INSOMNIAC: ALAN SMITH #2 (Alan Smith series) (28 page)

‘But how do you know that it’s Central Park? It might be some other parks also...’

‘No no...the first thing that comes in your mind sometimes is the right one’

‘Oh...new fact’ Kevin mumbled.

‘Guys, I think I see someone else in the picture’ said Alicia who was quiet all this time. Everybody shifted the glance to the computer, as Alicia said this.

‘Where?’ asked Ryan.

‘There in the middle’ pointed out Alicia .She pointed at the narrow squeezed out space in the middle of the man and the child. There was someone in between them certainly, but it was hard to make out the details, as the man and the boy in front was too much distracting.

‘Might be...yes it seems like someone’s there’ Ryan said hesitatingly.

‘Who’s it?’ asked Kevin.

‘I can’t make that out, man’

‘Yes, the picture is blurred out at that portion’

‘Seems like a man’

‘Might be’

‘Ryan’ Alan called him. Ryan stood up. ‘Go to the other room and connect the pen drive to the large screen, I need to see the picture in detail.’

‘You got it’ said Ryan, got up and left the room taking the pen drive with him.

He started looking for the plugs and switches to turn the screen on .Then he connected the Pen Drive to the narrow USB port that was not visible at all from the front , the screen lit up at the same time and the home page with a picture of a sea beach came into view.

It was a touch screen so work was a lot easier. The depth of the colours was also great. It was of Ultra HD quality screen a little carved on the edges to give the surrounding sound feeling. It had 16 million colour in it with pixels ranging from 1320 to over 2000.

A pop up window soon came up, Ryan touched the screen few more times and in the same process like in the computer, the picture came into view. And it was looking much better than what it looked in the low resolution computer. It was also soothing to the eye.

Others soon joined Ryan in the room and stood a few centimetres away from the screen.

‘Yes here it is’ said Alan.

Ryan stood beside the screen and asked ‘Do I need to zoom it?’

‘A little might be good’

Ryan easily zoomed the picture up a notch, with some tactics with his fingertips.

Now it was easy, the zoom made the front picture of the man and the child go sideways giving more space to the man in the middle. The place got blurred for sure, but the colour depth helped them to see all they needed to see and to identify him.

Alan turned away. ‘It’s Jade Carter.’ He said briskly. ‘He also witnessed this thing’

‘And now both of them are dead’ completed Alicia.

Everyone was thinking the same thing now; you could just tell what was going on in their mind by just looking at their respective faces. Only Alan remained expressionless.

‘Well, so...now what do we do about this?’ said Ryan.

‘These two men are dead because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time’ said Alan then added. ‘Unfortunately’

‘So we got the reason for the two murders’ said Kevin. ‘Damn, we’re making progress’

‘Yes, but...’

‘No but in here’ said Ryan. ‘They were killed because they witnessed an abduction. And they both were news reporters, so they could've exposed this thing and make life hell for the killers, or better say the abductors’

‘And so they needed to be silenced’ said Alicia.

‘But still the problem remained for them as  Paul Brown took a picture of the scene at that time and managed to give it to us even if that means losing his own life’

‘Yes, and it was the photo they were threatening him for...’

‘Oh it’s so clear now’ said Alan. ‘Okay so now, we find out the kid, we find out the killer’

‘But if they were at the wrong place at the wrong time then why didn’t the killer shoot them at once, in the park itself?’ asked Kevin as he had a tendency to bring out flaws in a theory.

‘Central Park is totally a public place’ said Alan. ‘So if you shoot two men down in the broad daylight, the chances are people will hear the shots or maybe even see them. So why take the risk when you can track them down again and kill later, in different methods?’

‘But then if they can abduct someone in a public place then they can as well kill someone if they want to’ said Kevin.

‘I doubt that terribly’ replied Ryan.

‘Okay okay’ said Alan. ‘If we can catch them and confront them then we will know everything from the killer itself. So why speculate it any further? We need to start searching for the child, we find him, we also find the killer’

‘But the kid went to the park, did he go alone?’ asked Alicia.

‘Yes it seems so’

‘If he went alone then maybe he goes every week or day, to play or something. And I think maybe someone there can identify the boy if we show the picture to them.’

‘In that case, we need to ask everyone there in order to get some information about the child.’

‘Yes and look, look at the T shirt and pants. The style, with all these logos and everything seems to be a kind of a jersey to me’

Alan looked at it closely. Alicia was correct; the style of the T shirt was not a casual one. It had logos and some kind of badges on the chest portion of the shirt. At the back which was away from them, seemed to have a large number, or was there? But one thing was sure, it was a jersey.

‘So if this is a jersey, then’ Alan stopped.

‘Then?’ asked Alicia.

‘Then he must be playing for somebody’

‘Or some team, maybe’ Ryan suggested.

‘What team, national team? International team?’ said Kevin.

‘The kid doesn’t seem more than 14 to me’ said Ryan. ‘I don’t think he will get chance in any national team let alone international’

‘Yeah then it got to be a school level team’

‘Yeah probably’

‘But we also need to know what kind of sport he plays’ said Alicia.

‘Look at the clothes’ said Alan. ‘Red and white T shirt, white pants with black stripes. Tell me what sort of game comes in your mind, which have this kind of uniform?’

‘Manchester united?’ said Kevin.

‘Shut up, that’s a club not a game.’

‘Okay then, soccer’

‘Basketball, baseball?’

‘Polo, rugby !’

‘Okay, whatever’ said Alan understanding that they were just saying all this just because they were asked to say it. They were not thinking about anything. ‘At least one thing is certain, that this kid went to central park that day from where he was abducted’

‘Or maybe he goes to central park regularly and that day was just a bad day for him’ Kevin suggested.

‘Perhaps, yes’

‘And if he goes there to play regularly then we have more chances of someone recognising the boy’ said Ryan.

‘Good it better be’ Alan stood straight and saw Henderson standing behind them, hands crossed, with a dull face.

‘What’s going on here?’ he asked in a hard voice.

Ryan was about say ‘Nothing, just passing time, watching a 3d movie’ but instead he said ‘Well this is a part of our ongoing investigation’

‘Yes, I thought you’d say that’ said Henderson. ‘And it seems like you’ve discovered something great?’

‘Actually, yes we just discovered something’

‘What about this picture?’

‘Yes, we found out from this picture that this kid’ Ryan pointed at the kid in the picture ‘was abducted’

‘Really?’ he asked now with the dull face giving up.

‘You bet’

‘So, shit just got serious’ said Henderson. ‘Two murders and now an abduction. And yet you don’t have your killer?’

‘No’ Ryan thought it was the best to give one word answers than to talk rubbish.

‘Huh, this case...this is a freaking case you got this time’ said Henderson, and was that a hint of smile in his face? Maybe not. He continued. ‘Anyway, so you’re gonna start searching for the boy, I assume?’

‘Right’

‘I see, I see’ said Henderson still looking at the picture and nodding to himself.

‘We made progress, Mr. Henderson’ said Alicia.

‘Yeah Yeah , I can see that. Progress in complicating the matters a little more without solving anything. Good, extremely good, keep it up’

Alicia remained quiet.

‘So’ he went on ‘Any ideas where you would start this search for the boy?’

‘Central Park’ Alan replied this time.

TWENTY SEVEN

Soon they left the building and it took exactly 15 minutes to reach the main gate of the central park.

As they came down and entered, they felt a cool breeze that was blowing and it was a lot cooler in this parts as there was more trees, more nature, more open areas, it was really healthy and the air was also clean .

They entered from the first gate and found that people today on this side were mostly old, some were jogging still now, some cracking jokes among themselves and everything, and there were also some couples who sat on the benches in a cosy manner. Some children played here, mostly soccer, and other kids’ game, but they also had to take break from time to time, as the temperature would drain your energy too soon.

The sky was clear blue; a faint pair of floating clouds was there at the horizon vertically angling towards the sun. Ryan went under a tree and stood in the shade, Alan and Alicia did the same, putting their shades on.

‘Okay so, what should be our first move?’ asked Ryan.

‘You’ Alan continued looking around and surveying the area. ‘You check as many people, you can here; we will go and check the other sides. This is a freaking large park to cover’

‘Yes’ said Ryan, nodded and went away. He came out in the sun and went to an old woman with grey hair who was walking her dog, a labradoodle.

He stepped in front of her, offered her the picture and asked ‘Madam, did you ever see this kid before, here?’

‘No’ she shook her head. ‘I haven’t’

‘Ok ma’am sorry to bother you’

‘Hey are you a cop?’

‘Uh...yes madam, NYPD’

‘I see’

Ryan left her and tried asking someone else, but still failed to get any positive results. Some more people entered the park he asked them too, but they flatly gave negative answers and walked away.

Alan and Alicia walked up to the north-east side and looked for someone who could tell them about the kid. Alan scanned the area, stared at everyone to see if they could say anything when asked. Kevin was checking the adjoining streets of the large park.

Heat was increasing and was draining out all their energy, they knew that soon they would have sit down somewhere and take some rest. They would never be able to cover the whole park.

It was not a good idea after all, asking everyone like this. Even if they did this, then they should have bought some more uniforms with them so that they could cover the park a lot quickly. The process would have been a complicated one of course, but that was the only chance they had.

But Alan remained stubborn as he started walking again avoiding the exposure of the direct sunlight by walking under the shades from the trees.

After a while when Alan walked a few metres more, Ryan came up to him and joined him. Alicia was talking to someone on the backside, but of course, no luck.

Ryan panted, held his breath then let him cool himself a little. Then he said ‘Asked most of the people there near the main gate, no one recognised the boy’

‘Hmm’ Alan looked disappointed and glanced ahead thinking if they should go back and make a new plan.

There were some other parks too just by the side of the central park like The Arthur Cross Pinetium, The great Lawn soft ball fields but Alan had more faith in the Central Park itself.

Alan kept looking at all the people, studying them while Kevin also came back after checking the 85
th
traverse, and his face showed that he got no result. Alan didn’t need to ask him anything.

Alan and all of them stood under a large tree with broad and wide branches, providing enough shade for everyone to stand.

‘There got to be someone who have seen the kid’ Alan murmured to himself.

Alan thought hard applying his brains, about what can be the alternative way out of this. But suddenly someone said ‘You looking for someone?’ from the back and broke his concentration.

They turned back to see, an old man with a grey beard with a cap on his head. He wore specs and was short. He looked more like a cowboy, his shirt was a little dirty and so were his trousers.