Naked Addiction

by Caitlin Rother

  “Stupid dog,” Goode yelled as his van careened toward a row of black trash bins and a young guy who was crouched down, examining something between the cans.

  Goode’s brakes screeched as he came to a halt just a few feet short of him. He was a stocky guy in his early twenties, a little heavyset and not all that tall, with short dark hair and big dark eyes, wearing a baseball cap backwards. His face conveyed a whole spectrum of emotions, only one of which was relief that he hadn’t been flattened by a VW van. Goode guessed that he was probably of Italian or Greek origin.

  A little shaken by the close call, Goode sat for a minute, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He’d almost killed a guy, trying to avoid a damn dog. He was shaking his head when he noticed a pair of ivory feet with red toenails sticking out from between the bins next to the kid’s checkerboard-patterned Vans shoe.

  Is that a mannequin . . . or a body?

  “Hey, sorry. Are you okay?” Goode asked as he hopped out of his van and walked toward the kid, who wore a curiously inscrutable expression.

  “I thought you were going to run me over,” the kid replied, smiling a little as he squinted up at Goode, who had the sun behind him. “My life flashed before my eyes, the whole deal. I was cruising down the alley when I found her,” he said, nodding at his skateboard, lying wheels-up nearby.

  Goode’s eyes followed the ivory feet up a pair of long legs to see it was not a mannequin, but the crumpled body of a raven-haired young woman, stunning even in death. Goode kneeled down to take a closer look. She didn’t smell very fresh, but it was hard to tell with the heat. She was wearing a man’s shirt, white with red pinstripes. And nothing else.

  Her lower abdomen was marked with purple blotches, as if two hands had grabbed her and squeezed. Her neck was bruised and patches of skin were ripped away, as if she’d been strangled. The red fingernails on her right hand were ragged at the ends, as if they’d been broken off during a struggle. But this was no skanky tweaker. He could tell by her hair, nails and skin that she ate well and had recently had a mani-pedi. Her build was athletic and well toned, her hair looked highlighted and styled, and her shirt was a Ralph Lauren. Clearly she came from money and likely attracted men of the same ilk.

  But there was something familiar about this girl. Goode felt one of those jolts where a memory creased his consciousness and then dissipated like the trails of a fireworks display. Only he couldn’t get it back. Something was blocking the image.

  The alley was quiet and still for a moment. Time seemed to stop. With the sun beating down on his head, he felt dizzy again, just like he had on the bridge.

  The kid reached out to touch the girl’s shirt, but Goode grabbed his sweaty wrist before he could make contact.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Goode said. “This is a crime scene now.”

  A puzzled expression crossed the kid’s flushed face, as if the cylinders in his head were running but he didn’t quite know what to say.

  “What?” Goode asked. “You touched her already?”

  The kid nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah, I don’t know, I’ve never seen a dead person before. It was weird. Her cheek felt like a cold peach. Then I got freaked out by her eyes. They were this amazing turquoise blue, staring at nothing. So I closed them.”

  Goode stood up and pulled the kid to his feet, up and away from the body. “Let’s talk over here,” he said. “I’m a police detective.”

  The kid came willingly. When they reached the other side of the alley, about fifteen feet from the body, he still had that confused look on his face, but he looked a little more scared now than he had initially.

  “I’m not in any trouble, am I?” he asked.

  It was too soon to tell. Goode didn’t get a killer vibe off him, but since he’d been right there with the body, he was a natural suspect. And Goode had learned long ago that murderers often came with no identifiable marks. You had to go deeper. Pretty much everyone he met on the case for the next couple of days would be a suspect.

  “You tell me,” Goode said, staring into his eyes. The kid, who had regained his composure, stared back. Then he started smiling, which Goode found to be an odd response given the circumstances. “What’s so amusing?”

  “So, you’re a cop?” he replied, shaking his head as if the notion didn’t make sense.

  Goode duly noted that the kid had answered his question with a question, a useful deflection technique if the other person doesn’t notice.

  “Yes, I am. Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “No joke,” the kid retorted.

  “What’s your name?” Goode asked.

  “Jake Lancaster.”

  “You have any ID on you, Jake Lancaster?”

  Jake pulled a canvas wallet out of his back pocket and ripped open the Velcro flap to reveal his driver’s license, which said he was twenty-three. Goode saw a student ID card in the wallet, from the University of California, San Diego. So he was no dummy. UCSD was a tough school. Goode had gone there a couple of quarters before transferring to UCLA.

  “What are you studying up there?” Goode asked, hoping Jake would show his true colors.

  Jake said he was in the biochemistry master’s program. He’d applied to medical school but had been rejected, so he was going for a little “extra credit” to juice up his next round of applications.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Jake said, grinning mischievously and pointing at his shoes. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “You Italian?”

  “Yeah, on my mother’s side,” Jake said, grinning again. “How’d you know?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Goode was trying to make a subtle point that being a good detective meant he could sense things based on gut instinct, with little or no information. He only hoped that Jake was as smart as he seemed, and would pick up on that. Not wanting the kid to disappear while he was on the phone, Goode told Jake to wait while he notified the Homicide unit, then started walking toward his van.

  “We’re going to need to get a statement from you, Mr. Lancaster,” he said in the most suspicion-free tone he could manage. Then he turned, paused for a moment, and said, “By the way, did you know her?”

  Jake looked him straight in the eye, as if he knew he needed to show he was honest and sincere or he might end up as a case of wrong place, wrong time. Maybe he got Goode’s point after all.

  “Not really,” he said. “I’d just found her when you found me.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Goode said again, as he got into his van and rolled up the window so Jake couldn’t hear his conversation. He didn’t want the kid to know that he was still a relief homicide detective, without a whole lot of pull. As Goode rummaged around on the passenger seat for his cell phone, he looked back over at those red toenails and flashed on the girl’s beautiful face. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-four, about the same age as Jake.

  What a waste.

  After punching in Sergeant Rusty Stone’s number on his cell, he glanced over his shoulder and around the alley. He didn’t want anyone or anything else to contaminate the crime scene.

  Stone was an old surfing buddy, who had been telling Goode for the past decade what a great homicide detective he’d make. He’d helped Goode land the prestigious relief job, then tried to grease the way for him to get the experience he needed to get transferred from Narcotics.

  “It’s showtime, buddy,” Goode told Stone, who had been napping in his backyard hammock and was still a little groggy.

  “Huh? What show?” Stone asked.

  But once the news perked him up, Stone told Goode to call the watch commander and report finding the body while Stone called the Homicide lieutenant, Doug Wilson, to see if Goode could work with the team that was up in the rotation, especially since he’d already gotten a leg up on the investigation. In the meantime, Stone told Goode not to let Jake leave without giving a full statement, and reminded him to tell dispatch to run a quick criminal check to make s
ure the kid didn’t have any outstanding warrants.

  “Yeah, I know. I’m on it,” Goode said. “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

  Once Jake came back clean on the warrant check, Goode tucked the cell phone into his pocket and watched the kid play with the rat-dog. Flooded with adrenaline, Goode sat for a moment, trying to get his thoughts straight, worried that he might forget to do something important. He took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Down, boy, he told himself. You have to show Stone and Wilson that you can do this.

  For months now he’d been thinking that he couldn’t take one more night as an undercover detective, buying crystal meth in Ocean Beach. So this was it. His big chance to get the hell out of Narcotics. But self-interest aside, he really did want to know what had driven someone to kill such a beautiful girl. Unless, of course, her beauty was reason enough.

  Chapter 2

  Goode

  Goode told Jake he needed to wait a little longer, while he moved the van up the alley a ways. “Just stay out the way,” Goode said. “We don’t need you polluting the crime scene any further.”

  He wasn’t out of undercover work yet and didn’t want to be recognized or associated with his van by anyone else, so he parked it in an unobtrusive spot behind the adjacent apartment complex. He shook off his flip-flops and pulled on his Nike tennis shoes, without socks as usual.

  During his seven years with the LAPD and his eight with the San Diego PD, Goode had certainly seen his share of the dead. Drug dealers sprawled on their apartment floors near the beach, track marks up and down their bruised arms. Homeless junkies, their skin so dirty he wondered if it would ever come clean. He found it curious that people thought the longer you’re a cop, the easier it got to handle finding a dead body. Well, it didn’t. Especially when it was hot out, accelerating decomposition. Even so, finding this young woman felt different. He couldn’t figure out why it was hitting him so hard. And so deep.

  Goode was leaning against a garage door, running through the gamut of possible events that could have led to her being dumped in the alley, when the television news crews started pulling up in their vans topped with monster satellite dishes. The patrol cars rolled up as well, and officers began cordoning off the area with yellow tape.

  Soon the alley was also swarming with reporters, cameramen and tripods as tall as people. Goode tried to duck behind a stairwell, but one of the reporters spotted him and asked him to do an on-camera interview. The guy said he’d heard from one of the patrolmen that Goode was the one who’d found the body. That Goode was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that said, SURFERS DO IT IN WAVES, because he was off-duty.

  “Not exactly,” Goode said.

  Following protocol, he told the reporter to talk to the sergeant, who had just shown up. Stone nodded at Goode to join him down the alley, where he told Goode that he was officially on the case.

  “It’s showtime, indeed,” Stone said.

  The stars must be aligned, the sergeant said, because virtually all the homicide teams were already busy working active cases. On top of that, three members on the team that was up in the rotation had gone camping together and had come down with some nasty virus and/or poison ivy, leaving only one healthy detective, Ted Byron. His wife was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, so he hadn’t gone on the trip.

  Stone and the lieutenant came to an agreement: The more experienced Byron would take the lead on the primary crime scene in the alley, while Goode, under Stone’s close supervision, would have the unusual honor of taking the lead on the rest of the investigation, coordinating with two other relief detectives, Ray Slausson and Andy Fletcher.

  This way, Stone said, Goode would get a chance to dig in deeper and for longer than usual, really show what he could do and that he was truly Homicide-worthy. One of the senior Homicide detectives was about to retire in a couple of months, which would open up a spot. Stone also said he would talk to Goode’s sergeant in Narcotics to see if he could get freed up from his regular duties for a week or so.

  Goode was so excited it almost hurt. “I owe you about ten ginger beers,” he said, referring to the only type of beer Stone drank these days.

  “And don’t think I won’t be collecting them,” Stone said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Goode knew the two other relief detectives by name and face only. They seemed like good guys, but he’d never worked with them. Each one was five to eight years younger than him, not to mention much newer to homicide relief duty. Previously, Stone had little to say about them, which either meant they hadn’t screwed up any cases or he didn’t know their work very well, so they, too, were in the proving stage. Slausson was a local, a graduate of San Diego State University, and assigned to Robbery. Fletcher was originally from the Washington, DC, area, where his father had worked some hush-hush intelligence job at the Department of Justice. He worked Special Investigations, which coordinated with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Based on past experience, Goode felt lucky not to be stuck with some of the other relief guys, who carried too much of the asshole gene.

  Feeling the jab of elbows in his back and side, Goode stepped back to make way for the television crews as they formed a circle around the sergeant, closing in like buzzards. He chuckled as Stone shuffled around, stepping over electrical cords and dodging his own share of elbows. Typically, the TV reporters shouted questions until the pack relinquished the floor to the reporter with the most personally intrusive or obtuse query. That afternoon was no different.

  A hair-sprayed blond man with an open collar and no tie started the volley: “So, there was a murder here last night?”

  “Ohhh, probing question,” Goode whispered to himself.

  Goode scanned the scene and saw Rhona Chen from Channel 10, one of the more seasoned TV reporters. Talk about an oxymoron. But at least she got most of her facts straight. She was wearing a bright pink suit, a white silk blouse, and a string of pearls. Goode remembered the last time he saw her, with her legs wrapped around a cop outside Denny’s, about 3 A.M. He hadn’t seen her in the flesh since, but he’d always had warm thoughts about her when he saw her on TV. Ready Rhona, he called her.

  Stone made a very brief statement: “A young woman was found dead in this alley a few hours ago. As you can see, Homicide is investigating and we will issue a news release at some point today. That’s all I can say for now.”

  Goode couldn’t help but smirk. He knew damn well that the other homicide detectives hadn’t arrived yet and there would be no news release until the lieutenant was good and ready. And that would be later. Much later.

  Cops were usually careful around TV reporters, who were known among the ranks for going on the air without knowing what they’re talking about, quoting sources who didn’t know any better, and speculating a whole lot.

  “You people are always jumping the gun,” Goode muttered, louder than he’d intended. Unfortunately, Pretty Boy heard him.

  “So, she was shot?” he piped up. Goode pictured him with a VACANCY sign hanging from his neck.

  “Talk to the sergeant,” Goode snapped.

  “Didn’t you just say she was jumped by a guy with a gun?” he asked.

  Goode shook his head in disgust and walked away before he smacked the guy in his veneered teeth. Goode wouldn’t be surprised to hear a teaser for the news that night as a result of his little quip: “Young woman shot in an alley in PB, story at eleven.”

  He’d always liked newspaper reporters better than their TV competitors. The television infotainment crowd seemed to live only for blood, gore, and anything on fire. And they had bad manners to boot.

  After Stone’s briefing, the TV crews—pissed at the cops for withholding information—moved their tripods as close as they could to the yellow tape to do their live shots. By that time, the evidence tech had arrived to measure the scene and take photos, which provided the perfect backdrop for the cameras. Byron, Slausson and Fletcher had arrived by then, too, so they all huddled up while St
one explained the team arrangement to everyone.

  “Slausson and Fletcher, you guys stay clear of the crime scene while Byron searches the alley for the girl’s wallet, in case her ID and the rest of her clothes turn up. Byron, after the ME gets here and transports the vic to the morgue, you and the evidence tech can go through the trash bins next to her.”

  Goode told Stone he was going to fetch the apartment manager to check whether the victim had lived in the complex, and if so, to identify the body. Hopefully, the victim had been a tenant and Stone could get a phone warrant so they could start searching her apartment.

  Goode said he needed a minute in the shade to cool off, but what he really wanted was a chance to pull his thoughts together again. He pulled out a dog-eared, yellowed photo from his wallet. It was just as he’d suspected. Although the victim was at least a decade younger, she bore an uncanny resemblance to his mother. She had the same long dark hair, so silky that you wanted to touch it. And, according to Jake, the same bright blue eyes, too.

  It was a photo taken at his sixth birthday party, a week before his mother jumped off the bridge. He was standing at her side as she held his newborn sister, swaddled in a blanket. His parents named the baby Maureen, but his mother pronounced it “Marine.”

  “Hey, Goode. Let’s go,” Stone yelled from down the alley. “Time’s a wastin.’”

  Goode shook his head and sighed. This was no time for deep thinking and reliving his past. A rivulet of sweat ran down his spine. It was so damn hot out, yet he felt a chill. He tucked the photo back into its hiding place. He’d just turned thirty-six, the same age his mother had been when she died.