The Cruelest Cut (3 page)

Jack was bored. Two hours of riding a desk, and he was beginning to think he'd made a mistake coming back to work early. His first day, after four weeks of sick leave, and his mind had turned into mush. He couldn't concentrate for shit.

Since he had walked in the back door of headquarters this morning and parked his ass, all he'd done was read reports, drink coffee, field questions about how it felt to be back at work, and feel his blood pressure rise with the insistent stress of the job. Everyone was congratulating him on not getting killed and reminding him how close he'd come. On television the detective-hero gets shot, beaten, run over, blown up, attacked by dogs, and stuff like that, and even does it all with a snappy line like “Hasta la vista, baby,” or “Is that the best you got?” But, in the real world, all those things hurt like hell, and the only thing the detective says is “Get me an ambulance.”

He'd forgotten how it felt to be in the same room with twenty detectives—listening to their constant bickering, insults, bad jokes, inappropriate laughter, and petty jealousy, not to mention the general depressed atmosphere that would smother a sane man. Luckily, he wasn't quite sane.

Old memos, wanted posters, bulletins, and even active case reports were stuck haphazardly here and there, littering the top of his desk. He'd spent an hour sorting through the mess, tossing most of it, and piling up things that looked important. He was just going through it a second time when he felt a nudge.

He looked up to see his partner, Liddell Blanchard. Jack was tall, but Liddell's six-foot-five hulking figure made him look like a midget. “Saddle up, pod'na,” Liddell said. “We've got one down at the river. Out by your place.”

 

In her haste, Maddy Brooks tripped in the big rocks lining the steep bank along the Ohio River and tumbled to the bottom of the embankment.

“Maddy, are you okay?” her cameraman asked, trying to fight down a chuckle. He carefully made his way down the rocks to where she was sprawled out.

She rolled into a sitting position, blew strands of hair out of her face and looked up at him. “Yeah. Just wonderful.” She looked around, hoping no one had seen her fall. It wouldn't do for her embarrassing moment to show up on some home video footage.

Dex, her cameraman, said with a grin plastered to his face, “Maddy Brooks always gets to the bottom of things. One way or another.” He chuckled and reached down to give her a hand.

She pushed his hand away. “I will do it myself, thank you,” she said icily. She knew he secretly had the hots for her, and she didn't want him touching her.

She made it to her feet and brushed herself off, surveying the damage to her clothes. She had lost the heel of one shoe and knew she was going to have bruises all over her body, but somehow she had not broken anything and thankfully hadn't damaged her face.

“Maybe we better get you to the hospital…you know…to get checked out,” Dex offered.

She fixed him with a stare and said, “This never happened. You understand?”

He held his hands up in surrender. He knew what an icy bitch she could be, and he definitely didn't need her gunning for him. But he couldn't help but smile inwardly at the memory of the Ice Queen tumbling head over heels down the rocky embankment.
Too bad the camera wasn't on. That footage would make for some pretty fun halftime entertainment with the guys.

Maddy kicked at one of the large rocks until she dislodged the heel from the good shoe, and then scampered down the river in the direction of the crime scene. If she was lucky, she would find an opening in the police line and get some good shots of the body before the detectives ran them off. That was why she had opted to come down the sharp rocks instead of driving straight to the crime scene. She would find a way in. No way was she going to be shut out of the scene after losing an expensive pair of shoes.

 

“The old guy with the dog pulled the kid out of the water,” Corporal Timmons said to Liddell, and nodded in the direction of an elderly gentleman wearing a red, shawl-neck sweater and tweed, snap-brim cap. The dog—a mostly white Jack Russell terrier mix—pulled anxiously at his lead, casting nervous looks at the throngs of policemen.

Liddell said to Jack, “I'll go talk to him,” and headed in the direction of the man and dog. They both knew Jack was better with the dead than the living, so Jack went to check out the victim.

The first rule of a crime scene is to not touch anything. This scene had been fucked sideways before the police arrived. First by the old man, and then by the Fire Department Rescue Squad. It was understandable that the old man would pull the kid's body from the water, because he wouldn't know any better. But a fire department rescue crew had arrived before the police did, and had thrown a tarp over the body. He knew they did it out of some misplaced respect for the dead, or to protect the kid's body from prying eyes. But he'd been through this with them before and could not seem to get them to understand that they should leave the body exactly as it was found. Now he would have to learn where the tarp had come from and what it had last covered because of the possible contamination and/or transference of evidence.

Jack donned a pair of latex gloves and carefully lifted the tarp slightly to peer underneath. The body was that of a small boy, maybe ten to twelve years old. The body had apparently been head down on the muddy bank, maybe partly in the water, but he now lay on his side, his jeans, T-shirt, face, and hair smeared with dark river mud. “Can we get some shots, Jack?” one of the crime scene techs asked. “Then we'll uncover the body and get a better look.”

Jack stood back and let the tech shoot several digital photos of the area and then helped the techs carefully lift and fold the tarp so that any possible evidence that had come in contact with the body would remain on the inside of the tarp.

“He's been moved,” the tech said.

“Corporal Timmons said the old man pulled the body from the water,” Jack explained to the tech.

“Well, he probably wasn't in the water,” the crime scene tech replied, pointing out the partly dried mud on the face and in the ears and mouth.

Jack whistled at Liddell, got his attention, and held up his cell phone. When Liddell came on the line Jack said, “Ask him if the boy was actually in the water.” Liddell asked. The old man replied, “He was lyin' in the water just like I said. I pulled him out. Me ‘n' Belle pulled him out.”

Jack had punched the speakerphone button and held the phone out so the tech could hear.

The tech shook his head. “Belle must be the dog?”

Jack shrugged.

“The boy's body was moved, Jack, but not from the water. If he had been in the water he wouldn't have that amount of mud still on him. He was probably faced down in the mud, maybe near the water's edge, and then was turned over.”

Liddell heard what the crime scene tech said, and Jack heard him using a stern voice on the old gentleman. A moment later he came back on the line and said, “He admitted that he turned the body over. Said he was checking to see if the kid was breathing. Then when he saw he was dead, he made up the story about pulling him from the water because that gave him more of a reason to have touched the body. He wants to know if he's going to jail.” Liddell chuckled.

“Tell him he's been watching too much
CSI
,” Jack said and hung up. To the tech, he asked, “Any idea yet how he died?”

The tech looked at the back of the victim's upper torso and whistled softly. “Well, I don't know if it is the exact cause of death, but someone tried to cut his head off.”

Jack looked at the boy's body again, more closely now that the tarp was removed. He could see the victim's head was twisted in an odd position, but until the coroner arrived they wouldn't be able to do a more thorough examination.

“Something else, Jack,” the tech said, and pointed to something lying partially under the victim's side. Jack looked but couldn't see what the tech was talking about. The tech pointed again, and said, “I might be wrong, but that looks like intestines.”

The tech was right. But there was nothing else they could do until the coroner arrived and they took tons of photos.

“I'll get some more photos before I move him. And we need to clear an area around the body until we can check everything,” the tech said.

Jack thought about shoe prints. He would have to get one of the techs to look at the old man's shoes, maybe take a picture of the bottoms, for later elimination. He looked up and saw the mobile crime scene van parking at the top of the road. He also saw Maddy Brooks hobbling down the shoreline with a cameraman in tow.

Jack keyed his radio and advised the uniformed sergeant in charge of the scene that they had company. In less than a minute two uniformed officers were headed down the bank to cut off Maddy Brooks and get her out of the crime scene.

He watched the two uniforms corral the news crew, and although he couldn't make out any words, he could hear her exasperated voice rising above the others as she was ushered out of the area. He could imagine the threats she was hurling down on their heads. He knew she had a job to do, but he couldn't care less about her damn television station or her bastardized idea of the U.S. Constitution. The public's right to know didn't outweigh the rights of the victim. At least on that count, the fire rescue crew and Jack were in complete agreement.

“He'll see you now,” the mayor's administrative secretary said.

Chief Marlin Pope put down the
Evansville Living
magazine and nodded at the woman. He guessed her age as in her early forties, but the perpetual scowl she wore made her mouth into a straight-line gash with concentric wrinkles emanating from it, creating the effect of a broken pane of glass. Her hair was tightly permed and short like the geriatric set seemed to prefer. Her pinstriped black pants, coarse black blazer, and thick-soled, ugly shoes gave her the look of a stern jail matron. She was quite a contrast to the last secretary, who had looked to be all of seventeen years old, was a knockout, and was rumored to be extremely loyal to “his honor, the mayor,” but not too bright.

Maybe he's finally realized that youth and beauty do not necessarily equate to brains and ability,
Pope thought.
But, more likely, his wife hired this one.

“Good morning, Mayor,” Pope said as he entered the spacious office. He didn't bother to attempt to shake hands. It was no secret that Mayor Thatcher Hensley hated the very air that Pope breathed and would do everything in his power to replace him as soon as it was possible. The only thing stopping Hensley from replacing him
now
was a serious lack of backbone.

Pope knew that he had the distinction of being the first black man in the history of Evansville to attain the promoted rank of deputy chief and the appointed rank of chief of police. The person the mayor was considering as a replacement for him was Deputy Chief Richard Dick—blond-haired, blue-eyed, tall, and lean, every bit the Aryan poster child.

Mayor Hensley believed that replacing the popular Marlin Pope with the decidedly unpopular Richard Dick would be tantamount to political suicide. But in truth, it was an accepted political practice for an incoming mayor to replace the chief of police with his own selection.

To his regret, when Hensley took office he delayed in naming a new chief of police. Now, almost a year later, the rumor that Hensley was considering doing so was viewed by the black community as a racial slight, by the public as a weakness, and by his own party as outright stupidity.

But like any politician worth his salt, he had a backup plan. All he had to do was find good cause to dismiss Pope, maybe some type of malfeasance of office, or a corruption charge, and Hensley would be home free. The trouble was, Pope was good at what he did, and as far as Hensley had been able to ascertain, the man was as honest as, well, the Pope.

“Have a seat, Marlin,” Hensley said, not bothering to address him by his title or even his proper name. Pope pretended not to notice the intended slight and sat directly across from the mayor. Thatcher Hensley leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Where are you on the murder of Dr. Lewis? And don't bullshit me.”

 

James Kuhlenschmidt hated his nickname. “Kooky” wasn't exactly a confidence-inspiring moniker.
Why couldn't I have gotten a cool nickname, like “Gunner” or “Robo” or something? Why do I always get the shit jobs?

He made his way through the large riprap and head-high brush along the shoreline, where his training officer had sent him on a fool's errand. He was supposed to be looking for evidence.
The body is way back there. It's obvious there's nothing down here.

But he had seen one interesting thing when that newswoman had gone down on her keister in the rocks.
Man, that will give me some stories to tell at the FOP Club later.
And then he'd watched from behind the bushes as she and her cameraman scurried down the shore with her yelling orders at the poor guy like he was some kind of pissant. He wondered briefly if he should stop them from sneaking into the crime scene, but then he remembered that he, Officer James Kuhlenschmidt, was also being treated like a pissant.
Let one of the hotshot cops down there do something about that pair.

His mind was still occupied with these thoughts when his feet tangled up in something and he went sprawling onto the hard rocks and sharp brush. As he struggled to his feet, he noticed that his pants leg was torn and there was blood all over his hands. “What the fuck?” he said out loud and wiped at his hands. The blood wasn't his. Then he noticed the clear, plastic line twisted around his boots. And there was something else.

 

Maddy Brooks had just about made up her mind to call Deputy Chief Richard Dick and insist that she be allowed to do her job, when she saw a young, uniformed officer running toward the crime scene. He was screaming something over and over, but she couldn't quite make the words out. It sounded like “Buckets of blood!” She turned to order Dex to film the scene unfolding below them, but he had already shouldered the camera and was getting it all.