Today’s excerpt is from Whodunit
Did It, Book #1 of the Bader Trilogy.
With Sherman Oaks as a possible starting point, Elmer comes up with an
idea to zero in on Whodunit. Not
everyone is happy with his new idea, but no one has a better idea. Enjoy and have a wonderful day.
m.j.
Elmer chatted
with Ruth a few minutes before they agreed on seven. As he put away his phone, he got
serious. “Okay, folks—as I was about to
say when my ex-wife called—we’re gonna have two NCIS teams helping on the credit
card leg work. Being the case, Reggie, I
want you to do something before you start out.
Spradling, over at FBI, is gonna be back before too awfully long. I want you to work with him a bit, since
their computer—in theory—is better than ours.
I want someone to set up a program to produce a list of every single
male in the weight range of “Whodunit” who has a driver’s license showing an
address in Sherman Oaks. Figure out an
age range—not too old or too young. If
it can be done to exclude dark-skinned African American males, so much the
better.”
“Oh, my God,
El—it’ll be a ton of men. If you’re
thinking we check every one of them out, it’ll take six lifetimes.”
“You got a
better idea?”
“Oh, hell,
no. This credit card deal doesn’t pan
out, I guess it’s the only next step—unless we find something hot in the case
material Bert is gonna get. Jeeze—we’ll
need an Army for it, though. There are
over fifty thousand souls living in Sherman Oaks. Say half are women, then we knock out anyone
under twenty-five or so—probably anyone over seventy—then knock off ten percent
or so dark-skinned blacks. You’re still
looking at fifteen thousand or so names…with maybe a third single.”
Elmer nodded,
“True, but we can narrow the list down quite a bit after you get it. Try to set it up so we know occupations,
where possible. Guy making over
two-fifty isn’t likely to be pulling this kind of a deal…probably a lot less. Anyone making a real good income goes to the
very bottom of the list. Think of
anything else to put someone at the bottom of the list. Anyone who is handicapped goes there. Hell, all kinds of other things. You and Spradling should be able to figure it
out—you’re both smart.”
“Thanks a
lot. Okay, I can see where we might get
it down to four or five thousand, but it’ll still be one hell of a lot of
people to be checking out…especially if the damned guy doesn’t even live in
Sherman Oaks. The only thing we have to
zero in on there is jackass, dead, Skeets.
Before you ask—no, I don’t have a better idea.”
“Good—glad we’re
in agreement then. Hop to it, old chum.”
“Oh, kiss my big
black ass.”
When Greg and
his three team members—one of whom was a nice-looking female agent who would be
working with Greg—arrived, Elmer filled them in on the Sherman Oaks idea. Greg shook his head. “You are sure a glutton for work, Elmer. But the idea does have merit—I’ll give you
that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment