The Ninth Life

by E. H. Reinhard

  Eve opened the driver’s door and went to the trunk. She opened the lid. The woman was still alive. Blood came from her mouth. She gripped the handle of the knife hanging from her stomach. Eve stared down at her. Her eyes moved to the left. Eve reached into the trunk and stuck her hand into one of the bags of groceries. She brought her hand back holding an apple. Eve bit into it and chewed as she stared down at the woman.

  “You’ll soon be his,” Eve said midchew. She held the apple in her teeth and placed her left hand over the woman’s mouth. Eve yanked the blade from the woman’s stomach before sticking it in again.

  Chapter 2

  I rearranged myself in my chair. With a sound of a squeak, I dropped two inches. I stared at the ceiling of my office. “Really?” I asked.

  The chair dropped another inch and bottomed out.

  I stood and reached underneath the chair to raise it. The seat didn’t lift. I stepped on the base and tried pulling up on the seat as I worked the handle to adjust the height. The seat rose. The second I sat down, it dropped again.

  “You piece of sh—” I cut my sentence short when I noticed someone standing in my office doorway.

  “Chair take a crap?” Hank asked.

  I grumbled in annoyance and rested my elbows, which were then at chest height, on the surface of my desk. “Apparently,” I said.

  Hank took another couple of steps into my office. He wore a gray suit jacket, which bulged over his shoulder-holstered service weapon, with a white shirt and black tie. His dark hair looked freshly trimmed, yet he had a bit of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His police-issue mustache remained. My eyesight dropped toward his feet. I had a hunch that Karen, Hank’s wife, had a hand in what I was looking at.

  “Why the hell are you wearing sneakers with a suit?” I asked. “Sneakers with no socks, I might add.”

  Hank looked down at his shoes. “Karen said it’s in style. I believe she used the word edgy.”

  “That’s what you’re going for?” I asked. “You want to be Hank Rawlings, Tampa’s edgy-shoe-wearing homicide sergeant?”

  Hank shrugged and looked up. “I don’t know. Who cares?” Hank said. “What are you, the fashion police?”

  I ran my hand over my bald head and gripped the back of my neck. “I am,” I said. “So what’s up?”

  “Nothing. I wanted to see if I could borrow a buck or two for the vending machines.”

  “Karen didn’t give you your allowance this week?”

  “She forgot. And I spent the last couple singles I had in my wallet this morning on scratchers.”

  “How’d you do?” I asked.

  “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  I pulled my wallet from my pocket and handed Hank a five.

  “Want anything?” he asked.

  “A new chair,” I said.

  “Pretty sure those aren’t in there, and this isn’t going to cover it.”

  I reached out for the coffee on my desk, lifted the cup, and gave the remaining liquid a shake. “I guess I could use a refill and a muffin or something,” I said. I swallowed the last gulp in my cup and stood. “I’ll join you.”

  I trailed behind Hank down the hall until he made a right into the station’s lunchroom.

  A pair of uniformed patrol officers, Hart and Berris, stood in front of the coffee machine, shooting the breeze. Hart, a late-fifties, lifelong patrol cop, turned and looked at Hank and me. I saw Hart staring down at the coffee cup in my hand.

  “Lieutenant, Sergeant,” Hart said. “If you’re here for the Joe, you have perfect timing. We just cooked up a fresh pot.”

  “Perfect timing it is,” I said.

  I filled my cup from the carafe, poured in some creamer from the lunchroom’s refrigerator, and put my back to the counter. I took a sip and watched as Hank seemed to debate what to buy from the vending machine. “Is all the paperwork done on the Fierro murder?” I asked.

  Deborah Fierro was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of three that was killed in her home a week and a half prior. Her husband, covered in high-velocity blood spatter when we arrived on the scene, lasted an hour in our interrogation box before breaking down and confessing to committing the crime. He’d found out that she was sleeping with her personal trainer and opted to shoot her in the chest as opposed to filing for a divorce.

  Hank made his selections, which appeared to be a candy bar and chips, and looked over at me. “I just have to put everything together in a file, and it will be set. I’ll bring it over to your office in a little bit.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sounds good.”

  “What do you want from here?” Hank tapped on the vending machine glass.

  “Muffin. Blueberry,” I said.

  He punched in the code, and I heard the muffin drop to the bottom of the machine. Hank scooped it out and tossed it to me. I caught it left-handed without spilling a drop of my coffee. I unwrapped the cellophane with my teeth and took a big bite as I left the lunchroom for my office. From just outside my office door, I could hear my desk phone ringing. I took a couple of quick steps, rushed into my office, and scooped up the still-ringing phone. I swallowed the mouthful of baked goods and washed it down with a sip of coffee.

  “Lieutenant Kane,” I said.

  “Lieutenant Carl Kane?” the caller, a female, asked.

  “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “There’s a body at the corner of East Oak and North Jefferson.”

  I heard a click, and the line went dead. I looked at the caller ID on my phone, which showed a local number. I dialed the number back. The phone rang in my ear repeatedly until a voice mail from a female named Erica picked up. Her message played in my ear, telling me to leave a name and number. I did and stated that the caller needed to call me back. I pulled out my notepad from my pocket and jotted the phone number down.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  I looked at the glass window separating my office from the captain’s, and I could see the lights on inside through the drawn blinds. I shoved the rest of the muffin in my mouth, took my notepad and coffee, and walked next door. Captain Bostok was seated at his desk.

  He rocked back in his chair as I entered, and took his glasses from his face. Bostok began cleaning his lenses with his tie. “Kane, what’s up?” he asked.

  “I just got a call. A woman said that there was a body on the corner of East Oak and North Jefferson.”

  “What other details did you get?”

  “That was it. The caller asked for me specifically, said there was a body at that location, and hung up.”

  “Did you try calling the number back?”

  “Yeah, it was the first thing that I did. No answer on the return call. It went to a voice mail for a female named Erica. No last name.”

  “And this came straight to your desk?” Bostok asked.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t internally transferred,” I said.

  “Hmm,” Bostok said. He crossed his arms over his large stomach. “Take Rawlings or Jones and go check it out.”

  “Jones is out at the dentist this morning.”

  “Rawlings, then,” Bostok said.

  “All right. Do you think you could do me a favor?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what do you need?”

  I copied down the number of the caller on a separate piece of paper from my notepad and tore it out. I passed it to Bostok. “See what Terry, or someone from tech, can get on that number.”

  Bostok reached for his phone on his desk. “I’ll give him a ring now and have him get started. You want it traced or just see who it belongs to?”

  “Tell him to just get me whatever he can.”

  “I’ll have him call you with any results.”

  “Thanks, Cap,” I said. I left the captain’s office and found Hank at his desk in the bull pen. Hank shoveled a handful of chips into his mouth and stared down at what I assumed was the file from the Fierro murder.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Hank looked up. “Go where?” He lifted the
bag of chips to his mouth and poured in whatever crumbs remained in the bag.

  “I just got a call reporting a body. Over on East Oak and North Jefferson.”

  Hank tossed the empty bag of chips into the wastebasket beside his metal desk and took his phone from his pocket. He glanced down at it. “I didn’t get the call,” he said.

  “It came straight to my desk. Get your ass up. Let’s go.”

  I went through the call with Hank, the same as I had with the captain a moment earlier, as we walked to the parking structure.

  We took an unmarked cruiser from the station’s fleet and headed out. The body’s location that the caller had stated was a little over a mile from the station. I took North Tampa Street to East Oak and made a right. The neighborhood was older. Large homes, fifty-plus years old, mixed with older commercial buildings. Four blocks down, I saw the sign for North Jefferson and pulled to the curb before the corner. The drive took us five minutes. Hank and I stepped out of the car.

  I didn’t see any groups of people rubbernecking to get a view of a body anywhere. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  “The caller didn’t say which corner of the intersection, huh?” Hank asked.

  “Nah,” I said.

  I looked around. Directly behind Hank, on the passenger side of the car, was a large brown house that had been converted to some kind of business. I looked across the street behind me at a vacant lot with a handful of palm trees. I saw no body. I looked across the intersection. A yellow home, also converted to a business, took up the left corner of the intersection. A redbrick single-story commercial building that looked as if it held four storefronts took up the right corner. A white sedan was parked at the curb in front of the redbrick building.

  “Did you want to start knocking on doors?” Hank asked.

  “Let’s just have a look around first. As soon as we start asking if anyone has seen anything out of the ordinary, and make everyone aware of our presence, we’ll have people coming out of these businesses and trying to see what we’re looking for.”

  “Okay. You take that side, I’ll take this one,” Hank said.

  “Sure.” I left Hank and crossed the street to the vacant lot. I walked the sidewalk, rounded the corner, and continued looking over the patch of grass. Aside from a couple of scattered palm trees and the few big oaks with mulch borders, I saw nothing. At the back of the lot, the grass washed out to gravel where a few cars parked for another business. I looked right at the yellow house on the corner and crossed the street. I followed the sidewalk around the front of the place. A big sign stood in the landscaping out front, telling me that it was some kind of realty company. I continued on past the front porch and entrance to the end of the building. I stopped. A patch of grass roughly three or four lots deep sat beyond the converted yellow home—a for-sale sign was planted in the center of the large parcel of land. Nothing was amiss. I took another couple of steps and looked at the homes a block over, behind the vacant land. I saw nothing. I turned to see Hank directly across the street from me. He stood just a few feet from the nose of a white sedan, a ten-year-old Acura. The redbrick building at Hank’s back had four individual addresses plastered above their respective front doors. Three of the four entrances had the windows papered over—vacant. The last in line, nearest Hank, appeared to be some kind of record store, judging by the signs in the windows.

  Hank turned to face me and held his hands up. “Not seeing anything,” he called over.

  “Start knocking,” I said.

  I walked to the entrance of the realty business and climbed the five red-painted cement steps to the front door. A sign that read Closed hung inside of the door’s glass. I pressed the bell and gave the door a knock. Thirty seconds passed, and no one came. I turned around, looking for Hank. I didn’t see him and figured him to be inside the record store. I crossed the street and passed by the rear of the car that was parked at the curb. The license plate caught my eye—a tag from Wisconsin, my home state. The license plate frame was solid black plastic and had a single word on it: Kane. The name, my name, looked as if it had been written on the license plate frame in silver marker. Finding my name on the plate seemed to be an exceptionally odd coincidence. I stopped and stared at the rear of the car. My eyes went to the rear bumper. I saw blood.

  Chapter 3

  Hank walked from the door of the record store. “No luck,” he said.

  I waved him toward me. “We got blood,” I said.

  “On the car?” Hank hustled across the sidewalk and came to my side.

  I pointed at the three drips that I saw on the car’s rear bumper. One of the drips had rolled over the flat upper part of the bumper’s edge and had made its way down the rear of the car.

  I balled my fist and knocked on the quarter panel. I listened for any sounds coming from inside. I heard nothing.

  “Run back to the car and call it in. Get Rick or someone else from forensics out here.”

  “Sure,” Hank said. He jogged to our cruiser.

  “And grab some gloves from the trunk!” I called.

  I watched as he looked back, confirming. My eyes went back to the car’s license plate and frame. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Timmons in patrol.

  “Sergeant Timmons,” he answered.

  “Hey, it’s Kane. I need you to run a plate for me.”

  “Fire away,” he said.

  “Wisconsin tag.” I rattled off the plate number.

  “One second,” he said.

  I could hear him clicking at keys.

  “That plate is stolen. Comes back to a 2010 Ford Focus, color blue.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Plate stolen or the vehicle that it belongs on as well?”

  “Just the tag. What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I got a call at my desk of a body at a specific location. Unknown female caller. I tried calling the number back, but it went to a woman’s voice mail. I’m standing here at the back of a car with the tag that I just gave you. Looks like it has blood on the bumper.”

  “Did you need me to get a couple of cars out to you?” Timmons asked.

  “Probably should. I have Hank calling it in now. I’m going to try to get into this car in a second.”

  “Okay, I’ll send a few guys over. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Will do.” I clicked off from the call and stuffed my phone back into my pocket.

  Hank jogged back from our car. “It’s called in. Here,” he said and passed me a set of latex gloves.

  I pulled the pair of gloves over my hands.

  “Are we just popping the trunk on this thing or what?” Hank asked.

  “We need to. And hopefully not damage any prints, if there are any.”

  “Did you want to just wait on forensics?” Hank asked.

  “Can’t. If there’s a chance that someone is alive in here, we need to get them out.” I slipped two fingers into the gap on the rear of the car. My fingers felt a pad with a button inside to pop the back. I pressed it in, and the trunk lock disengaged. With a short pull, the trunk’s shocks did the rest and lifted the lid.

  “Shit,” Hank said.

  I looked down at the face of a dark-haired young woman staring back at me. She had three nines written on her face in blood, one on each cheek and one on her forehead. She couldn’t have been much older than early twenties. Her eyes were open with no life in them. Her skin was a shade of gray. Half-dried blood saturated the maroon long-sleeve shirt she wore. I noticed an excessive amount of holes in the front of her shirt where she’d been stabbed. Her legs were bent back so she’d fit horizontally in the area. She wore a pair of jeans that were also blood stained. I looked at a cell phone on the floor of the trunk nearer Hank and me. My eyes went back to the nines drawn on her face. An uneasy feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.

  “This is bad,” I said.

  “What’s with the numbers on her face? And damn, how many times was she stabbed?” Hank got
his head low, and I figured he was trying to count the individual knife wounds.

  “It’s nine times,” I said.

  “What?” Hank asked. “How the hell did you come up with that number on the fly?”

  “Because I’ve seen this exact same thing before. And the asshole that was responsible for it told me that I’d see it again.”

  “What?” Hank asked. “Who?”

  “I’ve told you about it before. Larry Koskinen. The devil-worshipping nutcase that I arrested for killing four women—well, them and his parents. The asshole who gave me these.” I pointed at two long scars on the right side of my head. “This is exactly how I found the first victim. A white sedan with a young woman stabbed to death in the trunk. Same nines in blood on her face. The bullshit with the license plate and plate frame is a message. This was for me,” I said.

  “Yeah, I remember you talking about it. He’s locked up, though,” Hank said.

  “Not where he should be. He got sentenced to the state mental health facility. His attorneys ran with an insanity plea and somehow got it. I need to make a call. Give me a second.” I stepped up on the curb and walked a couple of doors down to stand in front of one of the papered-over storefronts. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Jim Gase, my old partner in Milwaukee. Jim, in addition to being my past partner, had been on the Koskinen case with me and took the lieutenant position for the Milwaukee PD’s homicide division after I moved.

  “Long time, no talk, partner,” he answered. “What’s going on?”