The Wicked Ones

14. Kiss and make up already !

Elisabeth threw open the door to the room in which the precinct stocked all the large screens and equipment that would be required to watch the surveillance footage. The lights were turned off and the small room was lit only by the blue glow of the gigantic computer screen, Asterin was hunched over the keyboard, her golden eyes scrutinising every detail of the scene that played again and again in a loop. Thornhood sat in a corner of the room, quite far from her, arms and legs crossed, completely closed off from his partner. He seemed to want to come closer and take a look at the feed but appeared to be too scared to ask black to move over.

"Oi guys !"

They both wiped around in one go to stare at her. Elisabeth grabbed a chair that'd been left in a corner and put it next to her friend's.

"Asterin, scoot over, Alexander, come over here. James gave me a pretty good physical description of the perp. I'm guessing you two have already highlighted some suspects on the footage."

"Yes," Asterin's tone was cold and harsh, it made Lis grimace but luckily, in the dark, her friend didn't notice, "I have noticed five particular individuals. What did Morningstar say ?"

"Curly blond hair, longer than yours. Very green eyes. Sharp features. Tall muscular build. You got anything like that ?"

"I have two that could match the overall description but I would have to look again, I did not pay attention to facial features when I watched."

"You can see his face at the 22 : 45 : 30 time mark, or around that time I think."

Both the girls turned to face Alexander as he spoke, Asterin astonished and Elizabeth grinning slightly.

"How did you see that ?!"

Asterin had snapped at him a bit but Thornhood remained calm as he answered. "I was looking over our shoulder... His body language gave it away, he was twitchy and I'm fairly sure he was hiding a knife under his coat."

"Great. Aste dear, could you put the footage at the time he mentioned."

After a few adjustments of the image, the three detectives managed to get a good look at their prime suspect. He was just as James had described, and just as Alexander at said, his body language showed the usual discomfort of a man fleeing a crime scene. He was only in the camera's angle for a minute or so : the man exited the apartment building in a rush, looked around the streets for a few seconds, completely bewildered, made a U-turn, bumped into someone and ran out of frame.

"Wait, wait, wait... Play that again."

"Did you see something ?"

"Yeah..." They let the video play once more for a few seconds and paused it as she exclaimed, "There ! Right after he bumps into the woman," she pointed at the screen were a dirty looking young adult wearing a bright pink overcoat was standing, "look at her hands. She clearly got his wallet. If we find her, we can probably get an address or at the very least an ID. That's going to be hard though... She looks like she lives on the street so she could be anywhere in the city..."

"Actually," Black intervened, "is that not your new friend Alexander ? We have her in the cells right now, she tried to steal my bag while we were getting the footage."

"Great ! Let's go ask her some questions."As the two girls exited the room, Thornhood sighed and muttered, "She's not my friend ..."

-

Asterin was leaning, crossed armed and legged on the wall of the interrogation room. She was facing Aramith Selwyn's back to which she was glaring daggers at.

"For the last time," she said, straightening and circling her to join Lis and Alexander on the other side of the table. "We asked you where you kept the wallet of the blond man who you mugged yesterday evening, not what your favorite dessert is !" she snapped.