by Ronnie Allen
He looked excited and scared at the same time. “When are we goin’ in there?”
“It will be a while. But it will happen.” If you stick around long enough.
He led Jarvis to a punching bag in the corner where the balls were kept: stability balls, resistance bands and tubing, medicine balls, balance trainer.
“What’s all that stuff?”
“We’ll get to everything Jarvis, not all today, but we’ll get to it. Today we’re working with this. Have you ever used one?”
“They had smaller ones, narrower ones. This one’s a wide sucker.”
“Yes. This one is for full body contact. It’s a one hundred fifty pounder. Called the heavy bag. Use it for Muay Thai. Stand up fighting. Striking. Kicking.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m good at.”
“Good. That’s why we’re starting here.”
“Okay, cool.”
Frank handed him ten-ounce black boxing gloves from a hanger on the wall. “First, I want you to get a feeling of the floor underneath you. It’s anti-slip, vinyl. If you guys spill anything, even bottled water, you’re expected to clean it up.”
“Got it.”
“Jog in place for a few minutes. Let me know if you can feel it move with you.”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Good that’s for shock absorption. Less injury if someone falls. All right, in the gym upstate, what did you do to warm up?”
“They only had a trainer in there with us, once in a while. Usually we just went to the weights.”
“Uh-huh, not here. We do a full body warm up before we touch a piece of equipment. Show me how you’d stretch out and limber up. Do you know the proper names of movements?” Jarvis gave him a distant stare. “Okay, if I told you to do a lunge, would you know what that is?”
Jarvis gave him an offhanded smile. “Oh, stuff like that, yeah, sure.”
I’ll take care of that cockiness. “Awesome. Give me ten lunges, each leg, twenty squats, twenty swings, then get into a plank position, hold for twenty seconds, and give me twenty push-ups.”
Jarvis, stood with mouth gaping. “Uh?”
“Well?”
“Hang on, Doc. I never did it like that!”
“Okay, help me understand. And I need you to be honest. Is it the sequence that you have a problem with, or remembering them, or the number of reps?”
“Everythin’!”
“All right. Let’s do this.” Frank started off slowly, showing Jarvis the right form for each exercise.
Jarvis paid attention to everything, working along with Frank, performing the movements with him as Frank modeled them. Good, the kid really wanted to do this. After getting him up to half the number of reps, one round, Frank knew he had to reward the effort with the heavy bag. In between exercises, while catching his breath, Jarvis hadn’t taken his gaze off it.
“All right, Jarvis, ten minutes on the bag. Give it all you got. Full body. Go.”
Jarvis slammed the bag with the agility of a street fighter, not with the skill or form of an MMA trainee. In time, Frank thought, as he analyzed and noted Jarvis’s style on his clipboard. After three minutes, Jarvis stopped dead. Sweat poured down and out of every pore in his body. He couldn’t catch his breath. He bent over.
Frank handed him a bottle of water. “That was only three minutes.”
Still not catching his breath, Jarvis had a hard time getting the words out. “I--can’t do--no more.”
“Okay. For today. Your first goal will be five minutes, then up to ten. Then up to an hour. Hit the showers. You’re responsible for your own laundry.”
“How often can I come here?” Jarvis asked with still-labored breathing.
“Every day if you want and you can stay as long as you want.”
The kid grinned from ear to ear for the first time. “Thanks, Doc.”
***
Frank heard the heavy click of the bolt as he locked the door behind him. Back in his office, he slumped in his chair for a moment and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t any closer to coming to grips with his wife’s murder after two years, one month, six days, and fifty-three minutes. He swallowed hard.
Opening his desk drawer on the bottom right, he hesitated this time and exhaled a prolonged breath. He needed courage every time he did this. He lifted the sterling silver frame that laid face down. Turning the frame over, he gazed into loving eyes.
Oh, man, Jen, I sure miss you. Frankie misses you. Every day I tell him how special you are. How his mommy is watching over us from heaven. How his mommy sees everything we do. I have to tell ya, Jen, though I’m sure you already know. Frankie got a little rambunctious the other day. I took him in my arms and patted his behind, love pats.
He laughed, but I know you wouldn’t have approved. Then I grounded him. Two days, no cartoons. Then he stopped laughing. We agreed upon it, Jen. Zero tolerance for disrespect.
Tears trickled from the corner of his eyes, audible whimpers from his mouth. Good thing his office was soundproofed.
Jen, I swear I’ll find out who did this to you. I’ll find the bangers who mowed you down, just to get even with me. I promise, princess. I promise.
CHAPTER 4
Nick grimaced at the remnants of paint odors from last week’s renovation as he sat at his desk, involved in preparing his report from this morning that he knew he had to send to Brooklyn, ASAP. His cell rang. “Valatutti.”
The last thing he expected was a call from his new partner. She still had an hour before her shift began.
“Nick, Sam. I need a team here, now. Off the Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Second Street entrance to the park. Mutilated body. Male. Bring me sweats and sweat shirt, and towels. I’m a mess. I put in a 911 call a minute ago.”
“On it.” Nick surveyed the office to see who was available. He shouted out to Dingo Withers, lead homicide detective, who was at the other end of the open space, chatting with a few uniformed cops. Vacant desks in quadrants in the space between them caused his already baritone voice to echo. “Get a team, guys, now! Body in the park.” He went back to the call. “Why are you in the park when it’s teeming out?” Nick was up, weapons holstered, and out the door as he continued talking.
“Needed a run. Never mind that. Look at it this way, I landed my first case.”
“Your case?”
“Yep. I’m declaring it as mine.”
“We’ll talk about that, Wright.”
“Just get your ass here. I need sneakers, too. My clothes are evidence.”
“Stay put and don’t touch anything.”
“Nick, don’t insult me. I know the drill.” She disconnected before he could respond.
Ass? She told me to get my ass, here? And hung up on me? Oh, man, she’s going to be a picnic to work with. First job--knock her down a peg or two.
As he was racing to his SUV parked in the precinct’s outdoor lot, Withers caught up to him.
“What have ya got, so far?”
“Not much. Male and mutilated, and she’s wet. What were you doing out of your office? Don’t have enough homicides on your plate?”
“I had to speak to Loo about something. He told me to tag along. What do you mean, she’s wet?”
“That’s all I got. She hung up on me.”
“Hung up on you? Not even one-step into the building and your new little partner hung up on you? Oh boy. Glad I ain’t you. You’re going to have your hands full with this one. Looks like she needs to be taught how we roll.”
Nick could swear Withers’s baldhead had reddened, and that would be nearly impossible with his dark brown skin. “I realize that. Hate to say it, but she did great this morning.”
Withers rubbed his nose with his index finger and smoothed out his mustache at the same time. “Yeah, she’s got a good rep in juvie cases. But as a detective? It’s coming down the pipeline that she isn’t going to make it here.”
***
The rain tapered off by the time Nick arrived at the sce
ne and got out of the car. He didn’t neglect to notice Sam’s perfect body through her clingy sweats and T, even though she was covered in mud and blood. Her ponytail hung loose. Straggling wisps of hair stuck to her face. He smiled for the first time. His wife was never going to meet this one. Blonde and blue eyed with the perfect nose and full lips, to boot. Nope, his wife was never going to meet her.
Sam approached the other suited man who also towered over her. “Hi, I’m Sam Wright.”
It was all Nick could do, not to laugh. He knew Dingo well enough to know what went through his mind.
“Dingo Withers, lead homicide expert from Homicide Investigative Unit. What have we got here?”
Nick couldn’t mistake his curt attitude and, he assumed, neither could Sam.
“What are you doing here?”
“You lucked out, rookie. My unit is housed in your precinct. I’ll be busting your ass.”
“Okay, Withers. I see this as a test, right?”
He didn’t crack a smile. “I said I’d be busting your ass, but no. It’s the job of a first responder, and you, Detective Wright, happen to be that person.”
“I was the first on scene, yes. No one has gone into these woods since I’ve been here. No civilians to interview. The scene is safe. No assailant. On first look, I saw blood still oozing from wounds. So they’re somewhat fresh. The rain wasn’t pouring down so forcefully when I was under the shelter of the trees near the body. It’s a lot of cuts, more than ten at first glance. I got up after I fell. So you’ll have my DNA evidence that was transferred because my arms touched the branches, yeah Locard’s Exchange Principle, and there’ll be wet origin footprints. Didn’t notice any other footprints going to or away from body. Ooh, ooh, ooh. There’s more!”
Oh, man. How old is she?
Nick bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
“I knew I shouldn’t have taken the direct path to the body because that’s probably what the assailant did. But I had no choice. The bushes on either side are so dense. See them over there? So there was no other way to get through. I did, though, try not to tread in the water. Didn’t stick around to make exact count of cuts. Kept my arms straight down at my sides when I ran out and my eyes on the ground. Didn’t see any weapons or possible tools. Noticed the puddle water was red, right over there where I was standing when you pulled up. Splattered up on me as I jogged through it. I haven’t gone back to the body, but looked at it through this path.
“While I was waiting for you, I took pics on my phone of my shoe prints, the soles of my shoes, which have mud embedded in them now, the splatter on my clothes, and I documented the time, and conditions with my ID. I also noted the exact time the rain started. Also made videos of the flow of the water from every angle, except directly from the body. As I said, I didn’t go in there again. In one of the videos when I replayed it, I found...”
She set the video to pause on an object deep within a bush low to the ground and gave him the phone. “This oval white thing. Looks like a band of some kind. I didn’t touch the bush, or try to retrieve it. May have some blood residue, but I’m not sure. It’s down deep enough, so I can’t tell how much rain hit it. We actually shouldn’t even be standing here. It’s within three hundred feet of the scene. The body is less than twenty feet in. I’m thinking that the killer or killers wanted the body found. They could have taken it deeper into the woods. I did see some indentations in the ground that indicated a path. Took pics of that, too. Maybe they dragged the body. But they also raked up leaves and debris, and removed them, leaving a muddy path around the body. I fell butt down into that mud.” She twisted around to show them.
Nick couldn’t help but look at her perfectly rounded bottom. He had to turn away to conceal his burning cheeks. He saw Withers do the same.
“Maybe trying to outsmart us by removing what they considered to be evidence, so what we see on the surface may not be what really is. In removing stuff, they actually told us a lot. I’m getting the impression that because of this, the murder was premeditated, carefully planned, and not random. As I’m thinking, it could be a woman. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to pull him farther, or it was more than one woman. Can’t tell if the wounds were post mortem and I definitely couldn’t see the COD. And it stinks. Had a full meal before he was offed, otherwise he wouldn’t have released fecal matter. I know it’s not dog poop, stepped in enough of that while jogging. Nope, this isn’t dog poop on my sneakers.”
She raised her foot to show Withers. He just stared at her with his eyes widened and his mouth slacked open.
“I stepped in it next to the body. Oh, and he was laid on his back, hands down at his sides, arms and legs intact, cuts on torso, eyes open, and--”
Withers cut her off. “Are you finished rambling? How in the hell are you going to remember what you just said? I don’t see your brown book. And I need your notes, Detective.”
“Oh.” Sam plucked her recording device from inside her bra. “Always have this with me. I turned it on when I came across the body. I also recorded my prelim before you got here.”
Withers blew out a breath. “You mean to tell me, rookie, you recorded what you saw and then proceeded to give me this long-winded ramble? So now I have to go through two fucking tapes? And your complaint form?”
Sam shrugged her shoulders as Nick tried to conceal his laugh, again. He nodded in approval at her recount and still couldn’t take his eyes off her. A uniformed patrol officer brought over a duffle with fresh clothes and towels. He couldn’t help but check her up and down, either. He shot Nick a you’re-a-lucky-bastard look. Nick grinned back.
Withers retrieved evidence and garbage bags from the trunk of the SUV. “Here, Valatutti, hold up a towel for your partner so she can change. Put each item of your clothes into a different bag. I’ll see that it gets processed in less than two hours. Everything, including underwear and socks, sneakers. Go.”
“Change right here?”
Nick glared at her. “Suck it up, Detective.”
“You better not drop that towel, Detective.”
Nick held up the towel spread out by both hands. The garbage bags hung from his wrists by their ties. Sam pulled off her T-shirt and deposited it into a bag. All the while, Nick looked up at the sky. He would have loved to peek, but how professional would that be? In his fifteen-year career as a detective, he was respected for his integrity when working with partners. The only reason he was assigned to be Sam’s partner was because Carol Hubbard, his former partner was home, recouping from a bullet she took trying to thwart a grocery store heist when she was off duty. He loved working with Carol. He thought about the rapport he had built with her over six years and how it would be unparalleled. He knew they could depend on each other to cover their backs. They were at the point where they completed each other’s sentences.
He had trained Carol, quite successfully, he thought, so when she took that bullet, he blamed himself. He thanked God every day that she had recovered. So it was a natural and timely fit that Sam would be assigned to him, and it was Carol’s injury that opened the position for Sam. His rotten luck, this little big mouth was next in line. Nick had asked the captain not to assign another rookie to him, but his asking wasn’t strong enough, and he wasn’t the type to beg. Even as a detective second grade, in New York City precincts, he didn’t have his way with assignments. The job demanded he follow orders, promptly.
Sam tugging at the drawstrings of the garbage bags forced his attention back to the matter at hand. She had changed quickly. Nick had never known a woman who could get dressed that fast. She handed the bags to a patrol officer.
Nick stared at her. “Guess they misjudged your size.”
Sam pulled the two-sizes-too-big sweatshirt out from her body and laughed. “You think? At least it’s big enough to hide my boobs. They didn’t send a bra.”
Nick chuckled.
“Okay, I see you’re short in the smile department, Valatutti.”
“Yup.
Deal with it.”
Withers had called Crime Scene and the coroner’s office. He paused for a moment. “Officer, get that to the lab, ASAP. Process immediately. Can’t have this wet crap forming mold. Detective Wright, give me your phone. See if we can zoom into that white band.”
He held up the camera, cut, and cropped an image. “Three letters, numbers, can’t make them out. But we’ll get it.”
Crime Scene arrived in about forty minutes. Now time would stand still. These guys didn’t rush. They had one opportunity to catch every bit of evidence. Immediately, the two-man team in personal protective equipment jump suits, PPE, approached Withers.
He gave them the initial report. One of them got out cotton swabs and took DNA from each of them, from the inside of their cheeks in order to distinguish them from any other persons that came up in the evidence.
Sam didn’t take her gaze off the investigator, as he wrapped the cotton swabs in white paper, using the pharmaceutical fold method to keep them from falling out, put them into separate manila envelopes, and marked them with his ID number, name, location, time, and conditions.
Nick observed her the entire time. Her intent seemed flawless. To him, it looked like she had a photographic memory, calculating each step. Then he remembered what she’d told him. ‘I declare this case as mine.’ That meant it would be his, as well.
The investigators unloaded their van. Out came tables, tents, lighting apparatus, generators, physical and trace evidence manila bags with retrieving implements, garbage bags for wet items, laptops, cameras, powders, gelatin lifters, fuming glues, brushes, chemicals, tarps, and white boards to lay the victim on. Nick knew the process of set up would take at least an hour and a half, with only two guys, before they could start processing the scene. This was going to be a long day and more rain was in the forecast.
He called to the investigator putting out the crime scene tape. “When can we get in to see the body?”