The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.

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      “Nautilus here, Dispatch. You’re breaking up. Repeat.”

      “DB …corner of Industrial and Eldredge. Called in by a truck driver. Driver en route to hospital with chest pains.”

      We were eight blocks away.

      “Nautilus and Ryder confirm message received,” Harry said. “We’re on our way.”

      Harry jammed the Crown Vic into gear, roared toward the scene. I figured we left a wake like a speedboat. The radio crackled again. Not Dispatch, but another detective team in the vicinity.

      “This is Logan and Shuttles. We’re closer, just five blocks. We’ll take it.”

      Harry growled and keyed the mike again. “Nautilus and Ryder have the call.”

      “Why’s Logan out at this hour?” I said. “I’ve never seen his lazy ass work past five thirty.”

      The radio crackled with Pace Logan’s voice. “Dispatch, this is Logan. Mark this one ours, we’re almost there.”

      I felt the car accelerate. Harry growled, “Negative on that, Dispatch. Carson and me are making the run.”

      “Goddamn it, Nautilus, it’s ours,” Pace Logan barked over the radio, no longer using Dispatch as an intermediary.

      Harry threw the microphone to the floor. “It’s whoever gets there first,” he muttered, flicking on the lights and screamer and taking a right so fast it about threw me in his lap.

      Pace Logan was a disgruntled, hotheaded old-timer waiting to grab his retirement pay, buy a trailer in Florida or Branson, and make life miserable for a succession of lonely women picked up in bowling alley bars. Logan’s twenty-seven-year-old partner, Tyree Shuttles, was a new-made detective with the misfortune of being chained to a dinosaur.

      Harry cut another corner hard, skidding toward a line of parked cars barely visible through the rain. I held my breath and braced for an impact that somehow never arrived. We blew through a deserted intersection and I saw a flashing red light paralleling us one block over: Logan and Shuttles. We were three blocks from the scene.

      “Jeez, Harry. It’s a drag race.”

      “I’m not picking up after Logan again,” he said. “No goddamn way.”

      Six or seven weeks back, Logan’s mishandled evidence in a homicide case almost bought the defense a dismissal. Harry and I got called in at the eleventh hour, eleven forty-five, maybe. It took weeks of twelve-hour-a-day work to retrace Logan’s investigative steps, supplanting tainted evidence with new finds. Harry’d finally nailed it using information Logan had overlooked in his own records.

      I’d spent the bulk of my time handling our standard overweight caseload, meaning Harry had mopped up pretty much on his own. Both of us had worked doubles most days, and Harry’d ended up postponing a vacation with family in Memphis. He was still royally steamed about Logan’s screw-up.

      I rolled the window down an inch. Between the beats of our screamer, I heard Logan and Shuttles’s siren. It would be close.

      “Next block, Harry. Turn right.”

      A radio car at each end of the block had secured an intersection at the edge of a warehouse district. On one corner was a restaurant equipment wholesaler, cattycorner was an industrial laundry.

      We raced down the street from one direction, Logan and Shuttles from the other. A semi sat dead in the street, a red Mazda a dozen feet from the big truck’s grille. Harry skidded to a stop and dove into the rain, no time to pull on his rain gear. I slid into a plastic slicker and followed.

      Harry splashed toward the Mazda as Logan jumped from his vehicle, almost on the Mazda’s bumper. Logan stepped in front of Harry, finger jabbing, voice angry. The uniformed officers closed in, drawn by the smell of confrontation. I hurried over, rain pouring into my eyes.

      “I’ve got the scene, Nautilus,” Logan said. “Get back in your vehicle and haul ass.”

      “Not gonna happen, Logan,” Harry said. “It’s ours.”

      “I got seniority, Nautilus.”

      “Then join AARP,” Harry said. “I’m not saving your worthless ass anymore.”

      Logan froze. His eyes tightened. “It was a Forensics screw-up, not mine.”

      “You almost blew the case, Logan,” Harry said. “Have the balls to own up to it.”

      Logan’s hands squeezed into fists. “For a simple fuck, Nautilus, you’re a sanctimonious son of a bitch.”

      “And for a cop, Logan, you’re a helluva defense lawyer.”

      Logan made a guttural sound and launched a punch toward Harry’s gut. Harry blocked it, grabbed Logan’s wrist, twisted, dropped to a knee. Logan went down. Harry rammed Logan’s arm behind his back. He writhed on the wet pavement, cursing and threatening.

      “Knife!” someone yelled, a nightmare word. Everyone froze, heads turning, hands dropping to holsters.

      “Easy, guys,” Tyree Shuttles said, a few feet behind the Mazda. He pointed into shadows by the curb. “I found a big-ass knife. Over here in the gutter.”

      Harry released Logan’s wrist. Logan squirmed up, gasping and wheezing, a heavy smoker. He leaned against the Mazda to catch his breath. Something grabbed his eye, and for a moment he seemed transfixed by an image near the sidewalk. I turned to look, but all I saw was water rushing down the gutter, dumping into a storm sewer.

      Harry and I jogged to Shuttles, kneeling beside a metal object in the gutter. Logan wheezed up, looked at the weapon, then at Shuttles. Harry backed away and sighed, having the civility to invent an ad hoc protocol.

      “Shuttles found evidence, Logan. You guys get the case.”

      Logan leaned against the driver’s side of the Mazda, looked inside. He stared a moment, pulled a flashlight from his pocket, checked again, shook his head. Logan laughed without a trace of humor.

      “You want this one, Nautilus? It’s yours.”

      Logan turned away, walked back to his car, climbed in the passenger’s side. Shuttles shot a glance at his vehicle, Logan sulking within. The young detective looked embarrassed.

      “I’m sorry about what went down with Pace,” Shuttles said. “He’s been in a shitty mood the last couple weeks.”

      Harry brushed rain from his face, stepped closer to Shuttles, lowering his voice so the uniforms couldn’t hear. “I know you won’t request a new-partner assignment, Tyree. I respect that. But transfer to another district. Get a new partner that way. Logan’s not doing your career any good.”

      “Pace is retiring in two months, Harry. He’ll be gone soon.”

      “You sure?”

      Shuttles nodded.

      Harry bounced a gentle punch off the young detective’s СКАЧАТЬ