A Life Removed

by Jason Parent

  “Well?” Beaudette crossed her arms and faked a smile. When she smiled for real, she was striking, despite the seriousness that lingered in her piercing blue eyes. Those eyes, sharp and predatory like an eagle’s, belied her strength. Though more blundering in her movements, Beaudette’s results suggested she might become as shrewd as Marklin, but she was half his age and one-tenth the prick. She’d been working with Major Crimes for only a year when she was assigned her first homicide. She already had a few murders under her belt, mostly open-and-shut cases, when Marklin decided to take her under his wing.

  Aaron swallowed, his mind frazzled, all his training and even rudimentary thinking momentarily forgotten under the detectives’ examination. The two seemed to work in tandem. As if sensing the glare her partner was giving him, Beaudette shifted to business mode, lips pressed flat. Detective Robot and Detective Asshole reporting. The thought was unfair to Beaudette, who, unlike her partner, was more than a stereotype. She could exhibit normal human emotions without having to look too hard for them. Still, Aaron wondered what she would be like if she just let loose, kicked back with the boys, maybe unbuttoned a few buttons…

  Beaudette cleared her throat then stared at him with a steely glare.

  Aaron looked at Marklin, who twitched as if he were just waiting for the chance to earn his Detective Asshole moniker, and shivered. Warmth spread across his cheeks. “She’s in the back. In the dumpster.” He motioned for the detectives to follow.

  Red and blue lights and lines of yellow tape filled the parking lot. No one would be getting their steak-and-cheese subs that day. The detectives surveyed the lot as they strolled.

  Before they reached the body, Marklin exploded. “Who the fuck fucked with my crime scene?”

  Aaron knew immediately what had set Marklin off. The large navy-blue police-issue blanket was an eyesore. “I covered her,” he said sheepishly. “She’s naked.”

  “Do you think she gives a fuck? If you fucked up any of my evidence, you can kiss your ass goodbye.” Marklin’s clenched teeth and steady glower made clear that he meant every word.

  Even Detective Beaudette gave Aaron an inquisitive stare.

  “Do you have anything worthwhile to add to this investigation?” Marklin asked.

  “Dispatch sent me in first. No one’s seen nothing. No sign of a struggle in the immediate vicinity. No blood spilled anywhere I could see. I already talked to the shift manager, and he—”

  “We already know that much.” Marklin scowled. “Don’t you worry about the shift manager. We’ll talk to him ourselves. Can you give me an ID on the girl?”

  Aaron shook his head. He knew better than to open his mouth again.

  “No? Then get the fuck out of here. Go help keep back any nosy civilians, employees, and press. And don’t go doing another stupid thing, like making a statement.”

  Marklin had made his order. Aaron had no choice but to comply. Still, his heart ached for the deceased woman he’d never known. Aaron couldn’t understand what she could possibly have done to warrant such a brutal death, to have her body lifelessly tossed aside like garbage.

  He ambled to the crime scene’s perimeter. At the tape, he turned back to watch Detective Marklin peel off the blanket.

  “Jeez, what a way to start the morning, huh, Jocelyn?” Marklin asked. The victim was nothing more than a dead body to him, just another lifeless part of his job.

  “Do you think it’s the same guy?” Beaudette asked.

  “Looks like it, or a good copycat. Two kills in less than a week. The press is going to have a field day drawing wild conclusions.”

  After donning a pair of latex gloves, Beaudette cradled the woman’s hand in her own. “Same markings on the wrists.”

  Marklin nodded. “I see them. Thin slits. Looks like they were made by a razor. Surely, the killer wasn’t trying to disguise this as a suicide?”

  Aaron couldn’t help but chuckle. A difficult task. I doubt she could have lived long enough to remove her own heart.

  “You never know,” Beaudette said. “Criminals can be so stupid. Just the other day, a masked couple robbed a local convenience store. When the woman saw a contest entry form near the counter, she filled it out before leaving. Sometimes, they make our job so easy.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the cause of death seems to be the same.”

  Marklin chewed on the end of a pen. He shook his head. “Heart carved out? I’m not so sure. What are these bruises on the sides of her neck? Possible strangulation? We’ll need an autopsy report immediately. Where is that M.E., anyway? Christ, we haven’t got all day.”

  “The other victim had been dead for days before we found him. Assuming the same person did this, do you suppose there are more bodies we haven’t found yet?”

  Aaron gasped. Beaudette’s question provoked another, more horrifying question. A serial killer in Fall River? It would be a first in his lifetime. The thought brought a chill to his spine.

  Marklin didn’t flinch. “Who knows? But if there are, it will only make him that much easier to catch. The more bodies we find lying around, the more evidence we’ll have to work with. He’s bound to have left evidence somewhere, if not here.”

  “She’s naked. What about semen samples? We can’t rule out the possibility of a sex crime.”

  “Possible, but unlikely.” Marklin scanned the parking lot. “Damn it! Where the hell is Dr. Hawthorne? Do I have to do her job for her?” He slapped his thigh then used his pen to poke through the garbage before returning it to his mouth. “Anyway, assuming that the murders are linked, Fernald was naked, too. I don’t think there’s a sexual motive here. But you’re right. We should have the team do a full sweep for fingerprints around the dumpster, dust what and where we can. I’m sure our absent M.E. will do a full examination for genetic material, hair follicles, and anything else that doesn’t belong here.”

  “Fernald was dumped into the river,” Beaudette said. “Why do you think this one was displayed so openly?”

  “Maybe he needed to get rid of the body fast. We’ll ask him when we catch him. For now, all we’ve got is a dead girl with her heart ripped out and another heartless body down at the morgue. We won’t know much more until Dr. Hawthorne and the lab guys do their thing.” Marklin turned to leave.

  That’s it? That’s it, you bastard? That’s all you’re going to do for her? Aaron flexed his fingers. The way Marklin was just leaving her there, piled atop garbage, didn’t seem right, though he still wasn’t quite sure why he cared so much. Aaron had seen enough. It wasn’t his case to solve, but he’d hoped somebody would step up to the plate. He let out a long breath, realizing he was overreacting.

  “We got lucky with Fernald,” Detective Beaudette said. “He was in the system, imprisoned for sodomizing preteens. People at the department recognized him.” She gestured at the body. “Maybe she’s in the system, too.”

  “We’ll let the officers on the scene have a look before she’s moved,” Marklin said. “Seems we have all the time in the world. Come on. Let’s talk to the manager. There’s not much else we can do but wait.”

  Days later, Aaron still couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind. Something about her face haunted him. Those soulless eyes stared at him, filled with accusations, as if wondering how he’d let her murder happen. As if there was a damn thing I could have done about it.

  He shrugged and rubbed his wrists, trying to massage out the pins and needles. In the mirror across the bar, his reflection stared back at him. Funny. His eyes looked just as dead as hers. He took a long draw from his beer. “I tell you, man, this city has gone straight to hell.”

  “It certainly has,” a bald man with bushy eyebrows and a five-o’clock shadow replied as he leaned forward on the stool beside Aaron. A red-and-white cane, his tool to see beyond where his eyes could not, was propped against the bar near his leg. “Hopefully, someone will do something ab
out it, sooner rather than later.” He finished his beer, signaled the bartender, then gestured at Aaron’s bottle. “You want another?”

  “Nah.” Aaron patted his stomach. “I’m getting too fat for my uniform. And if I come home drunk again, Arianna will toss me right back out. Man, Rick, I don’t know how you do it. We’re the same age and eat and drink the same shit, but you’re still the same weight you were ten years ago, while I’m shaped like a grape.”

  “Grapes are healthy.” Ricardo chuckled. “But seriously, it’s stress. Your paranoid crap with Arianna, your problems with your job, your feeling that somebody else’s grass is always greener. You’re doing it to yourself. Always have—”

  “Let me stop you there. I know where this is heading.”

  “Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

  “You were going to tell me that if I just let God into my life, all my burdens would be lifted.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Ricardo laughed. “Okay, maybe something like that. I’m just saying, you’ve got a lot to be thankful for, including a girl who loves you. Don’t let all those crazy, confused thoughts up in that head of yours screw up the life you’re making for yourself.”

  “Okay, okay. I got it.”

  “Hey, I’m just looking out for you, man. That’s what friends do. And you’re the last person I’d trust looking out for yourself.”

  “Maybe I will have one more.” Aaron shifted on his stool and peeled the label off his bottle. “So… how’s Brittney?”

  “She’s good. We’re good. But if you don’t believe me, ask her yourself this Sunday.”

  “We’re still watching the game?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?”

  Aaron stared down at his beer. “I don’t know. Seems like I hardly see you anymore.”

  “You’re seeing me now.”

  “I know, but…” He shook his head. “I guess we’re just getting older, man. You’ve got your things, and I’ve got mine.”

  Ricardo smiled. “Anytime you want to be part of my things, you’re more than welcome.”

  Aaron scoffed. “Yeah, I’d fit right in with that group.”

  “What? Everyone likes you. Come for a reading. Who knows? You just might learn something.”

  “I’m afraid I’m already too set in my ways. Are you going there after this?”

  “Yep. Doug’s picking me up.”

  “What’s tonight? Judo or Jesus?”

  “It’s jiu-jitsu, and we don’t really separate the two. Both faith and martial arts take discipline. Maybe a little discipline is all you need to get rid of that beer belly you’re growing. Maybe clear your head. Come on. At the very least, you’ll get a good workout. I guarantee you’ll lose some weight.”

  “I’ll pass.” Aaron ordered another beer.

  CHAPTER 2

  I don’t know if I can do this. Jocelyn stared at the body. Not since she’d shot and killed the first of a handful of armed assailants had she felt so inadequate, so grossly unprepared to do what was expected of her. She could handle the violence. She could deal with the gore. She could even deal with that dead man’s accusatory look, the way his eyes seemed to say, “Where were you when this was happening to me? Where were you when my life was taken away?”

  Yeah, that shit Jocelyn could handle. At least she thought she could. Crime had been easier to deal with before she’d started working homicides. That shit was the nature of her job, her tragic misfortune to only be involved after the bodies had chilled. She was like a janitor, called in to clean up the mess. For once, she would have liked to arrive and find a body still warm. Maybe then she would see two fewer dead eyes when she closed her own at night.

  But she could handle a few nightmares if that meant knowing she was making her family safe. What she couldn’t handle was the shit that made no sense. No matter what angle she approached her case from, no matter how she twisted it in her head, she couldn’t conceive of a single reason to extract a man’s heart then hang the naked body like a Christmas ornament from hell above the stone steps of City Hall. If the killer’s trying to make some sort of statement, why couldn’t the son of a bitch just tape a note to the victim and be done with it?

  She sighed, thinking of her daughter, Caitlyn, who was just learning to crawl. How she wanted to shield her from the horrors that ordinary humans inflicted upon others on a daily basis. How she wanted to be home in her chair, Caitlyn cradled in her arms, safe from the outside world. Is this the world I’ve brought you into? Can I make it a better place for you? She smiled, twisting her wedding ring around her finger. She’d married a good man, one who would keep their little girl safe while her mommy worked.

  Under the umbrella of the Fall River Police Department’s Major Crimes Division, Jocelyn had worked Robbery and Vice and anywhere else a short-staffed precinct required. She spent most of her time down in the dirt, turning caught crooks into confidential informants and surveilling nightclubs and projects. She’d seen her share of shit: Columbian neckties, severed genitalia stuffed in all sorts of orifices, tweakers so strung out that they mutilated themselves or others with razor blades or machetes, and babies who had died from neglect. She saw the kind of stuff regular people only saw in torture porn, except there, it wasn’t real. Those things kept her up many a night, sweating and screaming, not knowing if she’d found her place in the world, wondering if bringing another into it had been selfish.

  But no matter how crazy the crime, the motives always made sense. They were always the same: Person A wanted or stole something from Person B. Person B took issue. Mayhem ensued. Any ancillary craziness was easily explained away by the fact that the victim, the perpetrator, or both were higher than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or more desperate than a fox in a trap.

  This crime scene, however, was a brand of crazy all its own. As she studied the man hanging from the white column gallows, his feet a few inches from the step, Jocelyn wondered if she’d ascended the ranks too quickly. Her stomach gurgled with butterflies beating their wings as if trying to start a hurricane in Asia, and they were breeding, multiplying. A chill ran through her. Doubt plagued her every action, stalled her every word. Her mind was more shaken than a 007 martini.

  On the outside, she took a deep breath and managed to fake being as cool and calm as 007 himself. Never let them see you sweat, her father used to say. She smiled the slightest smile. You got this, Detective.

  On a police force that was ninety-eight percent male—thank God for Officers Reilly and Cusack—Jocelyn was hard pressed to find a friend at work. Most of the guys she’d upstaged at the academy resented her—her barreling her way up the food chain threatened plenty. Anyone who didn’t know her thought she was “just a girl,” and those who did know her blamed their own inadequacies on affirmative action, because someone as clumsy and weak as Jocelyn Beaudette couldn’t possibly be a good detective. And almost all of them began every conversation by staring at her nearly nonexistent tits.

  Her dad had been like that, minus the tit staring. He’d been a chauvinist old prick until the day he died from a heart attack four years ago. Still, the old dog had surprised her by supporting her decision to join the academy. At her graduation, no one had cheered louder than he did. I miss you, Dad.

  Perhaps that was why she liked Bruce. In spite of all his chauvinism, sexist remarks, and testosterone-laced dick swinging, Bruce, of all people, treated her like a person. No. Like a cop.

  But Bruce hadn’t arrived yet, and the scene, one of the busiest intersections in the city, was hers to commandeer. With the clock nearing eight on a Wednesday morning, Jocelyn had no way of shielding the scene from public view. She’d managed to keep spectators and reporters back, cordoned off the front entrance, coordinated with the mayor to have government employees start work at ten, and arranged for traffic redirection to limit the chaos.

  She had just set about the real reason she’d bee
n called there—to solve a murder—when Bruce strolled up the steps.

  He smiled at her. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control.”

  “No thanks to you.” Jocelyn smirked.

  He handed her a Styrofoam cup filled with hot black coffee and kept one for himself. She mumbled a quick thanks before taking a sip.

  Bruce grinned. “Someday, you’ll be standing in my shoes. Then you’ll appreciate what it means to be near the top of the pecking order. Except… wait a minute… aren’t you supposed to get the coffee?” He set his coffee down on the cold step then polished his glasses with his hot breath and the end of his untucked shirt. “So,” he said as he adjusted the earpiece of his glasses behind his ears then bent over to pick up his coffee. “What brings us here—” He stopped to gape at the body. “Christ, is that—”

  “Yep. Benjamin Reinhart. Age forty-seven. Corporation counsel for the city. List of potential enemies probably a mile long.”

  “Yes, but none with this MO. Shit, Beaudette. The city’s top attorney? This investigation is about to become a shit storm. Everything we do is going to be under a fucking microscope.” He took a gulp of his coffee then held up the cup. “We’re going to need a lot more of this.”

  Jocelyn had rarely seen Bruce as jovial as he had been a moment prior, but she’d never seen him as frazzled as he suddenly became.

  He walked down a few steps and waved over one of the boys in blue. Handing the officer the empty cup, he said, “Toss this for me, will you?” Without waiting for a response, he hustled back to Jocelyn. His face was deadpan, his eyes soft, then he managed a slight grin. “Just focus on the case. I’ll handle the press conferences.”

  Jocelyn pressed her lips flat. How did he know I was stressing it? She poked him in the arm. “Looking for some face time with the media so that when we crack this, you can use it to launch your political career? I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re not likable enough for politics.”

  “You ever meet a politician who is? Speaking of which…” Bruce peered up at the body. “Any thoughts?”