by Harper Kim
He walked around back, out of the Technicolor glow from the squad car but still within muffled earshot of the squelching CB. The rear windows—panes covered in yellowed newspaper—were visibly illuminated from within but cast no useful light outside. There were broken surfboards, cracked toilet seat covers, rusty water pails, shaved wood chips, and a few plungers piled haphazardly along the bank of a ravine. Peering down into the black maw of the ravine, he swept his flashlight and saw more of the same, along with mattresses, thousands of decaying plastic trash bags, and what looked (and smelled) like raw sewage.
Near the back stoop of the shack, beer cans littered the ground around a well-used washtub fire pit, along with a few coffee cans overflowing with cigarette butts. Your cup runneth over are the words that popped into his mind at that moment, though he couldn’t say why.
He expanded his focus beyond the ravine, to the occasional wafting scent of laundry and the brassy staccato of Mexican radio, turned low. The glowing green eyes of a feral cat levitated out of the ravine as it made its nightly rounds.
The place was seedy, he’d give it that, but his gut sensed no danger, and Malone trusted his gut.
Back to business.
The windows and doorjambs were intact. This wasn’t a forced entry. There was some sand and gravel on the rear steps but nothing significant. Anyone who walked along the dirt road abutting this place would pick up sand in their treads. And the perp certainly didn’t approach from the ravine, or there would be Arthur Murray two-step diagrams mapped in shit across the porch. Step, step, smear, smear.
Judging from the shriveled hedges, the coarse, haphazard weeds that grew up fast and died as giants, and the broken planters with a poorly fenced yard, it was easy to see the family that lived here wasn’t living the high life. Robbery was clearly not a motive.
Malone headed back toward the front entrance.
Up the street, a familiar red light oscillated brilliantly against the black sky. That would be Crogg, thought Malone. The sliver of moon provided little light for the tired neighborhood, if you could call it a neighborhood. Most of the sparsely placed houses (if you could call them houses) along this stretch of road were dark, shades drawn, bars secured, and doors bolted shut. Only this shit-hole of a shack was brightly lit, with every light turned on, plus additional lamps on tripods brought in by the crime lab techs. There were no rubberneckers in this part of town. Neighbors kept to themselves, especially when the red and blue lights came to visit, which was often.
An unmarked tan sedan with a twirling bubblegum light pulled up across the road and Detective Alex Crogg stepped out. Crogg tucked his hands into his pockets and proceeded toward him. They’d been partners for two years, ever since Crogg was promoted to detective. Malone trained him, so Crogg knew the drill. Malone would be bad cop and lead the investigation and Crogg would follow suit, playing good cop.
With his short blond curls and baby blue eyes, Crogg was a real chick magnet, a boy-next-door kind of guy. He was thirty-four but looked twenty-five. Kids loved and trusted him off the bat. Women adored him and let their eyes linger a bit too long on his solid frame. He personified the child book image of a trustworthy cop; he was the cop that would rescue your cat from the tree, chase down the bad guy who snatched the old lady’s purse, strike a hero’s pose, and sparkle.
Crogg had a good guy image that partnered well with Malone’s harsh features and cold ruggedness.
With Crogg by his side, Malone marched up to the front steps, regarded the two rookies with a cold stare, and waited. The two rookies shifted glances at each other and back at Malone, confused and uncomfortable by the silence. Finally one of them took the hint and cleared his throat.
“Sir, we’ve already taped off the perimeter and secured the area, sir.”
“Yes. I can see that.”
“Uh…Oh, yes. Deceased vic is known as forty-four-year-old Peter Hayes. Resident and owner of property. Crime scene techs already inside, powdering the area. Daughter, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Hayes, and daughter’s boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Neil Wilcox, also inside waiting to be questioned.
“Apparently daughter was being abused by the deceased and boyfriend intervened. Girl shows signs of physical and sexual abuse, and most likely, you can add in emotional abuse.
“No weapon found at scene, but bedroom in rear has a wall lined with various pistols, shotguns, and revolvers. Crime techs are bagging the items.
“Hands of the daughter, boyfriend, and vic have been paraffined for GSR and are being tested back at the lab. Expected to be negative. Boyfriend’s right hand is in pretty bad shape. Both will need to visit the hospital after you talk to them. Also, blood is everywhere in the house, some old, some recent.” The rookie inhaled deeply, frantically searching his brain to see if he forgot anything important.
Malone grunted and motioned to the door. “How was the door found?”
The second rookie piped up. “Unlocked, sir. The vic didn’t believe in security. Word is he considered himself the security. You should really see the arsenal we found—”
Malone cut him off with a brusque wave of the hand and started up the short flight of steps. Crogg stepped up right behind him giving the two rookies an apologetic smile and a nod. So far, his primary duty as detective was covering for Malone’s manners, or lack thereof. Yin to his yang. The good thing about being Malone’s trusty sidekick was he never had to ID himself to the rookies or cross-jurisdictional blowhards usually manning the perimeter. Everyone recognized Malone. Crogg was a Malone man; that’s all they needed to know to wave him through. No hazing, no third degree, no my-balls-are-bigger-than-yours displays of authority—all of which at Crogg’s age should have been par for the course. Working with the biggest swinging dick in the county sure had its perks.
The crime lab techs were still working away, in matching coveralls, like bees tending to the hive. Slipping on booties and gloves so they wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene—Malone still couldn’t get used to all these new procedures—Malone and Crogg stepped over the yellow tape and entered the dimly lit shack.
The smell hit them first. A mixture of dirt, vomit, beer and cigar ash—that same eau de dirtbag Neil had smelled as he slunk through this space just ninety minutes ago.
As they made their way into the living room, Crogg couldn’t help but take a second look at the easy chair. How dusty it looked. How its edges seemed to smear and blur away in a cloudy gradient of shifting dust, which seemed to billow of its own accord from the worn upholstery in an unholy Brownian motion. His father had owned a chair like that, and would tie one on most nights in that chair before laying into him or Mom. Mostly Mom. Crogg shuddered and rushed to catch up with Malone in the kitchen.
Three crime scene techs were busy dusting the kitchen and living room for prints, collecting the rats (both the cannibal-live and cannibalized-dead varieties) for their stomach contents. Seated at the kitchen table was the girl, boy, and a female social worker. The social worker, not an officer, was sent in by the Precinct’s fourth-floor brass to appease the kids into providing a statement in a non-threatening, non-traumatizing, non-suable way. She was specially trained in “delicate” interrogation and had some mail-order certifications to prove it. Malone thought she was shit at her job. And a liability. According to Malone, she was a prime example of the ugly bureaucracy behind (or on top of) the badge: CYA before real justice. According to Malone, she was responsible for setting perverts, kidnappers, and worse free because the Defense would always have a field day with the credibility of outside consultants and the stories they pulled from minors. It compromised the whole damn shebang to bring in outsiders even to pull pubes and toenail clippings from behind the toilet, let alone to be the lynchpin of primary witness statements.
Needless to say, it would be one of the first action items on Malone’s shit list if and when he ever joined the club on the top floor.
Crogg remembered seeing her a few times before. From what he heard around town, Dr.
Rachel Dawes was the best at coaxing and reassuring frightened children and battered women into providing a coherent statement. He liked her, too. He thought she was cute.
The Medical Examiner came downstairs, spotted them, and headed over. He was a gaunt, silver-haired man, whose body seemed to be lost in his shapeless navy blue coveralls with loosely hanging elastic cinches and reflective cuffs. The jumpsuit swished like a pall of tent fabric when he walked. The word CORONER was silkscreened in four-inch-high block letters on his back, and REAMS appeared in similar one-inch-high block letters on the left side of his chest. His sunken eyes and pale, furrowed face betrayed his decades of life on the night-shift, the many hours spent soaking in bleached light hovered over the autopsy table. Neither Malone nor Crogg knew him well. Neither man much wished to change that fact.
Reams joined them, his face a stone, and filled them in on his findings. “Body is in the upstairs bedroom.” Click. “Daughter’s room.” Click. “DOA.” Click. He tapped his pen against his steel clipboard to mark every period and key word.
“Body, unmoved. Blunt force trauma at a single location, posterior, perimortem hemorrhaging detected between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Likely intoxication, blood test to confirm. COD likely related to C1-C2 trauma.” He then moved out of his comfort zone, observation to speculation, and the authoritative pen taps ceased as he instead brought the capped end to his lower lip. “Daughter’s boyfriend called it in…claims self-defense using just his hands. What’s fishy…is that the deceased is twice…no three times as big as the kid. No way.”
He waved his hands in disbelief.
“Highly improbable the kid could have killed the guy with his bare hands. Even though…his right hand appears broken and both left and right are bruised and swelling like crazy. Appears to be old and new contusions on boy’s hands…as if the trauma were weeks in the making. There are no other apparent injuries found on the boy.” The stoic, rapid-fire bursts of neurosis brought a perplexed, pained look across Reams’ face, which might have been the closest he ever came to smiling.
“What about the girl?”
Grimacing, Reams said, “Classic case of sexual abuse. Bruising, cuts, pain…of course she’ll need a Vitullo kit, but…you can just tell.”
“Thank you for the briefing, Reams,” said Malone. And then, in a much louder voice, “Tell Miss Dawes that I’d like to speak with the daughter and boyfriend. Soon.” He spoke ostensibly to Reams, but was looking past Reams, straight at Dawes when he said it.
Malone and Crogg waited a second. On cue, Dawes marched toward them. She was very short, probably south of five-foot. Doll-like, actually. She had a petite frame, soft jawline, large round eyes, chestnut shoulder-length hair, and a faint smattering of freckles on her cheeks that you could only see up close. She was a bit too heavy in the hips but attractively so. She was beautiful when she smiled, but her countenance was usually strained with downturned, pouty lips that made her seem moments away from crying. She gave both of them a curt nod, “Lieutenant. Detective.”
“Dawes. Lookin’ pretty today, as always.” Crogg flashed her one of his magnetic grins.
“Cut the shit, Crogg.” She never made eye contact with him. Her taut lips relaxed into a smile ever so briefly, and then reclaimed their downward cant. Power lips, not pouty lips. That’s what they were.
She continued: “Look, the kids, Elizabeth and Neil, have been through a traumatic experience. I still need more information so don’t mess things up for me, got it?” Dawes drilled her eyes into Malone. She was probably the only consultant that wasn’t afraid to confront Malone. When it came to kids, she was mother hen all the way.
Malone peered back, unfazed, unblinking, but also unprotesting.
To cut the tension, Crogg raised his hands in defense. “When have I ever messed things up for you?”
Glaring askance, Dawes let out a huff and composed herself before returning to the kids.
A moment later a wiry boy, favoring his right hand, came into view. He was trembling, but his eyes were fixed ahead with quiet determination. Behind him was the girl, who looked mature for her age and very pretty. She was noticeably frightened and was shivering uncontrollably, with a blanket draped over her shoulders.
“He—he’s up—upstairs,” the boy said. The boy’s right hand indeed appeared broken by the visible swelling and the odd angle of the wrist. The medics on-scene had temporarily immobilized his right arm in a sling until he could be released to the hospital for further treatment. Dawes touched his elbow gently and guided him back to the table.
Malone motioned for his partner to scan the first floor, which would involve him talking to “the enigmatic Dr. Dawes.” Crogg gave a single nod, secretly fist-pumping in his mind, and Malone moved up the stairs.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Malone wasted no time. The carpet on the treads was tacked down, unlike the haphazard remnants flopped downstairs, though it was frayed and worn bald in places. Dried blood and vomit were sprayed and caked along the punched-in walls. The metal banister leaned at a drunkard’s cant. Several of the balusters were bent, broken, or missing. The more Malone saw, the more the entire place looked like the scene of one long, drawn out crime. Like the red storm on Jupiter: violent and enduring, always shifting, always changing, but always there. Malone sensed this house was a dark place with dark secrets enclosed. Years of abuse were chronicled at every turn, both to the house and to those unlucky enough to set foot inside. He wasn’t sure if it was the vic’s doing, or if it was the place itself that invited, craved such carnage.
Your cup runneth over, he thought again, and shivered.
Whatever menagerie of prints the crime scene techs uncovered in the rest of the house would only support Malone’s observations. And would keep them working double shifts for weeks. But it was the room upstairs that affected the girl downstairs, the girl who couldn’t stop shivering tonight in the sticky spring heat. It was that upstairs room, the timid girl, and frightened boy that mattered to Malone tonight.
Scanning the room, the evidence was screaming in his face, laid out in neat piles of incriminating information; a prosecutor’s wet dream. If only the bastard were alive to pay for his sins. The indentation on the bed was deep, nothing a girl about five-four and a hundred pounds could make.
There was a musky smell in the room, a mixture of sweat and sex, beer and blood. There were dolls scattered around the dingy carpet and light pink flowers dancing along the yellowed wallpaper. The bed lay in shambles. An altercation of some sort definitely happened there. The pink sheets were rumpled and spotted with blood and other fluids.
Malone had to work extra hard to keep a straight face, to keep his eyes masked and indifferent. Usually it didn’t require this much self-restraint. But when cases dealt with sexually assaulted young girls, how could anyone keep a straight face? Christ, he couldn’t help but think about his youngest daughter, who was all grown up and college-bound in the fall. She would be going east soon. Georgetown. He pushed the train of thought out of his mind.
On the floor was a solid body, massive and still. The body was still warm and rigor hadn’t set in yet. The guy hadn’t been dead that long. There was a faint bruise stamped into the nape of his thick neck, a minor abrasion on the upper lip, and a few scratch marks along his forearm and cheek, but other than that, no other fresh injuries were apparent. Reams would have to complete the autopsy to be sure, but from what he could tell, that bruise was COD.
Crogg popped his head into the room. In hushed tones, Crogg stated his findings. “So far we have two clear sets of prints downstairs, most likely the vic’s and the daughter’s. Dozens of other partials will need to be analyzed back at the lab. Blood and other fluids downstairs are old, and from God-knows-how-many contributors. They’re typing anything that doesn’t look ancient, but likely it’s nothing fresh that can be tied to tonight’s case. We’ll see. Dawes isn’t opening up as usual. Says to wait for her report in the morning.”
Malone nodded and c
ircled the body. Kneeling, he leaned over and sniffed. Alcohol. “Did you sweep the rest of the first floor and make a report of your findings?”
Smug, Crogg folded his arms across his chest. “Yup. I observed as they combed through the bathroom. Gross is what it was, though I didn’t see anything pertinent. I’ll type up my notes tonight and give you a thorough report tomorrow morning. I even got rid of Dawes for you. Also, the kids are ready for us whenever you’re ready.”
Malone appeared to not even be listening. When Crogg didn’t get the praise he was expecting for being one step ahead, he didn’t let it faze him. He was used to it. “You should see this guy’s arsenal in the back room. Puts ours at the Station to shame.”
“Considering a gun wasn’t used here, it isn’t important to the case, so why would I be interested?”
Crogg opened his mouth but knew better and closed it.
Malone tilted the dead guy’s head so Crogg could see the deepening bruise. “What would you say if I told you that this is what killed him?”
“I’d say we’re looking for a baseball bat or a giant.”
They headed back downstairs, changed gloves, and headed toward the kitchen table where the girl and boy were still seated.
Malone called across the room to one of the rookies: “Let Reams know that the body’s ready for him to take custody.” Malone caught Neil’s lips twitching into a defiant sneer as he said this. The boy was proud.
Crogg raised a brow and looked at the scared kids, and then back at Malone. “Just remember to keep your voice low and smooth. Don’t scare them or else you won’t get anything out of them. They look frightened enough as it is. Plus, you really don’t want Dawes coming after you. She might seem like a gentle soul, but she’s vicious when she wants to be.”
Malone gave him a look. “And who trained who?”
