she always did, near to an exit or elevator and close to another expensive car if at all possible; she found the perfect spot next to a black 911.
The new Porsche’ paintwork glinted in the light as she stopped and put on some lipstick. Fluffing her short brown hair Charlene exited the vehicle.
Looking round she saw a couple of people here and there, parking or getting ready to depart. Pressing the small transmitter on her key, the lights flashed and the horn emitted a meep meep to confirm the operation of securing her car. Charlene opened her brown leather bag and placed the keys in it; reaching inside she pulled out a compact, and a stick of lipstick. She removed the cover and twisted the lower part of the stick, exposing the deep red lipstick’s business end. With her other hand she flicked open the compact and stared into the mirror. Charlene stopped for a brief moment, staring at her own reflection, but all she saw was a sad middle-aged woman. A car sped past, shocking her back to reality. She regarded her face once more, then shrugged at the reflection and smiled. After freshening up her make-up, she put the lipstick and compact back into the bag, then closed the flap using the gold-coloured crossed CC buckle. As she approached the elevator in silence and pressed the call button, Charlene watched quietly as the small round disks above the sliding doors illuminated, showing which floor the elevator was on. The light held position on the floor below, as her foot tapped impatiently on the hard concrete.
She smiled as the light went out and she could hear the faint rumble of the heavy metal box that was heading upwards through the shaft towards her. Just as the elevator approached, her bag gave off a faint tune as her cell phone played the theme from the musical Cats . As she looked down to answer it, the elevator’s door slid open and a bright stream of light shone out. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the blinding torchlight. A powerful hand reached out and dragged her in. As the doors closed and the elevator made its way upwards, a terrified scream filled the shaft, then abruptly it stopped.
Tooms and Tony had returned from their trip to ‘I haven’t seen anything and I don’t know anything’ land that was Karen’s apartment block.
“What’s up, guys?” asked McCall, who was busy looking to see where John Steel was.
“Well, as usual, nobody knew her apart from some guy in 4c who said, and I quote: ‘she was really smoking’,” Tooms replied, putting down the notepad he was reading from, and his voice carried an ‘ I’m not surprised’ tone.
“Nobody saw her and she lived in a block with over thirty people in it. Apart from that she was clean living, quiet, always paid her rent on time.” He put the pad into the pocket of his thick unyielding brown leather jacket.
“We didn’t find pictures of family or anything, no boyfriend pictures, nothing.” Tony added, sitting at his desk as he started to dial a number on the desk’s phone while McCall worked on the white board, which was now covered with photos and scribbles.
She spun the whole thing round, revealing three long black strips, one on top of the other. Each strip had several vertical lines coming off at the top of the base lines: this was her timeline board for each of the victims.
“McCall, you may need another stripe. We got us another one.” The Captain had a worn tone in his voice, he was tired of not having a single clue or anything to work on. This guy was good, and the knowledge of it was getting to him.
McCall didn’t try and find Steel—in fact she didn’t want him around her; yes, fine, he had saved her from Jabba and his gang but something about him was wrong, something was not quite right. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but he made her nervous.
The detectives made their way to a dirty alleyway near the meatpacking district; the press was all over the area, reporters tripping over each other to
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