Perfect Sinners

by Rick Murcer

  “Dad. Wait. There’s something else.”

  He stopped and turned back in her direction, not liking the tone of her voice.

  “What else?”

  “She wasn’t alone. There was another body pulled out of the water just a few yards from her. A young man we haven’t identified yet.”

  “Damn it. Coincidence? Or are we wrong about suicide? Because that sounds like a pack to die together to me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  Ellen glanced at Brice and Bella, and then exhaled.

  “Because she still had all of her arms and legs. He didn’t.”

  CHAPTER-3

  Ellen turned south off from West Lake and pulled up beside the brick high-rise apartment building running near that section of the Chicago River. The lights on her Forensic Tech van flashed silently against the red brick and the two CPD cruiser’s parked in front of the building.

  After parking the van, she grabbed her forensic kit from the front seat, locked the vehicle, then walked through the deserted lower level of the renovated building. After reaching the edge of the railroad tracks, she stood still for a moment, contemplating her surroundings along the bank of the river.

  It had been years since she’d been here, but it was not unfamiliar to her. Hardly.

  She’d remembered coming down here to swim with her friends when she was in college. Swimming had been strictly prohibited, but not enforced too closely.

  It had been nice to get wet, especially on those hot summer nights that owned Chicago in the dead of summer. Added to that was the rebellious thrill of doing what you weren’t supposed to do. Who didn’t have one or two of those thrills in their past?

  That, however, wasn’t her most vivid recollection of the area.

  The practice of illegally swimming here abruptly stopped for her after one warm, fall evening when, for the first time, she’d run into a dead body. Literally.

  She and her ex, Joel, had decided, after a few margaritas, that they wanted to start their senior year in college with a somewhat dangerous bang. The risk of being arrested while skinny dipping, despite two previous warnings, had only spurred them on further.

  Getting off the “L,” and running through the lower level of the building, she had beaten Joel to the edge of the dark waters. She then promptly stripped to her underwear and dove into the river without waiting for her future husband to catch up to her.

  As she came up out of the murky waters, she expected to see the surprise on Joel’s face and was ready to claim her first-into-the-water victory. It didn’t go down that way.

  The face of the dead man, eyes wide open, lips partially eaten, gray hair strung over his bloated features, had bumped ever so gently against her unsuspecting shoulder.

  Dead people had been nothing new to her. She’d been part of several autopsies as part of her college training, but she’d never seen a body the way she’d encountered this one. Her scream confirmed it.

  It had taken her three days, and dozens of showers, to get the reality of slimy, deteriorating skin off from her body. Never mind the image of him.

  While her flesh had been cleansed, her mind had been affected forever. Every once in a while she’d see the dead man, Phillip Johnstone had been his name, in a dream. They would talk the way people do in dreams. He’d apologize for overdosing and scaring her the way he had. She’d tell him it was okay. She was a cop’s daughter and had seen far worse things over the years.

  But nothing stuck with someone like seeing a body in that way. Her dream conversations confirmed it.

  The sound of the train heading north on West Lake brought her out of her trip down memory lane, thank God.

  Ellen refocused and gazed past the other forensic team working the crime scene on the west bank of the river, her eyes scanning the gray dirt across the tracks leading to the river’s edge.

  Like many areas in her city, this particular location had a certain charm because of its location near the water. In her experience, most people enjoyed a water view.

  Yet, it was contrasted with obvious ugliness. Plastic cups, beer cans and bottles, and other various discarded material littered the gray bank, and of course, in this case, a couple of dead bodies had made it ashore.

  She moved to the water’s edge, nodded to the pair of officers standing guard at the very east end of the scene, then dipped under the yellow crime scene tape, placing her kit carefully on the dirt.

  So this was it? This is where young Ramona left her last impression on this world. She’d been a pretty young lady with serious potential that had run into problems with her parents. Problems that could have been solved over time, according to Big Harv. A few days later Ramona had left this world for the great unknown leaving a scar with her parents that would not be completely healed and a void that could never be filled.

  Ellen shook her head slowly. She’d always tried not to think that much about the story behind a body at a crime scene. She found it clouded her concentration on the facts. Until Oscar, her ex-partner, had been murdered by the crazy killer, Kyle Black.

  Oscar had been a part of a family, had a personality that had brought her joy when her joy had been as far as west was from east. No one would know of the impact he truly had on her during that dreadful time. Oscar hadn’t been just a dead body to her when she and Brice had found him in that SUV. He was far more than just someone who had doubled as a Chicago murder statistic. He’d been her friend and someone she’d loved.

  She smiled at that thought. Even now Oscar was still teaching her that forensic science was something they did, not who they were.

  Putting her hands on her hips, she then let them slip to her sides, brushing against her blue jeans, slipping into her investigative mind set. Remembering why she did what she did was a good thing, letting it drive her to drink was quite another, although she enjoyed a good margarita with anyone.

  “What the hell is taking you so long, Ellie? We’ve got work to do, woman, no matter if you’re the Queen of Forensics or not.”

  She tried, but couldn’t stop the grin from forming on her face.

  Brice had been a light into her world, no question. Their relationship was growing and that made her feel more than good, but her new partner, Aaron Holt, conjured something else entirely. Not everyone could bring quirky humor to the table and be a talented CSI to boot.

  She had Kate Mortimore, her eccentric, gun-toting surrogate mother to help with the humor, but Aaron filled the complete bill for her.

  The man was nuts in one of those totally honest, idiosyncratic sort of ways. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she suspected that everyone needed someone like Aaron in their lives.

  She turned toward him. He was a shorter man, shorter than her at least, with shocking black hair, riveting brown eyes, and an athlete’s body.

  He’d played minor league baseball for the Cubs but had to quit after hitting under two-hundred for three minor league seasons. He said he couldn’t hit the curve ball, but she suspected his scientific nature had overtaken baseball as his number one love. There were worse things.

  “Just waiting on you. Where have you been?”

  He adjusted his blue Cub’s hat and grinned. “Well, I had to lend credence to the idea that cops eat doughnuts before they get their work-shit together. I had my ride stop to pick up two Boston Creams on the way over.”

  “You didn’t bring me one?”

  His grin grew wider. “I didn’t say that, my queen.” He then pulled a small brown bag from his navy blue CSI jacket, holding it high in the air.

  “All yours.”

  Striding forward, she snatched the bag out of his hand. “I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t stop calling me that. And thanks.”

  “I might like that, you know,” said Aaron, raising his eyebrows.

  “It wouldn’t matter to me if you did. That kind of therapy is priceless.”

  “Damn. And you call me a sick puppy.”

  “You are
.”

  “I’m not sick. I’m just, you know, unique.”

  “I’ll stick with sick. For example, you don’t think going to a baseball game at Wrigley just to watch women is warped?”

  “Heck no. People go to get drunk and pass out, among other frivolous motivations, like to get a sun tan for crying out loud. So why can’t I go to look for the first, and only ever, Mrs. Aaron Holt?”

  “Do you take pictures? Of the women, I mean.”

  Aaron shifted his crime-scene kit to his other hand and touched the camera hanging around his neck. “I’m pleading the fifth, Ellie.”

  “So you do?”

  He cleared his throat and gave her a wry smile. “Well, I’d love to discuss my courting practices with you further, but you’ve screwed around long enough here, we have a crime scene to reprocess.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry. I won’t say anything to the new boss.”

  She reached out and tweaked his ear, pulling his face close to her. “How kind of you. You know, it’s a good thing I need you here or there would be a third body to account for.”

  “Thank God for the little things. And I think you could use a breath mint,” he said, twisting away from her.

  “That’s what the doughnut is for,” she said.

  “A doughnut breath mint? I knew that.”

  “Enough messing around. I saw the report from the evening shift and thought they did a good job. I just wish we could have taken our own pictures of the bodies.”

  “I saw the file too. They did do a good job, but I’m like you. If you want something done completely right, do it yourself,” said Aaron.

  “I hear you, but the photos were good enough and Marcie’s people were pretty thorough,” said Ellen.

  Aaron scratched his stubbled jaw. “If you’re right about the quality of the night crew’s work, then why are we here?”

  She thought that a good question and one she had been sure he’d ask.

  In spite of his quirks, he was brilliant with accessing the crime scene and then finding different possibilities to explore that hadn’t been addressed. That ability was part of what made them a great team.

  “The report covered all of the usual bases, plus a couple more, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that this one has to have a different look because it has a different feel,” said Ellen, pulling the doughnut out of the bag.

  “You mean like it is far more than two drowned kids, one who just happened to be the daughter of a cop and the other with his right hand and right foot hacked completely off?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Smartass. Of course this set of circumstances is unusual. That’s why the detectives in charge of this one are doing their own door to door. That’s not what I mean. We need to get past the science for a minute. It looks like a murder of one and could be an accident for Ramona, right?”

  He shrugged. “That’s possible.”

  “So we have to look at this in two distinctive ways.”

  “Oh. I get it. You mean like they are unrelated and then again as if they are related incidents. Murder for both and murder for one and an accident for one? Is that what you mean?” asked Aaron, crossing his feet the way he did when he became excited.

  He’d told her once that crossing his feet reminded him not to rush or run into anything too quickly and slow down before he leaped. She could have used that thought process a couple of times over the last two years. That practice might have saved her some trouble and a sore hand or two from punching her frustrations. Then again, those times of conflict and confrontation held a certain medicinal charm.

  “Yep, you get it. Pretty sharp for a man.”

  “Don’t forget it, woman. And I’m all man, too.”

  “TMI Aaron, TMI.”

  “Hey, if I don’t brag on myself, who will?”

  “We can discuss that later . . . or not.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  “You’ll get over it. Okay. You start on the southwest corner of the scene and work to the middle then north. Grid it in square yards before you get going. I’ll start on the southeast and do the same. We’ll meet at the top of the grid and see if we’ll have to do it again.”

  “This approach to processing this area is odd, for even you, Ellie. Brilliant, but odd. Which method am I to use first?” She shook her head. “We process it like we normally do, but we want to look at the evidence in two different veins. You check me and I’ll check you. Make sure you use the breathable Tyvek evidence bags. Whatever we collect will be wet and we want it to dry out. Now, just do what you do, okay?”

  “Got it.”

  Aaron took his kit and then moved off around the tape. She finished the doughnut, picked up her case, and walked in the other direction. The feeling of almost instant euphoria rose in her stomach, allowing for the butterflies to begin their traditional new investigation dance. The only other time in the last eighteen months she ever got this feeling was when Brice was around. And that had increased lately.

  Shaking the thoughts of him from her mind, which was also becoming more difficult lately, Ellen snapped on gloves and went to work.

  After finishing her initial grid work, she took the Pentax DSLR camera from her bag. She then shot three pictures of each square yard, from different angles, of the ground over to where Aaron would meet her. She then moved back to the corner of the taped-off area.

  Hanging the camera around her neck, she then dropped to her knees, evidence bags bulging from her pockets, then began the tedious process of looking for something that seemed like nothing but could mean everything.

  Working down toward the river’s edge, she bagged anything that seemed out of place, new to the area, or spoke to her experience and intuition as a forensic investigator. There wasn’t much to see, however, especially in light of the night crew’s work.

  A few shards of what appeared to be Carnival glass, a used “L” ticket dated from the night before that had somehow been almost completely covered by the gray dirt, and a Canadian quarter were about it for her first sweep north of the river’s edge.

  After she reached the wavering waters, she stuffed the four evidence bags in her pocket and readied herself to go back to the south end of the scene when she saw something glint against the late morning sun’s light just below the surface of the river.

  Each tiny wave covered and uncovered the object, causing it to attract her attention. If she’d been looking up instead of down and out of the water’s natural shore-bound rhythm, she may never have noticed it.

  Reaching down with deliberate purpose, careful not to cloud the water, she picked up the two-inch silver cross and accompanying chain. She lifted it to face level and turned it over a few times as she studied it. On the backside of the chain was a symbol above two words that she squinted to read, but she finally made them out.

  JESUS SAVES.

  She didn’t recognize the symbol. I looked like an impressionist version of a sheep, maybe.

  “What do you have there?”

  She didn’t turn, realizing that Aaron must have finished his first pass on the west side of the scene.

  “It’s a cross and chain. It looks fairly new. It has a weird symbol and two words—”

  “JESUS SAVES?” said Aaron, interrupting her.

  She stood and turned in his direction. “How did you know that?”

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a clear evidence bag and handed it to her.

  “Because I found one just like it.”

  CHAPTER-4

  Standing on the narrow sidewalk of Randolph Street overlooking the Chicago River, she lit another cigarette, took two long draws, and then flicked the cancer stick over the side, watching the orange ember disappear.

  Damn. She hated the taste of tobacco and how it smelled when she lit a cigarette, but loved the nicotine hit. She was no idiot because she also understood the health risks of the screwed-up habit, her addiction of choice. Of course, unless one counted money
, hard whisky, boy toys, and power over life and death as addictions. She supposed some would, but she could take or leave all of them to one degree or another. All, except one, that is.

  Leaning against the brown safety fence, she continued watching intently what was going on below her at the river’s edge.

  Addiction. It was simply another word to allow people to ignore responsibility for their own actions. Something she never hesitated in doing. She liked overseeing her life and embraced the decisions she made. All of them.

  In that respect, her life was about choices, things she’d learned to enjoy and things she hated but were necessary.

  Take money for instance. It added legs to whatever needed to be done. And there was never a shortage of people who would do what was requested for the proper amount of cash. She’d seen it over and over again. Yet, after a while, and hoarding large amounts of money, she had come to realize that money was only a vehicle and not a destination.

  The same could be said of whiskey and hard-bodied men.

  There was no question that she loved getting buzzed. It helped with the stress of what she did. And there was nothing quite like a warm, willing, lean man who would do whatever was asked of them. Contrary to most schools of thought, men were built to please women. They were at least good for something.

  Yet, after so much of both the drug- and alcohol-induced highs and the incredible sex, they became little more than something to indulge in and with. They offered no real path to the next step, her destined next step.

  She reached into her pocket and began to finger the twenty-dollar gold piece, rubbing it between her finger and thumb, eyes still glued to the people below.

  And what of power? True power?

  Power was a beast of a different color. It was infinite and temporary. Passive and aggressive. Indulgent and solitary. Vocal and silent. Kind and cruel. It bred fear and cloaked those holding it with comfort. Above all, it was evil and good, something she was all too familiar with.

  Shifting her feet, she continued touching the coin in her jean’s pocket.