The Blood Detail (Vigil) Read Online Free PDF

trace.”
    Racine glanced up at the garage door, which had snaked up into the ceiling. He put his hand on a rather large indentation on the metal. I hadn’t noticed it had been damaged until he had reached up and touched it.
    Douglass opened the closet door where my washer and dryer where kept and gazed inside. “Take the rest of your men and initiate a search,” he said in an attempt to sound authoritarian. “Cover as much ground as you can. Remain in pairs at all times.”
    The armed team left. Douglass closed the door and he and Racine huddled up. I strutted toward them.
    “I’m thinking he wanted to use this spot to avoid the sun,” Douglass said.
    Racine nodded along. “Or he just wanted to get inside and have at her straight away. Indoors, he’d have all day to do what he wanted with her.”
    “What the fuck are you two talking about?” I asked, planting my feet behind them. My sneakers squeaked against the concrete.
    Both men turned to me, but it was Douglass who responded. “You had a visitor. It looks like we scared him off.”
    The pennies began to drop. “It was that creep from tonight, wasn’t it?”
    “Yep,” Racine said.
    I had about a million questions.
    “As you can see,” Douglass said, cutting me off before I’d had the chance to get the first one out. “We care very much about this suspect. We’ve been tracking him all night. He’s been on your ass since you left the murder scene.”

Lowdown
    To get my answers, I was whisked away.
    We traveled southbound in the back of the surveillance van. I was seated on the left side, my hands on my knees, with Douglass and Racine on the right. My only view to the outside world was through the front windshield. We whipped past the headquarters building downtown, and kept driving for another couple of miles. The building we eventually pulled into, from a ground floor parking hub with an automated security system, was a bit nondescript—boxed-shaped with a glass exterior was the most you could say about it. If I was anybody else, I might have had trouble placing it after the fact.
    The driver took us over to the elevators in the underground garage, so close that when Racine opened the van door I was able to step out of the vehicle and onto the waiting compartment. I couldn’t see anything else in the building, which I guess was the plan. As the elevator headed down, I jokingly asked why they hadn’t blindfolded me, but neither of them had a response, humorous or otherwise.
    Our final destination was an administrative bullpen, which appeared to take up an entire floor, with a myriad of cluttered desks at its core and enclosed offices along the outer walls. The place was hopping as we strolled down the center aisle, with Douglass and Racine flanking me on both sides. I felt like asking if they wanted to cuff me for good measure. But knowing that I’d be ignored, I kept my smart ass comment to myself.
    We began to angle toward one office in particular. It had Douglass’s name and title stenciled on the glass entrance. He opened the door for me and told me I could take a seat on the couch, he and Racine would get us all some coffee. Left alone to my own devices, I ignored the couch and took a seat behind the man’s desk. There wasn’t much sitting out I could snoop through. Almost no paperwork, and the computer terminal was off. I thought about turning it on, but decided instead to kick my legs up and take a moment to regroup.
    On their way back, the detectives saw me through the clear enclosure. They stopped for a second, said something vital to one another, and returned to their trek toward the office. Racine held one mug of coffee. Douglass carried two. After they’d both reentered, Pretty Boy offered me the mug with the smiling sunshine character on the side. I leaned forward to accept it, keeping my feet lodged high on the desk. I took a sip as Douglass sat in the chair in front of me and Racine took the spot I was supposed to be filling on