Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  Luke Stricker looks even more brutish since he shaved his head, the kind of guy you would expect to be on the other side of the handcuffs. It complicates matters having him on this, but he’s one of the most competent cops on the force. And competence is very attractive. Especially now.

  Mike Croff is ticking off the seconds by making little popping sounds with his lips. He notices her annoyance and freezes, mid-pucker. He widens his eyes with cartoonish innocence, turning it into a whistle. Peter and the Wolf. Doo-doo-di-dit-dit-doo.

  Oh yeah, and young Marcus Jones, sitting on the edge of his seat at attention, his straight-out-of-the-academy eagerness undone by his ridiculous hair style; cornrows with a little rat’s tail. She almost feels bad about the lipgloss stunt. Turns out he wasn’t such an FNG after all, called it in on his cell phone instead of the radio, so the press only got wind of it after the meat wagon was already loaded up. Nothing to see here, move along folks. Saved her ass, and in return she’s got him saddled with a dumb nickname. There’s already a picture on the noticeboard, his personnel photo badly photoshopped onto Tinkerbell’s body, surrounded by fairy dust.

  Joe Miranda sweeps into the room and starts talking as if he’s been the one waiting around. ‘All right, let’s get this on the road already. Versado, you landed this show, you’re running with it.’ He sits down on the end of the desk, slicks down his wave of black hair, and knots his hands.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Gabi goes to the whiteboard and uncaps one of the marker pens. ‘Officer Jones, if you could run us through your report?’

  ‘Don’t forget your magic unicorn, Sparkles!’ Bob Boyd cups his hands around his mouth. The good detectives, finest on the force, titter. All except Ovella Washington, whose focus tightens on her file.

  Marcus Jones aka Sparkles, now and forever, stands awkwardly, thrown off his game.

  ‘Relax,’ Gabi says. ‘Just like in the report. But if there’s anything you left out the paperwork, now’s the time to fill in the details. Start at the beginning.’

  ‘Okay. Right. I was straight off a shooting called in at Vernor and Clarke, round two a.m. Sunday morning. I’m on my own – my partner’s in hospital with a burst appendix. By the time I get there, no-one’s seen anything. Found some shell casings in the grass, but they could have been from yesterday. Or last week.’

  ‘Cut to—’ Gabi prompts.

  ‘Right, right.’ He frets at his merit ribbon. It’s cute that he wears it. ‘So’s I get back to my car – and there’s a call about illegal dumping down by the river.’

  ‘Well, that’s an emergency,’ Boyd says.

  ‘It would have been if it was our body being dumped,’ Miranda says with calm authority. He’s not called ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ for the shade of his irises (which are, for the record, Italian-brown), but for his Sinatra cool.

  ‘So I take a shortcut under the bridge near Mexicantown and I see it. Him, I mean. First I think it’s an animal. Roadkill or something. But then I see his face. It’s clear he’s … gone. I keep driving—’

  ‘How is it clear, officer?’ Luke Stricker jumps in. Harsher than necessary, Gabi thinks. Cut the kid some slack. She should talk.

  ‘It’s in his eyes. There ain’t nobody home.’

  ‘You could see all that from your car?’ Miranda asks. ‘Could have been shock. Kid could still have been alive. You could have got an ID from him.’

  Gabi steps in. ‘We know he died offsite, sir. No blood at the scene, and the prelim report from the medical examiner indicates that the body was in cold storage for a day or two before it was dumped. It’s going to take them a little while to establish time of death, but he was long gone by the time Officer Jones found him.’

  ‘Next time you check before you drive past,’ Stricker says. ‘Especially with a kid.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why did you keep driving, Officer Jones?’ Gabi says.

  ‘Maybe I woulda done it different if my partner was there, but I thought maybe the killer was still nearby. I was looking for a car pulling away, someone running. I called it in on my phone while I was driving. Got half a mile and then turned around. I couldn’t leave him lying there.’

  ‘That was good thinking, using your phone,’ Miranda says, mildly. ‘None of you boneheads would have thought of that.’

  ‘A lot of civilians got police scanners,’ Sparkles says. ‘I didn’t want rubberneckers. It didn’t seem right.’

  ‘It’s good protocol,’ Gabi says. ‘We can almost guarantee there will be another body, and when that turns up, let’s keep it on our mobiles.’

  ‘The department gonna pay for my minutes?’ Croff moans.

  ‘Oh, spare me!’ Washington looks up from her file at last. ‘When there’s another body, there’s another body. We all got plenty of our own to deal with. I’m sorry this little boy got killed. It’s horrible. But it’s one murder. Why should you get all the resources?’

  ‘Washington!’ Miranda warns. But Gabi doesn’t blame her. There are cases that catch all the attention. Kids especially. The whole department was obsessed with that little girl who got raped and murdered downtown several years ago. But in the meantime, there’s a killer who’s been gunning down prostitutes for five years. Washington’s been following him since her Vice days. Same MO every time – shoots them in the face. Thirteen down and counting, a baker’s dozen of hate. Never any witnesses. Nobody wants to talk. And besides, the feeling is that it’s just a bunch of whores. ‘City should put him on payroll for pest control,’ she’s heard some of the dickheads in this very department say.

  ‘Just like your killer, Ovella, this is unlikely to be a once-off. There’s a good chance of another mutilated corpse turning up. Might be six months, might be tomorrow. Our guy’s probably done practice rounds in the past.’

  ‘I’ll take that,’ Stricker says. He likes the pitbull work, the kind you can dig your teeth into.

  ‘I need everyone on it.’ Gabi picks up the black marker and tries to write ‘John Doe’ on the board, but the ink gives out halfway. ‘Goddammit.’ She tries another pen.

  ‘Shouldn’t it be John Fawn?’ Croff jokes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The deer. It wasn’t a doe.’

  ‘All right,’ she concedes, rubbing out ‘doe’ and replacing it with ‘fawn’.

  ‘John Yearling,’ Boyd musters. ‘Unlike you pussies, I spend time in the woods.’

  ‘Bambi,’ Stricker says.

  And that settles it. There is that frisson of rightness, everyone smiling and nodding. Coffee and black humor: the fuel that keeps cops going.

  ‘Very cute,’ Miranda says. ‘I hear anyone referring to this body as Bambi in public and I’ll put you on traffic duty forever. Do not write that down, Versado.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ She scrubs ‘Bambi’ and goes back to ‘John Doe’.

  Under that, she writes:

  ID the body

  Find the murder scene

  Motivation

  Murders with similar MOs

  Boyd: Hunting associations, park rangers, nature clubs

  ‘Aw, shit,’ her partner complains.

  ‘Us pussies couldn’t possibly interview big bad hunter types,’ Gabi mocks. ‘You’ve already got an in.’

  ‘That’s true. But season’s in full swing. You got a million registered hunters in Michigan alone. You want me to go through all of them?’

  ‘You could start with the ones with any kind of record for violence.’

  ‘Apart from shooting widdle animals, you mean?’ Croff says in an Elmer Fudd voice, working his hustle for all it’s worth. Every department has workers and slugs, and Croff is definitely Team Mollusc. He lets Stricker do the hard stuff and relies on his smart mouth and leaning on his connections for the rest.

  ‘Domestic assault charges. Unnecessary cruelty to animals. Shooting out of season.’

  ‘Was it a white-tail or a black-tail?’

  Gabi takes the photograph off the wall and hands it to B
oyd. ‘White. That any help determining where the animal came from?’

  Boyd puts on his glasses and squints at the photo. ‘Means it’s from a local population. Black-tail would have been better. He would have had to bring it in from Oregon or Canada. It would have been much easier to trace.’

  ‘There are deer on Belle Isle,’ Sparkles says.

  ‘Those are European,’ Boyd scoffs. ‘Fallow deer. This animal is definitely a white-tail, five months old.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Hasn’t lost its spots yet,’ he says smugly, tapping the white flecks on the flank.

  ‘And fawning happens in May or June,’ Washington says. ‘Don’t make out like it’s rocket science, Bob.’

  ‘So we know it’s probably from Michigan state, and probably killed recently because the age matches up, more or less.’

  ‘Unless the killer has a freezer full of dead fawns,’ Stricker says.

  ‘Point,’ Gabi says. ‘It’s a good fit. Did he get lucky on the first go, or is there a pile of dead deer somewhere of all the ones that didn’t match? Bob, I want you to add taxidermists to your list.’

  ‘Give me a break! I’ve already got a million hunters. Where the fuck am I supposed to get that?’

  ‘There’s probably a professional association,’ Stricker says. ‘Look on the Internet.’

  ‘That sounded a lot like you volunteering.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll take it.’

  ‘Fine,’ Gabi says. ‘And look into associated stuff too.’

  Stricker: Taxidermy. Circus freak shows. Other

  She can’t help thinking that ‘other’ is not a bad category for their relationship. The divorce rate among cops is high. Not un-coincidentally, high levels of interdepartmental affairs, too. The bosses will turn a blind eye if you keep it on the down-low. She didn’t get involved in any of that while she and William were still trying to work things out. But here she is now, screwing brutally competent Detective Stricker on those days their off-duties coincide.

  ‘All right, so what’s the motivation? Apart from being a sick fuck?’

  ‘It’s on display. He wants attention,’ Washington says.

  ‘Not like he put it up on a pedestal on the riverwalk.’

  ‘But she’s right. He did want it to be found. He’s not trying to cover it up. Kid and an animal.’

  ‘Black kid and an animal,’ Washington points out. ‘What’s that say?’

  ‘Could be racially motivated.’

  Washington: Race crimes / local hate groups

  ‘What about Satanists?’ Croff says. ‘Could be an occult murder.’

  ‘Sure.’ Gabi rolls her eyes.

  ‘Or voodoo hoodoo shit.’

  Satanists. Occult. Voodoo hoodoo shit

  ‘You good with that, Ovella?’

  She folds her arms, revealing glittering fingertips – the diamanté appliqués on her nails lead a lot of people to underestimate her. ‘Because I’m black? Or because I’m Catholic?’

  ‘Satanists are usually white,’ Boyd chips in, trying to be helpful.

  ‘That’s racist,’ Croff grins. ‘You’re insulting Satanists of color.’

  ‘You wanna throw in the Michigan Dogman?’ Washington complains.

  ‘Knock it off,’ Gabi says. ‘We need warm bodies on the phone calling the other precincts and districts on broadly similar murders. Don’t let anyone try to dump their cold cases on you.’

  ‘Can I sit down now?’ the rookie asks.

  ‘Not yet, Sparkles. Was there anything else you noticed at the scene?’

  ‘There was no blood or nothing. And he looked real peaceful. I think he didn’t even see it coming.’

  ‘Don’t speculate on that until we have more facts.’

  ‘Forensics?’ Miranda pushes.

  ‘I’m going to see the ME after this,’ Gabi says. ‘The dismemberment would have been fatal and there was a wound to the back of his head, near the base of his skull.’

  ‘And the glue holding the two parts together?’

  ‘I’ve put in a priority request for identifying the bonding agent. Industrial, probably, which should make it easier to trace. But testing is going to take a few weeks unless we can get a lead.’

  She writes in her own name.

  Versado: Autopsy / Adhesive

  ‘ETA on the results?’ Miranda asks.

  ‘Six to ten days. Would have been longer, but we piqued their interest. It’s a nice change from bullet wounds and semen.’

  Sparkles is still musing. ‘There was a lot of graffiti at the scene, but I guess that’s normal.’

  Gabi scans the photographs. ‘Might be worth checking out the tags.’

  ‘What, the killer left his signature?’ Croff snipes. ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’

  ‘Like the idiot who murdered his wife and posted the picture on Facebook?’ she says, honey-sweet. ‘Or the knucklehead who robbed the gas station on Dearborn two weeks ago still wearing his McDonald's namebadge? Criminals do stupid things all the time.’

  Suspicious graffiti tags

  ‘You got an ID on your kid yet?’ Miranda asks.

  ‘Stricker and Boyd started on that this morning.’

  ‘Pulled all our missing kids reports and put in a request with the other precincts. Got about a hundred we’re going through. Ditched the girls already, working through the boys. Lucky it was cold out, so he looks like he looks.’

  She knows what Luke means. Preserved. Couple of days in July, and he’d be swelled up like the Michelin Man. She had that once with a teenager pulled out the water after three days. Her mother kept saying, ‘Nah, nah, that ain’t my baby. My baby ain’t fat like that, my baby ain’t got those chubby cheeks.’ It took two hours to persuade her otherwise, and she only succeeded because of the tattoo of the seahorse on the girl’s ankle. Gabi gets it: you don’t want to believe. Not in real life.

  ‘We could hand over the kid’s photo to the press,’ Boyd says.

  ‘We are not releasing the photo,’ Miranda says.

  ‘Doesn’t have to be the whole thing. Crop it to a head shot.’

  ‘You gonna make me repeat myself?’

  ‘Just saying.’ Boyd scratches his beard.

  ‘We’ll give it another day. It’s going to be traumatic enough for the family without seeing it in the press.’

  ‘Can I come with you to the medical examiner?’ the rookie says. ‘I found him. I feel like I should see him through.’

  ‘Fine by me, Sparkles,’ Gabi says. ‘If your precinct commander signs off on it. But you better know that if you’re in, you’ve bought a ticket for the whole ride. I will use you.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Ovella, can you get on the Michigan Intelligence Center? Mike, you’ve got a friend in the FBI, right?’

  ‘I don’t have any friends, Gabriella, you know that.’ No, just three kids and a happy marriage to a human resources manager. It’s what makes him such a colossal wise-ass. He can afford to be.

  ‘If you could talk to someone with access to a better database than we have, that would be helpful. And it would be worth a beer.’

  ‘Make it a six-pack.’

  ‘Okay, people, everybody clear? You find anything, you let me know soon as.’

  ‘What if we run out of minutes and have to radio it in?’ Sparkles asks.

  ‘Use a code.’

  ‘How about “Faline”?’ Croff says, tapping away at his smartphone.

  ‘What’s that?’

  He turns the screen to show them. ‘Bambi’s girlfriend in the movie. And that’s you now, isn’t it, Gabriella?’

  There’s enough laughter that she lets it go. ‘Fine. Faline it is. Everyone else, we’re calling in to all the precincts. Similar stiffs, MOs, any connections. Start local, go as far as it takes. Biggest priority is identifying the boy and finding the rest of him. The deer too.’ She writes it down. The marker gives out on her halfway through ‘find the rest’. She throws it at the wal
l.

  ‘Is there one fucking pen in this precinct that writes?’

  BEFORE

  History of Art

  Clayton disappeared into the work. Otherwise he had too much time to think, about his cracked windshield and the dent in his grill and the blood on the tarpaulin in the back of his truck. Everything was so muddled in his head. The memories were like silverfish, that skittered away into dark corners. It was easier to look away than try to grab hold of them.

  (Don’t look in the refrigerator.)

  Besides, the work was flowing. He was inspired. Like he hadn’t been since he was twenty years old, when he was too young and too stupid to have doubts about what he was doing. He could slip away into it, like diving into the deepest part of the lake: the same pressure in his head, the tightening in his ears, the hurt in his chest, aching for air.

  When he surfaced, blinking in the fluorescent light in the basement, hours had gone by. Days maybe. His body reasserted itself with all its tiresome urges. His stomach roiled with hunger, his back ached, his hands were cramped, with fresh calluses. But he had new work, in new materials, finally making use of all the things he had squirreled away in his basement over the years; pieces made of clay and wire and newspaper and reclaimed wood. Strange and beautiful work, like he’d never made before. The sculpture he’d promised Patrick languished untouched in the yard. It seemed brutish and clumsy now. But he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t trust himself to judge. He could be going mad, he decided.

  The last time he had black-outs was nearly ten years ago, when he was drinking too much at the squat in Eastern Market. He’d hustled his way in among the youngsters, because it felt alive and vibrant: a real arts scene, like Paris in the twenties, or New York in the seventies, nineties Berlin. But he didn’t fit in. He was too old, his work was too strange, he didn’t know how to talk to the endless stream of girls, with their tattoos and bright hair, who came to hang out, to pose for portraits or be photographed, usually topless, sometimes naked.