Storm's Cage by Mary Stone (uplifting novels .TXT) 📕

white. Now, it’s hard to pin down his age exactly, but I didn’t see any gray hairs, so we eliminated men over fifty-five.”

Joseph hunched forward in his chair. “That’s still a lot of names.”

Portia snorted. “Well, Chicago’s a big city, Agent Larson.” Dragging the list aside, she clicked over to a close-up of the man’s masked face. She zoomed in and tapped her cherry-red nail on the pixelated image of his eye. “The mask he’s wearing shadows his face a little, but we were able to determine an eye color range. His is on the lighter side, so blue, green, gray, and maybe light brown or hazel.”

That doesn’t narrow it down much. Joseph kept the comment to himself.

“The last attribute we used to whittle down our pool of potential suspects is body type.” She returned to the list. “Factoring in his height, we think he probably weighs somewhere between one-seventy and two-hundred, maybe two-ten.”

Propping an elbow on the desk, Amelia squinted at the glowing screen. “Wait a second.” Her eyes flicked to Portia. “I recognize this guy’s name. Fourth from the top…Allworth.”

“Let’s take a look.” With a click, Portia pulled up the detective’s personnel file. “Cliff Allworth, six-four, one-eighty-seven at his last department mandated physical. Reddish-brown hair, blue eyes, forty-one years of age. Well, he matches all our search criteria.”

Amelia shook an index finger at Allworth’s photo. “I looked through this guy’s jacket, and it’s full of Leóne cases. This wouldn’t be too weird, but most of them ended up with charges being dropped or the Leóne suspect being exonerated. And the few perps that were charged wound up negotiating plea deals for less than half of what their sentence would’ve been if they’d gone to trial.”

The name Cliff Allworth wasn’t familiar to Joseph, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Allworth was a Leóne ally. His brow furrowed as he turned to Amelia, looking curiously at her. “How do you know all that about him?”

“A case I was following up on.” Her eyes flicked to Portia as she pointed to the mouse. “Do you mind if I take control for a second? There’s something in Allworth’s jacket that’ll help us out here.”

Amelia’s explanation was so casual and dismissive that he almost believed her.

Almost.

There was more to her story than she’d let on, but he’d have time to puzzle over the thought later.

Portia pushed the wireless mouse over to Amelia. “Sure, knock yourself out. What’re we looking for?”

“Allworth was attacked by a couple meth heads a while back.” Amelia was focused on the flow of the screen as she scrolled down the page. “He got his ass kicked, but he gave about as good as he got. A couple uniformed officers showed up to arrest the two assailants, and the District Attorney charged them the next day.”

Glancing from the monitor to Amelia and back, Joseph clasped both hands together in his lap. “If there was a trial, then there are pictures, right?”

“Yeah. The D.A. used them at trial to raise the charge to assault with a deadly weapon instead of just assault. They each got fifteen years.” With a couple more clicks, Amelia opened an image of Detective Allworth’s shirtless torso. He’d turned his head to the side, and a gloved hand held an angled ruler up to a nasty red mark on his side. In the next picture, the camera focused on a swollen welt just above his belly button.

Portia straightened in her seat. “Is that a scar?”

Amelia handed her the mouse. “Yeah. A big nice one.” She leaned back and rubbed her cheek in thought. “It’s not much, but if nothing else, you can use these photos to rule him out.”

Portia was shaking her head before Amelia had finished. “No, don’t be so quick to dismiss this, Agent. I’ve been staring at this guy’s naked ass for the last week and a half. If I had even a lick of artistic talent, I’m sure I could draw a picture of him from memory. And this scar, this is something I would have seen.”

“Those surgical procedures are all pretty common, though.” Joseph held up his hands when Amelia’s attention snapped to him. “Devil’s advocate, that’s all. I’m just making sure we have all our bases covered. Appendectomies and hernia surgeries are fairly common, and that could be the source of that scar. I’m sure there are a couple of other men on this list who’ve had one of those procedures before.”

Drumming her fingers on the desk, Amelia tilted her head in thought. “That’s true. Still, with everything else, I think that’d give us plenty to take a closer look. Maybe even get a warrant to search his computer.”

Shit. She was right.

All he needed was a minute to himself, and he could call Joe to report he’d found the missing detective from Kankakee County. But did he want to alert Joe Dalessio?

He wasn’t so sure he did.

If Cliff Allworth disappeared right after Russel Ulmer had dropped off the face of the planet, there was no way the Bureau’s attention wouldn’t be drawn to Joseph. He wasn’t about to risk his livelihood for a bottom feeder like Detective Allworth.

I did my part. I told Dalessio to watch his ass. This doesn’t blow back on me.

Portia’s voice yanked him from the contemplation. “Look here.” She dragged one still shot of the naked man up beside a second. “The one on the right, that’s from right at the start of the video, before he…” A scowl darkened her face. “Before he exerted himself.”

“No scar.” Amelia crossed her arms. “Is the resolution of this camera high enough to pick up something like a scar, though?”

Holding up a finger like a parent asking their child for patience, Portia zoomed in on the picture to the left. “This is from the same recording, but this still was taken at the end. See? He’s sweating. I’ll spare you the details, but this video was a little more…active than most of the others. The victim fought back, but like