Death Notes: The Beginning- Book 0

by James Hunt

  The stale taste of granola lingered over her tongue, and she flipped the wrapper over to check the expiration date, which passed nearly a month ago. She frowned and forced another bite down. She furrowed her brow, looking over the file’s details, shaking her head. “This is a missing-person file.” She snapped the folder shut and tossed the half-eaten protein bar in the trash, where it landed amongst the graveyard of discarded take-out boxes, candy wrappers, and fast food bags.

  Cooper shut her eyes as she stepped out into the hallway, the bright emergency lights angering the lack of sleep her body received last night. She stumbled through the hallway, the lack of coffee, food, and sleep transforming her gait to something akin to the undead. She looked down at her dirtied, wrinkled, untucked shirt and tried smoothing the front of the blouse with her palms. Her strands of hair continued to impede her line of sight as she maneuvered through the hallway, and she swooped it back with her hands, wrapping the thick strands into a makeshift bun.

  Two traffic officers rounded the end of the hallway and cast Cooper a dirty glance, shoulder checking her hard enough to throw her off balance. “Fuck you, Wurtz!”

  Wurtz and his partner spun around. “You just give me the time and place, Cooper.” He offered an obscene hand gesture, and his partner flipped her the bird. The two chuckled to one another and disappeared into one of the offices down the hall.

  Cooper rubbed her shoulder, stretching it backward, and winced as her back gave another pop. After twenty-one years on the force there wasn’t a joint in her body that didn’t complain. Still, every time Mother Nature tried telling her it was time to hang up the badge, she brushed it off. At forty-one, she wasn’t in any mood to retire, not with her city streets still so dirty.

  The office was mostly empty with the night crew coming in off shift and the morning crew just getting ready to start. Cooper pulled out her phone and checked the time: 7:00 a.m. She passed the bull pen of desk jockeys, and though she tried to stay out of sight, she couldn’t help but hear the whispers behind her back.

  When she arrived at the missing persons unit every desk in Hall’s department was empty, so she veered toward the interrogation rooms. The first two were unoccupied, but when she peered through the window of the third she spotted Detective Hall’s bald head, shining from the fluorescent lighting, speaking to a woman, while his partner watched through the one-way glass of the anteroom. She reached for the handle just when an angered shout stopped her.

  “Detective Cooper!”

  Cooper cringed at Captain Farnes’s voice. When she slowly turned, the restless slumber eroded the capacity to feign the procedural pleasantries. “What?”

  The captain was nearing retirement age, and from the look of his physical appearance, it was something he should have done ten years ago. The police chief couldn’t force him out due to his brother’s political persuasions, so for the past five years he’d been passed around the precincts like a father-in-law amongst unwilling siblings. His tenure at Cooper’s precinct had been his longest stay so far, and when he arrived their relationship was already strained from a prickly history. “I need a word.”

  “Whatever it is, it can wait.” Cooper looked past Farnes to the young man behind him, dressed in a new suit and tie. His haircut was fresh, along with his detective’s badge. He fiddled with his fingers, which caught the shine of a new wedding ring that he twisted nervously.

  Farnes ignored the request and motioned the young detective ahead. “This is Detective Jason Hart. He just recently aced his exam and has been placed with our precinct. Detective Hart, this is Detective Cooper, your new partner.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Detective.” Hart stuck his hand out, and it lingered awkwardly as Cooper ignored it.

  “You and I had a deal.” Cooper narrowed her eyes. Farnes had never been this bold with her, not on anything. And she wasn’t about to let him start shoving things down her throat now. “Pair him with someone else.” She reached for the interrogation room’s handle once more, but Farnes smacked his palm against the door before she could open it.

  “This is coming from the chief of police. He’s tired of you prancing around the city unchecked.”

  “I’m not the one that needs to be watched.”

  Farnes cleared his throat and straightened the loose tie around the coffee-stained collar. “If you have a problem with the assignment, then take it up with the chief.” Before she could protest, he disappeared, leaving her fuming and Hart standing awkwardly in the hall.

  Cooper kicked the wall, adding her own black scuff to the marks that lined the bottom of the peeling paint. “I’m gonna nail that fucking prick one of these days.” She clenched her fist, crumpling the file that had been misplaced on her desk. Before Hart could interject she flung the door open and slammed it shut behind her, leaving him in the hallway alone.

  The one-way glass inside the viewing anteroom offered the vantage point of Hall questioning a young woman. Her hair and face were dirtied, and Cooper noticed the bruises over her neck and wrists. A black eye highlighted the cuts and lumps along her cheeks, and she gently dabbed the tears at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. The placement and nature of the wounds suggested rape, and the sight only fanned the flames of Cooper’s rage. “It’s hard to battle for equality when the opposite sex can do that.”

  Hall’s partner, Detective Diaz, shook his head. “I don’t know, Cooper. I’ve seen you beat the shit out of plenty of men in my day.”

  Cooper edged toward the one-way glass, taking in the woman’s tattered clothes, the wet hair, dirt under her fingernails, and the light tremor in her lip. Her skin was white as a ghost, save for the dark circles under her eyes. She was in shock. “She looks like she slept about as much as I did last night. What happened?”

  “We’re not entirely sure. She’s barely gotten a word out since she arrived.” Diaz handed her the paperwork they’d managed to process so far. “We got a call from a diner owner out on Highway 86 that a woman had burst into their establishment, crying hysterically. They called the cops, and one of our guys brought her in to be questioned.”

  Cooper tilted her head to the side. The woman’s face, though beaten and swollen, was familiar. She flipped open the case file the officer had dropped off earlier and saw the same woman’s picture amidst the missing persons report. “That’s Kate Wurstshed.”

  “Yup,” Diaz answered, rocking back and forth on his heels. “The report said she’s been missing for about a week. When she didn’t show up for work on the second day, one of her co-workers came and filled out the report, but we didn’t have much to go on. The woman didn’t have any family members, or emergency contacts listed with her employer. We checked her apartment but didn’t find any forced signs of break-in.”

  Cooper slapped the file in Diaz’s chest. “Then it looks like this isn’t Homicide’s case.” She took one step toward the door, and Diaz grabbed her wrist, stopping her.

  “Can you give me anything else? Anything you heard or saw?” Hall asked, his voice flooding through the speaker.

  The woman sniffled, pulling at the sleeves of her shirt, shaking her head in dismay. “I don’t… I don’t know. It was dark most of the time. He always wore a mask, and he didn’t speak much. He just…” As she trailed off she buried her hands in her face, sobbing hysterically. Hall reached his hand across the table and gently squeezed the woman’s balled-up fist.

  “Diaz,” Cooper said, looking at the girl. “What am I doing here? She was a missing person. Now, she’s a found person.” But the longer she watched the woman cry, the less Cooper cared about whose case it was and more about catching the bastard who hurt her.

  “Just listen.” Diaz motioned toward Hall and the woman.

  Hall flipped a page in the notebook on the table. “Ms. Wurstshed, you mentioned earlier in the report you gave to the officer who picked you up that you heard screams from where you were being held captive. Were there other people with you?”

  Cooper inched close
r to the one-way glass until she felt the cool of the mirror on the tip of her nose. The woman nodded, gaining her composure. “Yeah. More than once. It was faint, but when it was real quiet I could hear them.” She twisted her face in grief but regained control of the tears quickly. “It sounded like… he was… killing someone.” Her lower lip trembled, and she once again hid her face in her palms.

  “Did they give her the kit?” Cooper asked, her eyes still locked on the woman.

  “Yeah,” Diaz answered. “We should have the results from the lab either tomorrow or Thursday. We’ll run any DNA we find against the database. See if we get any matches.”

  Cooper flattened her palm against the glass and leaned forward, offering a long exhale. She turned back to Diaz, who wore the mask every detective needed in their line of work. With the shit they saw on a daily basis, it was the only way to stay sane. You couldn’t let yourself feel it. You couldn’t get too close. “What are you not telling me?”

  Diaz stepped forward but kept his eyes on his partner and the woman beyond the glass. “I heard you’re getting a new partner.”

  “Looks like you knew before I did.”

  “I know the kid’s dad. He and I went to the academy together. Make sure he doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, all right?”

  “Is that what this was about? The kid?”

  Diaz inched closer to the glass, keeping his eyes on Hall and the woman, who was still struggling to string together coherent sentences. He snapped his head right, then left, two loud pops sounding with the motion, and then exhaled a slow, steady breath. “You’ve never had the best reputation. But you always did the job well. You’ve helped put a lot of shitheads behind bars, so that’s kept you afloat. But you don’t have that luxury anymore. Not after what happened with Danny.”

  “Don’t put that shit on me, Diaz.” Cooper thrust her finger in his face, her face red from the mixture of anger and fear coursing through her veins. “Everyone knew what Danny was doing. He broke the law, and IA investigated him. If people have a problem with that, if you have a problem with that, then you can go fuck yourself.”

  Diaz shifted his gaze toward Cooper, and with one squeeze of his fist another series of cracking joints filled the awkward air between them. But as quickly as his knuckles flashed white, he relaxed his hand and shook his head. “Christ, Cooper. You’ve made too many enemies and not enough friends. You need someone watching your back. Just give the kid a chance, will you?”

  “Is that it?” Cooper cocked her head to the side.

  “Nope.” Diaz pointed to the woman. “She was kept in an abandoned storage unit off of Highway 86. It foreclosed three years ago. It’s for sale, but it’s still listed under the original owner’s name.”

  “I’m not tracking down some warehouse flunky, Diaz.”

  “And I’m not asking you to. Just go and check out the crime scene, will you? Forensics is already on their way, and we’d appreciate your eyes.” Diaz turned back to the battered woman. “I think she would too.”

  Cooper tucked Kate Wurstshed’s file under her arm and backed to the door. “I’ll hang on to this for a while. But you owe me. Fucking big time, Diaz. I’ve got a case load larger than your prostate right now.”

  “My urologist thanks you for your concern.”

  When Cooper reentered the hallway, she saw Hart chopping it up with a few of the traffic cops near the first interrogation room. But the laughter ended when one of the officers noticed her gaze. The air grew cold in the space between their stares, though to Hart’s credit he didn’t offer her the same disdain as the others. But the way gossip traveled through this place she wasn’t sure how long it would take before his opinion was swayed.

  Hart dismissed himself from the conversation. She watched him carefully. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-four, the shine on the wedding ring suggested he was recently married, and the sudden urge for promotion suggested she was pregnant. “Sorry about that.” Hart looked back to the end of the hall, where his friends had disappeared. “I went through the academy with them. It’d been a while.” He extended his hand and smiled. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  Cooper examined the hand, letting him sweat a little longer. Finally, just before he broke off, she reciprocated the greeting then brushed past him and headed toward her office. “Where’d you walk your beat?”

  Hart took a few quick strides to catch up. “Um, Northeastern, but before there I was stationed at Southwestern.” Hart kept pace, flattening out his tie and clutching the detective’s badge that swung wildly from his neck.

  “Southwestern?” Cooper cocked her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. “And I thought I worked the bad parts of town.” She turned to look at him as they rounded the hallway’s corner and passed through the bull pen. “Ever discharged your weapon before?”

  “Once.”

  “How’d you handle the leave?”

  “It was harder on my wife. Well, she was my girlfriend at the time.”

  “How far along is she?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Cooper looked at him. “Your wife. She’s pregnant, right?”

  “Um—well, yes. Only a few months. Who told you that?”

  “No one.” Cooper shoulder checked her office door open but stopped upon the view of a box stacked on top of her files. She flung her hands in the air. “What the fuck is this?” She shoved Hart aside and stepped back out into the hallway, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Whoever left their shit in my office, come and pick it up, now!”

  Hart quickly stepped in front of Cooper and raised his hands. “Actually, Detective, those are my things.” His cheeks flushed red as he looked back and forth down the hallway as half the station gawked in their direction. “Captain Farnes told me I could drop off my things here.”

  Cooper cracked her neck to the left then sharply to the right, the motion triggering a whip-like pop with each snap. She closed her eyes and took in a slow breath. “They assign you a squad car yet?”

  Hart’s features softened. “No.”

  “We’ll take mine, then.” She started walking, but Hart remained frozen in the hallway.

  “Don’t I need to fill out some paperwork?”

  Cooper turned around and thrust her arms out. “Paperwork comes after we catch the bad guy, Detective.”

  Chapter 3

  Cooper flipped on the lights and blared the siren once they hit traffic, which happened less than a mile from the station. Early-morning rush hour and the storm from the night before had created a cluster of angry motorists amidst downed traffic signals, busted power lines, and flooded streets. Cooper mounted the curb close to the sidewalk and veered around the standstill traffic. “You’d think a hurricane had just blown through here.”

  Hart shifted his weight to the right to avoid falling into Cooper as the car rolled forward on the slant, then quickly buckled his seat belt. “It got really bad. Power went out at my place. My neighbors had a tree crash into their roof.”

  Traffic opened up once they made it to the highway, and Cooper reached into the glove box, pulling out a packet of latex gloves, and tossed them in Hart’s lap. “Have you ever worked a murder before?” She kept her eyes on the road and flicked on her blinker as she switched lanes.

  “No, well, not directly. I was first on scene last year to a double homicide over in Middle Branch Park. Two teens. It was gang related.”

  “Marcus Freemont, age fifteen, and Julius Smith, age fourteen. The deaths were at first believed to be initiation for new members, but it was actually retaliation. Freemont and Smith had just joined one of the smaller gangs, killing two boys of thirteen and twelve.” Cooper shook her head. “Members of the rival gang discovered what happened and sent their foot soldiers to track Smith and Freemont down.”

  “I didn’t know you worked the case,” Hart replied.

  “I didn’t.” Cooper pulled onto Highway 86, the speedometer tipping eighty as she blew past traffic, which yielded in her p
ath. “But if someone kills somebody in this city, then I know about it.”

  The rest of the trip was in silence, and when they arrived on scene at the storage unit, the area had already been taped off. And the fact that the news crews had yet to appear lifted Cooper’s spirits. She ducked under the yellow tape, pulled on her gloves, and stepped onto the storage facility’s property.

  The ground was thick with mud, and more than once she sank ankle deep in the muck. She pulled her foot out, shaking the mud from her shoe. “The storage unit will be our best bet. The roads aren’t the only thing the storm washed away last night. Smart.”

  Hart followed close behind, cursing as he watched his new shoes dirty with mud. “What’s smart?”

  “If someone was killed anywhere outside, the storm would have gotten rid of most of the evidence, giving the killer a clean slate.” Cooper watched Hart shake the mud from his feet. “Leave the dress shoes for church, Detective. You don’t have to impress the dead.”

  The facility’s entrance door was propped open, and Cooper saw officers and forensics teams combing the hallway, setting up battery-powered lights. Cooper lingered at the door, examining the digital security pad. She leaned in to get a closer look. The display was off, as the power in the facility was still down, and the molding around the lock was fresh. She looked along the wall at the bright paint, which contrasted against the aging discolored roof. “Odd for a place that hasn’t been used in three years to have a new security system.” She tapped one of the forensics members on the shoulder and pointed to the digital lock. “Make sure you tag that for evidence.”

  Cooper reached for her flashlight and allowed it to guide her through the dark halls. Storage units lined both sides of the narrow hallway, with some of them already opened. Broken and discarded locks littered the floor next to the doors. Most of the units were empty, but a few had abandoned belongings still tucked away after the business closed. Forgotten memories crammed into the small spaces, once-treasured items no longer of any use. Cooper shined her light inside one of the units, and the graveyard of lost property. None of the items looked important: old toys, decrepit furniture, lamps, shoes, shirts, coats. But suddenly Cooper stopped, and the spotlight of her flashlight lingered at the sight of a baby’s crib tucked in a corner, half hidden by an old tarp.