Chapter 1
The
school bell was just ringing when I stepped into the main office and let the
secretary know who I was and why I was there. She smiled brightly and handed me
a brightly colored visitor’s pass, which I clipped to the lapel of my coat before
heading back out into the hallway. I was there for my nephew, Liam. He was
doing a project on what he wanted to be when he grew up and his theme was
police officer. He took every opportunity he could to let people know he wanted
to be a cop, just like his uncle.
I
wandered through the halls of the middle school and felt the nostalgia wash
over me. It felt like nearly a century since I’d gone to that same school and I
remembered it as being a living hell at the time. We always joked that the
school was built like a prison, due to the lack of windows and the honeycomb
layout of the squat brick structure. Now, having been to several prisons for
interrogations and prisoner escort, I understood how wrong we’d been. The
school felt secure to me. An intruder would be lost and easily disarmed.
I
stopped in front of the room where Liam’s class was and just watched for a
moment. It seemed like nothing had changed in the decade and a half that had
passed since I’d occupied one of those desks. Spotting Liam, I felt as if I’d
travelled back to that time and was an outsider looking in. The kid was the
spitting image of me. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn he was my son.
He was small for his age, but I knew he was incredibly strong. The kid played
baseball nearly every day and was all muscle. His flaming red hair, one of the
few things he inherited from his mother, was cut brutally short, in very nearly
the same style as my own.
I
shook myself out of my reverie and knocked. The teacher’s voice barely made it
through the inch and a half thick door, but I did hear her tell me to come in.
She introduced me as Officer Davies with the KCPD. I took off my coat and hung
it on the back of her chair, letting all the kids see the badge clipped to my
belt.
“My
official title is detective, Mrs. Jackson,” I corrected. “Now, unfortunately, I
forgot all of my notes at home this morning, so I guess I’ll have to start with
Q & A.”
The
kids grilled me for fifteen minutes before one of them asked The Question, the
one every cop gets at least once a month: “What made you want to become a
police officer?”
“My
dad was a computer programmer,” I said. “I grew up wanting to be just like him,
until he got sick. He made me promise to do something more with my life. I’d
always been interested in Criminology, so I studied it in college.”
A
little girl in the front raised her hand solemnly and asked what criminology
was.
“It’s
the study of criminals,” I explained. “How they think, what makes them do what
they do, and how to stop them. I got such good grades in that class that my
professor suggested I apply for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, but I
learned that one of the requirements to get into the Bureau is law enforcement
experience, so I went from college to the police academy.” It wasn't the full
truth, but I felt alright lying by omission to the kids.
“Were
there any other questions?” I asked, but my phone started ringing before any
hands went up. I pulled it from the case on my hip and glanced at the screen.
It was Connor.
“Sorry,
I have to take this,” I said, ducking out into the hallway.
“Hey,
Connor, what’s up?”
“We’re
up, Kaleb.”
“What’s
the address?”
“226
Cactus Lane, apartment 2a,” he said in a slow, mechanical manner, most likely
reading it out of his notebook. His voice cleared and he said, “Hey, you ever
wonder why we got streets named ‘Cactus’ when the only cacti in hundreds of
miles of here are in fuckin’ pots?”
“Never
thought of it,” I said, laughing. “Can I meet you there? I’m at Liam’s school
right now.”
“Yeah,
I’ll see you there.”
I
ducked back into the classroom and apologized for having to leave. The teacher
dismissed my apology with a wave of her hand. “The kids were out of questions
anyway, Detective. I hope it’s nothing too serious, where you’re going.”
Liam
came up and gave me a quick hug good-bye. I ruffled his hair. “I hope so too,
Mrs. Jackson.”
I
grabbed my coat and left, dropping the visitor’s pass at the office on my way
out. The heat was like a hammer when I left the school. It was late May, school
was almost out, but the weather had jumped ahead several weeks. I trotted
across the parking lot to my car, tossed my coat in the back and let the A/C
run for a minute before pulling out into traffic. The heat meant more than just
my discomfort and Connor’s call confirmed that. The heat made people crazy, and
when they got crazy, horrible things happened. As I drove, I wondered how many
more lives the heat would claim.
Chapter 2
Kansas City is one of
those strange cities that grew up on two sides of the state line; there's a
Kansas City, Kansas and a Kansas City, Missouri. If you were to talk to someone
living outside the metropolitan area, they’d say it's just one big city, and
maybe officially it is. But if you talk to a resident of either side, they act
like the two sides are two different worlds. Aside from their mutual
love of the Royals and Chiefs, the Missourians and Kansans regard each other as
living in two different cities and some show disdain for each other, as if
State Line Drive were a twenty-foot wall, rather than a few lanes of asphalt.
Despite their feelings toward the other half of the city, many residents of one
side worked on the other. When I was a patrol officer, I was no different; I
worked out of a precinct in Kansas, while living in Missouri. When I got my
detective’s gold shield, I transferred to my new department in Missouri. I call
myself a Missourian and I’m damn proud of it.
I rolled down the
highway into the city itself, where everything was more expensive: booze,
smokes, even gas. Realizing the price difference, I cursed myself; I'd meant to
pick up a pack or two of cigarettes at the gas station near my apartment. They
were at least fifty cents cheaper there and I needed to save every dime I
possible. Being a cop wasn’t the most lucrative job ever, especially since my
brother lost his job and moved into my guest room.
It was a mile and a
half from Liam’s school to the crime scene, but traffic was miserable going
into the city, so I turned on the radio to one of the few classic rock stations
left and let the music drown out the world.
When I pulled up, the
crime scene was a zoo. The street was nearly blocked by patrol cars, the
medical examiner’s van, an ambulance and fire truck, not to mention God only
knew how many onlookers who had gathered around the building. I grabbed my
evidence kit from the trunk of my car and elbowed my way through the crowd to
the door. To preserve the chain of evidence, the whole building had been
cordoned off with crime scene tape, guarded by the first officer on the scene.
He was a lanky fellow in his late twenties with jet black hair and the kind of
pale complexion that always plagues night cops.
Visibly relieved that
someone else was here to help, the patrolman handed over the clipboard he was
holding, obviously the sign in log. I scribbled my name, rank and badge number
on the sheet. Connor and our medical examiner, Steven Werner preceded me, as
well as Benjamin Saxon and his team of investigators. I handed the clipboard
back and the officer let me pass, much to the chagrin of several onlookers. As
I walked in, I could hear the uproar from the crowd; several of them claimed to
live in the building and were trying to get in past the patrolman, despite the
land lord's vehement denials of their claims. I lit a cigarette as I walked up
the stairs, driving my teeth deep into the filter as I always did. I dragged
deep, feeling the calming burn of the tobacco smoke filling my lungs.
“Kaleb, over here,”
Connor called to me when I reached the fourth floor. I met Connor in high
school, but we didn’t run in the same circles. I played baseball, while he’d
been a football jock. Our paths only crossed once in awhile, usually as I was
leaving the ball field and he was coming on for practice. We went to separate
colleges but returned home to join the police academy. We were in the same
classes all through the academy and, together with the rest of our year, be
became closer than family. After graduation, I went to Kansas to finish my
on-the-job training and patrol work while Connor stayed in Missouri.
He’d gained a bit of a
gut in the years since the academy, but it didn’t slow him down. He was a big
man, both through the stomach and across; he'd continued playing football
through college and was almost drafted into the NFL he liked to tell anybody
who’d listen after he’d had a few drinks. His brown hair was short enough to be
respectable and within department regulations, but not short enough to keep it
from curling in the back.
I stopped and snuffed
my smoke on the sole of my shoe before stalking over to Connor, who grabbed the
half finished cigarette out of my hand before I could tuck it into my pocket. “When
you gonna give this shit up, Davies?” Connor asked. “It'll kill ya. Plus
chewing on the filters like you do, that can't be healthy.”
“It's either that or
chew my nails,” I said and set my kit down on the floor. I popped open the box,
which was nothing more than a tackle box I’d picked up at a sporting goods
store, and grabbed a pair of disposable latex gloves from beneath the tray. I
snapped them on and continued what I’d been saying: “I'd end up tearing one off
and then my blood would end up at a crime scene, and I need that like I need a
hole in the head. Now can we get to work, please?”
Connor nodded and
motioned toward the crime scene tape barring the door marked “406” in ornate
brass numbers. I grabbed my camera, snapped my kit shut and followed Connor. As
we approached, Connor dropped the remains of my cigarette on the floor and made
to duck under the tape.
“Hey,” I squawked,
dropping to one knee and scooping up the cigarette. “Do you know how much these
damned things cost? I need to conserve them 'til I get off,” I said, tucking
the half finished smoke into my pocket.
We nodded to yet
another patrolman who’d taken up position just inside the apartment and ducked
under the tape. Connor began talking as soon as we were inside while I started
taking pictures of everything.
“Name on the lease is
Theresa Rodgers; we're pretty sure the victim is the same girl.”
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“Eh, you know how kids
are; they go on vacation and let their friend watch the place, friend moves in
like they own the joint.”
I thought of my brother
and nodded. “Go on.”
“A Miss,” Connor
consulted his notepad, “Amy Anderson is the one who found the body. The ladies
carpool to work; I guess Amy got nervous when Theresa wasn't waiting for her on
the curb outside, so she came up and found the girl dead in bed.”
“Guess she had a key,
huh? Or do you think she loided the lock?”
“Does it really matter?”
I shrugged. “Probably
not.” My eyes and camera fell on Theresa's computer. “We pull anything off that
yet?”
“Not yet. I think
Saxon’s team is still working on the bedroom. Let's take a look at the body
first.”
“Alright, lead the way.”
