Ice Cap: A Mystery by Chris Knopf

Author:Chris Knopf [Knopf, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humor & Satire, Humorous, United States, Humor, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Women Sleuths, Thrillers & Suspense, Crime, American, General Humor, Crime Fiction
ISBN: 1250005175
Amazon: B006ZL3PK0
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2012-06-04T12:00:00+00:00

14

When I got back to my office, there was a bag of cabbage and komatsuna on the stoop and an envelope stuck to my door with a piece of duct tape. I used my teeth to pull off my glove and opened the envelope, handling it by the edges. The note said, “We’re still watching. Signed, your reverse gardian angels.”

I was incredulous.

“That may be, geniuses, but now I’m watching you,” I said out loud, banging in the code, dashing up the stairs and through the next door to the office. I plopped down in front of the monitor and rewound the tape. I booted up the computer and started downloading the last twenty-four hours into the editing program. The little dialog box told me to wait while it transferred the files, which was a mighty task. I jumped up, got out of my coat and hat, and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, just to burn the time.

Could it be, I asked, that those jerks are even stupider than Fleming’s boys, that they didn’t realize there was a security camera trained on the door? They did spell guardian wrong. That was an encouraging sign.

As I sat back down, the screen filled with about a dozen little windows, segments of the retrieved video that showed any change from the fixed background. Most were me coming and going, the FedEx guy, squirrels hopping through the snow, and Mr. Sato leaving me the bagful of leftover chopped vegetables. And then there were two guys who looked like they’d been hired by a casting agency to play the parts of Ike and Connie, though aside from body type it was a poor match. The Ike character was all Caucasian, with slicked black hair and a pale, uneven complexion. He wore a dark full-length coat that looked like wool. His eyes shifted from side to side while his partner wrote out the note and stuffed it in the envelope, then ripped off a piece of duct tape and clumsily stuck it to the door.

The lousy speller was heavy like Connie, but much taller, with a round head covered in gray buzz-cut hair. Neither looked at the camera peering through its pinhole just above the doorjamb, confirming their oversight.

Professionals plying the crime-and-punishment trades knew this fundamental fact: Most criminals, especially hired muscle, were pretty stupid. You met the occasional Franco Raffini, or an entrepreneur like Ivor Fleming, or a street kid who could have run Harvard had life’s lottery put him in the right household, but on the whole, they’re mostly dumb as stumps.

I think I was actually whistling with excitement as I selected the clearest shots of their faces and converted the images to JPEGs and saved them to my laptop’s hard drive. I even started singing a little song that went something like, “Gonna getcha, gonna getcha, look out you dumb bastards, we’re gonna getcha now…” but then stopped, disturbed by my lousy singing voice.

I pulled out my cell and called Joe Sullivan.

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