Wolf in the Big City

Chapter 6 - Laundromat

I arrived at work the next day feeling the same sense of confusion. I'd slept a dreamless sleep, troubled by the thoughts of what was to come at the laundromat place. The feelings clearly showed as Dylan approached me at my desk while I typed out what I should've finished the previous night.

"Hey man. I could taste how sour your face is from all the way across the room. What's wrong?"

"It's...nothing, really. Something I shouldn't be worried about."

He scowled and patted me on the shoulder.

"C'mon dude, all these years I've been by your side for support. Now you're flakin' on me? You can talk to me, Danny boy. I'm all ears."

"...alright fine. I'm just weirded out by that talk you had with Doctor Beauregarde yesterday. Add to that, Eddie met me after work yesterday and gave me this."

I showed Dylan the business card I'd gotten from Eddie. He looked it over and gave it back to me.

"I'm familiar with the place. If I don't have time to do my own laundry when I'm working, I go there."

"Fuck, Dylan: enough's enough. First it's you, then Eddie, now this business with this laundromat place? What the shit's going on?!"

Dylan held his hands out and chuckled.

"Woah jeez, Danny boy, chill out. It's not that bad, seriously. Tell you what, I owe you for not explaining myself, okay? After work today, I'll take you to the laundromat. You'll see what I mean-"

He stopped abruptly and pulled his phone from his pocket, which was ringing. Dylan excused himself to answer the call, which left me with even more questions than answers. What was the deal with these three? I sure as hell wanted to know the answer. Dylan taking me to the place on the business card was sure to get me some closure. I hoped. In any case, I did have a job to do so I returned to my laptop and kept typing until Dylan came back.

"Ready for the morning briefing? It's in five minutes."

And so it went. Detective Ortega and I were scheduled to interview the victim's families for the day, while Evelyn went with Sergeant King to the lab to collect all our reports and the autopsy results. Max stayed behind to continue working on a facial reconstruction of the suspect's picture he'd gotten on the CCTV. Eddie went with the LT back to the crime scene, something about a bad feeling he had about the scene. Said he might've missed something about our killer's movements on the day of the murder.

The day passed by without incident; didn't learn much from the family. The Princes didn't have any enemies or people who would want to hurt them, so we were back to square one on that end. I was still going through the autopsy results when Dylan tapped me on my shoulder.

"Hey man, you gonna leave?"

"What?"

"It's five-thirty, dude. Not going home?"

I checked my watch. Lo and behold, I'd spent the rest of the afternoon poring over reports and writing them too. Story of my life. I shrugged my shoulders and closed my work laptop.

"Eh, sure. Whatever. Weren't you gonna take me to that laundromat place?"

"Yup! We'll have dinner on the way, then we'll go have a look."

Dinner itself was a very awkward affair. I had a feeling that Dylan was holding his excitement back just so he could see how I'd react to...whatever it was that laid behind this mystery curtain. It was irritating me to no end, but I bit back the harsh words on the tip of my tongue. We had our meal at a nearby cafe and then made our way to the laundromat, which was a short walk down two city blocks.