The Detective and the Contractor

Chapter 1: The One That Got Away

Ernestine was on her fifth cup of coffee of the day. She had been doing nothing but shuffling file after file at her workstation. Work had been well and truly light, for the lack of a better word, for the last two weeks, at least for her task force. They were called in to assist in investigations or provide armed support to other units from time to time, but there was nothing else.

Approaching the evening, the young Detective Chief Inspector looked around the desolate office. Most of the staff and other officers were gone, either their shift ended or they decided to go on a break, or were doing work elsewhere. Still, it did not feel quieter than usual; she worked with professionals who would refrain from much idle chit-chat during working hours. She decided to simply recline back in her seat, staring at the ceiling.

"If you fall asleep, I'm gonna have to write you up for it," a voice said.

"No, sir, I was just..."

"Relax, DCI Jones," Superintendent Huertas said, "I was just kidding. But I'm not kidding when I say you should get some rest. Go home, put your feet up, have a nice bubble bath or something. Unwind!"

Ernestine regained her composure and said nothing for a few moments. "Well, maybe," she finally said, "But I can't help it that we're missing something. It can't just be that our leads just dry up. There hasn't been a peep from the ground for a while."

"Well," Huertas said, leaning against the desk, "Like I said, maybe you should just get some rest. It'll do you good, trust me!"

Ernestine sighed and slumped forward onto her desk. "Is that an order, sir?" she said.

"You want me to make it one?" Huertas said and they simply stared for a few moments. "Well, I'll make it a suggestion, but I will say that you shouldn't have too much caffeine," he continued.

"You're right, I'm starting to get the jitters," she said, staring into her cup. Then, she stood up from her desk and said, "You know what, I need some water."

Abruptly, as she was walking away, her computer terminal started beeping. She quickly went back and saw it was an urgent call. Promptly, she answered it.

"DCI Jones," she started.

"Hello, uh, this is Monitoring Command, I'm looking at a ping from one of your sensors and I have instructions to contact you directly," the voice said, "I'll patch it to you now."

Both Ernestine and the superintendent saw the screen changed. It now showed a map of the city with a faint dot with markers showing the location of the sensors. As more data were streamed in, the dot became sharper as the source of the signal became clearer.

"PS Kryzinsky, I want visual on the target we're tracking," Ernestine said, working on her terminal, "I'm sharing the feed now."

"Got it!" said the police sergeant.

After a few moments, the feeds from nearby cameras appeared on the screen. They knew there would be quite a bit of traffic at this time, so they prepared themselves. However, since this was near the outskirts of the part of a city that was sparsely inhabited, it was not hard to see what they were looking for.

"There, the white one!" the superintendent said.

"It's the only thing that match the pings," Ernestine said, "Sir, we need to assemble an emergency force out there now."

"Agreed, you have lead on this, Detective Chief Inspector," the superintendent said, immediately going to his office.

"Monitoring Command, keep track and patch all data to everybody on my task force, thank you!" Ernestine said, then to everybody in the office, "Listen up, people! All hands on deck! Get anybody and everybody!"