugar on his chin, as I leaned painfully forward in my wheelchair.

Roger ran the monitoring system of the security department and spent his days sitting in a dark room in a comfortable chair. Watching the three hundred plus cameras the hospital had. Roger was big man, in height and girth. A big nice guy, in his early forties, with a kind heart and a weakness for pretty girls and doughnuts. Two things I was taking advantage of in asking for a favor. I needed to know what the blonde looked like and it was worth the twenty dollars I spent on doughnuts.

I had Stacy get me a wheelchair and roll me to the elevator before she started her shift. She rolled me in the elevator and left me with another bottle of water. Emphasizing that I should spend more time working on peeing and getting home, rather than digging in things I shouldn't.

But I had to know who this woman was. This woman who came out of nowhere to scoop me up, take me to the hospital and left me feeling a small trace of something I had never felt before. It was as if my gut was driving me to find her, as if she held some sort of answers I had been looking for in life. If anything, maybe she knew who took care of the four assholes and I could find them and thank them for exacting vigilante justice.

"Is there any more footage from the ER’s west entrance?" I squinted at the blurry screenshot of myself being carried through the sliding glass doors in the arms of a woman with long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. I swallowed down a dry throat, squeezing the water bottle in my hands. I was suddenly very anxious the moment Roger began plucking through last night's footage.

He rolled the black mouse with a chubby hand, tapping the play key and setting the blurry screenshot back into motion. "There's a little from the main entrance, but nothing that was any good." He clicked a few more times, "There is this, the pole camera that looks down on the ambulance lane."

I sat and watched as a plain black sedan stopped in front of the ER. The blonde climbed out of the driver's seat and as she went to move to the passenger side, she looked up and made direct eye contact with the camera. Frowning and dropping her head down to tuck it away from the camera. "Pause it! Right here!" I jutted my hand out, frightening Roger mid bite of his third jelly doughnut. He slapped the keypad, pausing the video. I waved excitedly, "Rewind a few seconds to where she steps out of the car."

Roger did as I asked, and when he paused the footage, I let out a ragged breath. Staring at the face of my savior. "Can you print this up?" I glanced hopefully his way.

Roger looked at me, "Alex, I could get in a ton of trouble having you down here and accessing the DVR." He glanced at the doughnut in his fingers, then back at me. I smiled as best as I could around my split, swollen lip, "Roger, please? I just want to thank her for saving my life." I nodded to the half empty box of doughnuts. "I will buy a dozen a week for a month straight."

Roger sighed, hitting the print button, "Don't tell anyone that I did this for you. I could lose my job. And don't you take that to the police, I heard some detective lady was asking about our footage, but was denied until she gets a warrant." He grabbed the piece of paper as it whispered out of the printer, handing it over to me.

It was still warm and when I looked at her face, I felt shivers run through my hands and up my arms. The paper was warm like her hand had been. Like her voice and her eyes. I smiled looking up at Roger, "My lips are forever sealed." I bent over the side of the wheelchair, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before I folded up the screenshot and tucked it in my pocket. I laughed lightly at how much Roger blushed as I rolled the wheelchair out of the security room and back towards the elevator.

I had to find Stacy and I had to pee. Then I could go home and start looking for the blonde.

I had to find her and I wasn't exactly sure why.

I loved my house.

My medium sized craftsman house with grey siding with white trim, and the perfect amount of trees and flowers to give it a very cozy feeling. My nice little house sat on a quiet street in a quiet suburb across the harbor from the Naval Academy. My neighbors were quiet older retirees from the Navy, or other branches of the military, and left me alone.

I had one lovely older couple next door to me, Dale and Mary, who kept an eye on my house, picked up my newspaper and mail if I was out of town for a few days. 

More often than not, I would end up talking to Dale for hours over the fence on Sunday afternoons discussing lawn fertilizer and how the Navy has changed since he served in the Vietnam War.

I had Dani immediately run both of them the second I bought the house and moved in. Mary was a retired elementary teacher who was clean as a whistle. Not even a traffic citation or contact with the police, other than bringing cupcakes to the local police department a few times a year to thank them.

Dale was a retired Navy Captain who was drafted during Vietnam and proudly served his country until he retired five years ago to tinker with his classic '63 Mustang and cultivate his impressive flower garden. Digging into Dale, he was harmless. Never indulged in the intelligence side of the Navy and was also clean as a whistle, if not cleaner than his wife. The two were just living the true American dream, married high school sweethearts who served their community and took the lonely single woman next door under their watchful eye.

I enjoyed Dale and Mary, they made me feel normal. Or at least they helped me maintain the shell of a normal person. Smiling, waving and helping take the trash cans in for my arthritic neighbors. Then I would retreat into my beloved home, into my den and sit in front of my heavily secured laptop to open up the other side of my life.

The one side where I killed without hesitation and discretion. Doing it for money and my country.

Waving at Mary as she stood out on the driveway, watering the lawn, I walked into my house. Closing the front door behind me and locking it, I let out an exasperated sigh as I hung up my jacket. I was close to exhaustion and wanted nothing more than to change into my comfy sweatpants and a t-shirt then relax for a few hours before diving into grading papers or whatever new job was waiting for me on the laptop.

Walking through the living room towards my den, I mentally noted tomorrow's lesson plan that still needed to be typed up. I would finish the last handful of papers to grade and then I could collapse on my giant couch in front of my giant TV. Setting my briefcase on the old mahogany wood desk, I glanced at the nondescript black laptop. Sitting there as lifeless as an inanimate object would, but it wasn't so inanimate. It was ominous. Ominous because of the things I knew would be waiting for me the second I started it up.

I turned away from the desk and headed to my bedroom, eager to strip out of my Professor business suit. Unbuttoning the dress shirt with every step, stifling a few yawns, I debated just going to bed. It didn’t matter that it was only half past three in the afternoon, I was tired and nothing sounded more appealing than curling up under my blankets and getting a good night's sleep. Hoping some sleep would chase away thoughts of the brunette.

It only took one look at my big soft bed, and I was done for. I changed into my pajamas of linen shorts and a big baggy sleep shirt. I set my cell phone on the nightstand, drew the room darkening curtains closed and fell into bed. Snuggling deep into the rich down pillows, I reached for the remote and turned on another massive TV hanging on the wall across the room from the bed.