“He must be holed up somewhere,” I said. “Let’s keep searching. There has to be something here that might lead us to his whereabouts.”

“Yeah, you keep thinking that.”

“I will. I’m not quite as pessimistic as you are.”

“Well, you should learn to be,” he said.

After a few minutes of searching we realized that this was fruitless and we weren’t getting any closer.

“Shit,” Al said. “Where is this woman by the way?”

“She’s at a friend’s barbecue for the afternoon. She has a few cops there watching her. It’s the middle of the day. I think she’ll be fine.”

“Good. Well, at least we know who this guy is and we can start researching to find out who else he might be tied to.”

“Yeah, but I’d still rather find him. I want to pick these assholes off one by one.”

“Easy, you can’t go talking like that. I’ll have to lock you up as some deranged vigilante.”

“Well, with this police force it’s no wonder we have to take the law into our own hands.”

“Anarchy is never a good choice. No matter the circumstances.”

“I can agree with that. But it’s still an option when you are out of them.”

We nodded in agreement to disagree. Al would always be a typical cop, no matter how disillusioned he became with the job.

“Ok, what’s next?” I ask. I knew what I was going to do, but I was curious what he would say.

“Well, we ask around and see if anyone has seen this guy hanging out, see if anyone might know something about the heist or the murder.”

“Ok, that might have been good thirty years ago,” I said. “But now we have this thing called the internet. More specifically, social media.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Well, we do a search for this guy, run a few of the pictures he’s got hanging on his walls. We match them to a few social media profiles to make sure they aren’t fakes, and we can try to narrow down who he is, where he hangs out, and clues to the people who know him who might not be so careful about accidentally divulging clues.”

“Wow, sounds like you would do well with our nerds in forensics and cybercrimes.”

“Maybe.”

“Alright, let’s do that then,” he said.

We left the apartment and drove back towards the station. We didn’t say anything for a while, but I could tell that something needed to be said. I hated to even bring this up, but I had to. It was part of the therapy that Al should have had but wasn’t getting enough of. He hated shrinks and was convinced he could white knuckle through anything. I’d proven to him time and time again just how fucking wrong he was.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “What happened with Nancy. That wasn’t your fault at all.”

Al groaned. “Man, I do not want to talk about this with you.”

“I know, but you don’t want to talk about it with anybody.”

“Yeah. That’s the point. Let me the fuck alone about it. You always do this sooner or later when we are together.”

“Well, I’m trying to help you. And trust me. You need help. You are holding onto this stuff way too hard.”

A few years back, Al was working a drug case and ended up busting one of the major players. When he busted in on the guy, Al found his fiancée doing drugs and fooling around with the guy on a king-sized bed. She’d been a plant by this guy to try to find out what the cops knew about him or his operation.

Al couldn’t believe it. And then she and this drug kingpin pulled guns and opened fire. Al had no choice but to retaliate. He shot them both. Nancy… the woman he loved. That was brutal beyond words.

Al loved her dearly. He was devastated. Since then he’d developed an “I hate the world” attitude. He was bruised and he wouldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let himself get past it. He’d been used. He was a seasoned cop and he had been used that way. It was enough to shake any cop to their very core and to make them questioned whether they even deserved a badge.

But Al needed to talk about it. “You did what you had to do. That kind of ploy could have fucked up anyone. You need to let it go and stop taking it personally.”

“You need to back off and let it go,” Al said. “I’m done talking about it.”

I let it go for now. We pulled into the station and then went to Al’s office where we worked for a while together scanning through Randy’s social media profiles. We combed and prodded through each one, through his friends list and then through their profiles. We had a bit of trouble at first, but Al called up one of the forensic tech guys who were able to crack the passcode and set us on the right course immediately. They reminded me of the guys the rest of the football team used to beat up in high school. I never did because it seemed a colossal waste of time and I don’t have a small penis.

Tags: Mia Ford Romance
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