Stephanie Steele
Chapter 24

“What do we know about Fredrick Winkleman?” Andrea stood before a holo screen in the debriefing room which showed a photo of Freddy which had been acquired during the search of his apartment, the centre piece of an investigation board which showed, along with a photo of Steele, the mayor, Nixon, Edwards and Leon’s victims.

Frank was stood at the side of a row of chairs where several detectives had gathered for the debriefing.

“The search of his apartment leads me to believe that he’s a dealer in illegal android upgrades. He sells black market android parts, computer components and does repair jobs on damaged androids.” Frank told her. “From the evidence we’ve found it appears that he was helping Detective Steele. She had an unknown informant on the street which we now believe to be Winkleman who goes by the name Freddy ‘The Chip’. There was a clone of Detective Steele’s hard drive on his computer system which leads me to believe that he also aided her in the killing of mayor Leonard.”

“And there was nothing on his computers? No pictures of children? No pornography of any kind?” Andrea asked.

“Just your regular stuff. Nothing that indicated he was into kiddies.” Walt said, disappointed.

“Our tech team are going over it again in case we missed something but Detective Simmons is right.” Frank added.

“Thank you Detective Frank.” Said Andrea. “What about the tip off? Any leads on who it was? You took the call Detective Simmons.”

Walt leant forward in his chair and shrugged his jacket up onto his shoulder. “It was anonymous ma’am. We were able to trace the call to a building on Rancoon Street but the building’s been empty for several years. Whoever called had hacked into the phone system there.” He saw Andrea’s puzzlement. “The phone lines were disconnected but someone with the right know how could still tap into the system. The system’s still there, just turned off.”

“Why would someone go to that much trouble just to give us a tip off?” Andrea said.

“It’s a big case ma’am. They were probably scared they’d be implicated. Didn’t want to get involved.”

“We identified the girl yet?”

“Carolynne Kilpatrick. Nine year old. Lived round the corner to Winkleman’s apartment. Her mother’s given a positive ID.” Walt told her.

“Frank, get onto Face, if Winkleman or Steele are recognised again, I want the readers to track them. And tell them they have authority to enter residential areas.” Said Andrea. “Walt, see if we can dig up any known associates of Freddy ‘The Chip’s’. Someone must know him. That’s all.”

Everyone stood to leave, chatting amongst themselves.

Something didn’t add up. Andrea had had little time to get to know the case so she was relying heavily on her team, but the lead detective working on the Leon murder/rape case conspiring with someone who was now implicated as Leon, but had no child porn on his computer, and her going around killing high ranking civil servants she thought were responsible, was bizarre to say the least. It seemed too neat that they should get a tip off about the latest murder. She had been in the job too long to assume what she was seeing was the whole picture, but what was she not seeing? There were pieces of the puzzle that were missing and some pieces which just didn’t seem to fit.

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