Case 31 - Another New Beginning, Part 2


    Keiko was sitting at the coffee shop the Ace Courier delivery driver told her about, and she had just ordered an iced tea as she worked her way toward asking for information.  She figured the staff would be less resistant if she was a paying customer.

    That was when her phone rang.  It was Sean, and he sounded worried.  

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong?”  she asked him.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m at the Ace Courier office,”  he said.  “The receptionist has been shot.  Witnesses say an Asian woman was just here, and the delivery driver that just stopped in said some woman was asking questions about a delivery.  So um...”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not carrying a gun.”  Keiko replied insistently, but hopefully not loud enough for anyone in the coffee shop to hear.  “In fact, I usually don’t.  You know that.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know but...it’s going to be hard to convince--”  He sighed loudly.  “What I mean is, my boss wants you to come in for questioning.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,”  Keiko whispered with a sigh of her own.  “Give me like, an hour.  I promise, all I’m doing is investigating.  I’ll tell you before I do more than that.”

    She heard Sean hesitate as he listened to an unintelligible voice in the background.  Then she heard him shift his grip on the phone, and whisper, “He’s really insisting, Keiko.  I can buy you a little time but...you have to come in.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, sure.  I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  Keiko knew she was lying as she hung up the phone.  She couldn’t go in for questioning until she had more facts - with what little she could tell them, she couldn’t depend on the police to track down a group of assassins and arrest them to clear her name.

    Just then, as luck would have it, the waiter she ordered from stopped by her table to see if she needed anything.  “Yes, actually...was there a delivery driver here earlier today picking up a package?”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,”  he replied.  “I gave it to him.  Some foreign guy in a suit was here, and said he was late for a meeting, so he paid me twenty bucks to give it to the courier.  He was Jamaican or Haitian or something.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thanks.”  Keiko replied as she stood and left payment for the iced tea.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why do you ask?”  the waiter asked.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m an investigator.”  Keiko responded.  She handed the waiter two twenty dollar bills.  “I was also never here.”

    With that, she quietly slipped out the door, and drove away on her motorcycle.  The waiter quickly stuffed the two twenties in his pocket and wiped the table clean, saying nothing.

    It was about time for him to leave for the day, so he took off his smock and hung it in his locker, clocked out, and headed out the back door after telling his boss he was going home.  As soon as he stepped out the door, he saw the same foreign man in a suit he spoke to earlier.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey man, someone was asking about you,”  the waiter said.

    The foreign man didn’t respond.  He pulled out a gun with a silencer.  The waiter cursed, and tried to get back into the coffee shop, but the door was locked.

    Suddenly, there was the sound of a revving engine, from a racing bike.  The waiter flattened against the wall, prompting the foreign man to turn around...

    ...just in time for Keiko to raise her arm and perfectly hit the man with a powerful clothesline move.  She skidded the bike to a stop, got off, and let her helmet bounce to the ground.

    The foreign man quickly looked for his fallen gun, but he couldn’t find it fast enough. 

    Keiko booted his head like a football, and he flipped onto his back, his head hitting the concrete.  She then landed her knee on his neck and pressed her palm against his forehead to completely trap him and immobilize him.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know the information I need,”  she said, declining to play games with words, as the waiter fled on foot.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’ll kill me,”  the man said in a heavy Jamaican accent.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I will kill you,”  Keiko threatened, her voice barely a hiss, sounding bloodthirsty.  To emphasize her point, she pressed two fingers in the shape of a gun tightly against the temple of his skull, where she knew it would hurt.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ahh, stop, stop!”  the man begged, and spoke quickly.  “I got a package by courier in Jamaica, same as you did here.  It had a key, I flew here and picked up the gun and instructions in a locker at the train station.  It said to leave no witnesses.”

    Keiko sighed.  Another dead end - these people were good.  It was unlikely she would find any new clues by harassing a courier in Jamaica - that would just lead to another coffee shop, another assassin, another dead end.

    But then she remembered - the train station had cameras.  If she could see who accessed the locker before the Jamaican man, she might get some kind of clue.  It was time to talk to Sean and his boss after all, as they would be able to get her access to the video.

    She quickly called Sean on her cell phone.  “Hi.  I have your suspect from the courier killing in custody...you can come get him.  I also need a favor--”


---


    Keiko travelled to the train station by police patrol car.  It was the first time she was in one since she left the department.  She rode in the back, but wore no handcuffs - she was leaning forward, watching them approach the train station.  Sean was in the front passenger seat, and a uniformed officer was driving.

    Two other police cars stopped at the curb beside the one she arrived in.  Sean stopped to open the back door for her, and the two of them raced to the security office with two uniformed cops.

    The station itself was large, but not to the standard of a bigger city.  It was designed in modern times, so it looked more like an airport - its architecture was all straight lines, high ceilings, neutral colors, and glass. 

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something I can do for you?”  an overweight security guard asked when they knocked on the door to the security office.

    Sean quickly flashed his badge.  “We need to see your video of the lockers from the last few days.”

    The guard looked behind him at a computer video station, and he shrugged.  “Be my guest,”  he said.  “I have better things to do than search videos, so I hope one of you knows how to use that.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I do.”  Keiko offered.  She squeezed past the large guard and headed straight for the computer.  Sean followed her, and watched over her shoulder as she sat down.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“These are usually organized into twelve-hour chunks, so there are two files per day.”  Keiko explained as she started working with the computer.  “We should work backwards from the first twelve hours of today to the last six recordings.  It should be one of those.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can watch this in fast forward, can’t we?”  Sean asked.

    She nodded, and looked up at him.  “You brought the storage device I asked for?”

    With a nod, Sean pulled a small hard drive out of his pocket.  He placed it on the desk next to her.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good,”  she replied.  “I can save footage that way, if we find something.  Did you get the airline arrival dates?”

    Sean nodded and unfolded a piece of paper he brought with him.  “Last flight from Jamaica was a connection that stopped somewhere else first, but it got in four days ago in the evening.”

    Keiko started searching the video.  “We need something from four days ago, then, or the day before.”

    Just as she suspected, late on the recording from four days ago, the Jamaican man casually walked over to the locker, and took a large bag from it.  She started rewinding to see if anyone else access the locker before then.

    That moment came faster than she realized.  Just a day before, an old man in a scraggly, thick beard and a worn hat that covered his eyes shoved a bag in the locker and walked away with the key.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perfect,”  Keiko exclaimed.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean?”  Sean asked.  “How would we even find him?”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Look at him.  I’m pretty sure he was a homeless guy somebody told to put the bag into the locker.  Somebody who didn’t want to be on camera.  And if this guy’s homeless, he’s probably still outside the train station.  Or dead.  Either way, someone saw something, and it’s outside the station.”

    The officers and Sean looked at each other.  “Let’s go.”  Sean said.


TO BE CONTINUED
    


-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2008 by Jason Froikin, and may not be 
--    reprinted without permission.  
-- World Class and all characters therein are property of 
--    Strike Two and Jason Froikin.