Free WEBCAM by Jack Kilborn Page B

his car to meet with his partner. Roy had called five minutes earlier, to update Tom on his progress sweeping the neighborhood, looking for surveillance footage. He hadn’t found any evidence of the mystery man Tanya had mentioned. But he had caught a convenience store video of Tanya walking past the storefront, clutching a large bundle wrapped in plastic.
    “Looked like a shower curtain,” Roy had told him.
    Tom had noticed the shower curtain had been missing from Kendal Hefferton’s apartment. A plastic shower curtain was an easy way to wrap up bloody evidence from a crime scene and take it with you without dripping everywhere.
    Then Roy had called a contact at ABC News, which ran dozens of traffic and weather cameras around the city, and had picked up Tanya two blocks away, a few minutes later.
    No plastic bundle. She’d dumped it.
    So Roy and Tom were on Dumpster duty. According to a quick check of Google Maps, there were six possible routes between her two video appearances, and six alleys where she could have dumped the bag.
    On the way to the scene, Tom called the number Tanya Bestrafen had given them.
    It was disconnected.
    Tom radioed Dispatch to locate Tanya’s apartment and DMV info. Tanya’s address, and name, were fakes.
    They’d been played.
    While at a stoplight, Tom Googled Bestrafen .
    It meant punishment in German.
    Tom clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The person calling herself Tanya Bestrafen might have been The Snipper, and they let her just waltz right out of the station without even checking her bona fides.
    He found Roy in an alley on Halsted, staring at a Dumpster, looking as miserable as Tom felt. Tom parked at the mouth.
    “Stinks,” Roy said.
    “Sure does. We screwed up.”
    “We do stink as cops. But I’m talking about that garbage bin. Smells like someone puked on a dead chimpanzee. I say we call up some uniforms, let them paw through it. Builds character.”
    The smell hit Tom, making his nose hairs curl and his eyes water. He swallowed back the gorge in his throat. “Not a bad idea.”
    At least, it wasn’t a bad idea until the garbage truck began to drive up the alley.
    “Shit, Roy, garbage pickup is today.”
    “So?” Tom watched his partner’s face as he put it together. “Aw, shit. They could take the evidence.”
    “If they haven’t already.”
    If Tanya was the killer, lying to the police wasn’t enough to pin the murders on her. They needed physical evidence. They needed whatever was wrapped in the shower curtain.
    Tom held up his badge and approached the truck. The garbage man looked like the kind of guy who grew up to be a garbage man, and the expression he wore was both world-weary and suspicious.
    “What?”
    Chicagoans weren’t much for small talk.
    “We’re looking for evidence that a murderer threw away. It might have been on your route.”
    “So?”
    “So how big is your route?”
    “So big that I’m running late, and the boss don’t pay no overtime.”
    Tom could have turned prick, making threats, being the cop that made people hate cops. Instead he went another route.
    “No shit. Us civil servants don’t get any respect. My boss is an asshole, too. And he’s got me hunting through alleys when my girlfriend is in out of town.”
    “Your point?”
    “Ten minutes, tops. My partner checks out the back of your truck, I check out the Dumpster, you guys go have some coffee on me.”
    Tom fished out ten bucks.
    “This is Chicago, officer. Where are we gonna get two coffees for ten bucks?”
    Tom had four more bucks in his pocket. “That’s all I got.”
    “I don’t got to do this, you know. You ain’t got no warrant or court order.”
    “I know. I appreciate it.”
    “Make it quick,” the man said, hitting the hydraulic switches to lift the shovel and open the hopper.
    “Got extra gloves?” Tom asked.
    “Not for no fourteen bucks.” Then he climbed out of the cab and headed toward his partner. The two of them had a loud chuckle,