Free Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing by Clea Koff Page B

teach us think the only place for a carrot is in a side salad – shredded.’
    â€˜And even then, it’s suspicious,’ Eric added.
    Scott grinned at him. ‘Plenty of stick around, though.’ He stood up. ‘And we should escort you out before our boss comes in here wielding his.’

EIGHT
    J ayne went into the Agency’s laboratory to put away the biometric equipment they’d used to measure the X-ray images Tony Lee had printed at Critter Central. Steelie was booting up the lab computer. After it whirred to life and executed a few beeps, she said, ‘Check it out. Our first message via the All Coroners Bulletin. From a coroner in Anchorage about Thomas Cullen.’
    Jayne pulled up a stool and read the couple of paragraphs, whose font was all capitals. Then she translated, ‘The coroner’s saying that they have a John Doe with a projectile in the sphenoid but they have his cause of death down as GSW with that bullet as the projectile that caused death? So . . . they don’t think it’s Cullen but they’re notifying us as a courtesy?’
    Steelie nodded. ‘Looks like they ascribed the bullet to a more recent gunshot, not an old bullet that was sitting in his head for years.’
    Jayne pushed back from the desk and frowned. ‘But how could they confuse the two?’
    Steelie shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t. Maybe it’s not Thomas Cullen but rather some guy who actually died from shooting himself the same way.’
    Jayne looked back at the coroner’s message. ‘It’s a decent match on the identifiers though . . . Caucasoid male, forty years plus or minus five, five-foot-nine plus or minus two, dark brown head hair, eyes brown, picked up in nineteen ninety-eight . . .’
    â€˜So he’s a forty-year-old white guy with brown hair and eyes, no known scars, marks or tattoos. No wonder they’ve never had any hits in NCIC; there’s almost nothing there to discriminate between him and thousands of other missing men. Doesn’t mean it’s Cullen, that’s all I’m saying. They could be right and it’s a different guy.’
    â€˜Send them another message.’
    â€˜I’m going to. I will encourage them, in polite language, to compare any X-rays they’ve got with the one we digitized. They haven’t done that yet.’
    Jayne got up. ‘OK, I’m going to write up the report on the BP’s for Scott and Eric. Let me know if you hear anything.’
    By the time Steelie came to Jayne’s office, she was tidying the papers on her desk at the end of the day.
    â€˜Did you get an acknowledgment from Tony on our report?’
    â€˜Yes and he said he’d make sure Scott and Eric saw it when they got back.’
    â€˜Which was when?’
    â€˜God knows.’
    Steelie perched on the edge of the desk. ‘So where are you meeting Gene tonight?’
    â€˜They put him up at the Omni—’
    â€˜Who’s “they”?’
    â€˜His company, I guess. So I’m picking him up—’
    â€˜He doesn’t have a rental?’
    â€˜No . . .’ She waited for Steelie to interrupt again but she didn’t. ‘And we’re going to eat in Little Tokyo.’
    â€˜Which restaurant?’
    Jayne stopped pulling the papers together. ‘I don’t know. We agreed to walk around, see what takes our fancy. If you’re so curious, why don’t you come too?’
    Steelie gave a little shudder. ‘I hear your cry for help and yet I am not moved.’ She went out the door, then stuck her head back around it. ‘But call me when you get home afterwards.’
    Jayne nodded. She finished at her desk, closed up the building, and left. At home, she changed clothes and put on mascara and lip gloss, realizing that the last time she’d seen Gene, they’d been at Kigali Airport in Rwanda almost a decade