Colt Crawford - Chapter 5 (Tuesday)

--If you haven't read Monday's post yet, do that before reading this one. I have made a few changes.--


She chuckled before responding. “My angle? My angle is simple. You’re from L.A. The detectives down there are just glad that this loser dropped the girl in a different county so they wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that some guy car-jacked a lady in broad daylight in their town. Now that it’s my problem, they aren’t willing to put a lot of time into it. Your connections just might come in handy, Mr. Colt Crawford, CEO of Crawford Investigations. You or one of your associates just might know which strings to pull at the LAPD.”

“You googled me?” Colt asked feigning shock.

“I google every guy I meet at coffee shops.”

“Well, I do have something that might be of interest to you,” Colt began. “It seems the lady’s boyfriend took a few too many sleeping pills this morning. They’ve got him at Cedars-Sinai right now. Looks like he’s going to make it.”

“That is interesting,” Krissy Malone said with a hint of intrigue. The day was bright and sunny, but cool so her hands were wrapped snugly around the coffee cup to help fight off the brisk air that entered the building each time the door opened. Colt noticed her interlaced fingers, but there was no ring. Not on either hand.

“And, yes, I do have a few connections with LAPD,” Colt continued, his eyes casually moving up from her hands and staring innocuously over her left shoulder. He was playing it cool, not even realizing that he had a need to play it cool. Then it hit him. He had just checked to see if Malone was wearing a ring. He had been so busy building his business and focusing on his career over the past several years that he had almost given up on women. Now that he had a little time on his hands, the old game started coming back to him rather quickly.

In his mind, he rehashed some of his old dating experiences, quickly sorting out the successful from the unsuccessful. It surprised him at how much information filtered through his head in the matter of two or three seconds. It was like a flood of memories had overflowed the banks of a river and swamped his mind with thoughts of his past. During that momentary flashback, his subconscious pulled out the top ten stupidest things he had ever said or done when a woman was present. His mind scanned this list and he silently vowed never to repeat any of them with Krissy Malone.

Colt was startled out of his reverie by the ringing of his cell phone. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. When he glanced down at the screen he had intended to ignore the call, but he noticed that it was from Lieutenant Crosby, his buddy at the LAPD. “I’d better take this,” Colt said with resigned anticipation. “It’s my contact in L.A.”

“I found that surveillance video you wanted,” Crosby began. “The security company at the high-rise e-mailed it to me. I haven’t had a chance to review it yet, but you are welcome to it. I’ll forward it to you.”

“Thanks. I owe you one,” Colt said as he clicked off the phone. A few minutes later, the e-mail came through and Colt was able to access the video right there on his phone. “You want to watch this with me?” he asked sliding around the table so that he was sitting next to Malone. The screen was small, so there was no avoiding a cozy moment. Colt skimmed through the images of on one of the files until he got to just before 5:00 on New Year’s day. Since the attack had happened on a holiday, the security officers had made the assumption that Samantha must have parked on the first floor of the parking garage and thus only sent Crosby the tape from that area. There were six different files attached to the e-mail, each containing about 20 minutes of footage taken from different cameras in the garage.

It wasn’t until they viewed the fourth file that they found anything worth watching.