path: root/CH-4.txt

"Let me get this straight, you think you can go through the service records and match the enlistment photos, or whatever photos you have against the guy's christmas photo?" Steven was talking with his mouth full again. Chase cringed and wondered how he could fail to realize he was doing it. She had tried telling herself that maybe the sight of partially masticated hamburger was a kind of art. Living art. But that idea never worked. Now she just insisted they sit side by side at a counter whenever they went out for lunch. that, at least, minimized the visual effects.

"That's the plan yes." She sipped her coffee, felt the acid rumbling in her stomach. She did not add *and you're the only one who can do it without being logged* because she figured Steven ought to be well aware of what she was asking. He was the one who administered the whole database system. 

"Well, okay, I'll help you pull the files. Assuming they're in the database." Steven pushed back the plate of fries and twisted on his stool to face Chase. "Have you told Littrell what's going on?"

"Of course not." Chase liked her boss. Littrell shared her genuine enthusiasm for the work. She had actually spent most of the morning debating whether or not to tell him about her freelance case, as she had come to think of it. But she couldn't shake the feeling that that was exactly what her anonymous tipster -- her employer she thought suddenly -- wanted her to do. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction until she had the satisfaction of knowing who they were. "Besides I've already run his name through everything we have. I know as much as you do. Those files you found in the main library are still all I have." Chase turned all the way around and looked out at the street. She had, ever since that day, insisted they come back to the same tawdry Greek diner. The walls were still yellowed with cigarette smoke, though it had been years since anyone had been allowed to smoke indoors. The booths that lined the back wall were tattered and orange foam tufts stuck up through rips in the black vinyl cushions. But Chase had come to enjoy the place, the food wasn't much but coffee was good and Chase could sit at the counter and stare out the window using the mirror in front of them. It let her keep an eye on the street despite having her back to it. Chase was half looking for the prostitute, but deep down she knew she would never see her again. And even if she did she probably wouldn't recognize her. It was finally Autumn. People had on overcoats, the northern winds were starting to blow. No one was running around in rubber micro skirts, not even prostitutes. Chase and Steven both had overcoats and yet they had still taken Steven's car down the to the diner rather than face the cold bite of the wind for six blocks.

"That's not true. There was a handwritten note in the file right?"

"Sorry what?" Chase tried to focus on what Steven was saying, but something was nagging her, something kept drawing her attention outside.

"There was a handwritten note with the file right?"

Chase nodded.

"That means someone else looked into the case at some point... What sort of paper was it?"

"What?" Chase had drifted off again, she was staring out the window, watching a man parked across the street, sitting in a green Lincoln, reading a newspaper. "What sort of paper? Um, I don't know, paper."

Steven turned around again and grabbed her shoulder. "Listen Chase, You have to pull the file again, figure out what kind of paper it is."

"Why the hell do I care what kind of paper it is?"

"Because it might give you some clue as to when the person looked into it." Steven was grinning from ear to ear. "Figure out when the paper comes from and you might be able to get Littrell to pull the assignments log and find out who looked into it. Then you can track them down and find out what they know." Steven half bowed his head, clearly proud of this leap of logic, which, Chase had to admit, was clever, if not very practical.

"All right. I'll give it another look tomorrow." She grabbed the bill and spun it around. She fumbled through her purse and pulled up a dollar fifty in change which she dropped in the little tray on top of Steven's money. "Let's get out of here."

Chase couldn't help watching the man in the car as she and Steven left the diner, but, as far a she could tell he never so much as blinked. *I've become paranoid. Christ, I have got to stop this shit.* Steven's car smelled of nutter butters. Down by her feet a handful of video game magazines that made for a slick carpet of crunching noises. They were two blocks away when something made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Steven was stopped at a red light. Chase reached into her purse and pulled out some lipstick. She swung down the sun visor and angled the mirror back behind her. She brought her lips up and started to apply lipstick, but her eyes darted around the scene behind her. She saw nothing at first, and was at the point of admonishing herself again when she glanced across the seat at Steven's mirror and saw, two lanes to their left, the same man, the same green Lincoln. Her heart started to speed up. 

"Steven, change of plans, I totally forgot I told a friend I'd meet her down at the mall this afternoon." She glanced around, up a head, they were just about to TK, which would cut down to the mall where there were thousands of tourists milling about the monuments. 

"Okay," he glanced over at her, surprised.

"Tell you what, why don't you cut down TK, drop me off at TK and I can walk from there." She risked a glance backward behind Steven's seat. The man was not looking her way. He did not really look like that sort of man who hire a prostitute to deliver a slip of paper. He did, however, look like the sort of man who would work for that sort of man she decided. She risked another glance. He had close cropped hair, almost a buzz. Ex-cop turned PI she decided. She looked again. He was wearing some sort of sport coat, Chase couldn't tell the color, but it was dark, probably blue, maybe black. It probably went with a suit, though Chase could nto see a tie. He wore cop shades, aviator style glass that were almost mirrored. If he did work for the man she had come to think of as her employer then her employer had very strange taste in employees. What, Chase realized with at start, did that say about her?

Of course it was entirely possible that this man did not work for her erstwhile employer, but was following her for some other, entirely different reason. But, while she acknowledged the possibility she knew she didn't believe it. Whomever he was and why ever he was following her, Chase knew it had something to do with the Lt. Lawrence case. 

What surprised Chase was that it did not surprise her. She realized that on some level she had been expecting something like this. Some part of her, some instinctual part she was not entirely familiar with had known something was wrong with the Lt. Lawrence case ever since she found the note Steven wanted to trace by paper history. 

Chase tried to keep herself from fidgeting in her seat. Instead she began to tap her foot against the pile of gaming magazines below, which prompted Steven ask in a rather surprised sounding voice if she was okay. She sat up straighter in her seat, gave him her best fake smile, and assured him that she was fine. The truth was she was starting to not be fine. Chase did not like being followed she. She had begun to feel not just nervous but also somehow embarrassed, like the feeling you get when you dream you're naked in public she thought suddenly. She realized she was blushing, but could not think why. Her hands had begun to sweat. She rubbed the along the sides of her seat, another nervous tic she willed herself to stop. But most of all she willed herself not the glance over her shoulder at the cars behind them. It was there, she knew it was there. She could feel it there. It was four excruciating blocks to their first turn and Steven hit signal on the red. Chase felt like her heart was going to explode right out of her chest every time she saw the light turn yellow just as they approached. Finally she turned to him in irritation, and told him that he needed to find a faster way to the mall or she was going to be late. Steven glanced over at her, unsure what to make of her behavior. More than anything he looked hurt, she decided. Typically male, when all else fails, look hurt. But he hung a left on tk and took a side street down toward the mall. Chase started telling Steven where to turn, leading him down increasingly narrow streets that would force the following car to reveal itself. The green Lincoln dropped further back, began to lag several blocks behind and other cars made sharp turns in behind Chase and Steven, but the lincoln did not abandon them. Finally, when they were within a block of the mall, She told him to pull over and she hopped out at the curb, slamming the door behind her with barely the hint of a thanks or goodbye. She knew as she marched away that if she had looked behind her that Steven's hurt face would have intensified, but she never looked back. She rounded a corner and ducked into a doorway, which turned out to be a bank alcove. She went up to the ATM, as if to use it, and instead watched as the man in the green Lincoln passed by, his head swiveling from side to side, clearly looking for something, most likely her.

She waited until he was forced to make a decision, noted that he turned left and she took off in the opposite direction, walking as fast as she would without drawing attention to herself int he such a way that he might notice in his review mirror. She went two blocks without stopping and then crossed TK and headed into the grassy fields of the mall. She slipped into a crush of tourists thronging around a bus, getting ready for the long walk up to the reflecting pool. several rows deep. No one seems to think anything amiss with her so she tagged along. About halfway down the mall she moved over to another group, ignoring a few glares from this group, which clearly thought she was freeloading on their tour. That she had no headphone to hear what they were listening to did not seem to occur to them. She stuck with them only long enough to get the steps in front of the Air and Space Museum where she broke away and sat down to collect herself. She was quite sure she had lost the man, whomever he was, but she was also quite sure that if she went right back to work or even perhaps to her apartment, he would pick her up again. Chase was unsure what to do, so she called her mother.

Her plan had been to ask her mother to come get her, but as it turned out, her mother was still in Las Vegas, staying with Aunt Elene now since Aunt Elene had apparently bought a condo out in tk. Chase momentarily wondered if perhaps she didn't need to drop her own problems and fly out to Vegas to stage some sort of intervention and stop her mother from, well, being in Las Vegas. 

"Honey, I'm fine, no need to worry. I won't go spending all your inheritance." Chase's mother found this uproariously funny and Chase had to hold the phone away from her ear while her mother and Aunt Elene cackled in the background. "Seriously Chase darling, don't worry, we aren't even gambling. God, haven't even ben a casino room since I talked to last, done with that. There's so much else to do dear..." Chase could hear Elene snickering in the background and decided that she did not want to know any more details. Instead she told her mother she was headed out the Chesapeake house and to let her know if or when she might be coming home so Chase could clear out before she did. "Well then I'm not telling you. Clear out. What kind of way to talk to your mother is that?"

"I only meant so you could have your space. It's your house mom, I'm just dropping in while you're out of town, so if you don't want me there when you get back, let me know. That's all."

"Well don't worry dear I won't be back for another few days yet, we switched our tickets to next week. But I'd rather you were there when I got home anyway, that place gets so lonely out there this time of year."

Chase assured her mother she would stay and visit, though she already knew she probably would find an excuse before the day rolled around. She hung up and walked two blocks to the subway station. She got off an exit sooner than her work and walked the last half mile above ground, keeping an eye out for green Lincolns. She didn't see any, nor did the hair on her neck ever stand up, which she was beginning to trust more than she used to. She went in the office, told her boss she was going to be working remotely for a few days, grabbed her things and bolted. Steven watched her go, the hurt look having been replaced by a more honest general sense of bewilderment. Chase smiled at him and waved from across the room as she headed out the door.


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