by Lex H Jones
“So from that, you think the murderer was on top of him?” Carl asked.
“That’s right. Once we get this guy to the crime lab we can look for bruises and pressure marks on his back, estimate the guy’s weight and height. That’s good, because from what I see here they were sensible. Attacker had his gloves on, you know? No DNA for us to search for.”
“Whatever else I might say about you guys, you’re fucking good,” Carl chuckled.
“What do you say about us?”
“You know, just that you’re a bunch of nerds who should get out more,” Carl shrugged.
“Oh... well that’s probably true,” Reeve smiled.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Reeve,” Carl assured him, patting the CSI on the back as he left. “Give me a shout when you have something more. I’m taking this case.”
Chapter Fourteen;
Clearing the Air
T he Ninth Street Police Station was the only station house on the East Side. There used to be another close to the bus depo, but it got so corrupt that it collapsed in on itself about ten years back. That’s the thing about corruption in any sort of department, private or public; it’s like a cancer. It can only go so far before it eats itself. A few guys taking bribes, dealing under the table, the department can still limp onwards doing what it does. But if every single person in the damn place is doing things they shouldn’t, it breaks apart and the whole sorry mess falls like a house of cards. When that finally happened to the other station, City Hall couldn’t honestly give a rat’s ass, so they never made an effort to set up a new precinct. They didn’t want cops on the East Side anyway; saw it as a waste of time and money. Let it burn, let everybody die.
Carl was one of the few officers in the East Side’s only remaining precinct that wasn’t corrupt. Sure he broke the rules now and then, but breaking the bones of dealers and pimps when a caution would suffice is hardly the same as corruption. He was still doing his job, after all—just doing it a little too enthusiastically. Near enough everyone else on the force has their hands in the shit somehow, even if it was just taking a few dollars here and there to look the other way. Detective Trent fell under that category, Carl was sorry to say. There were a good few shit-heads who never had to hear their Miranda Rights because they happened to have enough copies of Mr. Lincoln in their pockets to choose an alternative. Mr. Lincoln now spent a lot of time in Trent’s wallet and he seemed quite happy there.
It was rare that Carl came to the station, he had little use for it. He had his own office, being a high-ranking Detective, but it was rarely utilised. His superiors, such as they were, knew better than to ask him to do paperwork, so the cleanup to his cases was usually delegated. With that in mind there was never really any reason for Carl to come down to Ninth Street, but right now he wanted to speak with Trent. Corrupt or otherwise, the two were friends and had even been partners a long time ago. That was before Carl decided that he worked better alone and took the solo shift instead. He had always been better on his own, of course, but his superiors had hoped that sticking him with Trent might cool his temper a little. The reality was different though. Trent took the bribes whilst Carl beat the crap out of people. Not much better a situation, so it was agreed that Carl could work alone.
His failings aside, Trent was a real cop. The kind who worked when it got dark, ate and drank as a necessity to keep on moving, and didn’t really take any pleasure from anything. Small family, not many friends outside of work, and a sex-life that cost you each time you wanted to indulge in it. The glamorous life of law-enforcement in the City. Not many could stand it, hence the corruption setting in so easily. Trent liked the extra money the kickbacks brought him, but he was far from the worst. The dealers and pimps that he chose to ignore would never have been in prison more than a couple weeks anyway. The revolving-door prison system of a liberal, loved-up, fuck-hole society would have seen to that nicely.
“Hey, Trent,” Carl called over to the older Detective as he stood outside the door to his own office.
“What are you doing down here? Didn’t know you remember the way?” Trent called back.
“Smartass. Can I speak to you a second? My office?”
“Sure, two minutes,” Trent responded, returning his attention to the officer with whom he had been speaking.
Carl entered his own office whilst he waited for Trent, admiring the dust-covered desk and the filing cabinets which he hadn’t opened in months, if not years. His black-leather chair creaked as he sat down in it, reluctantly giving up its long-standing emptiness. At the back of his desk were two wooden drawers, neither one of them locked, which Carl decided to root through. They were mostly empty save for the usual random crap to be found in abandoned drawers; a notebook that wasn’t even taken out of the plastic wrapper, a box of chewed pens, and an apple or orange that now resembled a lump of coal. The only item in the drawers which Carl found to be even remotely interesting was an old photograph of him and Jimmy, probably the only one from when they were kids. They were sat in a small boat holding up a fish the size of a small cat. Carl smiled to himself as he looked at the old photograph, and then grew frustrated when he couldn’t remember who’d taken it. Surely it must have been his dad that took him fishing, but why would he have taken Jimmy as well, when he so clearly hated Carl being anywhere near him?
“What’s up then, you miserable bastard?” Trent sighed as he entered the office, interrupting Carl’s train of thought.
“Look, I was an ass when we spoke on the phone last night, I’m sorry,” Carl conceded.
“So you don’t think I’m a homophobic bastard?”
“Of course you are, but everyone’s got their prejudices, right? Not for me to judge you on them, I guess,” Carl shrugged.
“Then why’d you get so pissed off? If you know how I feel about gay guys then why throw a hissy fit when I don’t wanna take a case that involves one of them?”
“I got this friend who’s gay, alright? A close friend, probably the closest I ever had. Now I ain’t gonna go marching in any parades for him or any of that bullshit, but I do kinda feel bad that I haven’t been there for much of his life. I know he must’ve been through a lot of crap, taken his lumps more than once. And if I’d been there for at least some of it, I would’ve been able to stick up for him, I guess. Defend him from...”
“Guys like me?” Trent asked.
“Yeah,” Carl nodded. “That guy on the bed wasn’t Jimmy and you’re not one of the assholes who probably kicked Jimmy around at some point, but I just got this guilt, I suppose. Always have done with that kid, even his own dad hated him.”
“Don’t go where I think you’re gonna go, Carl,” Trent warned.
“We’re not talking about you and Lewis, alright? Your business with your kid is your own,” Carl assured him. “I’m just saying, I shouldn’t be passing my guilt over Jimmy’s shit-hole of a life onto you.”
“Okay, well I appreciate that, but it’s weird coming from you. I don’t know what you want me to do with that?”
“Just take the damn apology and get out of my office,” Carl smiled.
“All right, apology accepted,” Trent smiled.
“Now when you leave, make sure you slam the door behind you, all right? If you don’t leave looking pissed off then people will think we actually had a polite conversation in here. That wouldn’t be good for either of our reps.”
“Shit, you’re right,” Trent nodded, walking to the door and opening it, before shouting, “And fuck your goddamn proposals too, Duggan, you fucking prick! I don’t want nothing to do with it, so suck my goddamn balls!”
With that, Trent slammed the office door and stormed off through the station. Carl watched him go and smiled to himself, chuckling softly.
“Nicely done, Trent. Nicely done.”
Chapter Fifteen;
Moby Dick
“I ’ve got him, Duggan! He’s on my boat, his guts cut open!” Doctor Glass giggled down the phone.
/> “Come again?” Carl asked with a simultaneous rub of his sinuses.
“The white whale! His secrets are mine now!”
“Pretend for a moment that we don’t all speak ‘crazy’ and explain to me what you mean,” Carl said with a weary sigh.
“Judge White. He’s a big fat guy and his name’s White. So I compared him to Moby Dick? Get it?”
“You’re high, aren’t you Glass?” Carl asked with a second sigh.
“A little.”
“Jesus Christ, Glass! Don’t you remember what the DA said?”
“She said a lot of things.”
“The most important of which being the fact that we can only keep your licence if you agreed to stay clean whilst on the job. You wanna get doped up in your own time, then that’s your business. You start coming into the lab high as a kite again and we’re gonna lose our only coroner.”
“I was at home!” Glass said defensively. “But they called me in to say the injunction had been dropped and I couldn’t wait to get started. There’s a clock on poisons, you know. I told you that.”
“You actually sounded lucid there so I’m going to assume you’re on your way down. You clear-headed enough to keep at it? Don’t want you crashing on me.”
“Caffeine is a wonderful creation,” Glass giggled. “Hey, it’s not even that late yet, what’re you doing up anyway?”
“I had an early meeting with Trent, and why the hell are you calling me if you thought I was gonna be asleep?
“I got a message to let you know as soon as I’d gotten some info on Moby Dick.”
“I’m assuming that you do have some info?”
“Oh yes, like you wouldn’t believe,” Glass giggled again.
“Glass, I swear to God if you’re calling to tell me he had a small dick...”
“No, of course not. I mean he did, but that’s not what this is about,” Glass assured him. “See, you wanted me to figure out which poison he’d been dosed with, right?”
“That’s right. Once you knew the kind, you’d be able to tell the delivery method.”
“Bingo. Except I hit a snag.”
“Which was?”
“He hasn’t been poisoned.”
“What?”
“No poison in his system whatsoever,” Glass reiterated.
“Did you cut him open in time? Could it have just left his system already?” Carl suggested.
“Nah, there’d have been some sign after this short a period, even if it was just trace damage in his veins. This guy didn’t die from being poisoned, I’m sure of it.”
“Do you know what did kill him?”
“Heart attack.”
“Did he have a history of heart problems?” Asked Carl.
“Not yet. But I mean, he was probably heading towards them with his lifestyle. But he didn’t get there naturally.” Glass said, his voice barely stifling another giggle. Carl could tell from the increasing clarity of Glass’s words that whatever crap he’d taken was wearing off, which could only be a good thing. Nothing more annoying than speaking to an addict in the middle of a high, especially when you had no other choice.
“What are you saying, Glass? I don’t have time for riddles,” Carl said firmly.
“I looked into what medication he was on, in case he might have had a bad reaction to any of it. Apparently, he was taking a prescription calcium supplement. Strong ones, but they wouldn’t induce a heart attack. But when I cut into his heart, it showed signs of strain. The kind that’d be caused by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Again, nothing illegal, just prescription stuff. But if you didn’t know you were taking them, and took them with too great a frequency?” Glass made an ‘explosion’ gesture with his hands to illustrate the effect on a man’s heart.
“So you’re saying that for two weeks at least he hasn’t been taking the pills that he thought he was? Why would he switch to something else he didn’t even need to take?”
“Well it’s not me with the Detective badge, but I’d say that as far as Moby was concerned, he was taking his pills as normal. Only he wasn’t.”
“Someone switched them,” Carl nodded.
“I doubt he’d do it himself.” Glass shrugged. “Seems a very slow, lazy suicide.”
“Which brings us right back to his wife,” Carl said with a frustrated exhalation.
Chapter Sixteen;
History Lesson
T o his self-confessed delight, Carl found that Jimmy had left him some dinner in the fridge before heading out to God-knows-where this evening. It was just a few slices of Pizza that needed warming, but Carl was glad of it. Left to his own devices, he wouldn’t have eaten. One more night of pills and coffee to keep him going. His pills always went down better after having eaten something, the warning stating this was on the label on the bottle but Carl had never read it. If you spend time reading the warning labels on medicine, you’ll find that the possible risks are worse than the condition that you are taking them for. Better to just swallow them and not worry about it. It was only through Jimmy’s insistence that he eat something first that he’d actually noticed the lack of nausea accompanying the small white tablets.
The microwave pinged at the conclusion of its efforts, and Carl almost burned his hands in his eagerness to get the plate from inside. It smelt good, the combination of hot cheese and three kinds of meat wafting into his dry, cracked nostrils. To have the apartment filled with the smell of anything other than damp was a blessing. Still in a rush to head out to work, Carl just leaned against the kitchen counter whilst he ate. From this perspective he noticed the changes in his apartment that he had neglected to take note of earlier in the day.
“Son of a bitch! He cleaned!” Carl remarked to the empty room.
There were no discarded food wrappers on the floor, no half-drank cups of coffee left lying around on the surfaces. The dust that had long since laid down its roots on the window sills and surfaces was gone, replaced by a soft shimmer and the light smell of lemon. Carl smiled to himself, for a moment enjoying what it might have been like to have gotten married. An old-fashioned view, to be sure, but Carl was an old fashioned guy. In his head, the women did the cleaning and their husbands punched guys out for not telling what they knew. The world had changed, but not for the better. Independence was one thing, but it seemed like no-one was happy anymore. Freedom to do whatever you want, when you wanted to do it, brought as much misery as complete confinement. Having no purpose defined for you let some soar to the heavens, but it also meant that some would have no purpose. Period. The City was the perfect example of the latter option.
Funny thing was it hadn’t always been this way. When it had been constructed at the turn of the nineteenth century, the City had been a vibrant new ground of hope and opportunity. Factories on the East side, in which goods were manufactured to be shipped out to every state in the country. And on the West the finest entertainment an honest buck could buy. Movies, theatres, dance stages and concert halls. The people of the City worked hard and played hard, who could blame them. The cops didn’t have much to do, of course, but everyone knew their names.
The bullet that killed the dream wasn’t even fired from the Great Depression. It came a couple of decades later, when the people buying the goods that funded the city decided they’d rather get them a couple of bucks cheaper from overseas. The major sources of industry in the City dried up, and hundreds of blue-collar guys went out of work. Some moved away, some didn’t, and the city started to run low on funds with so much social security being paid out all of a sudden. A crippled local government and a vacuous hole in the economy is like a steaming great pile of shit that attracts flies with nice suits. Nice suits paid for through illegitimate means, of course.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you asked, the Mob never actually moved into the City. It would have been the perfect place for them to set up shop, but they left it alone. Instead, the void was filled by otherwise legitimate businessmen who now turned their he
ads to less morally-acceptable enterprises. Theatres became strip clubs, concert halls became massage parlours, and the manufacturing industry became the drug industry. Big business became crime, but the kind of crime that wears nice clothes and an expensive haircut so never gets arrested. The guys raking in the cash lived in the West, getting richer and fatter off the guys doing the leg work in the East, who all the while got poorer and sicker. The city followed suit with its people—the West growing so grand and opulent that it looked like it might collapse in on itself with having no foundation whatsoever, and the East giving way to decay and ruin. Only a few honest workers survived on either side, running coffee shops and DIY stores. The general rule is that if you make more than ten bucks and hour in the City, you’re not making it honestly.
Ironically, since the corruption set in like a cancer, the cops that had actually been needed more than ever became increasingly useless. Most of them grew tired of arresting the same guys over and over, only to see them set back on the streets after slipping a few Lincolns in the pocket of the judge or the jury. Working your hardest every day to keep the streets clean seemed a goddamn waste of time when the same filth was just poured back out of the trash cans the following morning. Some of the cops quit and moved away before the City took hold of them with its disease, others stayed on the job but placed themselves neatly in the pockets of the guys in suits. A very small number did their job well and with little or no corruption. That’s the best you could hope for in the City—the lightest shade of grey.
Chapter Seventeen;
Queen Bea