R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning by R.S. Guthrie Page B

system hard drive to an online service that secured and backed up the data. Another cost he’d talked the boss into.
    As we walked into the store the manager popped up out of his office and greeted us with a nice USB drive with twenty-four hours of surveillance, in case we wanted all of it.
    “It’s all time-stamped, high def, and I clipped off a segment two hours before and two hours after. A little less for my men in blue to have to sift. Used a sweet little program I downloaded.”
    I accepted the small drive, still amazed at the constant collusion between Big Software and Big Storage. I’ll make my software bigger, you sell more space. Chicken and the egg but you could buy a shitload of storage for a buck and put it on a piece of plastic no bigger than your thumb (although I had monster thumbs).
    “Thanks, uh, Chuck, right?” I said. He nodded, eyes dancing a tad, clearly enthusiastic to be part of an honest-to-Pete homicide investigation; biggest the city had ever known, though we hadn’t told him that much. “Your boss pay for the video clipping software, too,” I joked with him.
    “Ah, free download. Twenty-nine ninety-five if I want to ‘appreciate’ the private developer’s work. It’s great software and fuck if I don’t appreciate an honest person trying to make an honest living.”
    “So you’re saying the boss paid, he just doesn’t know it.”
    “Chicken scratch, my main man.”
    “I got it,” I told him. “Seriously, though, we really appreciate your cooperation, Chuck.”
    “Go get the bad guy, Detectives.”
    As we were leaving the store, my cell rang. Blocked number.
    “Hello?” I said. Never give out anything until you know who you’re talking to.
    “Bobeeeee.”
    I froze. Whatever was in my stomach dropped straight into my bowels. I felt the urge to vomit. I couldn’t speak. I mean I literally couldn’t speak .
    A voice from the past.
    The killer delivering himself up on a silver platter.
    “A little like the movie Se7en , wouldn’t ya say, old buddy? You remember the scene: the detectives stumble upon the killer’s apartment and he comes up the stairs carrying groceries at the far end of the hall while they’re knocking on his door. Great scene. Perfect cinematography. The distance down the hall, the silhouette, the killer’s hat and him holding a sack of groceries . Ah, gives me chills. Don’t worry, though, I don’t plan to open fire on you. Although I could.”
    I started spinning, looking around, eyeing every street person, every shopper, teen, hippie, homeless guy— anyone .
    Just like the fucking movies.
    “What’s up?” Manny said, still finishing a Coney dog he bought inside while I was chatting with the manager.
    “You don’t have to say anything, Mac. And stop spinning around like a cliché. We’re cool. You won’t find me. You think I’d stand behind you? It’s not going to work out that way.”
    “Fuck you, Spence. Where the hell have you been all these years?”
    Manny dropped his hotdog, chili and cheese splattering on the scorching asphalt at our feet.
    Spencer Grant and his daughter Melissa dropped off the edge of the planet ten years ago. That was just after him informing me he was in Denver then, not the panhandle of Idaho where he murdered his wife and other daughter, saving Melissa for God knew what.
    Ten years we’d not heard a thing; ten years no one resembling Melissa had ever been credibly reported. APBs, BOLOs, the works. Spence was even on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, in every post office . Plenty of crank reports but not one legitimate sighting of either of them.
    I swore to God above I never even thought of him as a suspect. Bad detective work, yes, but no surprise, I was sure, to a psychologist. As every year passed with no sightings, no more hauntings, demons—no Father Rule. My brain was just pleased as shit-cake to bury all that had happened in the distant past so fucking deep I’d need an oil derrick to bring it to the