LITMIR.BIZ

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don't warm up! I was just joking," said Benelli, getting up in his turn to avoid being caught unprepared.

      "Enough now" thundered Helen from behind the desk, "we are full of problems and you two should be ashamed of your childishness!" The two sat down with their heads down and she spoke again. "We have to get busy fast because what happened will leak out from one moment to the next and then the newspapers and TVs will hit us. The tasks remain those assigned yesterday and tonight try to present in this room concrete results in hand or it will be better if you don't show up at all! Now go."

      "Do I have to inspect the woods again?" Benelli asked doubtfully, he had absolutely no desire to go again to examine and photograph the absolute nothing. Helen told herself that after what happened the night before, it was better that for the moment no one set foot there.

      "No, it would only be wasted time. Today you will join Claretta and you will be looking for someone who can give us some information," she replied. Benelli twisted his mouth, because he thought she was as clumsy as Cindy and would rather work alone.

      "Come on, are you all still here?" Helen said to the agents still sitting at their desks. They hurried to leave the room. James was the only one who didn't have a specific task yet and was waiting for an order.

      "You come with me!" Said Helen, not at all friendly, he took the bag containing the breakfasts and followed her into her office. Helen closed the door and lowered the curtains, sat on the edge of the desk and turned off the intercom. James placed a glass and a sandwich next to her, then he chose a chair and began to unwrap his sandwich. She pushed the breakfast away and began to peer at him with her arms folded. James noticed her gesture but preferred to pretend nothing happened and sent down a couple of bites because he was hungry.

      After a minute, feeling uneasy because she continued to stare at him severely without opening her mouth, he placed the sandwich on the table and looked at her, pursing his lips.

      "About last night ..." he began to say, but then he found that the speech he had prepared was too childish. Not knowing how to proceed, he broke the sentence there, embarrassed as a teenager on the first date. She took a long sigh and began to remove the cellophane from her sandwich.

      "So many things have happened that I don't know where to start! First of all, I'd really like to know who last night tried to burn us," Helen began, then snapped into the sandwich and James felt refreshed. Contrary to what he had feared, she was not going to face the "kiss" topic.

      "I don't know, and what I understand even less is why! Was it possible that they were looking for Harry's fishing rod and for that kind of monster that was attached to the hook? "

      "I don't know what they were looking for, but if they were willing to kill us and burn the whole forest to get it then they were definitely looking for something extremely important. Maybe it was something that would put us on the right track and instead we are still at the same point as yesterday. And when we succeed in tracing the relatives of the victims, if they are not the ones to trace us first, what will we tell them? That their boys died of an unknown death and that they turned into mummies before our eyes? Who could believe it? As soon as the news will be public, newspapers and TVs will stick to us like vultures, they will tear us to pieces" Helen considered disheartened, then took a long drink at the milkshake and let out a smile because James still remembered her favorite taste. James found the dimples that formed on her cheeks adorable, Helen saw that he was staring at her like a perfect idiot, and she got serious again.

      "We absolutely need to find a foothold and we need to find it quickly because otherwise, we'll have no hope of solving this case," said James.

      "I fully agree. And as if that's not enough, in a few days Lobster's Festival will start down at the bay and we will be busy there. And since we are few, someone will also get a double shift."

      "Look, I don't have much experience in such matters, but I do know one thing for sure because they forced it into my head during the course at the Police School. If a case is not resolved within the first forty-eight hours, doing it later becomes almost impossible, and given the means and the evidence we have available, we would need a real miracle."

      "That's right," Helen agreed. They finished their breakfast in silence, crumpled napkins and wipes and challenged each other with their eyes, after which they competed, as they were used to do since they were boys, to throw it in the garbage can. As always, the result was a draw and they exchanged a carefree smile, and then they started to reflect each on their own.

      "As for what happened last night, it must never happen again," she muttered seriously after a few minutes without looking him in the eye.

      "I agree with you, no one has to try to kill us in the middle of the night," James tried to defuse, but she didn't smile and he blushed again. "... What if we contact someone more experienced than us?" He then proposed to get out of that mess. That idea was buzzing in his head from the first moment he had put his feet out of his bed, but he had not yet dared to propose it to avoid hurting her pride. Like any honorable sheriff, Helen was jealous of her city and her cases. James feared that in front of that suggestion she would be unwell.

      "Who do you think we should call?" She asked instead, surprising him.

      "I honestly don't know, I just know that in America we have special units and detective agencies of all kinds ..."

      "I promise you I'll think about it," Helen murmured, and he looked at her in awe because he didn't expect to find her so pliant.

      "Now go, I have to get to work," Helen added.

      "Yes, but what am I supposed to do?"

      "Stay in the office and squeeze your brains out, as soon as they tell us something new you will check on the spot," she said.

      "As ordered," James replied, standing up, and in that precise moment, Cindy knocked on the office door.

      "Come in," said Helen. Cindy looked out timidly at the door. "I am sorry, but the intercom was off ..."

      "Oh, how distracted I am! What's going on?"

      "The guy from the workshop called ..."

      "Damn, I completely forgot about him. Tell him that James will be there as soon as possible."

      "He said to go ahead calmly because now he doesn't have the car anymore," Cindy informed her.

      "What does it mean?"

      "What I just told you. Bob told me that when he went into the workshop this morning he didn't find the car, "the receptionist explained with a shrug.

      "It's not possible!" Helen said, banging her fist on the table. At that precise moment, she realized she was in front of an enemy too shrewd and powerful and she had the clear impression that the strange chain of negative events would not stop before having overwhelmed them. "You hear that? And to think that you were afraid of getting bored ..." she said discouraged to James.

Episode III

      In the Dead Sea

      Abdul had an olive complexion, and on his wrinkled face there were a sharp nose and two small dark eyes, and under the bulky woolen robe that protected him from the heat, he must have been incredibly thin. Abdul was a bedouin and lived as a guide for tourists in search of strong emotions; he got paid so handsomely that soon he could buy camels and become a breeder, in that way he would climb to the top of the social ladder of his clan. But meanwhile, he was seated on an inflatable mattress under the shade of the cross-legged tent, intent on scrutinizing the water vapor rising from the immense surface of the Dead Sea. Apparently he was dozing, in reality, his trained senses were ready to perceive and process tiny signals in an infinitesimal time. With the wind blowing in the right direction, he would have been able to distinguish the smell of a camel almost a hundred yards away, and that was the secret to survive in such an inhospitable place, where you have to fight hunger and thirst, to watch out for the heat of the day as for the cold of the night, for friends as for enemies, for snakes and for scorpions.

      Although he was extremely attached to that kind of life, with his customs and traditions, he appreciated

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