Justice Rain (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 11) Read online

  Might as well ask him though, so Chris lied, “I looked it up by the way. It says most police officers work five 8-hour shifts a week, with 2 days off.”

  “Hey, good for them,” Dale said. “My gig, we work rotating 12’s. What do you need though? We’re at 3-all here, third set.”

  Chris mentioned the lab work, and Dale said he’d stop by at 11, and what’s his unit number.

  Chris gave it to him, kind of absentmindedly, and then thought ooh boy -- you gotta be kidding me.

  Even though they’d discussed it before, Chris trying to direct Dale to using his department computer and Dale saying he’d rather not -- and Chris supposing he had to side with the guy there, since Dale’s actions in this case were going against the grain not to mention behind the back of Elipse PD -- still, all that noted, now that it was happening it made you nervous.

  Chris actually tried to clean up the place a bit, put on a little jazz in the background -- and pretty importantly he realized, shut down all his Chris Seely-related gmail accounts and make sure you needed a password to re-sign in. In fact, scratching his head -- is there any other sign of me in here that shouts Chris Seely, or throws off an associated vibe?

  He looked around a bit, was reasonably convinced he was good -- though there was a paperback novel in the bathroom that Chris had been reading in the tub . . . and son of a gun, like he was worried about, there was a written inscription on the inside cover

  Chris-Boss: Thanks for my being partner in crime solving. Best wishes, Ken

  And what this was, Kenny had given him a book, and of all things a James Ganderson thriller about a serial killer, and it wasn’t badly written, though a little testy with the credibility in parts -- but this was after he and Ken spent those couple days chasing clues in the Bay Area and tracked down that old Mel guy to Modesto, as the suspected Zodiac killer from the 1960’s -- and the verdict was out on whether that was actually the guy, but Ken enjoyed the chase, and was good at it, and gave the book to Chris when they got back to LA.

  Thinking about it, and Kenny . . . it made you miss the guy . . . they’d had some fun, and it was too bad it ended weird. Maybe down the line you could straighten it back out to a degree, but maybe not.

  Meanwhile the solving word in the inscription was a bit blurred from apparently getting some water on it, so a person (or cop like Dale who had to use the bathroom) at a glance would see Chris’s name followed by my partner in crime . . . and that couldn’t happen, so Chris scooped up the book and threw it into a suitcase in the closet.

  Dale was showered and changed when he walked in but was all business. “So what do got?”

  “Our big theory?” Chris said.

  “Your big theory,” Dale said, “but I’m here, so let’s get to it.”

  Chris considered this. “You sounded better on the phone an hour ago,” he said. “Anything happen in between?”

  Dale said, “Ah, you’ll probably hear about it anyway . . . I had a major falling out with the guy Stan. Court 5.”

  “The guy that takes all the lessons,” Chris said, “but never plays with anyone?”

  “Him, yeah. Long story, not worth wasting time. Ended up in our game though circumstance. He hit me with the ball twice.”

  “Tough sport,” Chris said, thinking he would have been ticked off if that happened to him, but at the same time amused that it happened to Dale.

  “Are you being facetious?” Dale said. “If so, we can postpone this little dealiehicke.”

  “I’m just saying, if the guy hits you once you’re too close to the net. Don’t make the mistake again, unless you’ve prefaced it with a good deep approach shot.”

  “What bothered me,” Dale said, “was the guy not signalling anything.”

  “Oh. You mean when the guy sticks up the hand -- after he nails you on purpose -- implying sorry about that, I didn’t mean it?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t do that,” Dale said, and he started to continue and then seemed to realize it was going nowhere and he was being petty -- and Chris figured the main part must have been he got his ass kicked on the scoreboard once that new guy stepped into the game as well, and Chris could identity with that, it did leave you in a bad mood.

  “Welp,” Chris said, “here goes nothing.” And he plugged the cord of the lab piece into his USB, and he signed into Gedmatch under the fake name he’d set up . . . and you could see Dale coming alive a bit, when the screen loaded and brightened up and all the possibilities were presented.

  “Looks complex,” Chris said. “I don’t know what half this shit does, but all’s we need is right here.” And pointed the mouse to the simple heading Upload Your DNA Files, and it was a crude interface, a definite low-budget feel to it -- but under that you had an option of Generic Uploads or Upload if generic upload fails -- and Chris went with the first, where you simply found your USB device on your computer, just as if you had a camera plugged in, and there were a couple clicks to perform -- and boom Jerrod Williamshtein was loaded. That being the fake name of course that Chris gave the suspect DNA from the blood droplet.

  “Now the moment of truth,” Chris said to Dale. “And stop me if you see me screwing something up. Your expertise from here on out is as good as mine.”

  “Keep going,” Dale said.

  So Chris hit SEARCH.

  And it took a minute, and then a little graph bar appeared at the bottom that would theoretically be filled in until it reached 100 percent, and there was a message thanking you for your submission and reminding you that family genome searches could take up to 24 hours to complete.

  “You got something to drink?” Dale said. “Then I guess we leave off, you inform me tomorrow, when the job is complete.”

  “I will,” Chris said, not taking a specific drink request but pouring Dale a shot of an off-brand Irish whiskey that he’d picked up at Walmart -- since the guy was likely still worked up from the pickleball incident.

  “In fact,” Chris said, after Dale had poured it down, “you didn’t go into detail on the falling out. Something happened after he nailed you the two times?”

  “Ah that wasn’t much. In hindsight. There was a situation, he was picking up a ball in the net, I reached across it and grabbed him by the shirt was all. Told him if I got hit a third time . . . like I said, it was stupid.”

  “Not stupid at all,” Chris said, enjoying it. “You raise your voice in the process, or anything?”

  “Maybe somewhat.”

  “Hmm. So . . . like, they had to stop the match?”

  “Karolina did. Yeah. I’m ashamed to say. She banned me from the facility until Monday.”

  “Holy Smokes,” Chris said. “Didn’t know she had it in her.”

  “Me neither. I couldn’t tell, is she doing it for show, and it won’t really apply? But then I’m thinking, she is the hired pro, she has her standards to maintain.”

  “Sounds accurate. So you can’t set foot on a court this weekend . . . That is pretty funny . . . The woman obviously knows how to separate business from pleasure, then.”

  “Fuck you,” Dale said.

  Meanwhile Chris took at look at the computer, figuring based on all the hoopla of how long it might take, that the bar graph would be filled in no more than 1 percent by now -- but surprisingly it showed you 56 percent.

  “Or,” Chris said, “stick around a little longer, you never know, we might get bite.”

  Dale took a look and pointed out that these things, they could to 98 percent on you and fool you, that the last 2 percent could be a couple hours. But he took off his shoes and put his feet up on the coffee table and actually fell asleep, Chris thinking man, that pickleball is proving to be a strenuous activity -- or maybe there was previous different activity last night as well -- and by now Chris had stopped trying to figure out the swinging thing, if that’s what it was -- because they all seemed reasonably normal when the so-called switch went back off.

  The computer dallied a bit on 90 percent, but then up pretty st
eadily like a thermometer and boom -- you were there.

  Chris alerted Dale who woke up with a start and momentarily didn’t know where he was. Chris said, “You wouldn’t have been the right guy, say in a college dorm roommate situation, to be in the upper bunk. Doubtful you’d last the semester without something happening.”

  “My brother and I had those,” Dale said, “but I made him sleep up top. Where are we here?”

  There was a decent list of names, maybe 15 or 20, though in thinking about it that may have been mild compared to your normal high-powered searches.

  What it meant -- unless this new advance in DNA was a complete bust -- was the suspect was in the family tree with those people.

  Chris said it out loud, and Dale said, “I’m with you. When you take a step back . . . it’s pretty downright unbelievable.”

  They stared at the names, and here’s where it got confusing . . . and Chris wondered if it’d be wise, but decided to call Mark.

  “I got a software guy,” he said to Dale, “might save us some aggravation. You mind if I try him?”

  “Be my guest,” Dale said.

  “Yo my brother,” Mark said. “What is shaking? How you been, dog?”

  “Good, Richard,” Chris said. “Listen, my buddy and I, we’re fooling around with Gedmatch . . . you know, the family tree site? . . . No big deal, but before we waste several hours, would you have any tips?”

  “Ah then,” Mark said, “are you in?”

  “Appears to be affirmative,” Chris said.

  “Speak English. You got results?”

  “Yep. Maybe 25.”

  “All right then. There’s a code. Under each name . . . This is all spelled out, did you read the manual?”

  “A code you say . . . then what?”

  “Okay you have a key to the code. On the lead-in page to the results page. It’s small print. But all’s you do, you eliminate 4th cousins and worse. Then you hone in on that baby.”

  “Okay sounds good,” Chris said, “thanks for taking an educated guess, we’ll do our best.” And he hung up. “Guy didn’t know much,” he said to Dale. “But these tech geeks, they can give you some angles to try.”

  “So what’re we doing,” Dale said. “The suspense is killing me here.”

  Chris went back to that other screen and studied it. “We’re looking c-3 and better, I’m thinking.”

  Dale put on his reading glasses and got up close. “That include a and b?”

  “Yeah let’s do that . . . what do you have?”

  “I got four,” Dale said.

  “That’s what I got,” Chris said. “How old?”

  “Jesus, you’re making me work here.” Dale grabbed the mouse and started clicking on the names, and subscreens popped up with family tree data -- more than you needed, but there were dates of birth, and Chris brought out a calculator.

  “What I’m seeing, I think,” Chris said, “is Layla Abernathy being the one. Is that what your’re getting.”

  Dale said, “Yeah . . . and I’m registering something else now too . . . For better or worse.”

  “What?”

  “Just keep going. We’ve pared her down as a cousin to the DNA right?”

  “The suspect sample. Yeah.” Chris kept clicking around, more trial and error, and there was a cluster of Abernathys -- not DNA donors but still in front of you, in the family tree -- and Chris couldn’t deliver a lecture on how this shit worked, that’s for sure, but he knew you kept going regardless of who or who didn’t submit their actual DNA sample.

  At least he was getting the hang of navigating the thing, and he got to where you could pare down the individual Abernathys, by both age and place of birth -- and Dale said to leave the current screen up, he wanted to check on something.

  “JP,” he said on the phone. “The Anthem-Mesa corridor, the 1041s . . . we got an Abernathy in that group?”

  There was a pause where J.P. would likely be running something.

  “Was my hunch,” Dale said when the guy was back. “You got a first name?” Dale was writing it down, Madelaine. “What’s the name again on the DOA? Eclipse’s?” More J.P. looking something up, and Dale thanking the guy, and not writing anything down this time.

  “What a mess,” he said to Chris. “Un-believable.”

  “Huh?”

  “First of all,” Dale said, “we ain’t got no suspect DNA. This belongs to the goddamn victim . . . may she rest in piece.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yep. Good old Eclipse. They couldn’t sleuth their way out of a no-flush toilet . . . Sons of bitches couldn’t even sort the evidence. The suspect bled at the scene -- they tell us -- but meanwhile the bozos give us the fabric, with the victim’s blood on it.”

  Chris didn’t want to mention that they didn’t exactly give this evidence to Dale, that he stole it . . . but same difference, if the ones working the case can’t keep the blood straight -- if there even was any suspect blood collected, which was doubtful now.

  “So Abernathy . . .?” Chris said.

  “Yeah. That’s screw-up part two. They identified the wrong victim. They had Veronica somebody . . . which we’ve indirectly corrected to being Madelaine Abernathy . . . Thanks for nothing, I was fired up there when the search first went through.”

  “I was too,” Chris said. “Gee. Talk about a deflating reversal.”

  “Yeah, well. And I didn’t mean thanks for nothing, you’re a good citizen. You gave it the old college try.”

  “Better luck next time I guess.”

  “Always,” Dale said, and he was up and out of there.

  ***

  Well that was a waste.

  It was interesting to witness how the Gedmatch thing actually worked. Chris wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, as pertained to own situation -- that it seemed to work pretty flawlessly. You’d think it was a bad sign . . . but maybe an efficient system was more easily hackable, as well.

  One positive thought was Mark didn’t seem bent out of shape this time when he called. You weren’t going to ask him, in front of Dale, but that would once again be a heck of a relief if Mark resolved those couple kinks from last time, after Chris’s first measure of relief proved premature.

  A final thought on the identification business -- Dale didn’t get into it, but you’d assume IDing a poor woman like this wasn’t a slam dunk -- since she was obviously down and out to start with, and may not have had a next of kin . . . or anyone caring enough the make the ID. Still . . . it seemed like quite an injustice to mix up the victim’s name.

  You’d assume they could have gone down to that Holiday Inn Express clone place, what was it again, the Haliday Jay? Where the known escort action was, on the I-10 corridor, and where coincidentally Chris had picked up Monica that time in the lobby . . . and at least shown the poor gal’s photo and asked questions. It was sad all around . . .

  Now though, you needed to track down Lucy.

  No sign of her at home, so he checked Gertrude’s as well, then the pickleball courts, then the pools, then the exercise room, then the library in the rec center. Zippo.

  This was frustrating. You didn’t normally need to track down the Lucys around here, and all those times you didn’t, she’d no doubt be around -- now the one time you needed to find her she disappears on you.

  There was a stack of brochures on the high check-in desk which Chris never paid attention to, but it did seem to list various optional activity that encompassed the Rancho Villas, as well as a few similar complexes in the north Phoenix area.

  He asked the desk guy, “Anything going on today? Where we can get on a bus and sit back and take in the scenery? Or you know what I mean.”

  “Yes sir, absolutely,” the guy said. “Today’s excursion to Montezuma Castle has departed already of course, this morning . . . Let’s see, the next one, that’d be the 7th, next Thursday, the Meteor Crater -- happy to place an advance reservation for you?”

  “There’s a castle around here?” Chris
said.

  “Oh no sir, that’s just the name. It’s a national monument.”

  The meteor crater business did sound interesting, and Chris thought maybe he should have been getting out and away from the Rancho Villas more after all -- but that was a different subject.

  “Okay thanks man,” he said. “You know Lucy? Or Getrude? Not sure of their last names.” He did remember Lucy’s but that didn’t matter.

  “I do not, I’m sorry, I’ve only been on the job this week.” And that made sense, since Chris’s little golf gig technically fell under the same employment umbrella and this did, and the guy wasn’t familiar.

  Anyhow he thanked him, and walked around a bit, since they did have an advertised 4.2 miles of trails when you combined every darn path on the face of the complex, and Chris didn’t take enough advantage of those either.

  The point was though, use the walking to think a bit . . . and Chris hadn’t registered it much, but you did now and then see the old folks dipping down when the got back to their apartment and reaching for a key under the mat. Which made sense, the place was pretty dang secure, and why screw around with your keys every time you want to take a dip in the pool for example. Plus the key under the mat was likely a safeguard for the again, sometimes forgetful population crowd down here.

  So you had to commit to something . . . so Chris first of all took the assumption that Lucy was on that weekly excursion . . . and secondly that she might have the same key-under-the-mat going on . . . and thirdly that he wouldn’t be arrested for spending a few minutes in her apartment.

  And sometimes you just went for it -- and yep, there was a spare key laying there, an he opened the door carefully and called inside . . . and even when you’d done a few of these type things before, they never got easy, and he took a gulp and stepped in and closed the door behind him . . . and while he was at it, he pulled the front shade.

  No need to roam around the place thankfully, like a burglar, since the computer was sitting right in the living room against the wall by the TV console. And of course a simple desktop, the monitor on top of a flat computer box, a mouse on a traditional pad and connected by a cord, the whole setup from at least 10 years ago.