Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  Take Gabi and Luke. In the precinct, they’re professional colleagues. But here in his neat little house in Highland Park, they’re fuck buddies, no strings attached, which allows her to keep it compartmentalized away from Layla and the shredded remains of her personal life. It’s exactly why cops end up sleeping with each other. Who has time to meet new people?

  The first time was in the back of her car, late one night, after the whole department went out to celebrate a conviction in the Granston case. It was Joe Miranda’s idea to go fowling – bowling with a football – hurling the ball down the lanes. They got pretty trashed, enough for management to ask them to keep it down. She gave him a ride home. They didn’t quite make it that far.

  Now it’s sex on demand, their respective schedules allowing. It’s stress relief. It doesn’t mean anything. It could be worse. She could be an alcoholic or popping valium. But that would require her to talk to someone to be able to get a prescription. Luke doesn’t expect her to talk. They very specifically don’t. There are unspoken rules. They don’t let it interfere with their work. They don’t discuss where this is going.

  She loves what he does to her, the way he makes her lose herself, the world tipping away, and she likes being able to do the same to him, the way his tight control unravels. Who’s the perfect cop now, she thinks, as he comes, the force of it racking through his whole body.

  ‘Don’t look so pleased with yourself,’ he says afterwards, reaching for the Nicorette gum he keeps on his bedside table, along with the condoms. Not quite a post-coital cigarette.

  ‘Can’t take pride in my work?’ Her phone rings and she rolls over to look at the screen. William Stirling. She groans.

  ‘You need to get that? I can go into the kitchen.’

  ‘It’s my ex,’ Gabi says, hitting reject call. ‘He wants Layla to come to them for Christmas, seeing I get Thanksgiving, and I don’t want to talk about it right now.’ She doesn’t say the obvious, that she doesn’t want to be alone over the holidays – any of them.

  ‘You’ll still have to deal with it later.’

  ‘Yes, but I can fortify myself with a drink later. How about you? Do you get on with your ex-girlfriends?’

  ‘We having a personal conversation now? Because that’s okay if we are.’

  She props herself up on her elbows and lets her hand drift over his stomach. They’re both in good shape for their age, but they’re not young any more. There’s a softening to their muscles. It’s true about her conviction too. Experience has filed the edge off the hard truths she believed in when she was younger. ‘You think getting older makes you more empathetic?’

  ‘No. I think most people become more unyielding in their beliefs.’

  ‘You’re more unyielding right now,’ she says, giving his cock a friendly squeeze.

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’

  ‘I can see how you made detective.’ She kisses him. ‘Don’t screw up a good thing, Stricker.’ She checks her phone. ‘We’ve got another hour before we have to leave.’

  ‘What should we do with all that time?’

  ‘I have some ideas,’ she says, swinging herself up to straddle him.

  The problem with chemistry is that it tends to blow things up. And she is already a chain of reactions building up inside.

  Sometimes the stupid, simple things work. Ringing all the doorbells of an apartment block until someone hits the buzzer. She has seen cops claim to be cable-repair guys, electric-meter readers, pizza-delivery people: whatever it takes to get inside the building. It’s not regulation. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes you only have to ask.

  There are a hundred games running in Detroit every night, from dice throws on the corner to ballers playing high-stakes poker in a location that switches every week. Tonight, it’s above a Kurdish restaurant on Greenfield.

  The place has kilims on the walls and low brass tables and huge lamps with geometric shapes cut into them. It’s quiet tonight, if you discount the number of men in suits who walk straight through to the beaded curtain at the back. The few patrons who are here tonight know enough not to make eye-contact.

  The beaded curtain leads onto a passage that opens to the kitchen and the bathrooms and a closed door, manned by a thug with a clipboard and bulges in all the right places, most noticeably, a gun-shaped one tucked into his pants.

  You don’t get in to a game unless you have a ticket. The tickets are matched up to names on a guest list at the door. No match, no entrance. It’s how they keep the cops out and, more importantly, the kind of chancers who would try to pull down a robbery. You’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to mess with the Russians, but Gabi knows that in Detroit, people will pull the trigger for a can of Pepsi, never mind a hundred large.

  ‘You’re not on the list,’ the bulging man says, not even bothering to look at the clipboard. He can smell the cop on them.

  ‘We’re here to see Timor,’ Luke says. ‘You can tell him it’s Stricker.’

  ‘You can wait out back, through the kitchen. He wants to talk to you, I’ll come get you. If he doesn’t, you can take off. ’Cos I know you ain’t here for trouble.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  He waves them into the kitchen. The chef glances up from arranging an elaborate meze platter: fat, shiny green dolma and thick swirls of hummus. A far cry from her own cooking skills, which mainly involve reheating things, although she has taught herself to use the barbecue since William left. Gabi realizes she’s ravenous. They usually stop for a grilled sandwich after sex. It’s not romantic, but she’s not after romance.

  The chef shakes his head, disappointed in them for being here, and that puts paid to her ordering takeout.

  They stand outside by the trash cans in an alley that smells of garbage and stale piss. Luke pops a square of nicotine gum into his mouth, and offers the packet. Gabi shakes her head.

  ‘You really think your man’s going to see us?’

  ‘In private, yeah, once he’s got the game settled. He’s curious. Same as everybody.’ Luke smooths his palms down his pants. ‘This case you pulled, Gabi … it’s messed up.’

  ‘Worst thing I ever seen.’

  ‘I got a call about a dead baby once. When I was still doing patrol.’

  Gabi winces. ‘I got it. You don’t have to say any more.’

  ‘No, it was worse than that. Hear me out,’ he says, but he’s wearing a funny little smile.

  ‘Better have a happy ending.’

  ‘Listen. We get to the house, abandoned, boarded up, and my partner refuses to get out of the car. She doesn’t want to see it. She’s almost crying. She begs me to go in. Bargaining. Week’s worth of paperwork if I don’t make her come with me. And I don’t want to see a dead baby either, but someone’s got to go.’

  ‘So you do.’

  ‘With no back-up, except her crying in the car. I’m pissed off. Call said the baby was in the basement, so I go down the stairs one at a time, swinging my flashlight back and forth, one hand on my gun, in case some crackhead jumps me, and there it is. Just like the call-in said, a dead baby. Little naked head poking out among all the trash. I can taste puke in my mouth. Because you see some shit. But dead babies.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘But it’s worse than that. There’s another one.’

  ‘What the hell case was this? I don’t remember this.’

  ‘And another one. And another one. And another one. The whole damn basement is full of dead babies.’ He’s grinning. ‘Only they’re not babies, are they? They’re baby dolls. Some crazy bastard had filled up his basement with baby dolls.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I went back to get my partner. I said you have to come see this, and I drag her out of the car. Cried all the way down the stairs, and then screamed and then laughed and then she hit me. Transferred to a desk job a month later. Thank God.’

  ‘And the dolls?’

  ‘I guess they’re still there. Someone should go find them, clean them up,
donate them to a daycare or something. Doesn’t your ex have kids?’

  ‘You are an awful human being,’ she says, laughing.

  ‘Detroit’s finest,’ he says. ‘Do you hate him?’

  ‘William? No. It was no-one’s fault, we just let it slide, and then it was too late. Got caught up in work and running after our kid, and we were doing different shifts – looking back, that was the kicker, you know? Ships in the night. My parents wanted me to move back to Miami after we got divorced, but it felt like that would be giving up.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that about you.’

  ‘That I’m persistent?’

  ‘Stubborn.’

  Her father sends her a link to every news story on violent crime in Detroit, like she’s somehow unaware of it in her job. Twenty-two-year-old Renisha McBride shot in the face by a white homeowner, the school that chose to break up a fight between two girls with pepper spray, the warehouse trading in human body parts.

  She begged off Thanksgiving in Miami this year because she knew they were going to apply the thumbscrews. Pestering her to take a nice job in special prosecutions investigations, perhaps, and they’d have invited a gentleman of their acquaintance to join them for dinner – who just happened to be single and something benignly professional like an accountant or a lawyer.

  ‘You ever think about moving?’ Luke asks.

  ‘After busting my ass for eight years to get to Homicide? But I have thought about Ann Arbor. Small college town. It would be good for Layla.’

  ‘Not much excitement in Ann Arbor,’ he observes.

  ‘Thing is, I don’t actually believe in justice. It doesn’t happen. Not enough. Rapists walk on a technicality. Money buys you out of problems. The wrong guy goes down for murder. Remember that detective who was closing cold cases by fingerprinting homeless people and doctoring the evidence files? People are corrupt and lazy and bad at their jobs.’

  ‘That’s a cold statement right there.’

  ‘Not all of them. Some of them are just overworked. You make the arrest, you file all the evidence, and the prosecution screws it up because they’re sitting with forty other upcoming trials and they can’t give it their full attention. Or the case is delayed because the DNA hasn’t been tested, but it’s sitting on someone’s desk waiting to be analyzed. But what are you going to do? Give up? Walk away from all this?’ She makes a sweeping gesture to take in the garbage and the alley, turning it into a joke because they’re both getting worked up. ‘It’s like parenting. You do what needs to be done.’

  The door opens behind them and the light sends a cluster of cockroaches scuttling for the cover of darkness. ‘He’s ready for you,’ says the thug.

  He ushers them through the beaded curtain and up a narrow flight of stairs, past a closed room buzzing with men’s voices, a little drunk, a little reckless – the swagger that comes around money. He knocks once on the door at the end of the passage and swings it open onto a bedroom with a huge photograph of Mecca on the wall above the bed.

  Timor is sitting on the bed, smoking. His eyes are too small for his face, which gives him the look of a chubby rat, with a graze of stubble and dark hairs springing from the collar of his shirt and the cuffs of his tailored shirt.

  ‘I give you ten minutes, okay?’ he says, in a clipped Russian accent. ‘Because I want you to know I don’t have anything to do with this. We will clear the air and then you can go fart in someone else’s house.’

  ‘Paul Lafonte,’ Gabi starts. ‘We found your number in the recently dialed list on his phone.’

  He interrupts her. ‘Yes, he owes me. Two hundred dollars. You think I would put pain on a man for two hundred dollars? Does that make fiscal sense? A broken arm does not help make the payments on my boat.’

  ‘You strike me as the kind of man who doesn’t make payments.’

  ‘It’s a recession. What can I say?’

  ‘What kind of boat?’

  ‘You know boats? A Beneteau First 30.’

  ‘My father taught me to sail. He skippers a yacht in Miami. Sunset cruises, corporate events. He doesn’t own it, though. The upkeep is too expensive.’

  ‘Let me ask you, then, Miss Detective. Would your father throw someone overboard for breaking a champagne glass?’

  ‘If it was damaging to his business and he needed to set an example.’

  Timor gives her a pitying look. ‘Mr. Lafonte cannot hurt my business. He is a small fry and I am the … king lobster. I am very sorry for what happened to his son. It’s a terrible thing.’

  ‘So you know what happened?’

  ‘The boy is dead. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Not in this case. There are some – unusual – specifics.’

  ‘What are these specifics?’ He twists one of his heavy gold cufflinks.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t get into that with you, but I need to ask you something. Forgive me being forthright—’ Gabi starts.

  ‘No, no, I like a forward woman,’ he leers, his mouth full of shining white caps. ‘You would like to come sailing one day? It would be my pleasure to have you. See what your father taught you.’

  ‘And go swimming with the fishes? No thank you.’ Gabi smiles thinly. ‘Russians are known for sending a message. Brutal ones. Cutting off hands and feet. Decapitations. There were feet washing up in Canada a while ago. Would have had to be dumped from a boat.’

  ‘Gabriella,’ Luke warns.

  Timor sneers. ‘I have heard these things too, and maybe some of it is true in other cities. I can’t speak for every Russian. But we do not kill children. We are not fucking Mexicans! Not even the narcos would do something this stupid. Bring down the police. For what? Two hundred dollars? You tell Mr. Lafonte that as a sign of goodwill and compassion, I forgive his debt.’

  ‘That’s magnanimous of you.’

  ‘I am a generous man,’ Timor says, but the atmosphere has turned colder. ‘I will wave to you from the deck when you are pulling some dead drunk out of the water, then.

  Now, if you will be kind and excuse me. I have a poker game to return to.’

  In the car on the way back, Stricker taps the steering wheel with his thumbs, a bass-line of annoyance. ‘You shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I know I pushed, but he wasn’t about to have us whacked. As he said, it’s not worth sabotaging his business.’

  ‘I mean you shouldn’t flirt. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘What?’ Gabi laughs at the preposterousness of it. ‘He invited me on his boat. I shot him down. What do you think the appropriate reaction would have been?’

  ‘This is why female cops get a bad reputation.’

  ‘You could have said exactly the same thing.’

  ‘He wasn’t looking at my tits.’

  ‘You’re putting this on me?’

  ‘Do you know what Mike Croff calls you?’

  ‘Sure. He’s told me to my face. Twofer. Latina and a woman means I get all the advantages, right? So the department can look more progressive.’

  ‘Threefer. Because you’re all that, and pretty too.’

  ‘Well, don’t you say the sweetest things. You’re not so bad yourself, Stricker. You could be the department poster boy. What does that say about you?’

  ‘Mike says the media is gonna love you when it comes to the press briefing. You play it right, you could be heading on up the chain.’

  ‘What do you think, Luke? I don’t deserve to be OIC? I didn’t earn this?’

  He keeps his eyes on the road, the deserted streets spottily lit up by half-working streetlights. ‘You were first on the scene,’ he says, coolly. ‘Cards fall where they fall.’

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

  Branches of Enquiry

  If Gabi had to give the debriefing a score, it would be a D-minus. Lots of leads with no concrete answers, petty bickering because everyone wants this and everyone is tense. Not even the box of donuts Sparkles has the initiative to bring in from Heidi’s Kitchen eases things.

 
Approximate time of death: somewhere between three and five p.m. on Friday afternoon, probably at the bus stop, which, despite the police tape, has already been turned into a memorial, with bunches of flowers and teddy bears tied to it.

  Cause of death: a very precise blow to the back of the neck, which severed the vertebrae. Could be a nail gun, or the kind of bolt gun slaughterhouses use on livestock before they slit their throats. Twenty-nine slaughterhouses registered in Michigan, ten within the city limits, mainly round Eastern Market. Two hundred and seven hardware stores in Detroit alone. They’re doing tests on pig skulls with various instruments to try to narrow it down.

  Results on the adhesive and the blood found at the bus stop are still outstanding. She has put in another priority request.

  In the meantime, she’s gone back to the case files of the original gang shooting Daveyton was caught in, but it was a drive-by, and the shooter was never identified.

  Unfortunately, the history makes the story sexier for the media. There are already calls coming in, begging for details. The parents have requested that photographs not be released to the press in their entirety.

  ‘Straight up,’ Joe Miranda says, quietly, so everyone has to pay attention when he talks. ‘The journalists have to toe the line on this one. They can show what we tell them to and not a hair more.’

  Ovella Washington has compiled a depressingly long list of individual members of racist hate groups in the state. ‘Online posturing, mostly,’ she says. ‘A lot of “Trayvonhad-it-coming” and “Renisha-deserved-to-die” and generally feeling sorry for themselves and whining about how the black man is keeping them down. Daveyton’s name came up on the forums only once – “One less nigger to worry about.” If his killer was a crazy racist, he’s not bragging about it online. The neo-nazis are more worried about running drugs. They’ll talk the talk, but I don’t think they’d want to risk bringing the police down on them with a stunt like this.’ She taps her file with her glittering nails. ‘In conclusion, I think it’s highly unlikely it was the work of an organized group, but it could have been a loner within a group.’