The Longest night

冬至 [9] / [16]

“Honey? Did you check my text? Can we have a drink while we talk? I miss those times when we’d drink together. That bar we used to go.”

His indignation exploded at her shamelessness: she definitely saw him standing right in front of THEM, when the man was bulldozing her into the mattress.

“No, you and I are done. Finished, We’re through. Stop calling.”

He hung up the phone, deleting all history of her correspondence. In accordance with his character, he was not the type who erased call logs or messages. But now he was pressing the screen of the phone, deleting all records as if to erase all the moments that passed between them.

"Is it finished? You mean, you've broken up with Violet?"

Ed asked with an astonished voice, half in belief and half in doubt.

Alexander took a cigarette out of his pocket, but, about to light it, he replaced it as soon as he realized that he had smoked one just before. Alexander said while ignoring Ed’s queries,

“Shall we? We might be stay up all night."

Alexander walked heavily toward the car, Ed hurriedly following him. Unlike Alexander's stiff face, a sort of curiosity was fully present in Ed's gaze.

The car they had just taken sped down the freeway. As it had just passed into midnight, the traffic was relatively light.

“No progress on the investigation at all until now, but doesn't it seem like we ought to have found something out sooner? Silly bastard. Doesn't he know that a tail is bound to be stepped on if it is long enough?

The problem was, all victims were under 6 years old, so they have problems remembering the appearance of the suspect. You know, kids' memories are not very reliable, and no further CCTV footage is available.

Nobody is saying this, but the atmosphere was pretty negative. People were about ready to give up. If we hadn't had this case, everybody might have given up. Seriously," Ed said.

“We still have DNA evidence for the suspect in the 3rd case,”

Alexander said slowly.

“Yeah, the only evidence in all these,”

Ed answered.

Alexander turned on the car's internal lights, and pulled up and arranged the files for all active cases: 7 in total, and averaging 1 case per month from June. In the 3rd case which occurred in mid-summer, the suspect’s DNA was collected from the victim - the boy's buccal epithelial cells. That was the only case which was reported almost right after it occurred.

The suspect moved on the 5-year-old boy Daniel, and told him that if he did whatever the criminal wanted, he`d buy Daniel anything he wanted to eat. The criminal asked Daniel,

“Have you ever eaten an ice cream bar?”,

and Daniel responded, “Yes, I have!”