“I’ll make sure she gets some.” Geena sat down and opened her laptop. “Wow, she even wrote the initial passwords down. Talk about nice colleagues.”
“Don’t be too enamored yet,” George warned her. “You have to change those passwords the moment you switch the laptop on. If Shireen gets past them within ten minutes, you’ll have to listen to averylong speech about password security, how to generate the perfect password, and how important it is to memorize them and never, ever write them down or let some programs save them.” He shuddered, remembering the stern telling-off he had gotten after Shireen had given him a new PC.
“I can see you speak from experience.” Geena winked. “What about you, Andi? Are your passwords safe?”
“Always.”
“Oh. How come?”
There was a pause, during which George debated if he should intervene or give Andi a little more time to answer. His partner didn’t show his closed-off face, so he would say something eventually, though when was anyone’s guess. George decided it would be safer if he said something just when Andi started talking.
“My mother’s family is German, from Bavaria. I had to learn the dialect spoken in the village where most of them live. You wouldn’t believe the passwords I can come up with.”
Andi started typing on his own PC.
“You wouldn’t want to help a colleague out, by any chance?” Geena was trying to sound nonchalant, and she could have probably fooled a civilian. But George could read her intention of getting to know Andi better clearly in her body language, which meant Andi, who had the senses of whatever arthropods dwelt in the vicinity at his disposal, could see right through her. Waiting for the inevitable dismissal that would result in George having to smooth Geena’s ruffled feathers, George was again surprised.
“Use Glaache10*. That should do the trick.”
“Excuse me, what?” Geena’s fingers were hovering above the keyboard.
“G-L-A-A-C-H-E10*.”
“Hmm.” Gina furrowed her brows in concentration. “Okay, G-L-A… no, wait, let’s make the next two lowercase, just to be on the safe side, so a-a-C-H… and the last one lowercase again, -e 10*. Perfect. May I ask what it means?”
“It’s a word for phlegm. The kind you produce at the back of your throat. Some people spit it on the ground.”
“And I’m not so sure anymore if I should thank you for your kindness.”
“It’s my pleasure to help out a colleague in need.” Andi shrugged.
“I’m going to leave you alone now.”
“Thank you.”
Geena turned her gaze to George, who held up his arms in a defensive gesture. She rolled her eyes. Tobias and Sandra snickered. They had followed the exchange silently, too experienced to intervene in anything Andi.
“Don’t we have to add to the whiteboards?” Geena crossed her arms in front of her chest.
George reached for the black marker. “That we do.”
After they had done a rough copy of the detailed burial site Evangeline had sent them, they stared at the whiteboard, silently willing it to tell them who the killer was. George felt a little irritated because he couldn’t add the information about the bees, which to him was like folding a shirt knowing there was a crease he hadn’t ironed out.
“We need a profiler.” Geena was tapping her foot. “I know my basics, as I assume do you, but this is… more than we covered in serial killers 101. I’m not even sure if it’s safe to assume this is his only burial ground.”
“I think it is.” They all turned toward Luke Gelman, who was standing next to Andi’s desk, looking hesitant.
“Luke. What are you doing here? I thought you were busy?” George had no qualms reminding the AI agent why he was at the precinct in the first place. Luke winced.
“For the time being, I did everything I could. Don’t worry, the situation is under control.” He stepped forward, looking directly at Geena. George’s mother had raised him too strictly for him not to adhere to social niceties. Apart from that, Geena had nothing to do with the problems they were having with Gelman, and he really wished to stay on civil terms with her.
“Geena, this is Officer Luke Gelman from IA. Luke, this is Agent Geena Davis from the FBI. She’s also our liaison to the military.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Davis.”
“Geena, please. As I told George and Andi, this case shapes up to be such a bummer, we can’t be expected to stay all super polite and shit. You a profiler?”
“I studied criminal psychology and did enough courses on serial killers to be adept. I don’t profile on a regular basis, obviously, like somebody from the BAU would, but I’m proficient, I’m here, and given how overworked the FBI is, the probability is high that I’m all you’re going to get.”
