The Bloody Mary Diet: The Detective Adele Series Book 1 (3 page)

Trevor positions him
self between Carl and I, bless him, and we head back to see vic 4.  I try not to put names with victims because it makes it more personal.  Carl pulls out the drawer and moves back the sheet.  Except for her coloring and the slightly open eyes she could be asleep.  She is beautiful.

Carl
steps back and waits for me to touch her forehead.  He is positively ghoulish. He also knows better than to talk to me with Trevor there. Three years ago he and the captain had a short talk and Carl came back even paler than usual.  After that the weird questions stopped.

I reach out and get it over with.  The hardest part is starting.  No, I take that back.  It is all hard. My hand settles on her
forehead and I brace myself.  Nothing.  I never get nothing.  With my left hand on her forehead I put my right on her hand.  Nothing.  It’s like she didn’t even die.  She just left.  There are no memories at all.  Nothing.  It’s like talking to a bag of sand. This has never happened to me.  The dead don’t lie and they always say something.  Even if they don’t know who shot them they will tell you that they had been shot. You get a picture and the “story” of their last or strongest memories. Vic 4 gives me silence.

Carl
is confused and Trevor is looking concerned.

I step back and say
, “I got nothing…literally nothing.”

Carl
offers to get me another body and Trevor growls at him. Trevor can be a really scary person. I thank Carl for his time and offer him my biggest beauty contestant smile.  We will need to be let in at night in the future and Carl does at least make it easy. The smile may have been two much but I am mommy’s girl and I know how to work it.  Or at least how it works.

When we get back to the car Trevor takes the long way back.  I know he is waiting for me to explain and I would but I have no idea what just happened.  Everyone has at least one memory and the newer or
stronger ones are easiest to hear. Usually with a murder victim how they died is the first thing to come forward.

Trevor breaks first, “What happened?”

“Nothing.  I heard absolutely nothing.  It was like she had never lived there at all. Like she left and took everything with her.  I didn’t even see a birthday.  She was a blank.”  I am trying to cover how shaken I am but Trevor knows me. It sucks.

“Do you need to leave earl
y? I can take you back to your Gran’s?” 

“No, I’m fine
, and my new dad is picking me up for dinner at the station.  Me, Radly and Mr. Stevens have dinner plans.”

Trevor thinks for a minute and offers to go with me.  I really should give him a chance.  He is
by far the nicest person I know and if he didn’t scare the holy living shit out of me he would also be the hottest. But I can’t. Not tonight anyway. Trevor looks away and tells me to make my new dad take me somewhere nice.  He knows he did not have to say that. I am mommy’s girl.

When we get back to the station I make a straight shot for my office. I really need to explain our “station”.  It is not a normal police station in any
since of the word.  Usually a police station would be more open and only officers would have offices.  A new building opened twenty five years ago and at that time old one was set for demolition.  It was only then that someone realized that they had “forgotten” to build room for the Odd Squad. 

We were stuck in an old city building that had never been torn down, and I am not joking, because it had way too much
asbestos. So in addition to my own very tiny office I have an increased chance of cancer and no real heating or cooling.  On days like this I will take it because I need a door way more than a bunch of questions about how I am now a broken necromancer.  I wonder if I will start to have performance anxiety.

As I am sitting down I see that someone has sent me another file.  This one is in a sealed envelope.  I open it and it is the first three Vic’s phone records.  Whoever collected them just shoved them in an envelope and sent them to us without even looking.  This case was creeping someone out.

I
t was then I remembered that I didn’t look at her feet.  The unusual blood pooling.  I should have looked at it.  I know what it should look like but not what it actually did look like.  I call the Boring Brigade and ask to speak to the name on the envelope.  He answers on the third ring, they usually don’t answer at all.  He wants to get rid of this thing bad.  I ask for any postmortem photos he might have and he says he will email them right over and hangs up on me.  WTF. Don’t make me go over there.

Within three minutes I have the first three photo files and I wish I didn’t.  The pictures are from the scene and the coroners reports.  All three have the pooling
pattern described in the report but words do not do it justice.  This is not just dependent lividity, this is like they were walking upright after death.  The feet are black and very badly swollen.  Some even appear to have cracked.  Now I am creeped out. 

The eyes are wrong too.  It is n
ot mentioned in the report but it definitely is clearly visible in the pictures.  They seem way too dried out and have opacities covering the retinas.  Now that I am really looking the faces are even wrong.  Stained and pulled tight.  Like a really bad face lift or a dehydrated corpse.  All of these girls had been walky talky less than eight hours before they were found.  I agree with the coroner’s report. They may have been up and walking but they were dead.

I email the photos to Trevor just as Mr. Stevens calls me to say that they are out front when I am ready.  It is already 11pm. Only thirteen ho
urs since the telemarketer called, for some reason I feel that a lot has changed.

Chapter
4: Daddy’s Little Girl

Jan
was right, Mr. Stevens is loaded.  No ring either.  I will tell her first thing when I drag in tomorrow. They are waiting in a limo outside our rundown, crappy station.  It looks funny.  The other buildings around ours have been renovated to period. About 1920, but our building really is period.  Like no one has touched the outside since 1920.  It really does stand out but I never really notice until I see someone else looking at it.  It makes me laugh.

Dinner with the boys was both interesting and very insulting. It turns out that Mr. Stevens is my biological father.  His name is even on my birth certificate.  The real one. Not the one mommy dearest pr
ovided me. 

Turns out that G
ranny Stevens was a first rate bitch who put my mom to shame. It turns out that I had not only been a “mistake”   but an embarrassment to her. This could not be tolerated. They are very well known local family and Stevens was their golden boy.  When I came along his mommy had him shipped off to military school. He was a junior in high school just like my mom. The late Mrs. Stevens then set up an agreement with my mother to pay handsomely for my upbringing. The only caveat being that I never know about my father and that he never now about me.  I had never seen a dime of what had been sent and it was a shit ton of dimes. I am furious.

Stevens had been told that I had been put up for adoption and that since he was a minor at the time he had no say.  This was not true but by the time he figured it out his mother convinced him that it had been a closed adoption and that I was with a loving family.  He
needed to stay away for my sake. What a fucking bitch!!!

At least it explained how my mom had maintained her lavish life style in the early years.  I always thought it was Gran’s money. 

So in a nut shell both my parents had disappeared when I
was born and left me to raise Gran and Poppi by myself.  Gran had turned out relatively well considering she was an alcoholic when I got her and Poppi is, to the best of my knowledge, still a complete disaster.  In my defense the first few years I was still learning not to crap my pants and hold a spoon but by the time I was four or five years old I really was a decent care giver.  I just didn’t have a lot to work with.  I do not blame me. I blame the system.

I really should explain about Poppi. He was what would probably be called an Incubi. It is almost like a spiritual vampire, they feed on emotion. Specifically
strong ones like love or lust or even just attraction. No one could say no to Poppi and as far as I know he never even tried to say no to anyone. I think he really did love Gran but he just couldn’t keep it in his pants and after about twenty years she couldn’t keep him in the house. As far as I know Poppi’s only majik power was getting more stray tail then the local dog catcher but he might have been able to do other things, too. I doubt I will ever know.

Back to tonight.  I am pissed.  I mean really, really royally pissed.  Mr. Radly wants to talk about the will and I tell him don’t want any of it.  He can give it to charity, buy cocain
e and hookers with it or even just waste it.  I do not care.

Then he says the amount and that it is in a trust for me. I si
t back down.  That is a lot of hookers and cocaine.  We could start a cartel.  I never really wanted a cartel.

I thank them for their time and tell Mr. Radly that I trust he can
figure something out because I do not want it. Then just as I am standing up to leave Mr. Stevens says something I cannot ignore. 

He says
, “Please, just one more thing. You have a younger brother and he is missing.”  Fuck.

I si
t back down.

Long story short military school became law school
in LA became public defender in St. Louis.  He married a fellow law student they had one child, a boy and when his mom was diagnosed with cancer they moved back to San Francisco. She passed, drug problem started and my brother disappeared.  Fuck. Somewhere in the city where I am a cop my younger brother has been missing and I did not even know.

The only reason I kno
w now was because my Bitch Grandmother died and had felt guilty enough to put me in her will. 

I agree
to meet my dad the following day for lunch alone.  We will talk about it then but I needed to get to the station. My mom had really just gone too far. The fact that she had deprived me of a mother was one thing, it was her right and I could deal with it. But she had taken everything and she had done it for money and then acted like I was an embarrassment, like we were beneath her. I am going to show her what an embarrassment I am.

I tell
them that my car is still parked at the station and since neither of them know me they could not know I am lying, which is a bonus I guess.  I don’t have a car. I have never even really driven a car. I have tried a couple of times and let’s just say it ended really badly. As soon as they drop me off I am up the stairs and into my office.  Trevor is still here and I have to get in and out without him seeing.  I grab my firearm and a clip out of my top drawer. I never carry my gun and I only use it to recertify so I am not the greatest shot but for what I want to do I don’t have to be.

Trevor is
at the door when I am walking out.  I knew I couldn’t get by him. Vampires. Know. Everything.

Another reason to not have a relationship with one.

“Why do you have your gun??”

“I don’t know what you are talking about and I am not on duty so move. Now.” He
won’t move but I can step around.  I can also get another gun and he knows it.

Trevor, “You have your gun. You are lying. Why do you have your gun?”

“I don’t.”

I dodge around him and run to hail a cab.  If I can get to my mom’s house before he can figure out where I am going I will have a chance.  I get a cab immediately and tell him to drive, fast.  He actually does.  Awesome.

We arrive at my
mother’s house fifteen minutes later. I hand him two twenties and tell him to not wait.

I pretend I don’t know what I am going to do but I am lying.  I am going to do the one t
hing that my mother cannot stand.  I am going to create a scene.  I know that her security alarms are going off because I know her system.  Doesn’t matter, I only need about 20 seconds. Good thing because I can hear the Alfa Romeo coming up the block.  I pull out my side arm and empty the clip into my mother’s front door and kick it open.

Trevor pulls up behind me and I can hear sirens behind him. My mom is coming
down the stairs.  She saw the security video and she knows it’s me. She will do anything to keep this out of the papers so she better come up with a lie and fast because I don’t give a fuck.

Trevor grabs my arm and pulls me inside.  I totally wrecked the double doors. Trevor is looking into my eyes, reading my mind.  He s
eems startled. 

He
says, “You are sober.” As if that is remarkable.

“I have not been drinking.”

“When you have to start explaining why you are sober you may have a problem.”

“You
fucking asked!!! That’s not fair.” I sound like a five year old even to me but I will consider this later.  Self awareness is very important to me. Not really.

By this time the
regular cops are pulling in up front and my mom and Walter are standing on the stairs staring at the double doors.  Or rather what is left of them.  I smile. I am not going to say a word.  If she wants to keep this out of the news papers she better think fast.  As the officers come in I wave my gun and Trevor attempts to get in front of me to wave his badge.