“That would be good. Thank you.”
The officer rushed off, which gave George the privacy to talk to Andi. “How did you know?”
Andi’s expression immediately closed off, shutting George out like he had done the day before and this morning. “I told you, it was just a hunch.”
George furrowed his brows. He wasn’t sure if he should press the matter. Andi had moved way too purposefully for just a hunch. On the other hand, what did he hope to prove at this stage of the investigation? He was pretty sure Andi hadn’t known about the first body, not before they got the call. Something at the crime scene must have tipped him off, perhaps even something George could have seen had he known what to look for or had he been more alert. If anything, he could probably learn a lot from Andi.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I mean, I did see my fair share of bodies while I was in narcotics, but focusing on the dead person and not the drugs is still kind of new to me.”
Andi stared at him intently, the dark circles under his eyes making his head look a bit like a skull. “It’s okay.”
That was the best he was going to get, and George knew it. The return of Officer Mayfair prevented any further awkwardness. George took the bolt cutter she had brought and opened the lock. Andi pulled the gate up, and what they saw in the pale light filtering into the unit from the hall made George curse. Two more bodies, young girls, one African American, the other Caucasian, lay on the naked concrete, their eyes still open, staring blindly at the ceiling. The ant street parted in front of the bodies, distributing the workers evenly between the two girls, while the flies buzzed around them, busy with fly things.
Carefully, George stepped into the unit, led by the light of Officer Mayfair’s flashlight. It wouldn’t do any good to destroy evidence by being too rash. He heard rustling and knew Andi was directly behind him, though he didn’t seem too interested in the bodies.As if he already knew all about them!The treacherous thought raced through George’s head before he could stop it. He mentally shook himself. How should Andi have known? They had come here together, and Andi had had no chance to do any investigating by himself.
Again, there was the rave-flickering before the unit was bathed in cold light, baring the poor girls in all detail. As far as corpses went, they didn’t look too bad. Since there weren’t any maggots crawling around yet and the smell was still bearable, they couldn’t have been dead for more than forty-eight hours. Whoever had killed them had strangled them, so no blood or other fluids were staining the concrete floor. If it weren’t for the dark bruises around their necks and the purple spots of postmortem lividity forming around their naked shoulders where they touched the ground, a casual observer may have even thought they were just sleeping. If people slept with their eyes open. On cold concrete. George shuddered. No matter how often he saw death, no matter how used to the depths of human depravity he got, he would probably never get accustomed to the cold senselessness of a life forcibly taken, no matter the reasons. To him, it showed one of the ugliest sides of humankind, one he wished didn’t exist. These girls were young, too young to be dead. Too young for the one outside to be wearing clothes so skimpy they barely covered her, too young for the two in here to be naked. And to be strangled. It was a cruel way to die. Cruel and drawn-out and so unnecessary.
“And we have a winner.” Andi’s voice pried George from his contemplation of the fragility of human life. He turned around to see his partner lifting up a battered crowbar with latex-covered fingers. The paint on the thing was chipping, and the naked steel underneath was rusty and—bloody. “I’d say we’ve found our murder weapon for victim number one.”
George could only stare at Andi. While he had been busy doing nothing but overthinking every little thing, his partner had found important evidence that could very well help them find the culprit.
“That’s great. Let me get a bag for that. Hopefully, there are fingerprints on this one.”
Andi simply nodded, watching the crowbar as if it held all the answers to this case. With some luck, it would at least provide them with a solid lead. They bagged the tool and kept looking around, waiting for the coroner to arrive. Once the three bodies were photographed from every possible angle, their liver temperature taken, and then put in body bags to be driven to the precinct, CSI descended on the scene. The two men and one woman were taking the storage unit and the place where they had found the first girl apart, dusting for fingerprints, collecting cigarette stubs, miniscule bits of dust that, according to them, were out of place, and some of the flies still buzzing around. George imagined the bluebottles sounded kind of angry for being denied their meal, but who was he to understand those creepy flying undertakers? While George did his best not to get in the way of the CSI team, at the same time trying to form some working theories on what had happened, Andi was just standing near the entrance to the storage unit, his eyes distant, as if he were listening to something only he could hear. George had to admit it was kind of odd—just like everything Andi had done since they’d arrived at the crime scene. He knew intellectually that every detective went about his work differently and they all had some unique ways to process the information they gathered or were given, but with everything the chief had told him about his new partner, George couldn’t help but wonder what exactly Andi was doing.
After CSI was done, they went back to the precinct, Andi being tight-lipped the entire drive, no doubt focused on the case. At least that was what George forced himself to believe. As prickly as Andi had been to him since the moment they were partnered, he didn’t want to think the worst of a man he had known for less than forty-eight hours. He also had some thinking of his own about the case to do, which wasn’t pleasant at all.
George didn’t like where his own speculations where leading him, so he could relate to Andi’s silence. Three young girls, none of them older than twenty, one in clothes usually found on professional sex workers, the other two naked, brutally murdered in a storage facility that—according to the shocked janitor—didn’t see much action in a good week, let alone during the night, led to one obvious conclusion. Sex trafficking. If they were lucky, using the term in the loosest way possible, it was only a small-scale organization, perhaps even just one pimp. If they weren’t and these girls had been the victims of some large group, the case would jump state borders in no time flat. Though that wouldn’t be too bad in George’s opinion. Because then the Feds would get involved, and their resources were far greater than those of two city detectives. Unlike many of his colleagues, George didn’t guard his cases like a jealous lover. His attitude was that whatever or whoever got the bad guys behind bars deserved a shot. As for the credit, George knew how to phrase his reports to get maximum recognition for his accomplishments.
He pulled into the precinct’s parking lot, and they both got out. They headed back to their desks, where George decided to brave another attempt at getting a few words out of his partner. Rose’s advice still resonated in his head, but this was about the case. They had to work together and exchange ideas if they wanted to solve it.
“So, how do you usually proceed at this point? Back in Boston, we had a whiteboard where we wrote down everything we had. I liked that very much, but if you do things differently, I’m happy to give it a try.”
The look he got could have frozen hell over. “I don’t have a whiteboard.”
Andi made it sound as if that explained everything. George decided to ignore Andi’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. “I’m sure we can find one. Their natural habitat is the conference room, where they catch dust and are written on with pens unsuitable for their sensitive surface.”
Was that a twitch of lips? Did Andi actually find this amusing? George felt stupidly elated. “If I remember right, there’s a conference room down the hall. Let me see if I can catch us our very own whiteboard.”
That got him an actual smile. A quick one, granted, but a smile nevertheless. George hurried to the conference room, and lo and behold, a whiteboard was sitting there, even with the right kind of pens in a case next to it. He shoved the pens into the right pocket of his suit, opened the brakes on the whiteboard, and navigated it toward their working space. Almost all eyes were on him, making him a tiny bit uncomfortable. He parked the whiteboard on the wall opposite his and Andi’s desks so they both could see it clearly. Andi was watching him with a hint of disbelief in his eyes. “You really did it. I thought you were joking.”
George winked at him. “Surprise, partner.”
For a moment, he thought he had overdone it, but then another smile flitted across Andi’s features, making him look almost friendly. The amiable expression vanished quickly, though.
“Since we have the whiteboard now, we might as well use it.”
George nodded and got a black pen from the case. In the middle of the board, he wrote:three Jane Does. One bludgeoned, two strangled. Time of death—
He looked at Andi. “We don’t have that yet.”
“If I had to bet, I’d say they were killed roughly at the same time. The one outside likely tried to get away. Judging from the absence of maggots, two days, tops.”
He sounded so sure, not at all speculative. As if they had the facts from the lab already. George decided not to dig deeper. He already knew Andi didn’t like to have his methods questioned, and unless George had proof Andi was doing something shady, he would not rock the boat and make the man retreat into himself even more. For this reason, he dutifully wrote down:time of death—roughly at the same time. Murder weapon—crowbar.
“The bruises around the necks of the other two victims looked like handprints to me. We have to wait for the coroner’s report on that.”
So there were things Andi didn’t know. George felt better. “What else do we have?”
