The Partnership

by Dustin Stevens

  A short time before Billie had been cycled into the CPD system, a former officer in the Marine Corps that had been stationed in Afghanistan before her handler was killed by an IED. While her training and abilities were topnotch, she had not taken to a single person that had been assigned to her, quickly moving through most of the new hires and even a few of the old hands, developing quite a reputation for herself in the process.

  When it was first suggested to Reed that moving into K-9 might be a positive solution for him, the thought had seemed like a demotion, an unspoken questioning of his abilities both as a man and a detective.

  There was no way he could speak to how Billie felt about the move, though if her early wariness was any indicator, she was of the same mind.

  Some small bit of that feeling still remained for both, even now almost a year later, occasionally flaring up at odd moments.

  Despite it they were both still moving forward, growing more comfortable with one another, each fully aware of how close they were to being shown the door before this opportunity came along.

  “You don’t even feel this cold, do you?” Reed asked, walking forward and clipping the short lead to Billie’s collar, a two-foot leash that gave him better control over her. By and large he tried to give her the eight-foot lead, or even better let her roam free, but when approaching a fresh crime scene he found it better to keep her restrained as much as possible.

  If not for the fact that he already knew the body had been fished from the river, he would have left her behind on first approach.

  For as indispensable as her skillset had become for him, the simple fact remained that she was still a dog, not always able to help where her paws went or what residue she picked up along the way.

  “Yeah, sure wish I had a nice fur coat like yours,” Reed said, running his hand through the thick hair between her ears before standing upright and walking past the cruiser. Ahead of him he could see a pair of individuals huddled together, their dark uniforms reducing them to little more than outlines against the backdrop of lights around them.

  “You boys look chilly,” Reed said, raising his voice a bit to be heard, causing both men to rotate at the waist to look his direction.

  Upon confirming the source of the statement, they both turned and drifted toward him, their shoulders hunched up against the cold, their hands buried into the front pockets of their coats.

  Wade McMichaels stood as the closest to Reed, extracting his right hand from the front of his coat and extending it before him. Tall and lean, his face was shaved clean of any hair, most of the blood flow to it seemingly gone as well.

  “Detective,” he said, offering his gloved hand before immediately shoving it back into his coat.

  “Officer,” Reed replied, shifting a few feet to the side and performing the same ritual with McMichael’s partner, Tommy Jacobs. “Officer.”

  A few inches shorter and a bit heavier than his counterpart, Jacobs’s bare grip was warm as he shook Reed’s hand, immediately retreating to the same stance as McMichaels.

  Bearing an olive complexion and a thin goatee around his mouth, he didn’t appear to be quite as cold as his partner, though his pose seemed to indicate otherwise.

  Both still in their mid-twenties, they had been paired up after completing their training with a senior officer, just the way Reed and Riley had been a decade before.

  “Sorry for the wait,” Reed said, taking up the same stance, thankful to have Billie’s warmth pressed against his thigh. “My folks just landed, I was at the airport when the call came in.”

  In his periphery he could see McMichaels nod slightly as Jacobs said, “Lucky you, huh?”

  “Better than in-laws, right?” Reed replied, watching as a small handful of people moved about along the bank of the river more than twenty yards away.

  “Amen to that,” McMichaels said, again nodding, this time for emphasis.

  “What have we got?” Reed asked, jutting his chin forward an inch or so, anxious to move past the small talk, the cold and the clock in his mind both pushing him on.

  “Floater,” McMichaels said. “Jogger spotted her from the trail and called it in.”

  “Her?” Reed asked, seizing on the pronoun.

  “Yeah,” McMichaels replied. “Young woman, Asian, looks to be mid-twenties or so. Not to sound like a prick or anything, but...”

  “Can be hard to tell,” Reed finished, nodding, knowing where the statement was going. “Somebody was jogging out here? In this weather?”

  On the opposite end of their grouping a small snort could be heard, Jacobs rocking up onto his toes. “I said the same thing. Apparently she’s a student at OSU, training for a marathon in LA in a couple weeks.”

  “Jesus,” Reed muttered. “Hardcore. Dumb as hell, but hardcore.”

  “Agreed,” Jacobs said, “on both counts.”

  “Where is she now?” Reed asked.

  “Called her roommate to come pick her up,” McMichaels said. “We got a statement from her, told her you’d want to talk to her tomorrow.”

  “Anything there?” Reed asked, already sensing the answer before asking it.

  In a perfect world, the person to find a body would also have been a witness to how it ended up there, a veritable font of useful information that could jumpstart an investigation. In reality, it very rarely worked out that way, most simply having the extreme misfortune of stumbling across something horrific.

  Even more so in an instance such as this, where the body was spotted floating in the river.

  “Naw,” Jacobs said. “She was just out running, spotted a big white object right up against the bank, went over to take a look.”

  A dozen more questions sprang to Reed’s mind, ranging from the witness to her description of the body and a host more, but Reed pushed them aside. There was a process for this sort of thing, a general procedure that needed to be conducted to ensure everything was covered correctly.

  No amount of curiosity, or cold weather, could interfere with that.

  Again pushing his chin forward a bit, Reed motioned to the people working nearby, all of them clad in puffy white gear, seemingly oblivious to the world around them.

  “Please tell me that’s Earl and his guys working over there.”

  “That it is,” McMichaels replied.

  Chapter Six

  Despite the matching suits that the entire crime scene crew wore, it wasn’t hard for Reed to pick out the man he wished to speak with. In total there were four of them moving in various directions about the crime scene, all with their faces aimed downwards, their movements seeming a bit quicker than usual, no doubt spurred on by the extreme cold enveloping them.

  Framed within the harsh glow of the quartet of stanchion lights set up in a wide arc along the bank of the river, long shadows extended out from their bodies, reflecting off the top of the water before disappearing into the distance.

  The faint sound of rushing water provided the backdrop for the scene, the source of it a grate positioned right along the bank. Through it flowed a small finger of water that passed beneath the grassy area they now stood on, reduced to a mere stream that would surface again a few blocks over.

  Three of the four seemed to have a matching gait and build, each standing several inches below six feet, their frames slight. Even without seeing their faces, all of them with the hoods up on their winter suits, goggles or ski masks covering most of their features, Reed knew them to be the criminalist crew, having been around them a dozen times in the preceding months. Very rarely had he heard any of the group say more than a few sentences at a time, their particular brand of expertise making them far more comfortable in a quiet laboratory than answering questions at an active crime scene.

  That task they left to the fourth man in the group, the figure easily distinguishable, crouched just inside the ring of lights.

  By any working definition, Earl Bautista - head of the crime scene unit - was a big man. One of the few people that could actually loo
k down at Reed, his height was matched only by his considerable girth, easily tipping in above three hundred pounds. Most of that size was of the slab variety that fell somewhere between muscle and fat, all of it solid.

  “No overalls tonight?” Reed asked on approach, stopping just outside the semi-circle, his hands still shoved into the pockets of his coat.

  At the sound of his voice Earl turned his way, the beard that lined his jaw a bit heavier than the last time Reed had seen him. Like his counterparts, his hood was cinched into place around his head, covering his bald pate.

  “What, you think I’m going commando under this suit?” Earl asked, his voice deep and graveled as he stood and extended a hand to Reed.

  Taking the gesture as an invitation into the scene, Reed released the short lead in his hand, letting it fall by his feet. “Down.”

  Beside him Billie lowered herself to her haunches, glancing up at him in silence, having been through the process enough times by now to know how it worked.

  Accepting Earl’s handshake, Reed fell in beside him, both watching the other three work in silence, all giving a wide berth to the body spread on the ground in the center of the space.

  “Apologies for the delay,” Reed said as an opening. “Had to pick the folks up from the airport.”

  “Bah,” Ear said, raising a hand to wave off the comment. “Trust me, it didn’t matter. ME said she went in sometime last night. Poor girl is basically frozen solid.”

  “Solomon’s already been here?” Reed asked, his eyebrows rising as he glanced to Earl.

  “Some new piss ant from downtown,” Earl said. “I guess Patty’s in Florida for Christmas, so they’re covering for her.”

  “Hmm,” Reed said, noting a palpable sense of disdain clinging to the words. “Real winner, huh?”

  “He was cold,” Earl said, his face twisted up, his voice raised several decibels to relay his distaste for the entire thing. “Sprinted from his car, took about three quick looks, said he’d have to get her back to the lab to be able to tell much, but there was no visible COD, looked like she’d been in the water the better part of a day.”

  Feeling his own sense of disdain already beginning to match Earl’s, Reed let out an audible sigh. “Great. So he can’t tell me anything yet.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath on getting much of anything from him ever,” Earl replied, that same clench Reed had been feeling for over an hour again rising within.

  “Wonderful.” Rotating just a couple inches at the waist, he glanced to Earl and said, “How about you guys? Anything useful show up yet?”

  Matching the glance, Earl raised a hand to his brow, pushing his hood back a half inch, a flash of light reflecting off his skin.

  “Girl was found completely naked,” Earl said. “And the COD might not be clear, but the body was worked over something fierce.”

  As he spoke he began to walk forward, moving in a direct line, the other three members of his unit altering their paths to move around them.

  Biting back the obvious questions that arose from Earl’s last comment, Reed fell in beside him.

  The body was positioned just a few feet from the water’s edge, a blue tarp covering it. A swath of ice had already crusted to the grass between it and the bank, a bit more having formed against the corners of the grate, the sound of moving water growing stronger with each step.

  “Who pulled her out?” Reed asked, stopping by what he guessed to be the girl’s feet as Earl moved along the side of her.

  “Your guys did,” Earl said, motioning with the top of his head toward McMichaels and Jacobs standing along the road. “She wasn’t more than a foot or two from the edge, the current pushing her right up against the grate. All they had to do was reach in and drag her free.”

  As he explained, he reached forward and grabbed at the corner of the tarp, the vinyl material crinkling loudly as Earl peeled it back, stopping just north of her breasts.

  For the second time on the evening Reed felt the breath pulled from his chest, this time having no relation to the cold, entirely caused by the sight that lay before him.

  The original assessment of McMichaels seemed to be correct, the girl young and Asian, anything definitive beyond that tough to determine. Her skin appeared white to the point of translucence, the look even more pronounced by the black hair that was crusted to the tarp beneath her, ice crystals visible.

  None of that was what pulled the breath from Reed though, that part coming from the realization that his original supposition was wrong, his ingrained preconceptions again betraying him.

  The area he now stood in was said to be known as The Bottoms because most of the region was below the water line for both the Olentangy and nearby Scioto rivers.

  Most knew that was just a polite cover for a far more dubious origin to the moniker.

  Upon hearing that a floater had been found Reed had allowed that origin, and everything that came with it, to taint his original judgment. Most victims that arrived here had a certain look, they tended to wear the effects of a hard life in a hard place for everybody to see.

  Without knowing a single thing about a person or even how they died, Reed could generally tell at a glance if they were one of theirs.

  Just the same, as in this case, he could tell just as fast when they weren’t.

  “Most of her teeth are gone,” Earl said, extending a gloved hand up and peeling back her top lip. Beneath it was nothing more than her gums, the pink flesh having lost most of its color, just a few bumps on the surface displaying where teeth should have been.

  Allowing the top lip to fall back into place, Earl used his thumb to lower her bottom lip, the same thing staring back at them, only a stray molar or two visible deep in the recesses of her mouth.

  Despite the lack of teeth present the flesh looked healthy, not the kind of thing that usually accompanied an addiction of some sort.

  “Drugs? Surgical extraction?” Reed asked.

  “That you’ll have to ask the doc,” Earl said, pulling back a bit. “But if I were a betting man I’d say something closer to a hammer was used.”

  Feeling the skin tighten around his eyes, Reed offered an inaudible wince as Earl ran a hand beneath the edge of the tarp and extracted the girl’s left arm, lying it flat atop the blue covering.

  “And lookit here,” Earl said, rotating her wrist as much as the frozen extremity would allow.

  Stepping to the side, Reed moved in beside him and squatted down, following Earl’s outstretched finger to peer at the girl’s hand, the skin of all four digits and her thumb blistered beyond recognition. For a moment he remained rooted in position, processing in silence before looking away, his gaze rising to the water before them.

  “Other hand the same way?”

  “Yup,” Earl said, returning the girl’s arm back beneath the tarp.

  Side by side they remained in silence before Reed blinked himself back into the moment, motioning at the body.

  “Anything else?”

  “Not yet,” Earl said, pulling the tarp back up over her head, the tiny figure again disappearing from sight. “My guys and I will continue going over the ground here, but I don’t look to find much of use.”

  Grunting softly, Reed nodded in agreement. Given the current of the river, and the positioning of the body against the grate, she had likely been tossed in somewhere north and carried down to them.

  No way would somebody have put her in right there and risked having her come up against the grate so quickly.

  “So basically we have a victim that somebody wanted to make damned sure couldn’t be identified,” Reed said, allowing a tiny twinge of bitterness to surface in his voice.

  “Yup,” Earl offered again, adding nothing more.

  Chapter Seven

  “Down,” Reed said, issuing the word before even opening the back door into the kitchen. Using his tone reserved for commands, he waited as Billie lowered herself to the frosted planks of the back deck, not once questioning the
directive.

  Knowing she would react as such, Reed opened the back door and stepped inside, the ambient temperature at least ten degrees warmer than when he had left.

  “Come,” he said, this time his voice lowered into an urgent whisper as he held the door wide and allowed Billie to brush against his leg, her feet clattering against the hardwood flooring in the kitchen. Without giving him a moment’s pause she went to the pair of stainless steel bowls on the floor beside the stove and buried her muzzle into the closest one, drawing in deep laps of water.

  The sound of her drinking echoed through the room, sounding akin to canon fire in the quiet of the home.

  For a moment Reed considered scolding her before thinking better of it, knowing whatever sounds she made wouldn’t much matter anyway. Instead he dropped his phone, badge, and keys on the table and walked past it to the living room, the reason for ordering Billie down outside the back door sitting in an armchair in the corner, legs outstretched on the ottoman before him.

  Despite any admonishments Reed had made to the contrary before leaving, he knew that his father would be waiting up for him, just as he had since he first started being out after dark more than two decades before.

  “I see Mama has gotten ahold of the thermostat already,” Reed said.

  For a moment there was no response, his father attempting to go through the charade of pretending to be asleep before abandoning the notion, his eyes popping open.

  “Poor old girl’s been cold since we took off from Oklahoma,” his father said. “Asked for a blanket on the plane, put on every sweatshirt she brought and a couple of yours right after you left.”

  Settling himself onto the far end of the couch, Reed extended his feet before him, resting them on the edge of the coffee table, crossed at the ankles.

  “Meanwhile you’re sweating to death?”

  “Roasting like a Christmas ham,” his father said, no small amount of derision in his voice.

  Allowing the corners of his mouth to curl upward, Reed turned his head back toward the kitchen, to the sound of Billie’s footsteps approaching. He watched as she passed into the darkened living room, her solid black coat little more than a shadow as she paused beside him. There she remained for a moment, drawing in a few breaths through her nose, before walking past him and settling herself onto the floor by his father.