by Shawn Ryan
"Fingerprints?"
"Nothing but smudge prints off surgical gloves."
"What about you, Buzz? Any prints from the body?" Badger asked.
"Nope."
"ESDA?" Jason asked.
"We got something there," Bibb said, pulling a piece of paper from the middle of the stack in his right hand. "It came up with about ten different footprints. That's actually kind of low, considering the number of delivery people and what-not that work behind the shopping center. But one shoe cropped up more than the others—a size ten Nike. This print was mostly in a semicircle around the body, like the guy was walking back and forth around it, admiring his handiwork. Judging by the width of the shoe and what that says about the pressure on it, the guy's about five-ten and weighs about one seventy."
He glanced at the papers again.
"Oh yeah, and here's something else," he said. "No fingerprints on the note, but it was typed on an electric 1950 model IBM. One of those big, gray mothers that weighs about the same as a small horse. Can't be too many of those things floating around. And the a and the r are a bit out of whack on this particular model."
"I'll start calling typewriter sales shops," Badger said.
"Call the repair shops, too," Jason added. "I'd think a repairman would remember one of those things coming past him."
"Had she been raped?" Badger asked, turning his attention to Saunders.
The coroner grimaced. "Yeah. Semen shows he's AB positive."
"That's a pretty unusual blood type," Jason said. "We can feed that into NCIC and hopefully come up with something."
Badger dialed the computer lab, telling them to check AB types. The technician said he'd call back when the program was finished running.
"Here's something else, something not so nice," Saunders said. "She was raped after she was dead and her head cut off."
"Jesus Christ," Badger said, his face going white.
"No, not him," Saunders said. "I don't think he was anywhere around when this was taking place."
Chapter 3
« ^ »
Badger and Jason sat quietly for a moment, leafing through the papers and digesting the information left by Saunders and Bibb. Finally, Badger spoke.
"This one is going to get worse before it gets better, Jazz," he said.
"Not if I can help it. There's got to be something in this information, something we just haven't noticed yet. I'm not leaving until I find it," Jason answered, reaching for his jar full of ballpoint pens and always-sharpened pencils. As he stretched, a nail of pain jolted into his right shoulder and down to his fingertips. He grunted in pain.
"Quit reaching so far," Badger said, his eyes on the paper in front of him. "You do that every time."
Jason nodded and rubbed the lump of scar tissue on top of his right collarbone. The break had been severe, both ragged tips of the bone tore through the skin, but it wasn't the worst injury he received that day eight months ago. Plowing his car into the front end of that tractor-trailer almost threw him through the windshield. Without that bottle of J&B in him making him limp, he probably would've died. Instead, he suffered the broken collarbone, a broken leg, a crushed spleen and ruptured bladder, one hundred stitches sewn into various parts of his body, and the humiliation of finally admitting to himself what everyone else in his life knew: He was an alcoholic.
Luckily for him, the guy in the truck only received minor scrapes and bruises. The department convinced the man not to sue, after giving him a sizable chunk of cash for his medical expenses.
Six weeks in rehab put Jason back on the path, and he'd been sober ever since. The pain of Sarah's and Claire's death still remained, but he no longer swam in the desire to soak it in booze.
Until a few months before, he hadn't had the chance. Not with Badger hovering over him like a mother hen, inviting him to dinner every night, making sure he kept busy, kept sober.
Now, though, even Badger trusted him. Jason still spent several evenings a month with his partner and his two kids, but he did it because he loved the company, not because he was afraid of being alone.
At his desk, Jason glanced at the pictures of Badger's kids hanging on the wall. Cynthia, eleven, was the spitting image of her mother, a situation that caused Badger no small amount of pain, since her mother had run off with a trucker two years before and no one had heard from her since. Cynthia's brother, seven-year-old Clint, looked just like his dad, white streak in the hair and all.
Dear God, let me solve this one so they don't get hurt, Jason prayed.
The two detectives sat at their desks for a while longer, staring at the papers on their desks, moving things around, accomplishing nothing. Finally Jason leapt up.
"Listen, I'm going to get some coffee. You want some?"
"Sure. Cream no sugar."
"Like I don't know that by now," Jason said, reaching for Badger's white porcelain cup printed with the words A Country Boy Can Survive. The inside of the cup was stained a mucky shade of brown from innumerable refills of the department's bitter, gut-busting coffee.
"God, don't you ever wash this thing?" Jason asked, staring with disgust into Badger's cup. "It looks like a swamp in here."
"Nah, I figure if we ever run out of coffee, I can just spit in the cup and get enough taste to slide by," he said.
"That's sicker than shit, you know that?" Jason said as he headed for the kitchenette.
For the first time that day, Badger laughed. He pushed away from his desk and tilted back in his chair, adjusting the baseball cap that never seemed to leave his head. Through year after year of frustration, he was a diehard Atlanta fan, cheering for the Braves during baseball season, the Hawks in basketball, and the Falcons in football. He even spent several months in a pissy mood when the Flames moved to Calgary to play hockey. His masochistic tendencies to cheer the generally dismal Atlanta sports scene had yet to pay off, although the Braves had teased him with two straight World Series appearances.
As Jason headed back from the coffeepot with two steaming cups, he smiled at the thought of his and Badger's initial meeting. It was Jason's first day at Gwinnett and he was looking for the bathroom, his arms full of papers given him by a lady in personnel who wore such hideous makeup he kept expecting her to say: "I want those ruby slippers, my pretty."
His head was turned to the left, scanning an adjacent hallway for a bathroom, when he ran headlong into an immovable object. The papers in his arms exploded into a mushroom cloud and he staggered backward, spearing his thigh on the corner of the water fountain and leaving a deep bruise that would plague him for days. He quickly leaned against the wall to keep from tumbling to the floor.
In front of him stood Badger, all six feet, five inches of him.
"Goddamn boy, you've got your head stuffed entirely too far up the crack of your butt," Badger said, a big smile on his face. "Lighten up. We don't bite—at least not hard enough to leave teethmarks."
There'd been a lot of water over and under the bridge since then—Sarah's and Claire's accident, Jason's drinking, Badger's divorce. Life went on, however miserably.
"Here you are, dear," Jason said, setting Badger's cup on his desk.
"Thanks, darling," Badger said.
Placing his cup on his neatly arranged desk, Jason leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles, a sound that brought a grimace to Badger's face. "Man, I was hoping you wouldn't get around to doing that today," he said.
"Sorry, first chance I've had," Jason said.
"Well, it's a damned nasty habit," his partner said.
Jason shrugged, then leaned forward, picking up a toy sitting next to his phone.
It was a magic trick known to most as the disappearing ball. About the size of a prescription bottle, it was quite simple to perform. A yellow ball rests inside a goblet-shaped vase with a lid. The idea is to show the ball to the audience, then take it out and place it in a pocket. Put on the lid, wave your hands over it, lift the lid and presto! the ball has returned. Put the
lid back, wave your hands over it and presto again! the ball is gone.
The trick is elementary. The lid houses an inner section containing a yellow half-ball. Put the lid on, let the inner section drop down, and the audience sees a ball. Put the lid back on, lift the inner section and the lid at the same time—the ball has disappeared.
Jason had bought the trick about two years before at a little magic shop near the Omni. He entered the store to kill a few minutes during a lunch break at the federal courthouse, where he was giving testimony. He didn't know exactly why he went into the store, but once inside, he spent an hour there, so mesmerized he forgot about lunch and was almost late getting back to court.
He figured magic was in his blood. When he was growing up, his father always did magic tricks, making him a big draw at neighborhood birthday parties. Jason had to admit his father was good at these little feats of magic. Sometimes he was more than good; he was dumbfounding. More than once his father performed a trick that left the kids stunned. Despite massive amounts of brainstorming among themselves, the kids never figured out how the tricks were done.
Jason looked at his dinky, store-bought toy and grinned. He was pretty good at it. Not surprising, considering the secret was one of manual dexterity and he'd spent two years honing his talents.
The toy was part of his daily routine. He fiddled with it every morning to clear his mind, but also used it whenever he was feeling stressed. It relaxed him, helped calm jumbled thoughts.
This particular day, a couple of minutes had passed since he had picked it up when his phone rang. Holding the magic trick in his left hand, he answered the phone with his right.
"Medlocke," he said.
"Hi," a familiar voice said.
"Oh, hi Dad," Jason said, a note of joy instantly entering his voice. "How ya doin'?"
"Just fine, Son," Stephen Medlocke said with equal enthusiasm. "How about you?"
"Well, got a nasty murder case going on, some psycho killed a ten-year-old girl," Jason said. "It's not pretty."
"Dear Lord," his father said. "I'll pray for the family and for a quick resolution."
"Thanks. We can use the help. So how are things at the church?" Jason asked. "Got this Sunday's sermon in hand?"
"Oh hell no," his father said. "Oops, pardon me. I mean, heck no. The vestry and I have been going round and round this week about money matters, policy decisions, and a bunch of other nonsense. That's put me behind. But I'll get it done. Always do."
Jason smiled. His father and the vestry at Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church were always at odds, had been for the fourteen years his father had been the church's priest. Stephen may have been devout in his belief in God, but he also had a devout temper and streak of stubborness that ran through him like a vein of iron ore.
"I hate to sound pushy, Dad, but I'm swamped right now. Any particular reason why you called?" Jason asked.
"Well…" His father hesitated briefly. "Actually, it sounds kind of silly sitting here in the daylight, makes me feel kind of embarrassed for calling."
"What is it?"
"Well, I woke up this morning with the horrible feeling that something was wrong. Nothing specific, just a gnawing in my stomach. So I called. Was I right? Is anything wrong?"
I just had a feeling. Is anything wrong? Jason had heard those words dozens of times from his father. Stephen always seemed in tune with his son's emotional ups and downs, whatever the distance.
He called the day Jason was promoted to detective on the Boston force. He called the night they found out Sarah was pregnant. On the day Claire was born, before Jason could make any phone calls, Stephen phoned the hospital. Claire was a month early, so the call couldn't even be attributed to an educated guess.
His father even called the night of the accident, before Jason could comprehend what had happened.
"Jason, Jason are you there?" his father asked over the phone.
"Uh, yeah. Uh, sorry, Dad, I was lost in thought," Jason stammered. "No, there's nothing wrong with me. Just this murder. We found out about it last night. Maybe that's it; maybe that's what you felt."
"Could be," his father said, but his tone didn't sound convinced. "All right, chum. Well, just blame your father's overprotectiveness and worrywart attitude for this phone call."
"No problem, Dad. I'll call you in a couple of days."
"Okay. Love you."
"Love you, too, Dad."
As he hung up the phone, Jason began fiddling with the disappearing ball trick while considering the amazing and unbroken connection he and his father had, an emotional life preserver always thrown at the right time.
Sometimes it's saved more than just my emotional life, Jason thought.
Jason was eleven years old and ice skating alone on Metzger's Pond. All of his friends were busy or their mothers wouldn't let them go. What sissies, he thought, mama's boys. Still, he didn't tell his father he was going alone, knowing he would spend precious skating time arguing the point.
Once at the pond, he lost track of time, looking up only as the sun went down. The sky turned from thick, snowy gray to deep purple in a matter of minutes. The temperature, in the low thirties already, plummeted when the sun dipped behind the rim of the tall oaks, elms, and spruces surrounding the pond. Alarm rippled through Jason's stomach, but he tried to beat it back.
No big deal, he told himself. I know the way home.
But as the sun and the temperature dropped, the blizzard hovering just to the west exploded in force. Like a glacial juggernaut, it pounced on eastern New England at the same time Jason walked through the woods toward home. Within seconds, the winds stabbed through his heavy parka, past his sweater and shirt, and sliced into the nerves of his skin.
Whipping through the woods, leaving moans in its wake as though the trees groaned with the cold, the wind mixed snow from the clouds with snow already on the ground, throwing skin-stripping spears into Jason's face. He felt his eyelashes and eyebrows freezing.
Within minutes, the storm was a "whiteout." Jason couldn't see his hand stretched out in front of him. His nose and cheeks were numb and he didn't feel the scrapes and abrasions he picked up each time he plowed into the bark of trees he never saw.
Terror, packing its own feeling of cold, began worming its way from his stomach toward the outside. Oh, I'm in deep shit, he thought.
He ran panicked through the woods, slamming into trees that knocked him down only to see him jump up and start running again. Like a swimmer drowning in deep water, Jason was going under, the killer cold and emotionless. As Jason's fear rose, he felt his body begin to tingle. He'd never experienced such an electric rush, and it terrified him. Oh God, it's the first signs of dying, he thought.
"Daaaaaddddddyyyyy," he screamed, but the wind grabbed his voice and broke it into a million crashing shards. There wasn't even enough time for an echo.
He lasted another thirty seconds before the cold beat him down. He collapsed to the ground, tumbling face first into a snowdrift. The shock of the cold revived him momentarily, just long enough for him to roll over onto his side. He lay there, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest and his body curled up in the fetal position. He waited to die.
"Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy," he whispered.
Just before he sank into unconsciousness, a strange thing happened. He rolled onto his belly and pushed himself up, making a last, desperate attempt to rise. His head hung straight down to keep the blinding, blowing snow out of his eyes. His eyelashes, already broken off, left little protection.
Looking at his hands, he saw a bright golden glow surrounding them. It shimmered and danced along his fingertips, illuminating the snow beneath his hands. He brought one hand up and watched the glow weave through his fingers, illuminating, outlining bones and blood vessels. I must be dreaming, he thought as his body tingled madly. Then unconsciousness pulled him under.
He awoke screaming, needles of pain jabbing into his feet, hands, and face. He kicked and jerked, but strong arm
s held him down. A soothing voice spoke to him, breaking into his panic and calming him.
He opened his eyes to find himself lying in his living room, in front of a fire blazing so boldly it threatened to leap from the hearth. Thick, goosedown quilts were wrapped around his body. Both his hands were in pans of tepid water and warm, damp towels were woven around his feet. The first thing he saw was his father's face above him. Looks of unashamed fear and unbounded joy washed across his dad's eyes.
"Hi, fella," his father said as tears flowed down his cheeks.
Back in his office, the puzzle of the blizzard tugged at Jason. He still couldn't fathom how his father had found him. He was half a mile off the path in deep woods and almost covered with snow. How did his father do it?
He'd asked the question once. His father's first response was to smile without any humor reaching his eyes. Stephen seemed ready to say something equally unfunny and a hard, sad look crossed his face. But it was so quick, like a lightning flash across a black velvet sky, and Jason wasn't sure if he'd seen it or not.
"Just father-son intuition, mixed with a liberal amount of pure, dumb luck," his father said.
It was more than luck, Jason knew as he sat at his desk, his fingers moving faster and faster with the disappearing ball trick. It was something fundamental to the relationship between his father and him, Jason thought, perhaps something fundamental to the Medlocke family.
The tingling began to rise within his fingers, lancing backward up his arms and into his shoulders. Why now? It was unusual for the sensation to show up when he wasn't angry or under emotional upheaval of some sort. Nothing like that was going on now. He was just curious. Extremely, insatiably curious about what had happened that evening in the snowstorm. Why would that bring the tingling forth?
He tried to control it, rein it in, but the effort was exceedingly difficult. The tingling seemed to have a mind of its own. Jason felt as if it were going to rip the skin right off his body, when it suddenly stopped.
