The Partnership

by Dustin Stevens

  Beyond it was the executive suite for the precinct, a stop Reed would have to make in the coming hours, but not before hopefully having a bit more information to take with him.

  Ignoring the lifeless floor, Reed ascended the wooden staircase before him, Billie taking the steps two at a time, knowing the routine well enough to surge ahead without direction. Beneath their combined weights the aging stairs moaned slightly, the sounds echoing through the building, seeming to reverberate from the brick walls around them.

  Two short flights later Reed found himself on the second floor, the design a carbon copy of the one below, only a few small changes differentiating the two. Instead of housing the administrative functions, the space to the right was set aside for the dispatch desk, an ugly, oversized affair badly in need of paint. On the outside of it sat a loose cluster of plastic chairs, the arrangement giving the impression that the night before had seen more socializing than working.

  The back half of the building was also offset by a wall, the space behind it housing the evidence locker for the precinct. Bearing a scent that perpetually reeked of mildew, Reed made it a point to stay out of there as much as possible, though as a detective that wasn’t always feasible.

  Bypassing both, Reed followed Billie to the left, a tight tangle of desks crammed into the area, providing workspace for the detectives in the precinct.

  Why there were so many – more than double what was needed for the thin crew that currently worked out of the 8th – Reed wasn’t quite certain, but never bothered to bring it up. Instead he wove his way through the jagged maze each morning, making his way to his spot in the corner, Billie beating him there by several seconds.

  By the time he arrived she was already placed flat on the floor, her body turned to stare out over the room, her chin resting on her paws.

  “Good girl,” Reed whispered without glancing down to her as he shook the mouse sitting atop his desk, the screen popping to life in front of him.

  Within the semi-darkness of the room the sudden appearance of light caused him to wince slightly as he paused a moment, waiting for his pupils to dilate, before beginning his research.

  Until he heard back from the ME, there was no need to try digging on the victim herself. He had no fingerprints, no dental imprints, certainly not a name, to start searching for.

  Leaving those issues aside for a later time, he opened the case database for the Columbus Police Department and navigated his way to the search feature. Beginning broadly, he entered the phrase “Drowning Olentangy” into the box and set the program to digging, an automated hourglass appearing on screen before him.

  Six seconds later the results of his inquiry were returned to him, the records pulling more than fifty incidents from the files. Arranged in chronological order, they were presented in a vertical listing starting in 1958, the most recent one just two years before.

  Clicking on the last entry in the list, Reed opened the case file and scrolled through it, the victim a vagrant that was found to have a blood alcohol level of .34 at the time of drowning. His gaze moving quickly through the standard entries in the form, Reed made it as far as finding that it was a forty-something white male that had went into the water before closing the file and moving to the next one in the list.

  The second most recent recorded drowning in the river was just six months before the last one he’d looked at, the victim also a male, this one African-American. In his late fifties, the man’s dog had gone into the water for some undisclosed reason and the man had flung himself in in an attempt to save the animal. As best could be discerned, he had gotten caught in a current and drowned, his body deposited three miles south.

  The dog had made it safely back to shore less than a hundred yards from where he went in.

  Shaking his head just slightly, Reed glanced down to his Billie, her lidless eyes shifting to match the gaze without looking up at him.

  It was stories like this that had originally given him pause when it was suggested that he join K-9. His own experiences had often found dogs to be a bit flighty, prone to bouts of self-indulgence or erratic behavior.

  The thought of placing his trust, or even his life, into something that could at times appear to lack deductive reasoning seemed a fool’s errand for sure.

  Little by little she had managed to erode that way of thinking, beginning with her abilities to sense and match his own demeanor and ending with a hundred other reasons.

  Going back to the search before him, Reed removed the term “Olentangy” from the box and entered “Asian female” in its place, not expecting much, bearing no surprise when nothing useful came back to him.

  “Okay, so nothing on the drowning,” Reed said, the sound of his voice again drawing Billie’s gaze up to him, the light of the screen reflecting off her eyes as she turned his way.

  “Let’s see if we can find anything on the torture pattern.”

  Clearing the search again, Reed began inputting every possible permutation he could think of to cover teeth being forcibly removed and fingerprints being destroyed. More than an hour passed as he scoured through the returned files, a couple of instances coming back that hinted at one or the other, but never finding them in tandem.

  Completely absorbed in his research, he barely noticed as the sun began to rise through the window before him, illuminating the frost-covered world outside. He certainly didn’t notice the black sedan that entered on the opposite end of the lot or the fifty-year-old uniformed gentlemen that emerged from it.

  Not even the whine of the front door opening or the sound of footsteps on the staircase managed to pull him from the screen, his entire focus on the hyperlinked files arranged on his monitor and the information they held.

  It wasn’t until a small sound rolled out from deep within Billie, her head rising to waist-level as she pushed herself up onto her front paws, did Reed manage to look away from the screen.

  “What’s up?” Reed asked, following her gaze across the expanse of desks to see Captain Wallace Grimes standing just a few feet away, his cap under an arm, his briefcase still in hand.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” he said, motioning with the top of his head before disappearing back in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Eleven

  The lone three inside the 8th Precinct made their way downstairs in an odd train, Grimes leading the way, still dressed in his wool overcoat from being outside. Behind him was Billie, taking the stairs three at a time, gravity propelling her forward. Bringing up the rear was Reed, his coat still on the back of his chair at his desk, his usual uniform of jeans, t-shirt, and zip-up hoodie on display.

  Making the turn at the bottom of the stairs, Reed followed the other two through the frosted glass doors and into the back half of the first floor.

  Slowing just enough to flip light switches as he went, Grimes led them into the first office on the left, shrugging his coat off and tossing it onto a polished black rack standing in the corner. Atop it he placed the hat that had been tucked under his arm, the shiny bill pointed toward the floor.

  The office was one Reed had been inside almost once a day since joining the 8th, a small handful of Christmas cards arranged on a table along the side wall the only change from any of his previous visits.

  The centerpiece of the room was an enormous oak desk, the wood polished to a mirrored shine, what little paperwork there was on it arranged into neat piles. Behind it was a single black leather desk chair, windows framing either side of the corner spread.

  On the near side of the desk was a pair of visitor’s chairs, both employing a blue fabric finish, the bottoms just beginning to show signs of wear.

  In total the place looked a lot like every other executive office Reed had been in, the furniture all government issued, each no doubt bearing a metallic serial number somewhere on its surface.

  “Rough night?” Grimes asked, pulling his chair back a few inches from the front edge of his desk and settling down into it. Almost instantly he fell
into his standard pose when debriefing with Reed, his elbows resting on either side of him, fingers laced over his stomach, the pads of his thumbs tapping lightly against one another.

  The two sides had first worked together a decade before, Grimes still a lieutenant in the 19th, Reed a beat cop there as well. Five years later Grimes had been promoted to captain and shifted over to the 8th, a post he had reluctantly accepted.

  Reed had suspected the hesitancy had something to do with Grimes refusing to be an affirmative action statistic in a city woefully short of African American leadership, though he knew better than to ever ask the question.

  Some things were just better left unsaid.

  After the passing of Riley it was Grimes that had reached out to Reed, citing that a change of venue might do him well, even being the first to suggest a move to K-9.

  At the time Reed had been too distraught, too filled with anger and self-pity, to realize the extent of the solid extended his way.

  Only now, almost a year later, was the full extent of what the captain had done for him becoming evident.

  Less than a month from his fiftieth birthday, most of Grimes’s hair was still accounted for, though the shift from black to grey was fast afoot. After years of being an active investigator, his time behind the desk was starting to show, his uniform bearing just a bit more strain that it had a year before.

  “They’re never easy,” Reed replied, lowering himself into the chair closest to the door. Beside him Billie assumed a similar stance, only her back half going to the floor, her front supported by her paws.

  Reed knew the question was more than just rhetorical, Grimes offering him the floor.

  “Asian, female, mid-twenties to mid-thirties,” Reed rattled off. He consulted nothing as he did so, not even bothering to bring his notebook down with him, the three hours he spent at the scene the night before more than sufficient to sear every detail into his mind.

  “Spotted by a local jogger that never, ever should have been there. McMichaels and Jacobs arrived to find her face down in the water, the current having pinned her against the grate south of Gentry Street.

  “She was just off the bank, so they were able to fish her out and drag her onto shore.”

  “DOA?” Grimes asked, more for confirmation than an actual question.

  “Very,” Reed said. “Completely naked, the girl was almost frozen solid. Immediately called for crime scene and a detective.”

  A small grunt was Grimes’s only response as he burrowed his chin down a bit into his chest, skin folding up around it, his stock pose when processing new information. He remained that way a long time, his eyes glassing a bit as he stared down at his desk, before shifting his gaze back up to Reed.

  “ME?”

  “Came and went before I arrived,” Reed said, not quite wanting to admit it, but knowing he had arrived well within a reasonable amount of time, especially for a scene such as the one he’d been given.

  “I guess Dr. Solomon is away for the holidays, so they assigned a newbie from downtown to fill in.” For a moment Reed considered how to best relay the initial impressions of the young man, ultimately deciding to leave it at, “Earl didn’t seem real hopeful.”

  Picking up on exactly what Reed was getting at, Grimes nodded once, his neck unfurling and realigning in rapid order.

  “The scene itself?”

  The corners of Reed’s mouth turned down a slight bit as he shook his head.

  “Wasn’t a scene,” Reed said, “it just happened to be where the current pushed her. We did a full work up, I’ve even got in a request for any local traffic cam footage nearby, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

  Silence again fell in the office as Grimes twisted his head at the neck, staring out through the side window in his office. Outside the world continued to grow a bit lighter, the thick cloud cover getting a little more pronounced the only sign that the sun was indeed making its way north in the morning sky.

  “She in the system?” Grimes asked.

  “No way of knowing,” Reed replied, drawing Grimes’s attention back over to him. “Fingers were destroyed, teeth forcibly removed.”

  Across from him the captain’s response was just as his had been, folds of skin appearing around his eyes as he cringed slightly.

  “Exactly,” Reed said, nodding slightly. “Somebody wanted to make damned sure we didn’t find out who she was. As soon as Earl’s report comes over I’ll run her through facial recognition, but that’s a long shot at best.”

  “And assumes she’s in the criminal database,” Grimes added.

  “Right,” Reed said.

  He didn’t bother to add the original thought he’d had the night before about the girl, that there was something about her presence that seemed grossly out of place in The Bottoms. If he had to bet he would be almost certain that she was not in the system, had not done anything wrong, but until he knew more about her – anything about her, in fact – he would have to keep the thought to himself.

  “Worked the files this morning,” Reed said. “No previous instances of Asian women being drowned in the Olentangy, of anybody having their fingers mutilated and teeth removed like that.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a unicorn here.”

  In response to the last line a sour expression crossed Grimes’s face, as if tasting something bitter. He worked his mouth up and down twice, casting a glare to Reed before returning his gaze to the window.

  “A damned unicorn,” he muttered, saying the word with the same amount of derision that every detective who’d ever encountered a case such this employed. “Great.”

  Without looking back he asked, “So what’s next?”

  Reed paused an instant, knowing that no further discussion needed to be had about the previous statement, about his classification of the case, but allowing Grimes the floor if he so chose.

  “Work the victim,” Reed said once it was clear no further comment was coming, echoing the oldest maxim in the detective playbook, especially when no clear evidence presented itself. “We’ll go talk to the witness, swing by the ME’s, hope a new lead presents itself somewhere.”

  His attention still shifted away, Grimes nodded slightly. Reed knew even as he explained things that what he had was precious little, but that on occasion that’s how things presented themselves.

  It wasn’t like they could suddenly concoct new leads, no matter how badly they might want to.

  Cases like this weren’t referred to as unicorns – completely and wholly unique – for nothing.

  “So it wasn’t a rough night, but it could be one hell of a rough case,” Grimes said, his voice just barely north of a whisper.

  “Merry Christmas to me,” Reed agreed.

  Chapter Twelve

  The pounding on the door woke The Businessman just after eight o’clock, the heavy thuds leaving no doubt who stood on the other side, their source the only person that would dare call on him in such a manner, let alone at such an hour.

  In no particular hurry to rise and let his visitor in, The Businessman pushed out a low groan as he sat upright and rotated his feet to the floor. Resting his elbows on his knees, he ran a hand back through his hair, the blanket he’d been using bunched across his lap.

  Outside the knocking continued, seeming to grow in intensity, echoing through the room.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” The Businessman muttered, pushing himself to a standing position and dropping the blanket in his wake. Having stripped away the suit coat and dress shirt he wore the night before, his top half was covered only by a ribbed tank top, his feet bare as he crossed the room, noticing a chill in the air.

  The trio of deadbolts on the door released with metallic clicks, The Businessman pulling it open to find The Muscle standing on the other side.

  At six-foot-four, The Muscle didn’t quite block the entire height of the doorway, though his tremendous bulk certainly covered the width. Dressed in his usual attire of dark corduroy slacks
and a black tank top, a knee-length black leather coat hung lank along either side of his torso, exacerbating the girth of the man.

  His dark skin appeared ashy beneath the single light above the door, a curly beard outlining his jaw and upper lip. Hair of the same length and texture covered his head, just a few greys started to creep in.

  On his face was the same glower he almost always wore, his oversized hands balled into fists by his side.

  “Did I interrupt something?” he asked by way of an opening, his voice seeming to emanate from somewhere deep inside.

  Thinking better than to respond, The Businessman turned away from the door in silence, padding back across to the couch. He pushed the blanket to the side and took a seat on the end where his feet had been just a few minutes before, taking up his socks from the floor and pulling them on one at a time.

  “Jesus, you slept here?” The Muscle asked, swinging the door closed and stepping inside. Just as he did every time he entered, he made a point of slowly walking the exterior of the room and inspecting things, as if taking inventory.

  The Businessman knew it was his manner of checking to see what was present, what kind of cash was being spent in the club, a venture The Muscle had let it be known he didn’t think a great deal of.

  As if The Businessman gave a damn what he thought.

  Or would ever be stupid enough to put any lavish new purchases on display for all to see.

  “Not all of us keep a nine-to-five,” The Businessman responded. “My night just ended two hours ago. Didn’t make sense to waste time driving home.”

  Having completed his revolution of the room, The Muscle smirked, circling around behind the desk and dropping himself into The Businessman’s chair.

  “Nine-to-five,” he mocked, letting something resembling a smile be seen. “That’s cute.”