Different girl, different club. Taylor Daniels was last seen in "Whiskers", about 3 blocks from where Carole Miller vanished. Other big difference? I was in there the morning after when the place was still taped off and I might have something to work with. I was standing in the club looking at the booth at the back where Taylor and her friends last showed up on the security cameras.
Will Barrett was already there. He was the lead CSI and like me he made use of his 'natural talents' in his work. He'd had the air conditioning turned off and now the tall broad-shouldered bloodhound was standing there with his eyes closed, concentrating. We hung back so as not to crowd him or add fresh scents to the air. He pulled a cloth from his pocket and wiped off his muzzle before he opened his eyes and spoke, the small digital recorder in his top pocket catching his quiet commentary.
"Two female felines, one female canine and one one female lapine, matching reference samples one through four. One possibly male mustelid, unknown species but definitely not a skunk. No match to known references. No others since the last washdown of the booth. No detectable track for any except the mustelid, who approached from the direction of the dance floor and left towards the bar." He wiped his muzzle again and turned towards us. "With the heavy foot traffic in here I'm not going to get any more than that, I'm afraid. You getting anything, Dafydd?"
"Not yet. Can you point as accurately as possible the exact direction our musky friend took towards the bar?"
"Near as I can tell, he was heading directly for the seat just to the left of the beer taps."
Time to defocus again. Standing by the booth I turned to face the indicated seat at the bar and walked slowly towards it. Nothing but a vague itch in the back of my skull that I wasn't seeing everything that I should. Walking back to the little group of cops by the booth I beckoned the club owner over and flicked an ear at the lighting rig above the dance floor.
"Your board still programmed from last night?"
"Yeah, we've a set of programs we cycle through, depending on the band or DJ's preference."
"Can you give me a few minutes of the one that was running last night"
"Sure, but I'll have to turn the aircon back on. The gear would overheat in about three minutes if I don't."
Will nodded. "Go ahead. I'm done here."
With the lights running I squatted down on my haunches by the booth and looked towards the bar again. The dance floor lights raised all kinds of colored highlights off the bar, the bottles behind it, the rail in front of it and even reaching some old fragments of a broken glass wedged under the bottom of the bar by the seat I was interested in... but there were no glasses on the bar at all. I signaled the owner to cut the lights and called over to him.
"What kind of glassware do you use here?"
"No glass at all. Too dangerous, man. Too many gals kick off their heels and dance bare-pawed. Break a glass in here and we'd never get it all cleaned up well enough that some lady wouldn't get her feet cut up. We serve all our drinks in plastic."
"Will, you got a spare set of gloves and an evidence bag?" Pulling on the gloves I grabbed a stir-stick from the bar and poked it into the narrow crevice where the bar and floor didn't quite meet cleanly. There were definitely glass fragments in there but they weren't from any drinking vessel. This was thin glass, looked like I had most of a small vial here and some of them had what looked like liquid residue on them. Instead of sealing the evidence bag I held it out to Will. "I know it's unofficial until the lab says anything, but you care to exercise that talented nose of yours before I close this up?"
The bloodhound needed only one sniff. He scowled as he sealed up the bag. "Roofies."
Cy shook his head. "So, was that our guy or are we going to get a report of date-rape from last night too?" I just shrugged.
The owner was back and was handing us a DVD. "Security camera dump from last night. It's mostly non-public areas - in here it covers the door, most of the bar and the dance floor."
"Dafydd!" That was Sarah calling from the door as she walked over to us. "If nobody is ready to make a statement to the press yet, you're going to want to go out the back. The whole horde is out front."
"Let's go review the camera footage. We might get lucky and catch somebody spiking a drink."
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Luck was not something we were getting much of on this case. There was almost nothing we could use on the video. In the first place, the venue was packed with musky folk. The band that night had been "Muskrat and the Swamp" an old-school punk outfit with apparently quite a following among the local mustelid population. The booth we were interested in appeared in the background of one of the dance floor cameras but it was almost always obscured by the folks dancing. We got glimpses of all four girls in the party at the booth, occasional shots of two or more of them on the dance floor, including one that would have confirmed, if we hadn't already known, that the collie and bunny girls were definitely a couple. Towards the end of the footage we got one view of Taylor, alone in the booth and leaning her head on the table and then she was gone. While the cops settled down in frustration to view it a second time I stepped out of the room and made a quick phone call.
"Good afternoon, Mr Owen. What can I do for you?"
"Jason, I need your skills. How easily could you get your hands on a list of the cards that were run at The Furball seven days ago and at Whiskers last night?"
"Depends which card services they use and how secure their own systems are. Could be anything from easy to damn near impossible."
"Make the attempt. Don't get caught. If you do manage it, clean up the data so nobody can tell where it came from and send me a list of any that repeat at both clubs on those dates. Hard copy list only."
"Repeats on card numbers only or should I try to track repeating names too?"
"Yeah, do both."
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The full tox and forensics were back on Carole Miller. No sign of semen or other fluids, no transfer of epithelials or hairs, no drugs in her system. No leads whatsoever. The local cops, the FBI and I had been shaking everything that wasn't nailed down for three days and nothing had dropped. It was like Taylor Daniels had vanished into a hole in the ground and then pulled it in after her. So with her being five days gone, it wasn't too surprising that I witnessed the argument I did in Paul's office.
"Dammit Cy, we've got two, both feline, in the same age group, similar hair color, similar build. Are you seriously telling me your gut isn't saying the same as mine is?"
"Paul, I know what you're saying. Yes I'm thinking the same. We just don't have enough for me to make that call yet. They'd laugh me out of the fucking office!"
"We've got a bastard starting a serial spree and we can't do shit. That burns me, Cy... "
"We need more evidence. As soon as we have enough I'll have a federal task force here in moments, but Paul, I JUST DONT HAVE ENOUGH YET! ok?"
"These guys seem to!" Paul slammed a copy of the Star-Tribune down on the desk. The headline was pretty clear, given that they'd set it in mongo screamer type - the kind a paper would normally reserve for a presidential impeachment or something like that. "SERIAL KILLER STALKING THE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT?" The article was total bullshit but the question in the headline was kinda tweaking at me too. What were the odds of two similar looking girls vanishing, the second disappearing just after we found the first one floating in the fucking river?
I interrupted their argument and handed Cy an envelope. "You didn't get this from me, it's not usable as evidence and you don't officially have it."
"Do I even want to know?"
"There were 5 credit cards that showed up in both clubs on the nights we're interested in. There's a list in the envelope. Right now, Sarah is quietly checking out all five of them."
"I see. and just like you didn't give this to me, you probably won't tell me about anything she finds out either, will you."
"Of course not. You'd only have to wait until you found a plausible official reason to have the info anyway."
"Duly noted." replied the 'gator drily.
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Taylor had now been missing six days. Sarah and I were sitting in her office looking over the files she'd put together on our 5 credit card holders.
"Two women and the guys are a mouse, a pomeranian and a weasel. The women's movements are fully accounted for both nights, as is the pom. The mouse isn't fully accounted for, but given where he went after the club both nights I think I can cover that gap in a little while."
"Oh?"
"I just need to talk to one of Sadie's girls. He was with the same one both nights and I think he's a regular."
"What about the weasel?"
"Since you're looking for a mustelid, I might like him for it. Problem is that he's so flamingly gay you wouldn't believe it. As in so gay that the sight of lady bits turns his stomach. Even if he was capable of the level of violence we saw on Carole, some of her injuries are not ones he would be capale of inflicting."
Shit. I fished out my phone and called Cy Arsenau.
"Arsenau"
"Owen. Tear up the envelope. they are all no deal."
"Crap. Good try though."
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After giving Cy the bad news I stomped back down to my own office. I grabbed a couple of burner phones and went through the usual dance of code phrases with Marko, my security contractor.
"Dafydd, what can I do for you?"
"Do you provide security services for any clubs in the warehouse district?"
"One or two, my friend. Through the respectable side of the business."
"You might want to schedule some of your more experienced people for those shifts the next few weeks."
"This business in the papers? Are you telling me you think I should put decent operators on those jobs?"
"Yeah. Too early for the cops to say anything officially but my gut is telling me that having some of the better eyes on your team around might be doing your clients, and their customers, a big favor."
I leaned back in my chair and then opened the filing cabinet and poured myself a couple of fingers of single malt. For once the flavor and fire of the fine spirit failed to warm me. My gut told me we were about to find another dead girl. It had taken too long.
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Seven days missing. The early morning call from Cy couldn't be good news. It wasn't.
"We've got another body in the river. River police found a bobcat by Harriet Island. My gut tells me it's our girl."
"We'll be there."
to be continued....
