Hurricane
A long night of heavy rain had washed the city clean, and the morning air was warm and humid, with mist lifting from the pavement and awnings. At 9:00 a.m., when Bosko arrived, Leith visited him in his office, first to give him the good news, then the bad. “It’s definitely the bootie we’re looking for, sir. No obvious evidence on it, but it’s gone in for analysis. Unfortunately, the only prints on the bottle belong to the Stubbs. The couple who found it.”
“And why did they fish it in?”
“Nancy Stubbs did that,” Leith said. “She says it was pretty, bobbing in the waves. So she scooped it out, and saw there was something inside, and, you know, if it was me, I’d think twice about opening up a mysterious gin bottle, but the Stubbs did just that. They chucked the cork in the water — unfortunately — and used a wire bent into a hook to pull out the bootie. It didn’t click right away, but then Ernie Stubbs recalled the newsflash, and so they brought it in. Not before handling the thing, though. Bet all the DNA we’ll get off it belongs to them and Rosalie Liu.”
“We can always hope,” Bosko said. “Without prints or DNA, does it advance us at all?”
“Far as I can see, it’s just an extra bit of weirdness to add to the file. The Lius weren’t drinkers, so unless they kept a stock for guests, it doesn’t seem it came from their place.”
Bosko thanked him for the update, and since they were talking, asked about the Alberta lead. “Doug tells me it didn’t quite pan out.”
“Not quite written off, but not promising,” Leith agreed, and gave a rundown of his interview with the biker Prince, Prince’s hot denials, and the consensus between himself and Dion that Prince had not killed the Lius.
“Yes, I actually read Cal’s report,” Bosko said, grinning. “Did you see it? It’s amazing. Reads like a runaway haiku. But in the end, when you step back, it’s quite thorough.”
“He’s definitely running circles around me,” Leith admitted.
“Anyway, so Mr. Prince is a dead end. At least you got a bit of a field trip out of it. The prairies revisited. Suffer any pangs of homesickness, seeing that boundless horizon?”
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