The Partnership

by Dustin Stevens

  Initial introductions had been made earlier, though Reed had stopped her outside the door to ensure she didn’t go tearing through the house, mistaking his parents for intruders.

  Already that trepidation made him feel a bit foolish, he sometimes forgetting how extensive her scent and memory receptors were, far more capable of imprinting and remembering individuals than any human could ever hope to be.

  “She go on to bed?” Reed asked.

  “Yeah, little bit ago. I stayed up to watch the end of the ballgame, was just about to turn in when I saw your headlights.”

  Reed knew this was probably closer to the truth than the earlier rendition of already being asleep, right up to the part about turning in.

  Still, he let it pass without comment.

  “Tonight was what? Bahamas Bowl?”

  “Belk Bowl,” his father replied, “whatever the hell that is.”

  “Right,” Reed agreed, having had the same thought when perusing the list of games a few days before. “Any good?”

  “Naw, not really. Besides, we’re just waiting for the playoffs anyway.”

  “That we are,” Reed agreed, the Sooners having served as the basis of conversation between them for the better part of a month and counting. No doubt it would continue to do so in the days ahead, though given the time and the visions of what he’d just witnessed moving across his consciousness, he didn’t especially feel like getting into it at the moment.

  Sometimes even football needed to take a backseat.

  “How’d it go out there?” his father asked, seeming to sense that very thing, moving past the previous topic without comment.

  His gaze aimed at the toes of his running shoes, Reed thought on the question a moment. He held the pose as his vision glazed over, seeing the girl’s hair frozen to the ground behind her, her hands mangled beyond repair.

  “Young woman, Asian, maybe mid-twenties,” Reed said, rattling the information off without shifting his focus. “No earthly reason for being in that part of town, let alone floating naked in the river.”

  Across the room he could hear his father draw in a sharp breath of air, though no words came with it.

  “Teeth were gone, fingerprints scorched off,” Reed said, continuing to think aloud. Just hours into the case he could already hear weariness seeping into his voice, the investigation appearing to be just one more in a string of what had been an especially ugly year.

  “Most chance at ever ID’ing her pretty much gone.”

  On the ground beside his father Billie lowered her chin to her front paws, her body positioned so she could stare right at him, her eyes open and blinking.

  “So she wasn’t drowned?”

  The lack of a clear cause of death was something Reed had been wrestling with since leaving the scene, still not sure how to handle it, content to wait until he spoke with the coroner in a few hours.

  “Doubtful,” Reed said. “She was found naked, not weighted down in any way. More likely it was a body dump, the other stuff insurance to make sure if she was found she was never identified.”

  “Damn,” his father whispered, just one single word managing to convey the same sense of angst Reed was already beginning to feel.

  “Pretty much,” Reed agreed, neither saying another word as his father rose from his seat and headed off to bed.

  Chapter Eight

  The top of the grease splotched paper sack was wadded into a tight curl as The Muscle dropped it down atop his lap. Having been clutched in his hand for the last several minutes, the cheap material of the bag had gotten damp with sweat, the two sides fusing together.

  For a moment The Muscle tried peeling them apart, feeling his patience grow thin as he longed for the meal inside, before giving up on the notion. Starting on one side, he merely ripped off the top half of the sack, the paper tearing away in a diagonal line, before tossing it to the ground beside him.

  With the removal of the paper came a plume of faux Mexican aroma, more than a half dozen assorted items from the fast food joint down the street all tucked away inside.

  Reaching down along the side of the recliner he was perched in, The Muscle shoved the wooden lever toward the floor, a footrest swinging out before him, turning his thighs into an impromptu table. There he placed each of the items from the sack, laying them in a haphazard assortment, a pile of hot sauce packets serving as the centerpiece of the arrangement.

  Tossing away the remainder of the bag, The Muscle ran a hand along the side of his leg, fishing into the crease between the cushion he was seated on and the side of the chair. After a moment his fingers finally struck what he was looking for, a piece of hard plastic six inches in length.

  Extracting the remote from the chair, he pointed it at the flat screen directly across from him. Perched on a cheap folding table he had picked up from a trash pile months before, the LCD television was easily the most expensive thing in his entire home.

  An argument could even made that it was worth more than the house itself, especially after having The Muscle as a tenant for three months and counting.

  The state of the abode was of no consequence to The Muscle as he started on the right side of the food arrangement, taking up a soft taco and peeling back the wrapper. The home was never meant to be anything more than a short term affair, just another in a string of cities such as Columbus. Provided things didn’t finally reach a breaking point between him and The Businessman, by this time next year he would be doing the exact same thing in Indianapolis, or Kansas City, or maybe even Little Rock.

  Not that it mattered to him. Where he was on any particular day was of no great concern, just so long as he got to peddle his very particular skill set and continued getting paid handsomely for it.

  The nocturnal schedule he had long since made peace with, the seedy streets and nefarious characters just something that came with the job.

  Truth be told, compared to what he’d been doing before coming aboard, it was all rather cosmopolitan.

  The Muscle’s pupils dilated slightly as the television came to life, the bright screen broadcasting garish color into the semi-darkness of the room. For a moment he left the channel where it was, watching an NBA highlight being played on Sportscenter, before maneuvering down to the DVR listings.

  There would be plenty of time for checking scores later.

  Right now he had something far more pressing to tend to.

  Starting with the local NBC affiliate, The Muscle pulled up the late night news, watching as a middle-aged black woman and a fifty-something white man with silver hair bandied back and forth on screen. With plastic smiles affixed to their faces, they pretended to care while broadcasting a report on the president’s winter vacation before kicking it over to a fat man in a tweed sports coat for the weather.

  Grunting softly, The Muscle toggled the channel over to CBS, setting the remote onto the arm of the chair beside him and taking up a pair of hot sauce packets. Holding them in tandem, he tore away the top corner of both, slathering the viscous liquid across the top of the taco before discarding them and taking up the first part of his meal.

  The set on the screen before him was much the same as the previous one, a different insignia on the table, the respective races of the two reporters having changed, but otherwise no discernible differences were visible. Eschewing national news for the time being, they kept their focus closer to home, discussing the local Salvation Army drive that was currently underway in central Ohio, imploring viewers to contribute anything they could.

  Feeling the right side of his nose curl upward in a snarl, The Muscle shoved in over half of his taco, the soft flour shell tearing away easily. For a moment all he could taste was the vinegar-based sauce spread across the top as it spread across his tongue, the sensation soon replaced by a concoction of imitation meat and beans.

  As fast as he could chew, he finished off what was in his mouth before shoving in the rest of the initial offering, wadding up the wrapper and condiment packets and addi
ng them to the growing pile on the floor beside him.

  Again returning to the remote, he changed the channel one last time, pushing south in the lineup to ABC where a single blonde woman sat behind a desk. With her body positioned off to the side, an oversized box was superimposed onto the screen by her shoulder, a stock image of a mashed car with police tape strung before it filling the space.

  Pausing just briefly, The Muscle listened as the reporter stared in earnest at the camera, her blown out hair not moving one iota as she shook her head gravely, describing the massive accident that had taken place on I-270 earlier that evening.

  Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since The Muscle had made the drop, and still no word yet from the local news. Under any other circumstances that would have been a good thing, but in this particular instance he wanted, needed, the message to be received. Doing so was the only reason he had taken the chance of disposing of her the way he did, bypassing his traditional method of digging a hole far out in the woods beyond town.

  If her death was going to be of any use to them, they needed her found. They needed her picture to make the nightly news, to have something definitive to show the others.

  Something to point to, ensuring their compliance.

  A clear message, discernible in any language.

  Feeling his acrimony at the situation spike just briefly, The Muscle shoved the thought aside, moving the channel back to ESPN. With the press of a button the blonde evaporated from view, replaced by Gregg Popovich and the Spurs doing what they had been doing for almost two decades, laying waste to anybody in their path.

  Today had been the freebie, the one that could pass by without too much concern, without him and The Businessman having to put their heads together to make some difficult decisions.

  The thought of having to make the trip over to see his partner, of setting foot in that flashy den of inequity, brought a taste far more sour than the hot sauce to The Muscle’s mouth as he thought on it.

  Things worked better when he and The Businessman remained in their respective spheres. If forced together they could coexist, but it was not something that either one relished, a necessity far more than a preference.

  Still, he would do it, if for no other reason than to make sure the girls knew what had happened.

  One way or another, the message had to be received.

  Chapter Nine

  Five hours was the sum total of sleep Reed was able to receive, his body mercifully allowing him to recede into total darkness, before his REM cycle took over. Once it did, scenes from the night before played on a loop in his mind, culminating with Earl pulling back the blue tarp, revealing the girl’s chalky visage time after time.

  Somewhere between the tenth and twelfth viewing his subconscious even decided to be extra cruel, allowing the girl to rotate her head at the neck, her eyes popping open to stare at him.

  Once that happened any hope for further sleep was gone, Reed sitting up with a start in his bed, the sheets slick with sweat beneath him.

  Raising both palms to his face, Reed pressed them tight into the sockets of his eyes, leaving them there long enough for flashes of color to begin dancing across his vision.

  “Been awhile since one of those, hasn’t it?” he whispered, knowing without looking over that Billie would be there.

  Trained not only to track every form of narcotic or explosive known to man, she also had an unnatural ability to detect changes in his physiology, a quality that ran somewhere between comforting and disconcerting.

  While on the job it was a tremendous asset to have a partner that was so attuned to his every function, knowing she could sense and react without a verbal command being issued. At home it could be quite the opposite, bringing with it the feeling of having his mother watching over him.

  Having two in the house at the same time was something he wasn’t sure he even wanted to experience.

  The wet pad of her nose pressed into his exposed rib cage as Billie let him know she was present, his state of unrest having drawn her in from her bed beneath the dining room table. Allowing his hands to fall away from his face, Reed placed one atop her head, furrowing the thick hair between her ears.

  The other he used to pull back the sheets, turning and placing his bare feet on the chilly floor beneath him. Glancing to the nightstand by the bed, he saw the gleaming red digits reveal it was just half past five in the morning, the world beyond his windows still dark.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said, giving the hair between Billie’s ears one last scratch before standing and moving straight across the hall into the bathroom. As quietly as he could, he showered and dressed in the semi-darkness of the house, finding Billie waiting for him in the kitchen a quarter hour later, as directed.

  Knowing his parents were still attuned to central time, it would be an hour or more before either one stirred, Reed leaving a note for them on the kitchen table before exiting.

  The world outside was cold and still as Reed allowed Billie to do her business for the morning, turning on the engine and allowing it to warm as he waited. Icy crystals entered his lungs as he stood with his shoulders bunched up below his ears, his nostrils burning with each deep breath.

  Combined, the effect was better than any amount of liquid caffeine could have been, every nerve in his body standing at attention as he watched Billie finish and come bounding toward him.

  Less than a half-hour after waking they were both in the car and on their way to the precinct.

  The events of the previous night hadn’t given him a great deal to work with, especially not until he was able to get over to the coroner’s office and speak with the ME. Given the report Earl had given him the night before about the fill-in he was south of optimistic about anything the young man might have to say, even less so about the timeliness with which things would be done.

  Taken together it didn’t leave him with much of a heading for where to start, his mind running through the various permutations of the victim and how she might have ended up in the water.

  It was possible that it was just a drowning, though the amount of damage present seemed too much for him to actually believe that. The girl appeared too well-kept to have simply lost all of her teeth in any conventional manner, Earl’s theory of a hammer being the culprit for their removal only confirming that. Coupled with the extreme disfigurement of her fingers, everything seemed to confirm Reed’s original supposition, that the girl was never meant to be identified, that her going into the water was only done after the killer figured there was nothing more her corpse could tell the world.

  Feeling his grip tighten on the steering wheel as he wound through the deserted streets of the western suburbs, Reed pushed past the girl herself, trying to focus on the latter half of the equation.

  The amount of abuse done to her seemed excessive, as if meant to convey a message, either to the victim herself or even to somebody else nearby. That meant there was likely a personal connection between her and the killer, changing the complexion of his investigation, ruling out a crime of opportunity.

  It still did nothing to tell him who the girl was or what she had done to earn such ire, but if he could determine either, he might have a shot at figuring out who had been in charge of her undoing.

  From the back seat Reed could hear Billie moving back and forth, though if it was from her own mulling of the case or from detecting his own garbled thoughts he couldn’t be sure. The car shifted just slightly as she moved her bulk from one side to the other, her head passing across the rearview mirror in either direction, each trip just a few seconds apart.

  In total the drive took sixteen minutes, the time aided considerably by the non-existent traffic and Reed rolling through a couple of stoplights that were blazing bright yellow. At seven minutes after the hour he pulled into the front parking lot of the 8th Precinct building, bypassing the employee lot for the front visitor stalls, knowing they would be there and gone long before any citizens arrived that might make use of them.
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  No need to make a long walk through the arctic air without having to.

  Easing to a stop, Reed left the engine running a moment, heat blasting through the vents on the dash as he stared up at the building rising before him.

  The 8th Precinct had been his professional home for nearly a year, though there was little to distinguish it from the 19th that had been his place of employment for a decade before that, or even from the schoolhouse he had attended as a child many years before that.

  Outfitted entirely in brick, the building was a perfect cube in shape, rising three stories high. The exterior of it had once been bright red but time and the elements had managed to dull the hue to something closer to pink, the effect especially pronounced beneath the pair of headlights illuminating the exterior.

  A roundabout and flag pole stood out front of the facility, both just beyond the scope of the lights, barely visible in the early morning air.

  Not a single light was visible as Reed sat and stared up at the building, bracing himself for the cold he knew he would soon be experiencing, planning how the next couple of hours would play out.

  For all his best efforts, it was a painfully thin plan.

  Chapter Ten

  The interior of the 8th Precinct was silent as Reed and Billie entered, a gust of cold air following them in through the front door. The only signs of life on the entire first floor were a pair of small desk lamps left burning at the far end of the space, no indication that their owners had been around since shift change the night before.

  Knowing that an incident such as the discovery of a floater would bring out the curiosity of his coworkers, Reed was thankful for the solitude as he trudged forward, Billie moving in lockstep by his side.

  Stretched out wide in either direction were desks arranged in uniform fashion, those to the right serving the administrative functions for the department, to the left desk space for uniformed division officers. Before them a wall ran the length of the building, dividing it evenly in half, a double door with frosted glass the only entry.