Continued from here part 2
Roxie woke up from the bed in the cheap hotel room Joe had rented for the night and saw Joe staring out the window, "What's going on?"
Joe looked over, "Someone started a brawl or something. The streets crawling with CBTF. Some goon in spandex showed up a minute ago, been entertaining so far."
She gave a yawn, "Wake me up if it looks like they're gonna blow us up."
Joe chuckled as she rolled back over and fell back to sleep.
***
The next day Joe woke Roxie up around noon, "We need to be on our way."
She grunted as she woke with bright sun in her eyes, "Sorry, been a month or so since I slept in a bed."
Joe shrugged, "We need to be away from here asap."
***
They dodged the increased CBTF patrol by entering a tiny bar called the Pigeon Hole. Joe looked around the room finding a few people who were exactly the type he'd expect to be hanging around a dive bar at 12:30 in the afternoon and a terrible folk singer abusing the bar's open mic feature.
The bar tender noticed the kid, "She can't be in here."
Joe sighed, "Some creepy guy's been following her around."
He looked toward the folk singer, "Let her sit for a bit and I promise I'll come back tomorrow and drink till that sounds like music."
The bartender looked to the small stage, "Serving that much liquor to a guy might count as manslaughter."
As he turned back he had a realization, "Holy s**t, Joe?"
Joe looked at him for a second before recognizing him, "Jack? I didn't recognize you with the beard."
Jack waved them over, "Hell, come on in. Have a seat kid."
Joe and Roxie sat at the bar and Joe looked up, "You serve food?"
Jack shrugged, "We do burgers, wings or pretzels."
"Give her a burger and a root beer."
Jack started to nod but he and Joe noticed the hard stare Roxie was giving the bar code tattoo on Jack's forearm. Joe looked down, "What's the problem?"
She pointed at the tattoo, "The Butcher had a tattoo just like that, same place and everything."
Joe sighed as he pulled up his sleeve to show his own bar code, "You sure it looked just like this?"
She nodded as Joe turned to her, "Okay, what'd he look like?"
She looked nervous, "He was a little shorter than Jack here, had short dirty blond hair, blue eyes and this little scar under his right eye that looked like a crooked check mark."
Joe turned back to Jack with a concerned look, "What the hell's going on?"
Joe sat up, "I lied a minute ago. This girl here, her family was killed by the Indigo Butcher. She's the only one who's seen his face and lived."
Jack popped his knuckles, "And from that description, I'm guessing we both have a pretty good idea who he is."
Jack then slid a plate to her with a burger on it, "Eat up kid."
He then waved Joe toward the office, "Me and you need to talk."
***
Det. Lewis and Agent Kane are looking over an Indigo Butcher crime scene in Devil's Den. Lewis was curious, "I don't see what we're gonna find that forensics missed."
Kane leaned down and rolled up his sleeve. Lewis noticed a bar code tattoo on his forearm and thought he saw something glinting in the sun light under his glove before Kane adjusted it. Kane moved something aside revealing a foot print, "I assume, like most people your forensics team was in a hurry to get away from here."
Lewis looked down, "Looks like a size 13."
Kane nodded, "Looks like it, tho I'm betting the man who made it was size 11."
He pointed to a dip in the foot print, "I'd guess he was wearing shoes two sizes too big with weighted filler. It's a red herring. He wanted us to find this and start looking for a guy with bigger feet who out weighs him by around 60 lbs."
Lewis crouched down beside him, "And how'd you get to that?"
Kane shrugged, "Its something he was trained to do. That probably explains why your forensics found 14 different DNA types that they were sure led back to him but ended up matching a victim."
Lewis rose, "So basically we got nothing?"
Kane looked up, "Not exactly."
He pointed at several other partially covered tracks, "We know he spent quite a bit of time standing right out here in the open and not one person saw him but there is a traffic cam pointed right where you're standing."
Lewis grinned a bit, "Well, lets go have a look."
***
An hour later Lewis and Kane are looking at the video with a lab tech. They don't see anything but Kane tells the tech to pause, "Can you enhance that?"
The tech gave a wary look, "This ain't CSI buddy. Street cams have limits."
He noticed the stern glares from the men, "Fine I'll see what I can do."
He tinkered a bit managing to enlarge the image a bit but not clearing it up much, "That's weird."
Lewis looked over his shoulder, "What?"
The tech pointed at the screen, "Its kind of what it looks like when you shine a flash light through a clear glass of water."
Kane leaned over and pointed out the vaguely man formed out line around the odd light pattern, "Our killer is bending light."
The tech looked up, "What, like the Predator?!"
Kane gave a blank stare as Lewis spoke, "Its a movie where this alien...never mind. Our perp can make himself invisible, that's a problem."
Kane turned to him, "So he's a carrier."
Lewis dropped in his chair, "Invisible, super assassin, serial killer, wonderful."
He then shouted out to the building, "Anyone else miss regular psychos?"
***
Victor sits at a table in the kitchen of his run down apartment. He has several photos of his next victim on a bulletin board behind him and the news playing on the television as he sharpens and cleans a set of blades. He looks over as he hears mention of the Indigo Butcher and raises the remote changing it to Demon Dog, "Bah, Indigo Butcher makes me sound like a deli ran by hippies."
***
Devil's Den, Pigeon Hole Bar.
A man staggered up to the bar, "Hey Jack, looks like a couple task force goons are heading this way. Damned jackboots always getting up in yer business, as if we ain't got enough crap to deal with down here."
Jack looked to Joe and Roxie and directed them to the back room. The man at the bar noticed them heading back so Jack put a bottle of his preferred whisky on the bar, "On the house, Ed."
Ed shrugged, "Sweet."
Joe found a sliding door along the back wall hidden by an over sized painting of dogs playing pool. Roxie noticed a small metal box on the wall that Joe pushed a button on before closing them in the small room. He saw her curious look, "Blocks the scanners."
A few minutes later a few men in task force uniforms walked in. He looked to Jack, "Scanner indicates a carrier may be in here."
Jack gives a wary look, "Unless alcoholism or depression are super powers I'm doubting you'd find any carriers here."
One of the agents puffed up his chest as he looked up at Jack, "I don't like your tone boy."
Jack feigned anger, "Boy? Who you calling boy?"
The agent's eyes went a little wide as he looked up at the large black bar tender, "Now, sir, I didn't mean it like..."
Jack went with it, "Oh, you didn't mean it like what, cracker?"
The other agent put a hand on his partner's shoulder, "Time to go Bill, if there was a carrier here we'd know it."
Bill nodded, "But I'm not racist, some of my..."
His partner hushed him, "Don't finish that sentence."
Joe chuckled in the hidden room as he watched the scene on a monitor, " Jack's still got it."
(To be continued)
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