Suzie, Chris was just in time to see it.
To see her smile.
She turned around just as he reached her, and the smile on her lips was nothing short of dazzling. It actually seemed to light up the area.
“Wait right there, boys,” Suzie said as she left the two teens and joined him. “Detective O’Bannon will probably want to talk to you before he lets you leave.”
Reaching the crime scene investigator, Chris turned his back to the teenagers so that they weren’t able to overhear his conversation with her. He couldn’t help noticing that she seemed exceptionally pleased with herself. It piqued his curiosity.
“You’ve made yourself at home with my witnesses,” he noted.
“Crime scene witnesses,” Suzie corrected. “And I think I’ve got everything that you might want.”
He couldn’t contain the grin that curved his lips. “No question about that.”
Suzie’s eyes narrowed, telling him she didn’t find him witty, nor was she flattered. “I was talking about the crime scene.”
“Okay, we’ll go with that for now,” Chris agreed. “And what is it you’ve got that I wasn’t able to get?” he challenged gamely.
Suzie deliberately started small. “I have their names and addresses—”
He waved dismissively. “Already got that,” he told her.
She hated being cut off like this. He could have the decency to hear her out. “I wasn’t finished,” she informed him.
Chris inclined his head as if to tender an apology. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“I have their names and addresses,” she repeated, “so that we can send them their cell phones once our computer technician takes a look at them.”
He thought of the mind-numbing selfies that were probably on both cell phones. “And she’d want to do that because?”
Obviously, she was going to have to spell this all out for him, Suzie thought. The preening homicide detective wasn’t quite as brilliant as he thought himself to be. “Because our teen voyeurs and would-be enterprising thieves might not have gotten into the party while it was going on, but they were tenacious enough to find a window that wasn’t covered, and they took videos of the people attending. It might amount to nothing,” she said, “but then again...”
“It might be something,” Chris agreed, instantly hopping on her bandwagon. He looked over her shoulder at the teens waiting to be released, and frowned. “They didn’t tell me they took videos of the party attendees with their phones.”
The look on Suzie’s face said he should have figured that part out for himself because it was so obvious. “They’re teenagers with smart phones. They take videos of everything at this age.”
Rather than appearing annoyed the way she’d expected him to, there was admiration in the detective’s eyes. It took her aback.
“You’re good,” he told her.
He expected her to preen a little, because it was her due, given the circumstances. But she wound up surprising him by merely shrugging her shoulders. “Just doing my job.”
In his opinion, what she’d just done could make his job a whole lot easier. “If we didn’t have an audience, I’d kiss you,” he declared, looking at the two cell phones she produced. She was holding them gingerly with a handkerchief.
“Then lucky for you we have an audience, because otherwise I’d be forced to deck you,” Suzie responded, offering him a spasmodic smile at the end of her statement.
The corners of her mouth went down again as she became serious. Sealing each phone, one at a time, into an evidence bag, Suzie carefully wrote down the time, date and which youth it belonged to.
Finished, she held the transparent bags out to Chris. “Drop these off with the lab tech after you take these boys to their school.”
Rather than grow irritated that the woman he had tried and failed to pick up last night was issuing orders to him, Chris took it all in stride. “You do have a take-charge personality, don’t you?”
Suzie waited for him to challenge her. When he didn’t, she said simply, “Again, just doing what needs to be done.”
Chris was about to say something further to her but she turned away, shifting her attention to the next thing on the list: taking close-ups of the dead woman, as well as the area around her. The victim might not have been killed in this exact place, but there could be some sort of clue accidentally left behind that would lead them to identify where the woman had been murdered.
Chris knew when he was being dismissed. For now, because he wanted to get the cell phones logged into evidence and then to the computer lab as soon as possible, he let it go.
“C’mon, guys. Teacher’s issuing you a hall pass,” he told the two teenagers. “Looks like you’ll be going to school, after all.”
Allen and his friend exchanged glances as they were being herded out of the former department store. Bill nodded in response to Allen’s unspoken question. Two minds with a single thought: ditching school.
“Hey, if it’s all the same to you, can you just drop us off at the Golden Gate Plaza?” Allen asked, referring to the largest shopping mall in Aurora.
“During school hours?” Chris asked, dramatically putting his hand to his chest. “Now what kind of an officer of the law would I be if I aided and abetted your hooky playing?” he asked. “You’re going to school, boys,” he told them cheerfully. “And I’m taking you there.”
The duo grumbled quietly—until they reached Chris’s car, a Lincoln Continental from a by-gone era when fins still meant something. The car was large, and provided the protection of a tank.
“Hey, is this yours?” Bill asked, as he and Allen stopped next to the vehicle Chris had brought them to.
Chris looked at the duo as if he was dealing with a pair of living brain donors. “No, when I saw you two running, I stole someone else’s ride so I could cut you off in an impressive car. Of course this is mine,” he said in irritation as he unlocked the doors.
Neither teenager seemed to be insulted by the sarcastic response. Allen ran his hand along the panel closest to him. “I guess I didn’t notice what an outstanding piece of craftsmanship this was.”
Chris noted that the teen was all but drooling on his car. He anticipated the next question that either boy was going to ask and headed it off. “I got the car by saving up every spare dime and working really, really hard. I think that the two of you should stop fixating on my ride and start figuring out what you’re going to tell your parents.”
Bill looked at him as if he had just begun speaking in a foreign language that the teenager couldn’t quite grasp. “Our parents?”
Digging deep, Chris searched for even simpler words to use as he explained. “Well, yeah, because after I drop you off, I’m going to make it a point to pay a visit to your parents. I think they’re entitled to know how
