The Girl In The Morgue
California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series Book 4
by
D. D. VanDyke
with
P. D. Workman
The Girl In The Morgue
Published by David VanDyke and Reaper Press on Smashwords
Copyright 2017 David VanDyke
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62626-204-1
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Carl Sandberg’s poem “Fog” is in the public domain.
Table of Contents
Books by David VanDyke
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Books by D.D. VanDyke
D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.
California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends - Book 1
(Includes Off The Leash short story)
In a Bind - Book 2
Slipknot - Book 3
The Girl In The Morgue - Book 4
Books by David VanDyke
Plague Wars: Decade One
The Eden Plague
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin
Nearest Night
Plague Wars: Alien Invasion
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes The Destroyer
Forge and Steel
Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest
Starship Conquest
Desolator: Conquest
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Conquest and Empire
For more information visit http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/
Cover by Jun Ares
Chapter One
November, 2005
“You don’t own me!” Jenna Duncan shouted past the chrome handgun pointed at her chest.
“Didn’t say I do.” The gun’s wielder made an offhand shrugging gesture with the weapon. “But you wanted the money, and now you’ll do what you’re told. We have an arrangement. You can’t back out now. You made a deal. You made commitments.”
“You’re going too far. I won’t.”
“It would be sad if something happened to you. Or to your annoying retard son.”
Jenna’s voice guttered with incipient rage. “You keep away from him.”
“Sure, so long as you do what I say. Then we’ll both be happy, won’t we?”
Jenna’s eyes darted around the room, looking for some way to take control of a situation that had no escape. Her opponent held a .45 this time, not the knife she’d been threatened with on other occasions.
She was prepared for a blade. Jenna was good with a blade herself, but a sharp edge usually came second to a bullet. If she drew fire, she’d have no second chances…second chances to do what she’d resolved to do, come what may.
For her son, for herself, she couldn’t live with a boot on her neck anymore.
There came a rattle at the outside of the apartment door, as of someone with keys. The gun shifted away from Jenna at the distraction and she seized the opportunity, snatching the nearest weapon, a dagger displayed on a side table. It seemed ornamental, but it was deliberately razored carbon steel.
Lunging to close the distance between them, Jenna brought the dagger up and aimed for the soft spot beneath her tormenter’s ribs.
Her opponent snarled and blocked instinctively with both hands. Jenna’s dagger skittered off the handgun and found flesh through the wielder’s long sleeves, and she sliced and stabbed desperately in short, quick motions, trying for a vital spot. Blood welled, was absorbed by clothing, but didn’t surge with the arterial pump she craved.
Not deep enough, her brain screamed.
And then: oh, shit, as her target’s trigger finger tightened, face a mask of rage.
The first round hit Jenna like a truck, stopping her in her tracks. Stunned, she didn’t quite believe it was real. The second and third shots took her to her knees. She could feel the blood soaking her chest and knew she was in trouble. Dropping the blade from nerveless fingers, she held her hands out in front of her as if to stop any more shots.
But it was a fruitless gesture.
Not fair! Not fair! The inane thought gripped her.
By the time more bullets tore into her, she’d mercifully lost consciousness.
Chapter Two
The phone on the bedside table startled California “Cal” Corwin from sleep, shattering her steamy dream. In it, a composite of homicide detective Tanner Brody and the enigmatic Englishman called Thomas had been rubbing sunscreen on her naked shoulders and upper chest as she sat in a deck chair looking out at the Honolulu skyline over the rail of a cruise ship. She felt cheated that fantasy wouldn’t be fulfilled now.
“What?” Cal snarled into the cordless handset, fumbling to turn her clock radio toward her. Twelve thirty-one. Technically, Monday morning.
She might have known. New cases always seemed to come on Mondays. She should have turned off the damn phone.
“Sorry to call so late, solntse, but it’s important,” Uncle Sergei’s gravelly voice said in the earpiece.
Cal rolled back under the covers to get away from the chill autumn fog of the City by the Bay. Most every evening it crept in on little cat feet, looking over harbor and houses on silent haunches before moving on, to quote Carl Sandburg. She liked to leave her window open just a crack for the fresh air, but it raised goosebumps on her skin as she waited for Sergei to continue.
Snowflake’s own little cat feet protested, pushing against Cal’s leg through the blanket. The Russian White mrowed, and Cal let him slip under into the warmth. “What’s going on, Sergei?”
“You sound angry. You not up this hour?”
“I’m on the wagon, remember? That means no poker. Just sleep.”
“Ah, prosti. But you know Jenna, my waitress?”
“Of course.” Cal remembered the statuesque girl, early twenties, with ink, piercings, and muscles. She dressed in a style somewhere between Goth and Biker Chick. Sassy and competent. Heavy makeup. Very attractive, to a certain type of person.
“She is dead.”
“Shit.” Cal rubbed her temples, feeling a tension he
adache spring to life. She didn’t mind staying up late, but being jerked out of sleep was one of her least favorite sensations. The older she got, the worse it felt. “How’d it happen?”
“They say her boyfriend kill her. He call police. Confessed.”
“So, case closed. What do you need me for?”
“He claim self-defense. He says she attack him with knife and he had to shoot her.”
“Yeah?”
“Eight times. With forty-five caliber hollowpoints.”
The back of Cal’s neck itched as the hair stood up. The commonest forty-five automatic, the Model 1911, usually held eight rounds—seven in the magazine and one in the chamber. A cannon like that could blow a fist-sized hole in a human being with each expanding lead bullet. Against a girl with a knife? Two, maybe three shots would be overkill. Unless there was more to the story, which Sergei clearly thought there was.
Cal rubbed her eyes. “When did this happen?”
“Nine o’clock tonight. I just find out.”
“Last night, you mean, dammit. Did the boyfriend have any injuries?”
“Yes…” There was a note of doubt in Sergei’s voice.
“So, maybe he overreacted to being stabbed.”
“Wounds were superficial only.”
“Still, when the adrenaline kicks in… Maybe he was drunk or high?”
“Maybe. Cal, I need you. Jenna, she was good girl. She deserve the truth.”
Cal sighed. She knew she would end up saying yes. “SFPD Homicide might have a stick up its collective ass, but they’re not incompetent. I’m sure they’re already grilling him to find out the truth, because his self-defense claim stinks to high heaven already. What do you think I can do?”
“You come talk to me at the bar. I don’t need police in my business, ponimayesh?”
Cal owed her dead father’s best friend far too much to turn down his request, no matter how inconvenient. “Okay, Uncle Sergei. I’ll be right there. You have someone to watch my car?”
“Da.”
“Ten minutes.”
Snowflake mrowed again in complaint as Cal threw on her clothes and loaded up with the usual slate of gear. Moving in the circles she did, she had to be prepared. Jeans, blouse, blazer, licensed Glock on her hip, extra mags and other cop-type stuff on her belt. High-tech nylon boots favored by police and the military completed her outfit. They were perfect for holding an extra cell phone and lockblade and kept her holdout’s ankle holster from slipping.
“Sorry, boy, you’ll have to sleep alone tonight.” Or Snowflake might deign to sneak downstairs to Starlight’s room if he could bring himself to join her two Pekingese on the bed.
Speak of the devil, there her mother stood as Cal tiptoed down the stairs. “Oh. Hi, Mom.”
“Starlight,” Cal’s mother corrected automatically. She hugged her macramé shawl around herself, looking exactly like the aging hippie Yoko Ono clone she was. Worry etched her face. Worry for Cal and for herself. “I heard the phone and then you clomping around up there. Do you have to go?”
Starlight’s usual carefree attitude toward security had undergone a radical shift since she’d been kidnapped a few months back. Someone once said a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged, and Starlight certainly fit that bill. Cal used to have to lock all the doors herself. Now, her mother did it, checking several times a day. And she kept her cell phone in her pocket. At fifty-five years of age, Starlight had finally joined the ranks of adults.
This new common sense was a good thing. Still, Cal couldn’t shake the feeling that an era had ended, one that had begun in the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love and still lingered in dwindling pockets of San Francisco. That golden innocence had faded over the decades, never to return.
Cal hugged her mother, feeling her too-thin body beneath the wrap. Vegan cuisine and yoga had preserved her girlish figure, but feeling Starlight’s bones beneath her insufficient flesh worried Cal. “It was Sergei. One of his waitresses has been killed. The boyfriend confessed but things aren’t adding up so he wants me to look into it.”
Starlight’s face softened into a smile. “Sergei…”
“You should see him sometime.”
Sergei had been one of Starlight’s many lovers way back when, and Cal wasn’t sure the relationship ended with her parents’ wedding. But Cal’s father was long gone, in the flesh at least, and maybe seeing an old flame would pull her mother out of her funk.
“That would be nice. Could you ask him to come by?”
“Why don’t you visit him?” Cal asked. “It would be good for you to get out of the house.”
Starlight’s brow creased. “Maybe.”
Her reluctance only increased Cal’s anxiety. She kissed her mother’s forehead. “Okay. I gotta go. Eat something with fat and protein, will you? You’re wasting away.”
Starlight didn’t reply. She gripped Cal’s arm a moment too long.
As Cal exited the front door, she heard the bolt slide behind her. It grated like the death of innocence.
The short, chill walk to her office’s private parking lot to pick up Molly, her rally-tuned Subaru Impreza, got Cal’s blood pumping. The rumble and whine of the turbocharged six shot adrenaline into Cal’s veins, as it always did. Better than coffee, though Cal wouldn’t have turned down a cup of joe right now.
Seven minutes of foggy driving later, Cal pulled up in front of Vyazma, Sergei’s dive bar and underground card room. One of his men opened the door and nodded as she headed for the stairs leading downward. He would keep an eye on Molly and fend off any of the scum who drifted through the Tenderloin looking for an easy score.
Inside, it was business as usual, which meant a lightly trafficked bar and grill area in front and a half-full private card room in back. Cal yearned for the padded tables with their cool green felt, the rattle of the chips, and the crisp cards beneath her fingertips. The eternal hope that when she turned up their edges for a peek, she’d see a pair of kings or aces. The breathless rush of expectation when she did.
But Cal steeled herself against the siren song and waved at Sergei, who came out from behind the bar to kiss both of her cheeks, Russian style. “Speak in my office.” He motioned toward it.
Cal led the way. “How’s Rostislav?”
“Working part time. He’s too tough to stay down long.”
“Glad to hear it.”
The big man had taken bullets for Cal less than a month ago. She’d visited him in the hospital and his face lit up every time he saw her. It made no sense to Cal. She was the cause of his pain, so why would seeing her make him happy?
Uncle Sergei said men love women because they represent life, beauty, warmth, and the future. It sounded logical, even poetic. But when Cal tried to apply it to herself, it was like a piece from the wrong puzzle. She wasn’t the type who kept the home fires burning. She was out on the streets pistol-whipping back the night. She was tough, scarred, and more than a little rough around the edges. Prickly, Thomas would say.
Sergei waved Cal to a leather upholstered chair in his neat office cubbyhole. He sat on a short filing cabinet and fished out a bottle of vodka and two water glasses, pouring a dash into hers and four fingers into his. “Za vas.” He upended his glass and gulped.
Cal tossed back hers with a grimace. Straight liquor wasn’t her preference, but with old-school Russians, there was no other way. She set the glass down. “So, tell me about Jenna.”
Sergei stared past Cal. “Jenna Duncan. Like I said, good girl. Had son, four years old. Steady boyfriend named Randy, the one they say killed her. She show up on time and work hard. I was thinking maybe she would become assistant manager.”
Cal lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “You trusted her that much?”
“She was like you, solntse…tough, smart, good heart. I wish you knew her better.”
Cal looked away in the face of emotion she couldn’t share. “Maybe it’s better I didn’t. I can be more objective.”
S
ergei leaned forward and grabbed her arm. “I do not want objective, Cal. I want angry. I want the mudak who did this. I want to make him pay!”
Cal frowned and patted his hand, then gently disengaged his claw-like fingers. “You said the boyfriend confessed.”
“Boyfriend is not the killer. Jenna was happy with Randy. She talk nice about him. No troubles. Confession is too convenient. It make no sense. Cops, they are happy to close the case. Not me.” Sergei picked up a thick envelope lying in the middle of his desk and held it out. “Here is money. I am now your client. Da?”
Cal took it and looked inside. Five thousand or so, in various denominations. She didn’t bother trying to refuse the payment. She knew he wouldn’t be dissuaded. Besides, she would have expenses. Anyone who thought a private investigation could be run on the cheap had another think coming.
“Da. I’ll take the case.”
Some of the lines in Sergei’s face smoothed and his shoulders relaxed. He nodded. “You need more, you ask. And when you find who did it, you come here to me right away.” He punctuated his words by thumping a thick finger on the top of his desk for emphasis.
Cal cocked her head at him. “So you can make him disappear?”
Sergei grunted and folded his arms across his chest. “Best you not know these things.”
“Right now, you’re a loaded gun looking for a target. Let’s make sure it’s the right target first.” Cal could just see Sergei doing something stupid in a fit of mistaken vengeance. She couldn’t stop him from settling scores, but at least she would try to temper his response to something short of “bloodbath.”
SFPD liked to think they were in control, but the truth was, they merely patrolled the surface of the city’s dark, ugly waters. The denizens of the deep were the ones who really ran the streets. The best that law enforcement could do was net the worst of the offenders to keep the predation suppressed.
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