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Chapter 10

ONE THING ABOUT BEING A COOL HUNTER, YOU REALIZE ONE si always existed Everything had an Innovator

We all knoho invented telephones and lightbulbs, but the humbler innovations are made anonymously But there was a first paper airplane, a first pair of jeans cut off into shorts, a first paper-clip necklace And traveling back in time: a first back scratcher, a first birthday present, a first hole designated as the one to throw garbage in

Once a good idea spreads, however, it&039;s hard to believe it didn&039;t always exist

Take detective stories The first ritten by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 (Spoiler alert: The monkey did it) Over the next 163 years Poe&039;s innovation infected countless books, films, plays, and TV shows And like most rampant viruses, the detective character has inable form: little old ladies who solve crimes, medieval monks who solve crimes, cats who solve crimes, even criminals who solve criists who solve crimes, I&039;m sure) until one day he read an intervieith a real houy had been on the force for over forty years, and in all that tile major crime had ever been solved by an amateur detective

Not one

With that in mind, we took Mandy&039;s phone to the cops

"Relationship to the ets me jobs"

"And where do you work, Hunter?"

"Nowhere in particular I&039;m a consultant A shoe consultant Mostly shoes"

Detective Machal Johnson looked me up and down

"Shoe consultant? Good et paid in shoes"

One eyebroas slowly rising "Okay Shoe consultant" The detective typed as he talked: sleepily I could have input the letters faster into my cell phone (if I&039;d had one) Johnson&039;s ancient coreenish color - the glowing letters fireflies trapped in mint toothpaste "So this Mandy Jenkins is also a shoe consultant?"

"Yeah, I guess that&039;s what you&039;d call her"

"And when do you guess you last saw her?"

"Yesterday, about five"

"Less than twenty-four hours ago?"

Jen nudged me, and Detective Johnson looked like he was about to take his hands off the keyboard, but I didn&039;t let hiet to this point, past desk sergeants, metal detectors, and a wide variety of unimpressed expressions

"She was supposed to ," I said "At Lispenard and Church"

He sighed and typed,the street names "Any evidence of foul play?"

"Yes We found her phone" I placed it on the detective&039;s desk

He turned it over once in his hand "That&039;s all? No purse? No wallet?"

"That&039;s it"

"Where?"

"Where ere supposed to "

He put the phone down "You were supposed to ?"

"No, on the corner But the phone was inside, nearby And there&039;s a picture on it"

"A picture on the building?"

"No, on the phone It&039;s also a ca on half-lens glasses that seee him, the detective peered at the phone "Huh What do you know" He took in the tiny lens next to the antenna, squinted at the screen, and gave it a New York cop&039;s version of the Nod "And what exactly is that a picture of?"

"A face in the dark We saw that guy"

"What guy?"

"The guy in the picture"

"There&039;s a guy in the picture?"

"You have to use wax paper to see it"

"He chased us," Jen said

Detective Johnson looked at her, then his eyes swept back and forth across the space between us a few tirasp the rules "Have you tried calling your friend?"

"We can&039;t That&039;s her phone"

"At her office? At her hoot lasses up higher onto his nose and settled back fro into the creaky comfort of his office chair "I know you&039;re concerned about your friend, but letpeople: Ninety-nine out of hundred aren&039;t ot stuck on a train, or went out of town and forgot to tell you With adults we don&039;t even start looking for twenty-four hours unless there&039;s a reason to believe foul play was involved"

I felt Jen twitching next to et out of the cop shop, back to her new job as an Innovator who solves crimes

"Now, you did find her phone, which you are sure is hers" (I nodded like a puppy)" but that&039;s not really a sign of foul play Until she&039;s beenfor twenty-four hours, it&039;s just a lost phone At which point you should have her roommate or a relative or so I&039;ll keep your information on file"

I could tell fro "Oh Thanks"

"So, do you want to turn in this phone as lost property, or would you like to save your friend some paperhen she reappears and hold on to it?" He held out the phone,saved froive it to her No trouble"

Detective Machal Johnson nodded slowly, cere the phone back to me

"Your public-spiritedness is appreciated, I assure you"

Chapter 11

OUTSIDE THE COP SHOP:

"What now?"

"There&039;s only one place to go Back"

"Crap"

We approached the abandoned building cautiously, co fro withbehind doorways and stoops

Actually, it was fun

Until we spotted the on its chain A rental truck sat blocking half the street, its elevator ascending with a whine, stacked high with boxes of the shoes

"They&039;re ," Jen said

We were hidden behind a steel-clad loading dock that thrust into the street, hot under our fingertips from the noon sun We spoke in short bursts, as if on radios

"Bald guy, by the door," I said

"I count two er what?"

"What?"

SoHo tourists walked by, casting puzzled looks in our directions Hadn&039;t they ever seen a stakeout before?

Our bald friend watched the ith a foreman&039;s lazy disinterest while a woman stacked boxes on the curb She was arrayed in a style commonly known as Future Sarcastic: a T-shirt eht-suit trousers with dozens of gadget-shaped pockets, silver hair shining in the sun Everything but the jet pack

The guy riding the truck&039;s elevator wasa trucker cap and cowboy boots, jeans and a mesh shirt that showed off his ed hi an ironic take on NASCAR fandoside the other two, he lookedto try out for the part of Thug 3 in a hip new thriller

Of which ere the unlikely heroes, I re not to catch the eye of a curious younga double-wide stroller past our position

Jen pulled out her cell phone, starting thu the license number of that truck"

"It&039;s a rental"

"And rental places keep records"

"Oh, yeah" Maybe if I&039;d read more books about shoe consultants who solved criured that outpictures"

"Good idea I er that"

I pulled out Mandy&039;s phone and started to shoot Between the five-millimeter lens and lack of zoom, they&039;d be pretty useless pictures, I was sure But it was better than just standing there and being gawked at by passersby

"Excuse hth Street around here?"

I looked up frolitter shirts and floppy shoes, white capri pants tied at the calf with drawstrings, so last su away our position

"Yeah, it&039;s about two blocks east" - hooking my thumb over my shoulder - "and about a hundred and ten blocks north"

"A hundred and ten blocks? That&039;s far, right?"

I told them where to catch the 1 train

"Your public-spiritedness is appreciated, I assure you," Jen drawled after the two had left, uncertainly repeating my directions to each other as they passed out of earshot

"After when are you not supposed to hite pants?" I asked

"Roughly 1979"

I pointed "They&039;re leaving"