Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes

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СКАЧАТЬ is residing in a box forever and ever, amen. Not very neighborly at all. Man shoulda returned the lawnmower, am I right? The leaden mouths of the general public sometimes drop gold nuggets.

      Half of Homicide is here for the briefing, waiting on commanding officer Captain Joe Miranda. Gabi is pinning up the official photographs provided by Evidence Tech. Every angle on the body, every scrap of material recovered from the scene, including trash. Only way the streets get cleaned up these days.

      Her partner, Bob Boyd, is picking at his teeth with his fingernail and examining the gunk he scrapes off with forensic interest. His size is useful on the street, although his bull-neck is starting to go wobbly around the edges, and he sweats a lot through the shiny suits he wears to impress. Gabi knows all about it because she gets to share a car with him. In summer, she tried to give him subtle hints, like pulling up outside a laundromat and demanding he go wash his fucking shirt or she wouldn’t drive another inch. He doesn’t approve of her dressing down, jeans and sweatshirts, but then he didn’t have to deal with some knucklehead leaking all the female officers’ bra sizes when they got measured for bulletproof vests.

      She’s pleased to see Ovella Washington, even if she has her head in her own case file, making a real point about it. She’s got a lot of hours. She worked Vice before they started running morality out of individual precincts, and Robbery before she transferred to Homicide.

      Luke Stricker looks even more brutish since he shaved his head, the kind of guy you would expect to be on the other side of the handcuffs. It complicates matters having him on this, but he’s one of the most competent cops on the force. And competence is very attractive. Especially now.

      Mike Croff is ticking off the seconds by making little popping sounds with his lips. He notices her annoyance and freezes, mid-pucker. He widens his eyes with cartoonish innocence, turning it into a whistle. Peter and the Wolf. Doo-doo-di-dit-dit-doo.

      Oh yeah, and young Marcus Jones, sitting on the edge of his seat at attention, his straight-out-of-the-academy eagerness undone by his ridiculous hair style; cornrows with a little rat’s tail. She almost feels bad about the lipgloss stunt. Turns out he wasn’t such an FNG after all, called it in on his cell phone instead of the radio, so the press only got wind of it after the meat wagon was already loaded up. Nothing to see here, move along folks. Saved her ass, and in return she’s got him saddled with a dumb nickname. There’s already a picture on the noticeboard, his personnel photo badly photoshopped onto Tinkerbell’s body, surrounded by fairy dust.

      Joe Miranda sweeps into the room and starts talking as if he’s been the one waiting around. ‘All right, let’s get this on the road already. Versado, you landed this show, you’re running with it.’ He sits down on the end of the desk, slicks down his wave of black hair, and knots his hands.

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Gabi goes to the whiteboard and uncaps one of the marker pens. ‘Officer Jones, if you could run us through your report?’

      ‘Don’t forget your magic unicorn, Sparkles!’ Bob Boyd cups his hands around his mouth. The good detectives, finest on the force, titter. All except Ovella Washington, whose focus tightens on her file.

      Marcus Jones aka Sparkles, now and forever, stands awkwardly, thrown off his game.

      ‘Relax,’ Gabi says. ‘Just like in the report. But if there’s anything you left out the paperwork, now’s the time to fill in the details. Start at the beginning.’

      ‘Okay. Right. I was straight off a shooting called in at Vernor and Clarke, round two a.m. Sunday morning. I’m on my own – my partner’s in hospital with a burst appendix. By the time I get there, no-one’s seen anything. Found some shell casings in the grass, but they could have been from yesterday. Or last week.’

      ‘Cut to—’ Gabi prompts.

      ‘Right, right.’ He frets at his merit ribbon. It’s cute that he wears it. ‘So’s I get back to my car – and there’s a call about illegal dumping down by the river.’

      ‘Well, that’s an emergency,’ Boyd says.

      ‘It would have been if it was our body being dumped,’ Miranda says with calm authority. He’s not called ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ for the shade of his irises (which are, for the record, Italian-brown), but for his Sinatra cool.

      ‘So I take a shortcut under the bridge near Mexicantown and I see it. Him, I mean. First I think it’s an animal. Roadkill or something. But then I see his face. It’s clear he’s … gone. I keep driving—’

      ‘How is it clear, officer?’ Luke Stricker jumps in. Harsher than necessary, Gabi thinks. Cut the kid some slack. She should talk.

      ‘It’s in his eyes. There ain’t nobody home.’

      ‘You could see all that from your car?’ Miranda asks. ‘Could have been shock. Kid could still have been alive. You could have got an ID from him.’

      Gabi steps in. ‘We know he died offsite, sir. No blood at the scene, and the prelim report from the medical examiner indicates that the body was in cold storage for a day or two before it was dumped. It’s going to take them a little while to establish time of death, but he was long gone by the time Officer Jones found him.’

      ‘Next time you check before you drive past,’ Stricker says. ‘Especially with a kid.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Why did you keep driving, Officer Jones?’ Gabi says.

      ‘Maybe I woulda done it different if my partner was there, but I thought maybe the killer was still nearby. I was looking for a car pulling away, someone running. I called it in on my phone while I was driving. Got half a mile and then turned around. I couldn’t leave him lying there.’

      ‘That was good thinking, using your phone,’ Miranda says, mildly. ‘None of you boneheads would have thought of that.’

      ‘A lot of civilians got police scanners,’ Sparkles says. ‘I didn’t want rubberneckers. It didn’t seem right.’

      ‘It’s good protocol,’ Gabi says. ‘We can almost guarantee there will be another body, and when that turns up, let’s keep it on our mobiles.’

      ‘The department gonna pay for my minutes?’ Croff moans.

      ‘Oh, spare me!’ Washington looks up from her file at last. ‘When there’s another body, there’s another body. We all got plenty of our own to deal with. I’m sorry this little boy got killed. It’s horrible. But it’s one murder. Why should you get all the resources?’

      ‘Washington!’ Miranda warns. But Gabi doesn’t blame her. There are cases that catch all the attention. Kids especially. The whole department was obsessed with that little girl who got raped and murdered downtown several years ago. But in the meantime, there’s a killer who’s been gunning down prostitutes for five years. Washington’s been following him since her Vice days. Same MO every time – shoots them in the face. Thirteen down and counting, a baker’s dozen of hate. Never any witnesses. Nobody wants to talk. And besides, the feeling is that it’s just a bunch of whores. ‘City should put him on payroll for pest control,’ she’s heard some of the dickheads in this very department say.

      ‘Just like your killer, Ovella, this is unlikely to be a once-off. There’s a good chance of another mutilated corpse turning up. Might be six months, might be tomorrow. Our guy’s СКАЧАТЬ