by Rick Murcer
Detective Ruiz walked to the yellow keypad, typed in six numbers, pulled his weapon, and hit the “open” button.
“Your weapon?” asked Manny.
“Hell, I don’t know. This is creeping me out.”
“The coroner techs were already in there, so I think you need to relax.”
Ruiz sighed, reholstering his Beretta Px4 Storm. “You’re right. Damn, I need a drink.”
“I’m in,” said Sophie.
“Make it three,” added Dean.
The door swung partially open, hesitated, then continued. As they took two steps inside, Manny heard a muffled pop, then a crash just as the fluorescent lights in the morgue blinked out.
Chapter-27
The headlights blurred past as residents of San Juan drove to their nighttime destinations, oblivious to any other world but their own. Randall Fogerty understood that—in fact, better than most. If one’s world wasn’t the most important, then what was the sense of being alive? He’d never understood the “die for my loved ones” bullshit that people espoused. When the rubber met the road, they’d choose to save their hypocritical asses. He’d seen it up close too many times to think differently.
His thoughts turned to Amanda, again. He’d avenge her death because that was how it was done in this world of his, and not just because she was family, but because it was the way.
There wasn’t much else a man of action like himself could do. He had an empire to run, which, over the years, had become his real family, his most important interest, his only true love.
Amanda had spent most of her time away from him over the last three years and that had led to an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality they both secretly enjoyed.
In a way, he almost felt relief. Since the day she was born, he had been waiting for this shoe to drop, and now it finally had. One of his competitors—no doubt one of them was the responsible party—would pay. Then the scale would be balanced.
His competitors.
Maybe it was time to take over another one, to build the kingdom even more. The rest already feared him, he knew that. Once word got out that his daughter had been murdered, the men who ran the other cartels would get messages to him that they had nothing to do with it. But one of them would be lying, and he’d figure it out.
Braxton brought him out of his thoughts.
“Sir, where would ya like us ta start?”
“Straight to see the detectives. Then we’ll do a little investigation of our own. We need to take care of this pronto.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled in front of La Uniformada in the Hayo Rey area of San Juan.
The night duty officer looked up from his computer as Fogerty passed through the tinted lobby doors of the old, five-story building. He watched as the thick officer quickly slammed the laptop’s cover down and put his wire-rimmed glasses back on his chubby face, all in one motion.
Damn. Is everyone on this island a lard-ass?
And this one, no doubt, was watching porn on the job. Fogerty shook his head. Cops like this one made it easy to do what he did with minimal risk.
“How can I help you, senõr?” asked the officer.
Randall glanced at the officer’s name tag and smiled, knowing if he didn’t force the smile, he might kill the man just because he felt like it.
“Officer Malaga, I’m here to see Detective Ruiz or Crouse. I’ve just been to the morgue and was instructed to visit here for details regarding the death of my daughter.”
Malaga’s eyes narrowed as he scanned Fogerty up and down.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
“There’s been a disturbance at the morgue and the detectives you asked for, along with some of those FBI assholes, won’t be back for a few hours.”
“What kind of disturbance?”
Standing, the large man folded his arms. “I can’t go into that, but I know the detectives would want to speak with you, Senõr Fogerty.”
Fogerty moved closer to the desk, and the officer flinched.
“Is that so? I’ve not even told you my name or why I went to the morgue.” His voice became quieter. “So how did you know it was me?”
Fogerty watched as a pudgy finger hit a red button just to the left of his computer. Almost instantaneously, six officers rushed into the lobby from three different doors, all with guns pulled and pointing them at his head. He slowly raised his arms.
“What is going on?”
Malaga waddled out from behind the desk, cuffs in hand.
“There is an APB out for you, senõr. It seems you were the last one at the morgue before the call came in— now the attendant is dead and a body is missing.”
Fogerty gritted his teeth, fighting for control as Malaga reached for his wrists.
“If I’d done such a thing, why would I march in here to speak to your detectives?”
Malaga snapped the cuffs shut.
“I don’t know and don’t care. You can explain it all to the detectives and those Feds when they get back.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake, officer.”
“Yes? That’s what all of you muchachaus say.” He laughed.
Bending close to Malaga, Fogerty whispered in his ear. “Yes, but not all of them are going to rip out your throat when they get released.”
Malaga’s face went from smug to shocked in a nanosecond.
Before the officer could respond, the sliding door opened, letting in the warm night air, as a huge man entered the room.
Braxton strolled directly toward his boss and Malaga. “Sir, is everyting okay?”
Three of the officers turned their weapons toward his number one. He needed to defuse this now, or there’d be seven dead cops, all caught on video, no doubt.
“It’s fine, Braxton. Go back out to the car and wait. It’s a misunderstanding. I’ll make a call and be out shortly . . . after the detectives and I have a heart-to-heart.”
Braxton scanned the room and broke into a wide smile. “Dat will be a conversation for sure.”
Then he was out the door.
“What the hell did that mean?” asked Malaga.
Randall smiled. “I’ll let your boss tell you. I believe I’ll make that call now.”
Chapter-28
“Damn it! What the hell was that?” yelled Sophie. “And why the blackout?”
“I don’t know, but maybe pulling your weapons isn’t such a bad idea,” said Manny.
He didn’t have to say it twice. Everyone except the two CSIs held their weapons steady, pointing at the now darkened morgue.
Manny went over the sound in his mind trying to figure out exactly what he’d heard. His first, and reoccurring thought, was that a stack of packages had been pushed over. But by who or what? The perp? Fogerty? Not likely. Whoever had done this was gone.
Rats? It wasn’t uncommon for that to happen, especially in big cities with a large daily body count. Particularly in areas where the standards for rodent control weren’t high. He had read an article just last month of that same problem in India. Rat’s had eaten and destroyed several corpses, including one that had been integral in a murder investigation.
“Could it be rats?” he said.
“Oh shit. Really?” strained Crouse.
“Yeah, what she said,” said Sophie. “I hate them.”
“He could be right. We had that problem a couple of years ago,” said Ruiz.
Chloe moved beside Manny, Josh a step behind.
“If that’s a rat, we’d better find bigger guns, because it’d be a big one,” said Chloe.
Her voice was all her own and he couldn’t help thinking how much he loved it. It was just one more reason his heart couldn’t keep steady around her, especially in these situations. She helped him live. Maybe the Bureau was right; when she was this close to him, he didn’t always think straight, and that could be a problem.
Shaking off her influence, at least for the moment, he walked to the keypad, found the light switch with the round timers
attached, and turned it clockwise. The lights flickered back to life.
“What the hell?” asked Ruiz. “How did you do that?”
“I suspected they were on a timer and motion detector. Most late night offices are. But that’s not the issue here. Let’s check this out.”
“You first,” said Sophie. “We got your ass, er, back.”
“Thanks, I hope,” said Manny.
“I’ll go with you,” said Josh.
“Not afraid of rats?”
“Only if they’re packing Uzis or armed like the Three Musketeers.”
“If they are, just run like hell.”
Manny moved to the right side of the opened doors as the last bank of lights regained their full brightness. The silence was broken by the subtle buzzing released by the lights. Scanning the room, he saw four steel tables. Each equipped with all of the necessary tools to complete an ordinary autopsy. It was hard not to think of how many people had that jagged ‘V’ carved on their chest in this room. He understood that the people were no longer there, but still . . .
Damn. A little morbid, aren’t we?
His eyes moved slowly from right to left, looking for anything, or anyone, that could explain the noise they heard. He stopped at the small, opened, three-by-three door on the left bank of body storage units and noticed the rack that had held a body was still fully extended. He frowned. The perp had propped it open with something.
“Shit,” he sighed.
“What?” asked Josh.
“Come to this side.”
Josh shuffled cautiously to Manny and looked where he was pointing.
“Another arm?” he whispered.
“Yeah. The perp jammed that door open with it.”
Taking another step deeper into the room. Manny noticed a door marked SUPPLIES, a gender-neutral restroom, and a triple sink, dressed with small hoses and soaps and disinfectants. But nothing living appeared to be around.
The morgue was clean, and he recognized the smells of antiseptics and soap, except there was an underlying odor.
“No rats or Uzis,” said Josh nervously.
Pointing to the supply closet, he motioned to Josh. By then, Ruiz, Chloe, and Sophie had entered the room. Crouse stood outside, gun raised, per procedure. He made eye contact with Sophie. She nodded and then guided the others over to the restroom door.
Manny was struck with a déjà vu he’d thought long buried. This was the same situation when they’d found Christina Perez hanging from the closet on the Ocean Duchess, her pretty face missing eyes that they’d later found in a jar on the patio. She’d been a victim of the now-deceased Fredrick Argyle. He felt his heart rate climb. He wasn’t sure he'd be ready for something like that again, ever.
Josh gave him a look. Manny nodded and opened the door an inch. A second later, sure there was no booby trap, he tore open the door.
He watched Josh’s eyes grow wide, then he let loose a pent-up breath.
“Nothing but plastic bags and latex gloves,” said Josh softly.
“That’ll make Dough Boy happy,” whispered Sophie.
“It made me happy, too,” said Josh, relief painted on his face.
“Not like Dough Boy,” she replied with a wink.
Manny watched her turn to Ruiz and Chloe who were waiting at the restroom door. Ruiz placed his hand on the door as Chloe backed up, widened her stance, and raised her Glock 19. Sophie moved forward to within a foot of the door’s opening radius and waited. No one was breathing as Sophie motioned to Ruiz to open the door a crack, like he’d done at the closet. Good girl. She was making sure there were no wires that would blow them all into the next life. Ruiz caressed it open an inch. The odor that had been subtle became more prevalent. Sulfur, but not as intense. More like a rotten egg, but sweeter.
He raised his hand for her to stop, but to her credit, Sophie wrinkled her nose, waved him off, and nodded to Ruiz to open it farther. The detective took a breath and swept the door open in one motion.
Sophie took one step inside; gun raised high, and stopped so fast he thought she had run into something, or someone.
Manny had seen Sophie at her best and, once in a while, at her worst, but never had he seen that look as she turned to find his face. Talk about dead eyes.
Not wasting any time, he busted through the corridor of the room and felt his heart sink. No, that wasn’t right: his heart fell.
From behind, he heard someone ask God for help. A good idea.
“I’ll take that drink now,” whispered Sophie.
Chapter-29
Alex walked boldly into the restroom, Dean at his heels.
Is this for real?
He quickly turned back to Manny. “Are you shitting me with this?”
Manny raised his hands to the ceiling.
Alex had been with Manny and Sophie for a long time, and they had weathered Argyle’s take on modern art, but this abomination was subhuman. He closed his eyes and recited a mantra he’d concocted in grad school just for a situation like this one.
It’s only biology, only tissue and bone, not a person. The person is gone.
Dean touched his arm. Alex gave him a quick glance, then a nervous grin, and went to work . . . almost. He hesitated one last time and looked to see if he really saw what was there a moment ago. It was.
The first stall of two was open and sitting on the stool was what looked like a ravaged body, but looking closer, it clearly wasn’t just one body, but a conglomerate of several bodies. All different races, ages, and in different stages of decomposition. The head—that of a young man with long hair and a beard—had been partially destroyed, apparently from the inside out, and now rested in the “lap” of this grotesque statue.
Blowing a breath, Dean took three pictures, then let the camera dangle around his neck.
“Wow, what a mess,” he said.
“No denying that, but they were already dead so the unsub just rearranged them. He or she must have used that sword or whatever on all of them,” said Alex.
Bending close, Dean squinted, then began to nod. “The cuts were made so that they would fit together to make something entirely different.”
Alex felt Manny and Sophie over his shoulder and turned to face them.
“Josh and the others are pulling open each drawer and making a list of each body part that’s missing in the drawers that have been. . . disturbed. Maybe that’ll help give us a lead or two,” said Manny.
“Good. It’ll take us a couple of hours to process this room and then we can get the parts back where they belong. But that’s not why you’re standing here, is it?”
Manny shook his head. “The obvious question is why? Then there are a few million other situations running through my head. For instance: how is this related to the body in the lobby? What was the sound we heard just before the lights went out? And since I’m about 99.9 percent sure Fogerty had nothing to do with this, who did it?”
“I’ve said this before, but you almost never ask a question you don’t know the answer to,” said Sophie.
“Let me interject something here. I’m not sure about the who and why questions, but I can tell you about the sound we heard before we got in here and that will explain why the head looks like it does,” said Dean.
“Have at it, Mucus,” said Sophie.
“It’s Mikus.”
After what Alex thought was a brief blush, brought on by a slight smile that Sophie probably didn’t even realize she showed, Dean put his hands in his pockets and then spoke.
“The smell, the one kind of like sulfur, but sweeter, is nitroglycerin, or some close derivative. It’s worse once it detonates. It can hang in the air, especially in a closed area.”
“What? Nitro?” asked Manny.
“Yeah. I’m kind of a geek when it comes to explosives.”
“You? A geek? No way,” said Sophie.
“Let him finish, smartass,” said Alex, frowning.
“Okay. Damn. Still touchy, I see.”
&n
bsp; “Anyway, I had a case in LA where the killer, a stripper in one of those high-priced clubs where anything goes, was working her way through grad school as a chemistry major, and she had offed one of her clients after he beat her up. She managed, somehow, to place nitro on the inside of his cell phone, right on the battery, and then when she dialed his number, the electrical charge ignited, or I should say detonated, the nitro. It blew his weenie to Long Beach along with half of his guts.”
“I know that stuff is deadly, but it’s so unstable. How did she manage to keep it from blowing up in her face?” asked Alex, feeling more and more comfortable with his odd, but talented, new partner.
“She wouldn’t say, but I think she got lucky. Besides, although that stuff’s scary, it can be handled safely. She could have mixed it with gun cotton, dissolved it in an acetone and created a thin cord, which is more stable, but will still explode with the best of those mixes.”
“What’s that got to do—?” Alex watched the light go on in Manny’s face and knew this investigation was now hitting the next level.
“Show me what you’re thinking,” said Manny.
Dean shuffled into the stall, wearing blue latex booties, matching hairnet, and latex gloves. Alex glanced at Sophie and almost laughed out loud with her. He snapped a picture from his own camera and knew they’d “discuss” Mikus’s dress code at a more appropriate time, but he did feel some of the tension leave his body. Always a good thing for a science guy.
Picking up the head carefully, Dean reached into the expanded mouth and brought out what was left of a small cell phone. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a new evidence bag, and dropped the phone into it. “Looks like a cheap pay-as-you-go unit.”
“Good God, that’s gross,” squirmed Sophie.
“Oh, I’ve done worse. Like the time—”
“Later with the war stories, we’ve got a lot of work to do. But helluva job with that one, Dean,” said Alex.
He blushed again. “Thank you, just trying to earn my check.”
“Can you get the number that was used to detonate the nitro from the memory card?” asked Sophie.
“Maybe. It’s pretty bad, though.”
