Ice Shear

by M. P. Cooley

  I knew that feeling; I’d felt it one time in my life, with Kevin.

  “And I wanted her”—Marty’s voice cracked—“and a new life, a do-over. More than anything. But starting over in this town, when there’s no jobs or nothing? Not easy. Not possible.”

  “Thank you, Marty. You were a huge help,” Dave said. “If you could come with us—”

  Marty jerked up. “Fuck. Of course. All bullshit!” he yelled. “My wife dies, gets murdered, and you take me into custody.” Marty stood and paced, closer and closer to the bedroom door. “You motherfuckers should have told me I’d need a lawyer.”

  I took hold of his arm with two hands, spanning his biceps. He tried to shake me off, but I gripped tighter, his muscles spasming under my hand.

  “No,” Dave said, confused, and I regretted not clueing him in about Marty’s gang affiliation. “No! You’re next of kin and we need you to identify the body.”

  Marty deflated, but I kept alert, like when I arrived at the scene of a car accident. The debris has stopped flying, but the engine might blow at any second.

  “I can do that. Ray’ll need a minute.”

  “Ray can stay here with Officer Lyons,” Dave said. I smiled benignly, like a babysitter. Marty didn’t believe it for a minute, and I stopped pretending.

  “Christ. Fine.”

  We trailed him into the bedroom. A phone was ringing, and Ray pulled one out of his pocket, talking in a low voice.

  “Great. Let’s hope that’s not Jackie,” Dave said.

  Damn it. Trying to keep Marty from spinning out, I’d left Ray alone, and now look what happened. Dave’s comforting pat on the back didn’t help. I pointed to Ray’s patch and in a low voice said, “Outlaw gang.” I explained the Abominations, and the code of outlaw motorcycle clubs—destroy—while Marty explained things to Ray. Ray had no interest in what his brother was saying.

  “Dad.” Ray waved the phone at his brother. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Marty didn’t answer. Walking back to the hallway, he pulled on a wool cap and coat and slung open the front door. I shivered as frozen air washed over me.

  Marty marched out the door onto the porch.

  “You ready?” he asked Dave.

  Ray spoke quickly on the phone as he followed his brother outside.

  “Marty!” Ray called.

  “Enough. I can’t talk.” Marty crashed down the steps, not looking back.

  “Dad says to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Dad’s right,” Marty called over his shoulder. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “He said not to trust the fuckin’ LEOs.” Ray seemed oblivious to the two law enforcement officers he was insulting, barreling on. “Dad says he and Mom are going to come.”

  “Well, I can’t stop them.” Marty waved Dave along. “Shouldn’t we go? Now?”

  Dave and Marty crossed the street. As they approached the car, Marty walked to the back door, his arms behind him as if handcuffed, momentarily confused when Dave waved him around to the front. Dave made an illegal U-turn toward downtown. Marty sat with his face pressed against the glass, eyes closed, his back to Dave. Like every suspect and victim in a homicide, he’d lost all privacy.

  CHAPTER 5

  I STOOD AT THE FRONT DOOR and watched as Pete, Bill—a cop who also worked the day shift—and a crime scene tech slowly walked toward the house. Between the frigid air at my front and the hot air at my back I expected a nor’easter to open up over me.

  “My parents are coming,” Ray said.

  “Oh, good,” I said blandly. “Will they be here soon?”

  The tech, an Asian woman half the size of both men, struggled with three brown vinyl evidence cases, each the size of a television set. She jerked the cases close to her body when Pete offered to take one.

  Ray said no, as if I’d asked a really stupid question. I wondered if he’d picked up that tone from Jackie or if she’d picked it up from him. Maybe it was what had brought them together. “They’re in California.”

  “Really.” I waved Pete, Bill, and the tech past Ray into the kitchen to start their work, pretending that I didn’t care what came out of Ray’s mouth.

  “They’re pissed.” Ray snorted as he plopped down on the couch. “They’re so mad.”

  “Mad?”

  “Marty’s acting like a damn fool, trusting you pigs. I’m keepin’ it real, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Was this Ray keeping secrets? This was going to be easier than I thought. “Really?” I prompted.

  “Oh, yeah. And Dad knows it, too.”

  “How old are you, Ray?”

  Ray grinned. “I’m a man. Seventeen last July, free and clear in New York. School’s out.”

  I flipped through their videos. Horror movie, horror movie, oh, hey, Fight Club, which was a bit of an existential horror movie. “Marty’s your guardian?”

  “Yeah, he wanted me to go to school and shit, you know, but Danielle, she told me I didn’t have to, that I could take the GED, like her.” He laughed and slapped his thigh. “You better believe I was done.”

  “Sounds like you really liked her.”

  I listened as Ray explained how he and Danielle had bonded during his weekend visits to L.A., both of them protecting Marty, who, the way Ray described it, was a babe in the woods. The source of Marty’s newfound naïveté was apparently Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “Marty went all soft when he moved to L.A.” Ray shook his head. “I know they met in AA, but Danielle wasn’t stupid like him—she got away from those AA culties as soon as they signed her card for the judge. She beat that rap. She and I understand each other.” He smiled, and I couldn’t bring myself to point out that he was still talking about Danielle in the present tense.

  “Danielle get picked up for drunk driving?” I asked.

  “Nah, some stuff that went down at her school.” I asked him more about it, and he shrugged and said, “Stuff.”

  “She didn’t ever go to trial or nothing,” he added. “And she knew Marty was acting like a damn fool, but she married him anyway.”

  “Were those wedding pictures I saw on Facebook? I wasn’t sure, since Marty wasn’t in them.”

  It didn’t register with Ray that I was snooping on his Facebook page. “Yeah, Dani and me needed to take the edge off with all those straights. She gave me this cool flask for being best man.” He pulled the flask out of the pocket of his cargoes. It was red enamel with black flames running up the side. “So we didn’t invite Marty. Plus, I can’t be seen with him in public. He’s shunned by the club. Don’t get me wrong, I stand tight with my bro, but I have my rep, and the Abominations don’t stand for traitors. Danielle used to say how bad it was that he walked away from everyone who had his back—his family and his brothers in the club.”

  I nodded at his leather vest. “That’s where you got the cut. It’s nice.”

  “It’s Marty’s. He don’t wear it no more, so it’s mine.”

  I heard a crash from the kitchen. I tripped in the kitchen doorway, catching my toe on two of the four layers of linoleum that were curling back at the entrance, but righted myself and surveyed the scene: Bill standing in the middle of smashed china, Pete squirming by the door that led to the backyard, and the tech, who looked ready to beat someone to death with an evidence brush. Everyone was miserable, and our surroundings didn’t help. The walls were lined with green-gray cupboards that coordinated with the linoleum three layers down. The Jelicksons didn’t do much housekeeping, and I could see why: this dinge was ground in.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “This idiot”—the tech targeted Bill—“knocked over the dish drainer with everything in it!”

  Bill gestured at plates with dried spaghetti and fifteen cups balanced precariously in the sink. “Do you think the stuff in the drainer has anything to do with what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours? Or even the last week? You’re overreacting.”

  I thought he made a good point. The tech did not.
“And what’s under those broken dishes, hmm? There could be footprints or other trace evidence, and you . . . you people have destroyed it.” The tech’s voice was rising, and if she meant to strike terror into Bill, she seemed to be succeeding.

  “I bet the footprints are still there,” I said. “A few pieces of glass aren’t changing that.”

  “There’s footprints in the backyard,” Pete said, pointing out the window. “A bunch of them.”

  The tech pushed him aside. “Okay, don’t go out there. I’m going to retrieve my kit and pull some imprints.”

  “I’m going to glance out the window,” I said.

  “Fine. At least pretend not to taint the evidence. Here—” The tech handed an evidence bag to Bill. “Sweep up the glass before you track in new dirt from the living room. Wait, I forgot the sterilized brush in the van. Don’t move!” and she rushed out, pointing at each of us as if to freeze us in our spots.

  “So, hey, should we go out into the backyard?” Bill asked once the tech had slammed out the front door. The three of us cracked up. “Hey, Pete, two cups were in there, right?”

  “Yep. And two saucers.”

  “Cups and saucers?” I inspected the Fruity Pebble–crusted bowls in the sink. “How civilized. Bill, did you already bag up the garbage?”

  “I did not.” He snapped his white gloves theatrically and opened up the door under the sink. “Urgh. Haven’t emptied this in a while.” I took a step forward, my boots sticking to the unwashed floor. The garbage was much as I expected: rotten banana peels, coffee grounds, and a few dozen cigarettes, all Camels but some with crimson lipstick marks coating the tips. Two tea bags sat on top.

  “What are you doing?” the tech demanded from the doorway. “God! You people! I knew I would regret not working at the crime scene.”

  “You claimed it was too cold down by the river,” Pete said.

  “I know what I said. I also didn’t expect to be assigned the clown police. Are there another twenty-five of you ready to spill out of the cruiser?”

  In the next room, Ray laughed.

  I stood in front of the tech. “I’m sorry, but what’s your name?” The woman was maybe a half a head shorter than my five feet ten. I was surprised. She projected tall.

  “Anastasia Lin.”

  “Anastasia, look—”

  “Call me Annie.”

  “Okay, Annie, we all want the best information from this crime scene, and you are definitely the authority. But you aren’t the person in charge here. I am.” Pete and Bill nodded. “Tell us how not to get in your way while you collect evidence, and we’ll tell you how not to hinder our investigation.”

  “I can’t do my job. It’s the secondary scene, but they didn’t send over nearly enough people to do this properly. We need at least two more techs—”

  “Well, you have three officers here and two more in the vicinity. Give us some direction. We can all move forward faster.”

  “I don’t suppose you could all stand very still and not touch anything?” Annie said, but with no real bite. She flapped her hands at Pete. “This one could take the bedroom. Grab something with DNA on it so we have a comparison for future sampling.”

  “Or any pertinent evidence,” I added.

  “Yes, yes. And the other one could take the bathroom. And that leaves the living room for you, so chop-chop.”

  “Actually, Annie, I’m going to stick with you.”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “Bill,” I said as he shuffled past, “you take the bathroom and the bedroom, and, Pete, keep an eye on our little friend,” tipping my head in the general direction of Ray.

  Annie held out a camera.

  “Can you use this thing?” she asked.

  “I can.”

  “No, I mean really, can you take shots that would be usable in court?”

  “I can.”

  The two of us cataloged the kitchen. Annie was pretty nice when she wasn’t talking. I appreciated her methodical approach, especially since I knew both of us wanted to race to the backyard. My part of the search mostly consisted of holding open evidence bags while Annie documented what she found, but I didn’t mind; so much police work—good police work—consisted of watching, taking careful notes, and waiting around. Lots and lots of waiting around.

  My favorite assignment back when I was in the Bureau was out in the Palm Desert, conducting surveillance on a Central American gang with Ernie Aguilar and Jerzy Fernandez. Jerzy, who everyone called Bear, was a half-Polish, half-Salvadoran agent who worked deep undercover with the Maras and was assigned as the inside man on our desert operation. Discretion came naturally to him—he very rarely spoke. A big guy who always wore flannels buttoned tight around his beefy neck and wrists, he gave Ernie the nickname Tigger and threatened to duct-tape him to a wall if Ernie didn’t sit down and shut up. After that, Ernie always referred to the three of us, our team, as “Lyons, and Tigger, and Bear.”

  I was proud of my work on that operation, which resulted in sixty-seven state and federal convictions. Of course, my work mostly consisted of listening to a surveillance feed in a tin shack and doing buys undercover as a meth-hungry tweaker. Kevin found that hilarious, suggesting I keep my one-inch-of-roots bleach job and running his finger over my fake tattoo, a heart with a dagger through it, drawn fresh daily to look faded, like the black ink had washed into my blood. I wished I could see it again, wished I’d kept some evidence of that time and the work, and Kevin’s hands on me.

  “Are you coming?” Annie demanded, holding the back door open.

  A small deck made of untreated pine jutted over the yard, which was dominated by an old tree stump. Multiple sets of footprints tracked back and forth in the snow to the coffee-can ashtray balanced on the railing. A third set led down the steps and across the yard to the fence that bordered the alley that was a straight shot to the river. Halfway across the yard, a deep indentation ran parallel to the footprints. Someone had dropped and dragged Danielle. I could make out the sweep of long hair and where her arms had spread wide, a bleak snow angel. Blood marked the path.

  “There’s been some melting. Can you cast the molds?” I asked.

  “Of course I can.” Annie thrust out her chin, but she dropped it slightly as she pointed to the first footprint. “Just not that one. Or that one,” she said, pointing to the next one. “Oh, but this one!” and Annie smiled to herself as she pulled out her molding kit.

  “Annie, do you need help here?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, then, I’m going in and finish my interview with Ray.” Annie waved me into the house. “They are sending a few more techs over from the river.”

  “Oh, great,” Annie grumped. “More people to destroy my scene.”

  “Aren’t they your peers?”

  “Colleagues, not peers,” she sniffed.

  I found Pete in the living room with Ray, both with game controllers in their hands. On-screen, a man crashed his car into a pole, and several women in miniskirts pulled him from the vehicle and beat him until he was lying senseless on the ground.

  “You suck at this,” Ray told Pete gravely. “For serious, yo.”

  Pete shrugged. I waved him over to the bathroom. Bill was returning a box of tampons to the cabinet under the sink, stiff armed and with gloves.

  “So?” I prompted once we’d all crowded in.

  “Nothing of interest,” Bill said. “I’ve got a brush with her hair, for DNA. Clothes were all over the floor, but Ray says they’re always like that. I did brush for prints. Nothing interesting.”

  “How ’bout these earrings?” Pete pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket containing a pair of two-inch hoops, blinged out with stones running down the front curve. “I was straightening the afghan and found these tucked behind the couch.”

  “The finest zircon,” Bill said.

  “Not zircon.” Pete waved his finger in a circle next to his own ear, indicating hoop earrings or, possibly, craziness. “I mean,
assuming these are the same earrings that were out at Franklin Jewelers right before Valentine’s Day, two weeks back.”

  “Why were you at the jewelers’?” Bill asked. “Need a new string of pearls?”

  “Me and Delia were looking at rings.”

  Bill hooted. “Delia?! Who you have been dating for three months?”

  I gave Pete a sympathetic smile and he continued. “Yeah. And shut your stupid face about that. I tried to get Delia to try these earrings on, for a joke, you know. Anyway, she wouldn’t, because she was afraid she’d lose one and owe nine thousand dollars.”

  “Which means the pair”—I suddenly became afraid I would drop one—“are worth . . .”

  “Eighteen thousand dollars,” Pete said.

  Bill and I whistled. That was the starting salary for a cop. Without overtime, of course.

  “Husband better have scored,” Bill said.

  I held the earrings up to the window. I liked shiny objects, and they glittered brilliantly, even through the plastic.

  “Your turn!” Ray yelled from the next room. We agreed that I would take Ray, Bill would start the search of the car, and Pete would go help out Annie.

  “Can I have a soda?” Ray asked as I entered the living room. He glanced up, noticing the bagged earrings, and frowned. “Give those to me. They’re mine.” He blushed, but held his hand out insistently. “They’re Danielle’s. Give ’em to me.”

  “I wanted to ask you about them. We thought they might be evidence.”

  “They’re not. She’s rich and has rich earrings. Hand ’em over.”

  He had a point. These earrings could not be linked to the commission of the crime. He grabbed them out of my hand as I held them out, shoving them in a pocket of his pants and snapping the button. He stared ahead at the TV, where it was player two’s turn.

  I went into the kitchen and stood in front of the fridge. Orange juice and mayonnaise sat on the top shelf, some wilted greens on the second. Soda filled the bottom shelf.