Chapter 2
A marylis knew Tristan was chomping at the bit to have her call forensics. She wasn’t sure what the protocol was. So, since she was new and didn’t want to get herself in trouble, that was not an easy decision for her. Yet, if something needed to be looked at, it was the job, and she needed to figure it out. She quickly phoned her boss first, and, when Dr. Cox answered, she explained what the problem was.
“Call them in,” he urged. “On something like this, you always want to keep on it.”
“That’s not going to sit well with them.”
“Most of the time we don’t have any issues, but this is a strange case, with a high body count,” he pointed out, “so let’s do whatever we can.”
“Are you aware that Tristan followed you home tonight?” she asked Dr. Cox, looking directly at Tristan.
Dr. Cox laughed. “Yeah, he wasn’t very subtle about it.”
“Wasn’t trying to be,” Tristan replied, loud enough to be heard.
Amarylis groaned and put it on Speakerphone. “That’s him yelling at you.”
“Oh, where are you guys?” he asked in a surprised tone.
“He’s insisting that I look after myself,” she muttered. “We had a strange encounter with somebody outside the office.”
“I don’t know what strange encounter it was,” he noted in alarm, “but don’t take any chances. As long as this Mason case is going south, we want to ensure that we’re north of it.”
She thought about all the things he could have said and asked. “Is this part of my job?”
“Being new, you’re not used to working in this environment. You’re probably not used to working where your ass will be put on the line.” He took a moment and added, “Normally I can’t imagine that being the case, but, for whatever reason, we appear to be caught up in something unusual right now. So, if you did see something like a USB key going through the system, we do want to confirm that it won’t go missing.”
“Right, so do I phone forensics?”
He thought about that for a moment, as the silence stretched. “I’ll do it. Let’s keep your head off the chopping block as much as possible.” And, with that, he hung up.
She looked over at Tristan. “Happy now?”
“Happy enough,” he replied, with a smile. “As Dr. Cox said, we don’t want your head on the chopping block, but neither can we afford to let this slide.”
“I wasn’t thinking we were letting anything slide. I gathered evidence and handed it over as usual, pretty sure it would get processed along with everything else.”
“Under normal circumstances it absolutely would be fine, but you gotta remember”—and he leaned closer now—“that your two interested males seem to be military personnel. So, if they were looking for something in particular and thought that maybe you had it or that it was picked up, there’s a good chance they would think you have it or you would know where it is.”
“I don’t need that as a sleep aid either,” she muttered.
“No, of course you don’t, which is why we’re doing what we can right now to fix this.”
It wasn’t long before the deep-dish pizza they had ordered arrived, and, on the heels of that, Dr. Cox called her back and greeted her with “Put it on Speakerphone, please.” She did so, and they both leaned forward to listen to the coroner. “Tristan, I contacted the lab, and they say they didn’t see any key.”
“And yet I did put it in an evidence bag,” she pointed out.
“But you also mentioned that it might not be something everyone would easily recognize as a USB key,” Tristan reminded her.
“I want you both, when you’re done with whatever you’re doing there, to meet forensics at the office. I’ve got John heading over right now.”
“Do we get to finish eating first?” Tristan asked, with a note of humor. “A lovely deep-dish pizza just arrived.”
Dr. Cox snorted. “You better get it to-go then. Once you start this process, it happens, and fast.”
What surprised her afterward was how quickly they were suddenly standing outside her office building. She looked over at Tristan and sighed. “We were sitting in a nice restaurant only moments ago.”
His grin flashed. “I promise I will make it up to you.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s hardly a date that you’re responsible for.”
“Ah, no, you brought it up, so I will absolutely make good on it.”
She groaned. “Now you will be obnoxious, won’t you?”
He burst into laughter, as she unlocked the door and walked in. “I will be obnoxious always,” he declared, with a smile. “Now, where would the forensics evidence have gone?”
“Up in the forensics part.” She turned to him. “They operate in a different part of this building.”
“Good enough.” He urged her on with his hand. “Lead the way.”
And she did, hoping that somebody would be there. When she walked up to the offices in question, she found several people gathered there. When she stopped in obvious surprise, they looked up and nodded.
“When we’re told to put a rush on something,” John announced, “we put a rush on it.”
“Good to know,” she said, as grins flashed in her direction.
“The thing is, you’re not the one doing it,” John noted.
“No, I’m sure not,” she admitted. “I didn’t realize we had such a big issue.”
“Apparently you picked up a USB key,” noted another one of the forensics guys, walking over to her. She thought his name was Tommy. “Are you sure?” he asked, without any accusation or anything malicious in his tone. “We haven’t seen any sign of it.”
“In which case we’ve got a problem,” Tristan stated, standing at her side. Tommy’s gaze narrowed. Tristan nodded. “Yeah, I’m one of the investigators.”
“But not one we know,” one of the other techs pointed out.
“Maybe not, but you will.” Almost an implied threat was inherent in what Tristan said.
Amarylis hurriedly rushed to interrupt the conversation. “Regardless of who knows who, considering I’m new here myself, you need to look for something that looks like a small race car. That’s the USB key.” They each turned blank looks her way. “Do you remember a small ornamental car?”
“Why would you think that was a key?” asked the fourth member of the forensics team, a woman, walking over to the bags in forensics.
“Because I’ve seen one before.” She waited while the woman went through several bags, and then she caught sight of it herself. “There it is,” Amarylis pointed out.
The other woman quickly opened the bag in question and brought out the USB. Everybody gathered around, and they were a bit chaffed. “We wouldn’t have initially recognized this as a USB key.”
“You would have if you had looked at it close enough,” Tristan said. “You can see it here.” Pulling it open, the USB connector popped out.
There were several nods. John explained, “Obviously we would have taken a closer look at it later, but it wouldn’t have been high on our priority list because it didn’t seem to be of too much value or interest.”
“I get that,” Amarylis noted, “but, because I did find it, I knew what it was. With that knowledge, we need answers as to what’s on it.”
“Let me go take a look.” John took the key over to a computer, and Amarylis sat down nearby, waiting. The three other techs looked at each other and muttered, “I guess maybe we didn’t need to come after all.”
“You did need to come,” stated John, the man at the computer. “If I’ve got to do extra time, so do you.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be nice to the rest of us,” Tommy joked good-naturedly.
“Did anybody else see anything unique or different at the scene?” Tristan asked, bringing the laughter to a pause.
One by one, his gaze went from one team member to the other, with Amarylis’s gaze following along, but everyone shook their heads. “Honestly, these recent crime scenes have been fairly standard for us. Depending on which body you’re talking about, we didn’t see anything unique or out of order.”
“We just didn’t notice the key for what it was,” Tommy admitted, looking at the miniature car.
“I didn’t either,” said the female tech from the side, “but we haven’t had a chance to process everything, which is where the problem comes in.”
She was in no way making an excuse, only an explanation, and that was something that Amarylis herself could understand. Everybody here was so busy and always had so much work to do that it wasn’t an unheard-of position to just need time to get through everything. “I understand that,” Amarylis agreed. “If I hadn’t seen a USB like that one before, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Good thing you did,” John noted. “I’m not exactly sure what we’ve got here, but it’s been encrypted, and I’m just working on getting it unencrypted right now.”
Tristan walked over to stand behind him, as the key slowly gave up its secrets. He leaned forward as files began to open. “I’ll need copies of everything on this key, and we’ll need this whole key backed up and secured.”
“Everything here is secure,” John noted, looking at him.
“ Extra secure,” Tristan replied.
The technician hesitated, looked over at the coroner, and she nodded.
“We’re worried about this going missing, so we’ll need multiple backups. Email it to me, email it to him, and you’ll need to email it to Jasper, the lead on the investigative team.”
“These are names that we don’t know,” John stated, turning to face Tristan.
Tristan pulled out his phone and contacted Jasper. He looked over at her and added, “You probably need to contact Dr. Cox as well.”
She nodded, pulled out her phone. As soon as Dr. Cox answered, she explained the problem.
He said, “Let me talk to them.”
She handed her phone over and watched as their faces paled slightly. She winced, as they were given a dressing down as to who and what went to whom. John returned her phone stiffly. Amarylis winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get anybody in trouble.”
“No, that’s fine. It’s just that we never get told anything.”
“I’m sorry about that too. I’m new, and you don’t know me all that well yet.”
“He’s new too.” John pointed at Tristan.
“Yes and no, but his department isn’t new,” she explained. “Definitely some bigger issues are going on here.”
“If you say so,” John muttered. “As I said, nobody talks to us.” The other techs were all quiet, as John followed through on the backups. Then he got up and sealed the key in a processing pouch, labeled it, and put it away in a wall safe for safekeeping.
She smiled and nodded. “Thank you.” There weren’t too many other comments, and, when Tristan got off the phone with Jasper, Tristan turned and asked, “Any issues?”
“We haven’t been reamed out by your boss yet,” John noted stiffly, “but I’m sure that’s coming.”
“I don’t know about being reamed out, but you guys aren’t supposed to hand off stuff without a proper chain of command, and, if you don’t know who to hand it off to, then that chain of command is compromised. You need to know exactly who and what you’re dealing with on each of these cases,” he stated, nodding to all of them, “so that will change.”
Almost immediately several phones went off. They all groaned, but Tristan smiled. “It’s still better this way. Your asses are covered, and so are ours.”
Multiple phone calls and conversations later, everybody in this group knew exactly who was authorized to work on Mason’s case.
When everybody was cleared to go home and to lock up, Amarylis walked back outside with Tristan. “I guess we had to do it that way, huh ?”
“No, we didn’t have to, but you needed to circumvent all the usual red tape,” he said, shaking his head. Then he shrugged. “They were doing their jobs by hesitating to give it to us, but we can’t tolerate that hesitation from here on out because we need things moving,” he shared, with a look in her direction.
“Got it. As long as they don’t hold it against me.” When he frowned at her. she said, “I know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” he declared. “You are working on a military base now and have more power here than you can possibly imagine. If you want any one of them removed, you can get them removed. They need to follow orders and to realize that you are the one giving those orders.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. Dr. Cox already gave me that rundown.”
“It will just take you a little longer to get your feet wet,” he noted, with a gentle smile. As they walked back to his truck, he muttered, “We never did finish that pizza.”
“No, we didn’t,” she agreed and then yawned suddenly.
“Seems time to get you back to your place for bed.”
“That sounds good,” she replied, “and you can leave me a piece of pizza. I’ll make good use of it for breakfast.”
He laughed. “Pizza for breakfast, I like it.”
“If pizza is good for dinner and lunch, no reason it can’t be good for breakfast too.”
“I like the way you think.” He gave her a big smile. He quickly drove her to her place and got out.
She frowned. “Why are you getting out?”
“Because I will walk you up there to see that everything is as it should be.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you take the hero thing a bit too far?”
“No, I don’t think there’s such a thing,” he countered, “and, if any trouble comes up, you won’t be saying that either.”
“No, I wouldn’t be.” Still, she grumbled the whole way up. As they got up to her apartment, she unlocked the door, stepped inside, and smiled. “See? It’s the same as always.”
“Good enough. Stay here and be safe and lock up right behind me.” And, with that, he handed her the box of pizza.
“Oh, I don’t want the whole thing.”
“You can have it. I will be working for the next few hours anyway, so I’ll get something later.” And, with that, he quickly walked out.
She frowned, staring at the large pizza in front of her. “At least take half of it with you.”
“No, I’m good.” And he was gone.
*