I said, “Roast beef sandwich sounds good.”
“Awesome! Itisgood! And to drink?”
“Iced tea.”
“Sweetened?”
“No, thanks.”
“Large?”
“Sure.”
“Beautiful!”
—
This time Milo took the stairs with no complaint. This time we used the big interview room to polish off lunch.
Flex space given a new meaning.
No false promises about my sandwich; generously dimensioned, amply stuffed with rare roast beef, and augmented by some sort of hand-whipped horseradish sauce. All of which was appreciated because sloshing coffee was the only thing in my gut.
Milo’s breakfast burrito was the size and shape of a lumbar cushion. He sized it up the way a coyote assesses a rabbit.
When we were through eating, he said, “Hold on, right back,” and returned with an enlarged version of Cameron Flick’s DMV photo. Wheeling one of the whiteboards to center stage, he taped the image dead center.
Nothing noteworthy about the face. On the bland side, really. Even the eyes were unremarkable. Medium brown, slightly down-slanted, neither angry nor kind. Just a pair of eyes, free of that cold forever-stare some witnesses report encountering when faced with evil.
People expect monsters and ogres but sometimes you just get terrifyingly ordinary.
Chapter
40
As we finished our drinks, the door swung open and five detectives filed in looking stunned.
Ten eyes shot to Flick’s face.
Petra, Raul, Alicia, Moe, and Sean continued to stare as they settled at the long tables.
Raul was the first to speak. “He drives a five-year-old Beemer that doesn’t show up on our citation list from that night. Neither does his name so maybe he’s the one who cut the chain. Or he found somewhere else to park.”
Petra continued to study the image. “He looks like what he is, a grad student.”
Moe said, “Majors in math, minors in evil.”
Alicia turned to me. “You figured this out last night?”
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully? Sounds like a definite.” She turned to Milo for confirmation.
He stepped up to the board. “It’s looking promising, here’s what we know so far.”
—
His lecture was brief and informative, and left five pairs of eyes active and bright. If he’d been a professor at Oberlin or some similar place, five stars from the undergrads.
