Inch by inch, the Boat Man made his way forward, the smell of wet fur and feces reaching his nostrils. A sheen of moisture coated his face as he proceeded, extending one hand and knocking against the back of the structure.
The move delivered the intended effect.
The moment the sound reached the dog’s ears, it exploded in a frenzy of angry barking, reverberating off the walls of the buildings as the Boat Man knelt low, waiting for the hysterics to serve their purpose.
Ignoring the howling dog, separated from him by a length of chain, he focused his attention on the dilapidated house, anticipation roiling through him as the sound of arguing died away.
In its place was only the angry baying of the dog, thundering out over the neighborhood.
After a moment, the barking began to fade, the animal losing interest.
Once more the Boat Man tapped at the back of the structure, sending the dog into a second burst of concentrated venom.
Poised in his hiding spot, the Boat Man reached over his shoulder for the sword, the freshly oiled blade sliding from its scabbard without a sound. Gripping it tight, he waited, listening as the springs on the rear door to the house screeched open, followed a moment later by boots hitting steps.
“What the hell are you out here barking at?”
The voice was male, a trace of familiarity present. The sound of it enforced the Boat Man’s hold on his weapon, his breathing picking up just a bit.
Seconds passed as the footsteps drew closer, passing over the back walk to the dirt.
“Hey,” the man snapped, “get your ass over here. What’s going on?”
Three long, torturous seconds passed as the Boat Man allowed his prey to draw closer before he sprang.
Chapter Eleven
The face of Edwin Mentor stared back at Reed, filling over half the computer screen. At first glance he appeared Latino, though his records indicated he was half-Caucasian, half-Filipino. The mug shot had been taken almost a decade before when Mentor still had hair, the top of his head framed with short, dark spikes that were gelled into place. He wore a thin beard and goatee and a thick gold chain around his neck.
All in all, a look that screamed 2004.
The folder Solomon had given him sat open on Reed’s lap as he glanced at the photos she had taken and the image on the screen. Somewhere in the bottom of the crime scene report spread across his keyboard, were the photos taken the night before, though Reed preferred to work off of the sanitized version sent over by the ME.
Before touching any of the paper, Reed had started with the electronic databases, intent to learn everything he could about Mentor before going back over what he already knew.
The first step for any homicide investigation was the crime scene. Having spent six hours there within the last day, Reed felt reasonably comfortable with everything that was found.
A whole lot of gore, and not much else.
The second place to look was at victimology, trying to work backward from the person who was killed to determine who might have done it. Often, there was no clear throughway that connected one with the other, but after digging around long enough, an investigator could at least determine the why, which generally led to the who.
Beginning with the large national databases, Reed entered Mentor into ViCAP – the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program – and NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. Both were run by the FBI, meant to warehouse data on violent or extreme offenders, running the gamut of criminals from identity thieves to foreign fugitives.
Once both came back negative, he shifted his attention to the local files, finding only a pair of arrests six months apart in the fall of 2004 and the spring of 2005.
The first offense occurred after being picked up for driving with a busted taillight, the officer on the scene smelling marijuana. A search of the car found three-eighths of an ounce inside, enough to warrant a possession charge but not enough to be considered dealing.
Half a year later Mentor was arrested along with eight others after a bar fight in Grove City. The narrative read that two groups of young men, one of which Mentor was a member, had gotten into an argument over a basketball game on television. The disagreement had turned violent, and all nine had entered into an altercation.
None of the participants had pressed charges, but the bar owner had been forced to for insurance purposes.
After that, the trail went cold. He owned his car, paid his rent on time. For the past six years he had been employed as a mechanic at a shop in Franklinton, a quick call revealing the place was closed until morning.
Parents passed when he was 17, no spouse or children.
Once the low hanging fruit was stripped clean, Reed fell to the files. Thus far, they had revealed little beyond the fact that the years had not been especially kind to Mentor.
“You got anything?” Reed asked, the question aimed at Billie as she lay flat on the tile floor near his feet. Her eyelids opened at the sound of his voice, her ears rising on her head.
“Yeah, me neither,” Reed muttered, shifting his attention back to the files. “Tomorrow we’ll see if we can track down this woman the uniforms found, maybe swing by the scene and let that nose of yours have a look around. Sound good?”
“You always talk to her that way?” a voice asked, snapping Reed and Billie’s attention, her chin rising from the floor.
Across from them Jackie approached, her wide figure barely squeezing through the narrow path between desks. In her hand she carried a paper cup of coffee, a lid fastened in place.
A smile crossed Reed’s face as he leaned back in his chair, folding the file closed on his lap. “The hard part is getting her to talk back.”
A sad expression fell over Jackie’s face as she looked at the dog. “If only.”
She held the pose a moment before setting the coffee down on the only clear space on the desk. “Here, Honey, I brought you this.”
The smile fell from Reed’s face as he looked at the cup and then up at the expression on Jackie’s face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We just got another call. Sounds a lot like the one you’re looking at right now.”
Chapter Twelve
Unlike the night before, the scene was alive with activity as Reed pulled up. A squad car was parked across the end of the driveway, an ambulance behind it. A third truck with an insignia on the door Reed didn’t recognize came next in line, orange flashing lights flooding the neighborhood with their tangerine hue.
“What the hell?” Reed muttered, easing to a stop on the opposite side of the street. In the backseat he could hear Billie moving around, straining to look, her paws scratching against plastic.
“You better stay here,” Reed said, glancing over his shoulder as he pulled the keys from the ignition and stepped out, his partner again wanting to join him.
Ignoring the sound, Reed slid his badge out from beneath his sweatshirt, letting it swing free around his neck, bouncing off his chest. It glinted under the bright lights of the truck.
Halfway across the street, one of the responding officers spotted him and stepped out in front of his car. The same height and a few pounds heavier than Reed, he looked to be approaching 40, bits of grey coloring his temples.
“Detective Reed?” he asked.
Reed nodded, stepping forward, introducing himself, a hand outstretched.
The officer met the shake. “Derek Greene.”
He pointed over to the ambulance, the back doors standing open, bright light from within splashing out. Seated on the edge of it was a young woman with dark hair, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Beside her stood a second officer in uniform, much younger than Greene, holding a pad and pencil out in front of him, motioning for the woman to calm down.
He didn’t appear to be making much headway placating her, or getting her statement.
“My partner, Adam Gilchrist,” Greene said.
Reed’s glance lingered on the scene behind the ambula
nce before shifting back. It was something he had seen many times over the years, something he had done on more than one occasion.
“Rook?” Reed asked.
“Less than a year in,” Greene confirmed, his features impassive as he stared straight ahead. His voice was free of inflection, meant merely to relay information, not scorn.
In his experience, Reed had found that was usually the best that could be said about rookies. Even those who came in with military training seemed to be like a newborn colt their first year, all knees and elbows, barely able to stand on their own.
“Is he talking to her because she has pertinent information or because you want him far from the crime scene?”
“Yes,” Greene replied, glancing over at Reed, no sign of mirth anywhere on his features.
Reed had figured as much.
“Alright, what do we know?”
A long, slow breath passed from Greene as he folded his arms across his chest. “Call came in 20 minutes ago from the girlfriend, said that she and her boyfriend were home this evening when something outside caused their dog to go crazy. The boyfriend stepped out to see what was going on, never came back.”
So far, nothing Greene had said seemed consistent with the night before, from the amount of activity surrounding the area to the presence of another person onsite.
“Was reported as another 187,” Reed said. “Can you confirm?”
“Yes,” Greene said without pause, not the slightest hint of hesitation in his voice.
“Last night I got one that had been hacked up pretty bad, looked like someone took a damn broadsword to the body. Dispatch said it might be connected.”
Reed left the statement open-ended, allowing Greene to match it against what he had already seen, free from any leading at all.
A long moment passed in silence before Greene arched an eyebrow. “I heard some chatter about that on the radio this afternoon, wasn’t sure if it was true or not.”
“It was,” Reed said, drawing his mouth into a tight line. While it was generally not his policy to share the gruesome details of cases, there was no reason to withhold information from Greene. If the two were, in fact, connected, he would need every relevant detail he could get.
That only happened if he played ball with the responding officers.
“What’s with the laser light show?” Reed asked, motioning to the flashing orange illuminating the neighborhood, drawing gawkers to their windows like moths to a flame.
“Animal control,” Greene said.
Once more a feeling welled within Reed, a combination of dread and adrenaline, his body’s natural response to what was bound to be an ugly situation. Questions passed through his mind as he tried to make sense of why animal control was on site, but he let them go.
So far, Greene seemed to be in control, handling things much better than the young crew the night before. His lack of impairment hinted that it wasn’t the first body he’d seen, the police tape and relocation of the witness indicating the scene was secure.
“How bad?” Reed asked, again leaving his voice flat, letting his colleague draw from it what he would.
“Top...two,” Greene said, pausing in the middle to consider his answer.
The feeling Reed had intensified a tiny bit. Two didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room. Two meant that this was going to be ugly, potentially even worse than what he’d seen the night before.
“If it’s alright by you, I’m going to go ahead and declare it a homicide, call in the tech crew so they can start making their way over here.”
Greene remained motionless, his arms still folded across his chest. “That’s what I would do.”
Chapter Thirteen
Top two might have been a stretch, but Reed was not above ranking the crime scene in his top five.
Never did he want to call something the very worst, fear of angering karmic forces enough to view the statement as a challenge, sending him something straight from a Stephen King novel. Instead, he tended to group things in terms of round numbers, usually multiples of five.
The previous night was a top 15 scene, maybe cracking the top 10 if he really tried to force it. The shock value of the blood and the severed limb had made it seem much worse at first, his senses not expecting to respond to such gore.
Now with a bit more time to provide perspective, he had backed off a bit from his original assessment. The facts were, there was only a single victim, and the kill was fresh. There was no mass grave, no gang shootout that had ended with bodies strewn through the street. Nobody had been left in the summer heat, their tissues bloating and rotting under the hot sun.
Top 15, possibly top 10.
Tonight’s scene was top five, no questions asked.
The victim’s name was A.J. Wright, the girlfriend saying he always went by his initials, short for Alex Jason. Thus far, that was the only useful information they had gotten out of her, though standing over the scene, Reed didn’t begrudge her a bit for it.
Walking out to find a loved one in that position would have shaken him too.
Wright was sprawled face up on a dirt patch between the house and a detached garage, the area clearly beaten free of grass by a dog.
Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a flannel open over it, his torso was carved with two intersecting slashes, both consistent with what Reed had seen the night before. The depth and ferocity of the cuts were such that bits of intestine were spilling from the wounds, bodily fluid staining the front of his clothes. A single gaping stab wound was present in the man’s chest.
In addition, unlike the previous victim, both of his arms had been removed mid-forearm. The left one remained on the ground by his body, the right one having been drug through the dirt, blood trailing in the dust behind it.
Some of the flesh from the open end of it had been gnawed away, the work of Wright’s own pit bull, the reason for animal control having been called to the scene. For the briefest instant Reed imagined what it must have looked like for the officers who arrived, finding a fresh corpse, the victim’s dog gnawing on part of it.
The thought turned his stomach as he fought the urge to look over his shoulder and nod to Greene. When he’d first heard that animal control arrived on the scene before him, a pang of something resembling professional jealousy had struck him. Now he understood it was for the preservation of the crime scene, making sure no evidence was disturbed, no more of the deceased consumed.
At some point soon Reed would have to track down the animal control officer and examine the dog to determine what, if anything, could be learned.
The odds were overwhelming that it would result in nothing but a heavy bout of nausea, but he still had to do it.
Keeping his distance, Reed made two loops around the scene, careful not to disturb anything. He drew his cell phone from his waist and dialed dispatch, waiting as the metallic scent of blood wafted up at him. Puddles of it covered the ground mere feet away, beginning to harden in the cold night air.
“Hey, Sugar,” Jackie’s voice cooed over the line, skipping all formality.
“Can you patch me through to McMichaels?” Reed asked, bypassing any greeting and getting straight to his request. Despite standing over the scene, he wasn’t sure he could accurately describe it to her if asked, certain that he wouldn’t want to even if he could.
Jackie seemed to sense the strain in his voice and did as requested without further comment, a moment of static coming over the line before a gruff male voice answered.
“McMichaels.”
“Officer McMichaels, Reed Mattox.” He knew from their earlier meeting that they were on patrol, couldn’t be more than a few miles away. “Any chance I can ruin your night for the second time in a row?”
There was a long pause, followed by a deep breath. “Aw hell, you’ve got another one?”
How that could have been ascertained from a single question, Reed wasn’t sure, but he let it go without comment. Instead, he pushed forward with his request, shoving it
out in one quick burst.
“I do, and I need you guys to start working the streets again if you can. This is two in as many nights, and this is more gruesome than the last.”
Again, there was a brief pause, Reed imagining the two officers exchanging words.
“I don’t care who we wake up or piss off this time,” Reed said. “We might have a serial killer on our hands here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Just 20 minutes after leaving the scene, Reed stood on the opposite side of the one-way glass, looking through it at Lucinda Barr. She was seated on a black plastic chair before a solid wooden table, the wool blanket given to her by the paramedics still wrapped around her shoulders.
Within the confines of the makeshift garment she looked even smaller than Reed remembered, her upper body swallowed by the plain grey material. All that was visible from the waist up was her neck and face, both wearing the telltale signs of the night she endured.
“Thanks for bringing her in and staying with her,” Reed said without glancing over to Officer Gilchrist beside him. “Couldn’t have been easy.”
“Actually, it was,” Gilchrist replied, a hint of surprise in his voice. “She’s been almost catatonic since it all went down. I hope you’re able to get something useful out of her.”
Reed shifted his focus from the room to their reflection in the glass, seeing Gilchrist standing beside him, his thumbs looped into his front pockets. Still in his 20s, he had a boyish face and thick dark hair, his height a couple inches more than Reed.
“Still, I appreciate it,” Reed said, skipping over the fact that he and Greene had agreed to keep the younger man far away from the scene. “I’ll talk to the captain, make sure you guys get your OT for sticking around this morning.”
Gilchrist raised a hand to wave off the comment as Reed stepped past him, Barr not even looking up as he moved into the room and closed the door behind him. In slow steps he walked over and drew out the chair across from her, lowering himself and lacing his fingers on the table between them.
The Boat Man: A Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 1) Page 5