AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

shoulder as she searched the stacks of the library. Why do most guys think arrest control requires force after they’ve already got you pinned? I never do, she thought, and then made a mental note to apologize to Martin. She also made a note to use Steve to demonstrate the yankyo pin next week as he was one of those who laughed hardest after watching the video.
    She found what she was looking for: Dragged Through the Mud; The Search for the Seattle Strangler.
    The book cover was more lurid than she would have guessed: obviously staged crime scene photos that showed a large pool of blood (I thought he was a strangler) and the trademark white tape outline of a body (I’ve never seen one of those in real life).
    She took the book over to a chair overlooking the lobby and sat. She flipped through the pages and immediately saw Munroe’s name listed in the “I’d like to thank” section. She fanned through the book and it seemed as if his name was on every page.
    She looked at the book jacket blurb: “Jackson Denning was the man neighbors asked to watch their kids if they had to run to the store. You gave him your keys when you went on vacation. This made him an unlikely suspect in a series of brutal killings of young women in Seattle. But author Michael Selwyn, an award-winning reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , unravels the clues that led police to catch the man dubbed the ‘Seattle Strangler.’”
    She looked at the back and saw the picture of the author, actually wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches, backed by a wall of books. He was kind of intriguing looking, despite his little Van Dyke beard, and he definitely had an air of self-importance. She could imagine the ribbing her partner must have endured when the book came out. She’d found the first mention of Munroe in the book.
“Alex Munroe is a big man, 6 feet 3, 220 pounds, and he still looks like the linebacker he was when he played college ball at Notre Dame. He uses that size to keep people at a distance and I’ve seen him use it to intimidate, although I’ve never seen him be violent and he does not have that reputation.
“He has one failed marriage behind him and says, ‘Don’t tell my wife, but I’m working on my second.’
“He’s blunt and when he talks, which is rarely, makes jokes like that when the conversation ventures anywhere near an emotion. But it’s still easy to see his determination whenever the subject of the Strangler comes up.”
    That’s Alex? she thought. That’s nothing like him. There are times I can’t make the man shut up. She flipped a few more pages and read.
“It’s incongruous to see this man, who you’d think would have all the sensitivity of a bulldozer, finesse a crime scene. Sherlock Holmes, a detective he admires, would meet his match in Alex. He will stand unmoving for minutes, just looking, just noting the out of place element and comparing it with his memory of previous crimes.
“He noticed, for instance, that in each of the murders attributed to the Strangler, a wastebasket had been emptied and replaced with a new plastic liner. And he noticed this at only the second crime scene he had investigated (which was actually the third murder committed by the Strangler). It was even more impressive when you consider that all the murders, save one, were committed in motel rooms where you wouldn’t be surprised to see a recently emptied wastebasket. But the liners that caught Alex’s attention were different. They hadn’t been knotted to keep them secure in the basket, unlike the liners in the other wastebaskets in the room.”
    OK, that sounds more like Alex, she thought, remembering his thoroughness back at the LoDo rave site. She skipped ahead.
“By this point in the investigation, Munroe had become obsessed by the case. His marriage had fallen apart. His partner had been reassigned. Co-workers (he had few friends) noticed that he’d begun losing weight. And the Strangler was now publicly taunting him, leaving behind messages pinned to the victim’s clothing.”
    She read one of the notes:
Mr. Detective,
Lovely Carol Ann
Did you not know she was next?
Could you not guess her name?
I thought we were playing the same game, Alex.
Catch me
“Munroe’s encyclopedic knowledge of crime is fascinating. He can rattle off the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims as readily as Jack the Ripper’s. He’s privy to details held back in many of the major serial killings in this country because of