A Blade of Glass

Chapter 16

Waiting in the car was the worst, Nickie was becoming convinced of it. It wasn't just that she didn't know what was happening inside, and it wasn't that she felt like she was being treated like a kid, being forced to wait outside while the important things happened, but that she felt uneasy, not knowing how long she was going to have to wait for, not being able to really concentrate on anything, for fear that as soon as she did, she'd have to put it down.

The only thing worse than waiting, was doing it with someone else, she was becoming sure of that, especially as she waited in front of the Lorenso house with Mary. It seemed to her that the other woman wanted to try and start a conversation, whether because she had something to say, or because she was bored, Nickie didn't know, only that she kept fidgeting and occasionally opening her mouth, like she was going to say something, only to change her mind and go back to sitting listlessly in the back.

It didn't help Nickie's disposition that Julian was inside, by himself. She could only imagine ways he was making things worse, saying the wrong thing, asking a delicate question in his manner, all without her, or for that matter, anyone there to try and smooth things over. Making things worse was that he was interviewing Danella with her father present, a man not known for his patients.

When they'd gotten to the house, Julian had told her that he'd been informed that he'd have to go in alone, since that was the only way that Mr. Lorenso would allow his daughter to be questioned, something that neither of them was all that happy about. Even he'd admitted that he would've rather sent Nickie in, but since he was the lead detective on the case, not to mention the one that Mr. Lorenso had picked to handle this, he had to do it himself.

It didn't help that Julian wasn't all that good with kids, it wasn't that he didn't like them, he didn't like them any worse than he liked anyone, it was just that he didn't really like anyone. To make matters worse, he never seemed to be able to relate to children, eying them suspiciously, like they were some kind of odd animal that he wasn't sure which end was going to try and bite him. It also didn't help that his look scared a number of kids, though an equal number gravitated towards him out of curiosity, so it kind of balanced out. On the other hand, since he didn't know how to interact with kids, he tended to treat them like he did everyone else, which tended to help, since it made them feel like he wasn't talking down to them.

By contrast, Nickie got on well with kids, knowing how to talk to them and get them to trust her. She wasn't as good as Dale, but she had an openness about her that they seemed to like, especially the ones that had gone through some kind of trauma.

But in this case, it didn't matter who was the best, since the father was only allowing Julian in. Which left Nickie and Mary nothing to do but sit in the car and wait while he was inside. To pass the time, she'd been trying to get work done, going over case notes about both cases, seeing what had been put up by the other teams and the like, all while the police band chattered in the background.

She wasn't paying it much mind, but it seemed that there had been a bank robbery committed by a trio of G.E.P. criminals and that a pair of members of the local hero team, CityWatch, were in pursuit. But since it was taking place a dozen or so blocks away and headed in the opposite direction from them, she was tuning it out.

Instead, she was trying to focus on the information that Julian had given her earlier, the casefiles of the kidnappings. She was trying to look through them and find whatever pattern Julian had seen, though she wished he'd just tell her what she was supposed to be looking for. She understood why he hadn't, he trusted her to see it, and wanted to make sure that he hadn't been seeing things, but it felt like a waste of time, after all, even if she didn't see it, it was probably because he was smarter than her, and not that there wasn't a pattern.