Tolerance Book III

Chapter Twenty-Two: Unexpected

Voight Residence

The gruff Sergeant eyed his two out of town House Guests across the kitchen table speculatively.  He was surprised the pair had opted to stay in town another week and had decided to ascertain the reason behind their extended stay.  He thought he had  been made privy to all the notebooks left behind by King had exposed but now as darkness descended outside and stars began glistening in the black velvet skies he wondered if he was mistaken.  He opted for his usual blunt approach.

"What haven't I been told?"
"What do you mean?" Murphy asked but only after eyeing his fellow New Yorker.
"I'm not playing around," Voights' tone was laced with steel as he put down his coffee mug on the table with a loud bang.
"It's not what you think," the AD hastily reassured, guessing what their Host was thinking, "you know everything we know about the notebooks."
"Well you're holding something back.  Out with it."
"We wanted to ask Jay if he'd come back to New York with us," Parker explained quietly, he was aware this was not going to be welcome news hence the hesitation to bring it up.
"He's good at profiling .....," Murphy spoke but was quickly interrupted.
"You already asked him about working with HS and he said no," the Sergeant curtly reminded the men, he was decidedly unhappy about this development.
"It's not a job offer," Murphy explained before elaborating, "but we could use his help on a case."
"Have you asked him?" Voight asked as an afterthought.
"Wanted to run it by you first," Parker stated honestly, they were not trying to undermine the Sergeant or the Intelligence Unit.
"So this is the real reason you came here? Not the King case?"
"We would have come anyway," Murphy defended, aggrieved at what was being implied, "we happen to care about Halstead not to mention the King case."
"Okay," Voight accepted in appeasement, "but this has come out of nowhere."
"Not really," the AD countered calmly, he understood the other mans' reaction but they were not the bad guys, "all we're trying to do is solve a case and save some lives."
"I don't like it," the Sergeant bluntly stated, he knew too well that if the Visitors pleaded their case using that premise his youngest Detective would feel compelled to help.
"Can't say as we're too thrilled about it either," Murphy admitted frankly with a heavy sigh, "but we've hit a brick wall."
"And there's no one else you can bring in?" Voight allowed his scepticism to leak into his voice.
"No one as good as Halstead."
"Besides .... there's a link to Chicago," the AD informed the Sergeant, "all of the Victims had moved from here to New York a short time before their deaths."
"But they were all murdered there? Voight was automatically thinking of jurisdictional issues even though the investigation was not in his domain or even his concern.
"Yeah."
"So how many has your UnSub murdered to date?"
"Twelve .... that we know of," Parker supplied grimly.
"Hell," Voight cursed before directing, "tell me everything."

The Sergeant listened intently as the New Yorkers took turns outlining the various facets of the four year long investigation.  The last killing occurred two weeks ago but prior to that there had been two year long gap.  The earlier Victims had all met their untimely demise within months of each other.   The link to Chicago was the only commonality between all twelve Victims.  The Psychologist admitted they were hoping Jay would give them a fresh perspective looking at the case with fresh eyes.  The 'fresh eyes' comment gave Voight the opportunity to bring up the main problem with the exhausted Detective going to New York to work another Serial Killer case .... the young man had been running on empty for some time and letting him go headlong into another investigation did not sit well with Voight.  Murphy and Parker had no counter argument to their Hosts' concerns for the truth was they shared them.  It was not lost on Voight that their concern for Jay was genuine so the fact they were going down this route meant they were out of options.

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Mollys Bar