Cold Hit by Stephen J. Cannell Page A

to work. My lane mates were holding their steering wheels in death grips, their faces scowling masks of anger. The frustration all of us accumulated on the 10 would be dutifully passed along to our coworkers, who would take it out on their subordinates. This domino effect of bad traffic karma would kill working environments all over town until noon.
    I inched along past Wilshire Boulevard, and tried to stifle my frustration by running through a list of more pressing problems. Alexa, Cal, and Tony didn't want Forrest to be a copycat because that body gave everyone hope. The department could slip into waitand-see mode and pray Zack and I would turn something. But since I was pretty sure Forrest was not part of the Fingertip case, it was just a head feint for the press. Eventually, we'd have to own up to that fact, and when we did, we'd undoubtedly get a task force, including a contingent from the FBI. The feebs like to bill themselves as experts in serial crime. After all, they have an Academy Award--winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster to prove it.
    All of this made me hate the driver of the blue Corvette in front of me. These assholes in my lane didn't know who they were dealing with. I was pissed off and I was packing.
    At 9:40 I finally made it to Ramirez Street and parked in the underground garage at the municipal crime lab. I took the elevator to the third floor and asked the girl on the desk if either Cindy Clark or Mike Menninger were in. A minute later Cindy came out. She was a sweet-faced, slightly round girl with the thick Texas accent I remembered. She smiled and looked down at the box of donuts I held out to her, selecting one carefully.
    "Y'all really know how to tempt a girl."
    "If that's all it takes, then I've been wasting a lot of money on jewelry and concert tickets," I joked.
    "What can I do for you, Detective?"
    "I was wondering if we're getting anywhere on my contact lens."
    "I was just fixin' t'check with Brandon on that. Com e o n.
    I followed her down a narrow corridor lined with tiny rooms that were the approximate size of walk-in closets. Each one contained a computer, a desk, and a geek. We entered a slightly larger room at the end of the hall dominated by a very skinny, young, black guy with a receding hairline. He wore no jewelry, not even a watch, but he had on a T-shirt that said "Crime Unit" with an arrow pointing down to his shorts. We're really going to have to do something about the quality o f h umor in law enforcement. Cindy made the introduction.
    "Brandon Washington, Detective Shane Scully. Shane has HM fifty-eight oh-five."
    "Grab a seat," Brandon said. "Lemme check my e-mails on that lens." When he smiled I saw that his two front teeth were box-outlined in gold. Not my favorite look, but hey, guys do what they think will get them laid in this town. He turned on his computer, and brought up his e-mail.
    "I've got a shitload of correspondence here. Hang on a second. Let me shoot through them." As he started scrolling, he brought me up to date. "I examined that contact when it first came in yesterday. It's a rigid gas-permeable lens."
    "Is that normal?" I asked.
    "Gas perms with this kind of correction are pretty expensive and are used for special eye problems. I checked it under a microscope for a manufacturer's edge mark, but it wasn't made by any of the labs here in the U . S ., so I sent it out to an eye clinic we use that buys from manufacturers in Europe to see if they can trace the country of origin. Ahhh, here we go." He leaned forward and read the screen. "Okay, the guy I sent it to says that he can tell from the way the lens was made, that it is from Europe, but they don't know where yet. It could take him a while to run it down because he says there are any number of countries with labs that might be able to do this kind of lens."
    "Why don't you start with Russia?" I said.
    He leaned back from his computer, looked at me and frowned. "Why Russia?"
    "Hunch. Cops