Red Tide

by Peg Brantley

  She turned to Chase. “Without a liver—or much else, for that matter—TOD is gonna be a problem.”

  This case had just begun and already it was going downhill.

  Chase stood back and let the ME get to work. He turned to Akila. “Where are the uniforms?” He had some questions for them.

  Akila nodded past the CSU van. “Kirk Wheatley caught the call.”

  Chase felt better about the support he’d lucked into. Wheatley had enough experience and street smarts to keep from messing up the evidence.

  He headed over to the patrol car and looked in the window. Kirk was filling out his report, using the computer to diagram the scene. Chase knocked on the passenger window and the officer waved him in.

  Chase climbed in to the passenger seat. “ Hey, Kirk. How did you draw this shift?”

  “I’m kind of baching it since my wife left me. I figured I could build up some points if I want some time off later—or need a favor.”

  Chase nodded. Personal relationships were tough to maintain in this line of work. He’d been lucky with Bond, but they still had to navigate rough terrain from time to time. “Sorry to hear about the breakup.”

  Kirk shrugged his shoulders. “Bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Who called in the DB?” Chase asked. He didn’t mention the pristine crime scene. Professionals expected nothing less.

  “Skizzers.”

  Chase sighed. Skizzers was a doper. Townspeople provided him with food, and in bad weather, a warm corner in a heated garage. But as careful as they were not to give the Vietnam veteran money, no one had quite figured out that by giving him food and shelter, he could parlay his disability check into whatever street products he could find.

  “Shit. Skizzers.”

  “Yep. Said that two giant bats swooped in with their Batmobile. Morphed into vampires and one of them split in two, leaving half of itself in the dumpster—which, for some reason, he referred to as a gift box.”

  “Someone listened to him?” Chase couldn’t believe a call like that had been taken seriously.

  “Not until he got specific about the location, and lucid for long enough to state the fact that two men had dumped a body, and we’d ‘better, by God, check it out.’”

  “Did he get a license number?” Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.

  “Nope, but we’ve got a BOLO for the Batmobile.”

  “Video surveillance?”

  “A couple of cameras. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re working cameras. Or that they taped anything we can use.”

  “We’ll check the local businesses tomorrow morning.” Chase looked at his watch. Four-fifteen. “I mean, later this morning.” He needed to get his notes in order and try to catch an hour or two of sleep.

  Chase got out and walked up to where Jax and Akila continued to work both the scene and the body. Akila stood inside the dumpster and looked almost comical decked out in baby blue protective gear. She rose to her full height and tugged down her face mask. “I should have taken the walk-on offers. This stinks. Literally.”

  “Good, you’re here,” Jax mumbled after glancing in his direction. “I’m ready to secure the victim and could use your help. Akila requested uniform assistance to bag the garbage and haul it to the crime lab, but she could use some muscle now to haul the body out.”

  Chase donned protective gear, like it would do any good, and jumped in the dumpster with Akila. “Shit.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  The two of them struggled and slipped in the slime to place the body in the bag. Chase fell twice, in awe of Akila’s more sure footage, but stayed on his game. With Jax’s help on the outside of the dumpster, they got the body out intact and ready to roll.

  Before he could offer his assistance, Akila put a leg up over the edge of the dumpster and dropped to the ground, covered to her knees in unidentifiable lab specimens. Chase elected to wait a few minutes until he could make the jump out of the dumpster without an audience. His bad knees and questionable back made him more of a target by co-workers than he liked. He also wondered if he could strip down to his skivvies and trash the rest of his clothes so Bond wouldn’t have to deal with them. He didn’t want to show up in their home with pants slimed with unidentifiable goo and bacteria.

  One thing at a time.

  He wondered if this body had anything to do with the other John Doe on the books. Bad things happen everywhere, even in the idyllic Colorado mountain town of Aspen Falls.

  But really bad things, especially here, tended to be connected.

  Chapter Three

  Aspen Falls Police Department

  Wednesday, September 19

  After he put his notes together into a Word document, Chase went home and fell into bed. An hour later—it felt like ten minutes—he got up, shaved, showered and poured himself a cup of French roast. It didn’t have the desired effect. Maybe he should try mainlining it.

  Jax had scheduled the autopsy for nine, a full hour later than usual. Chase managed to cut through the damp fog in his brain and focus on business. Jax swore under her breath a few times, lack of sleep impacting her usually good nature.

  Pending lab results, the only information involved things he already knew. All of the young Hispanic male’s internal organs had been cut out, like some kind of frog on a slab.

  After the autopsy, Chase paid a visit to the Chinese restaurant and three other businesses in the area, none of which yielded much information. Only one of them, Cobalt Mountain Books, had a working camera. Unfortunately, the snow had made a mess of the lens and only fuzzy movement could be seen. Still, he requested the tape and booked it into evidence. Maybe the crime lab could make something of it. They’d been known to do more with less.

  He needed help and made a request through official channels, directly to his lieutenant. Chase’s money was on not getting an answer anytime soon. In Lieutenant Butz’s mind, all murders were not created equal, especially if the victims had brown skin and uncertain social status. If necessary, Chase would go directly to Chief Whitman, but he hated to jump over Butz’s head. Because of Chase’s personal friendship with Whit, Lieutenant Butz tended to take every interaction between them as a direct threat to his job, so it would make an already strained working relationship worse.

  Terri Johnson walked into the squad room bearing gifts. More sustenance from The Coffee Pod, not the sludge machine down the hall. Coffee. The woman has a halo on her head. Tilted and a bit tarnished, but a halo.

  She handed him a cup. “I saw you earlier today and you looked like shit. You’re working on the dumpster DB, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Need help?”

  “I’ve asked Butz.”

  “What he doesn’t know… ” She set a bag down on her desk. “Want a muffin?”

  “Thanks, no. The sugar would be nice for about five minutes, then I’d be in real trouble. And thanks for the offer of help. Don’t need to stir up more with our lieutenant than is already stirred.”

  “We’ve got a squad meeting tomorrow. Maybe he’ll come through.”

  “We’d have better luck if my DB had blue eyes.”

  “Tell me about it. Even breasts wouldn’t be enough for Butthead.” Her cell phone rang and she checked the caller ID. Without a word, she took the call and walked out of the room.

  Chase took another sip of his coffee and tried to figure out what to do next on this case. He’d looked for Skizzers earlier when he’d gone to the businesses, but the doper had disappeared and no one seemed to know where he hung out during the day. Chase made a note to call Patrol. The uniforms usually had a handle on the more interesting characters who called Aspen Falls home.

  Chase clicked another folder on his computer. It was dated four days ago, Saturday, September 15. Some hikers from Lakewood had found a dead body on a trail just south of town. The trail, rated difficult, didn’t get a lot of traffic, and if the body hadn’t been discovered that
weekend, the young man’s remains might not have been found until next summer—if at all.

  As with all of his cases, Chase had attended the autopsy. Other than the fact the man had undergone a nephrectomy within the last six months, the ME had found nothing unusual. Kind of young to lose a kidney. Right now, she’d listed the cause of death as undetermined. Some of the autopsy results should be back next week.

  Two unidentified bodies in less than a week. Both Hispanic, both male, both young, both of whom had missing organs (one planned, the other not so much), and both in Chase’s caseload. He needed to find something to link them. Two cases with unidentified victims in a small mountain town were two cases too many.

  His life had become complicated. Again.

  Chase picked up the phone to call the patrol sergeant. A doper might be his best lead. A doper who thought he’d seen the Batmobile.

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