Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2) Read online

  “It’s in my nature,” Fey replied, not taking offense to the question.

  “This isn’t going to be any easier if we piss them off.”

  “I know that, but what do you want me to do? Both these guys are jerks.”

  Monk felt slightly odd counseling his partner, who heavily outranked him, but he persevered. “Don’t let them wind you up. If they know they’re getting your goat, they win. Find some way to use them. You won’t get anywhere abusing them.”

  Fey shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll try to be good, Daddy.”

  “Hey, I’m on your side. Don’t start with me.”

  Fey held up both her hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Blades and McCoy both stopped by the split-rail fencing that bordered the edge of the horse trail. About six feet beyond the rail, down the brush-covered slope, a figure was crouched down staring at a freshly dug mound of earth.

  Sticking straight up from the mound was a human arm – the hand at the end trying to claw its way to heaven.

  Chapter 8

  “Who the hell is that?” Fey asked, angry to see someone encroaching on the crime scene. Even though Fey had spoken loudly, the figure crouched by the gruesome shallow grave did not turn around.

  “He’s FBI,” McCoy said with distaste. If there was anything that could unite the LAPD and the LA Sheriffs, it was a common dislike and distrust of the FBI.

  “Get outta here,” Fey said. “He doesn’t look like any FBI guy I’ve ever seen. Where’s his black suit, white socks, and brown wingtips? He isn’t even wearing a skinny tie.”

  The figure, still crouched by the shallow grave, wore black stovepipe jeans cinched with wide buckle belt, scuffed black cowboy boots, and a black t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  “He looks like a reject from a bad James Dean movie,” Monk said.

  The figure stood up and turned around. “There were no bad James Dean movies,” he said, carefully walking away from the grave toward the quartet of detectives.

  “Detectives Croaker and Monk, LAPD.” Blades made introductions with the appropriate pointing motions. “Special Agent Ash, FBI.”

  Fey felt her stomach flip-flop.

  Ash stood slightly over 6’2. His short blond hair had been bleached white by the sun and had been cut by a berserk lawnmower. His lean build was framed by deceptively broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips and long legs. The arms extending from the rolled up sleeves of his T-shirt were corded with tanned, sinewy muscles. His face was long and gaunt, his eyes sunk in shadows. Character lines set him squarely in his forties. Fey could almost hear the Magnificent Seven theme playing in the background, almost smell the open range.

  Get a grip, woman, she mentally yanked on herself. What in the world is the matter with you?

  Ash held out his hand. It was cool and dry in Fey’s as she shook it. She’d half expected electricity to jump from it.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, knowing he was trespassing on a homicide detective’s sacred territory. “I’m here as an observer.” His voice carried the weary rasp of too many late nights and too many dead bodies.

  For a second, before he removed his hand from hers, Fey caught a flash of insight – felt something of Ash’s inner turmoil. She didn’t know what it meant, but she instinctively knew Ash was carrying around some heavy baggage. And there was something else – something else – then the window closed and the image was lost.

  “Our watch commander notified Agent Ash when the call came in,” Blades said, as if explaining everything. He looked from Fey to Ash and back, as if he too was sensing something odd.

  Fey didn’t understand why the Sheriff’s watch commander would call out the FBI to a local murder scene. Ash claimed he was there as an observer, but Fey knew malarkey when she heard it. Rather than make waves, she decided to wait until the ground rules for this little fiasco were established. She winked at Monk, letting him know to keep cool.

  “What’s with this guy Parsons and his dog?” Monk asked, trying to get the proceedings back on track. “It must have been pitch black when they discovered the body.”

  Blades shrugged. “Typical granola nut. Can’t miss a morning of jogging. He had a morning business meeting, so he took his jog earlier than normal. He runs the horse trails here every day. He didn’t want to mess up his bio-rhythms by changing his course because it was dark. He brings a giant flashlight and takes his chances stumbling across the landscape.”

  “The dog found the body?” Fey asked.

  “Parsons said the early start threw Spot’s bowel movements off. Usually, the dog runs along with him, but today he took off into the undergrowth. Parsons figured the dog was looking for a natural fire hydrant and would catch up down the trail.”

  “But the dog didn’t catch up,” Fey said.

  “Yeah,” Blades continued. “Ticked Parsons off. He had to come back looking for Fido. When he gets to where Fido took off, Parsons shines his flashlight into the brush and lights up Fido doing the doggie two-step around the grave. Fido must have thought he’d won the doggy lottery finding all those juicy, freshly buried bones,.”

  “Probably cost Parsons a world’s record by screwing up his training schedule,” McCoy said without feeling.

  Fey took a consciously calming breath. McCoy and Blades always pushed things to the limit. The dog had been distressed and confused by his discovery – his senses picking up violent vibrations from the scene. However, Fey kept her mouth shut. If she voiced her opinion, Blades and McCoy would never let it rest. She didn’t need to give them extra ammunition. “What did Parsons do when he found his dog with the body?”

  Blades shrugged. “Clipped Fido to his leash, dragged him off to the nearest pay phone, and dialed nine-one-one. He put the location in sheriff’s jurisdiction, so we rolled a unit out. The deputy who caught the call wasn’t sure of his boundaries, so instead of kissing this one straight off to you guys, the dunce gets the watch commander to roust us out of bed and drag our ass down here.”

  McCoy took over the narrative. “First thing we did was check the borderline on this section of the trail. And what do you know? This baby has LAPD’s jurisdiction written all over it.”

  Fey grunted. She knew the area, and knew the body was squarely on LAPD’s side of the border. “I wouldn’t put it past either of you to have moved the body when nobody was looking.”

  McCoy grinned. “Yeah. You can still see the heel marks where we dragged him from our jurisdiction to yours. It was pretty tough reburying the body and getting the arm at the right artistic angle.”

  McCoy and Blades would do whatever they could to hamper her, Fey was sure, but moving a body and reburying it with witnesses around wasn’t their style.

  “Did the dog dig the arm up?” Monk asked, looking down into the shallow grave.

  Fey caught McCoy and Blades exchange quick looks.

  “No,” Blades said, after a second. “At least, we don’t think so.”

  It was Fey’s and Monk’s turn to share glances.

  “Why not?” Monk asked when it became apparent McCoy and Blades were not going to say anything more.

  The answer came from Ash. “Because the Sheriff had another body similarly buried two weeks ago.”

  Chapter 9

  “When were you going to get around to sharing this trivial bit of information with us?” Fey asked Blades and McCoy, anger tinged with frustration evident in her voice. “Were you going to let us take over and not mention it was the second in a series?”

  “Give us a break,” McCoy said, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence. “We didn’t have the chance to tell you.”

  “Right,” Fey said, her hackles up. “There was never anything in the teletypes from your department about a body buried with the arm sticking out.”

  “A teletype was sent out last week,” Blades said. “We kept the information to a minimum because we didn’t want to give the press anything. We didn’t need the investigation turning int
o a circus.”

  “Did you come up with anything on the first body?” Fey asked.

  Blades shook his head. “Zippo. We’re at the same place we were when the body was discovered.”

  “Who was the first victim?”

  Blades looked chagrined. “He’s a John Doe. Black. Twelve to fifteen years old.”

  “A kid?”

  “Yeah. Sexually assaulted. Bondage stuff. Buried with the arm sticking out of the ground – same as this one.”

  “I’m want the file.”

  “You’ll get it,” Blades said.

  “The complete file.” Fey’s voice was low and menacing.

  McCoy stepped forward, but Blades put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get the complete file. You’ll also get our complete cooperation.”

  “You’re sure they’re connected?” Fey spoke to Blades, but shifted her eyes to Ash as if he were a magnet. A positive answer would explain FBI agent’s presence.

  “Have to be,” Blades said. “The grave scenes are too similar.”

  Fey nodded. If it was a serial killer, she could lose the whole investigation to Robbery-Homicide division. If there was anything she needed less than a serial killer on her turf, it was the big boys from downtown throwing their weight around. She felt a headache coming on behind her eyes.

  The tension of the scene was broken by the sound of new arrivals. The five detectives looked over to see Lily Sheridan, the coroner’s investigator, leading a parade consisting of the crime scene photographer and two blank-looking lumps of muscle who were Lily’s assistants.

  “Fine time of the morning to drag me out here,” Lily said when she was close enough. She was a big woman who didn’t care much about her image or the coarseness of her personality. Her slacks were creased and grubby, the tail of her blouse hung out at the back. When she wasn’t working a crime scene, she chained smoked with a vengeance.

  “Where’s the body?” she asked. Blades and McCoy moved aside and gestured toward the shallow grave.

  Lily took one look and winced in disgust. She turned to one of the muscle boys. “Sammy, go get the tools.” There was no sympathy in her voice. She was not upset by the scene, but by the inconvenience of waiting for the correct equipment before she could deal with the corpse. “Why didn’t you tell me this was a burial job?” Lily said, clearly not expecting an answer.

  Fey turned to Monk. “You take Parsons. I’ll get Eddie Mack organized on the photos, call in the troops, and then stay with Lily.”

  Monk took a thin, silver pen and a small notebook from his inner jacket pocket.

  “Slow and easy,” Fey said, stopping the detective before he could walk away.

  He looked back toward her.

  “I’ve a bad feeling we’re in for a storm.”

  Monk hated it when Fey got bad feelings. She was never wrong.

  Eddie Mack, the SID photographer, had a smile stolen from a kindly Santa Claus. Beyond his smile, however, he was as ugly as ugly gets. He was short and squat. Thick black hairs exploded unchecked from his nostrils. Others connected his eyebrows across the top of his nose. Bad teenage acne had left his cheeks looking like used pin cushions, and there was a large round growth on his neck. His clothes would have been rejected by a transient, and the faint smell of rank body odor wafted out of his pores.

  Fey didn’t care for Eddie’s physical appearance, but she was always glad to see him at a crime scene. His camera equipment was cutting edge – all personally owned because the department budget didn’t cover anything but basics. Eddie obsessive over each piece of equipment, producing masterful crime scene photos with exquisite skill.

  “What’s doin’, Fey?” Eddie asked, a wad of gum taking up a good portion of his mouth.

  “Could be better, Eddie.”

  “At least you’re better off than the stiff.” Eddie grinned showing stained uneven teeth.

  “Some days, I wonder.” Fey’s attention was on Eddie, but she sensed Ash, the FBI agent, watching her from beside Blades and McCoy. It made her feel anxious, as if he was waiting to see if she made a mistake.

  “What kind of shots you want?” Eddie asked. He fiddled with the light setting on the Nikons slung around his neck.

  “Full panorama of the area around the body. Close-ups of the arm sticking out of the grave. And a complete series as Lily uncovers the body.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Get me a couple of snaps of Parsons and his dog.”

  “He the one who discovered the body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No problem.”

  Fey appreciated Eddie. He never quibbled. He’d also worked so many crime scenes Eddie would take whatever you needed without you asking.

  As Eddie bustled off, Fey took a portable phone out of her jacket pocket. Flipping it open, she dialed the squad room’s homicide line.

  The call was picked up on the second ring. “West L.A. Homicide, Detective Jones.” The smoky voice was aggressively female.

  “Brindle, it’s Fey. We got a cold one and I need you and Alphabet to help.”

  Brindle Jones and A. B. Cohen, better known as Alphabet, were partners on the MAC table. They doubled as the second homicide team behind Monk and his regular partner, Chip Hernandez. Like Hop-Along Cassidy, the sex crimes investigator assigned to Fey’s unit, Hernandez was on vacation and unavailable.

  Alphabet, Monk, and Fey had all been assigned to West L.A. for a several years. Jones and Hernandez had only transferred into the division in recent months – their presence part of a not-so-subtle move to balance gender and ethnic diversity.

  “I heard you had a stiff,” Brindle said. “Dick Morrison was finishing up your rapist from last night. He said you went straight from the confession to the homicide notification.”

  “I didn’t have the chance to pee,” Fey said. “Some of the bushes around here are looking pretty good.”

  “Bushes? I thought we worked in the city. Where the are you?” Brindle asked. “Wait, let me grab a pad.”

  Several male, white detectives had been transferred from the division recently for a variety of inconsequential reasons. Their positions had been filled by female detectives or detectives from ethnic minorities. Fey disliked the politically necessary manipulations needed to achieve ethnic and gender balancing of the division. On the surface, all the detectives got along, but there were subtle tensions because of the artificial way the personnel changes had been implemented.

  “Where do you want us?” Brindle asked when she came back on the phone.

  “The horse trails on the west side of Will Roger’s State Park.”

  “Isn’t that Sheriff’s area?”

  “The body is inches on our side of the border.”

  “And here I am dressed up for court.”

  Fey laughed. Brindle was a notorious fashion maven. “You’ll see the parked cars from the main entrance to the park. Follow the trail from there.”

  “I’ll grab Alphabet and start rolling. Anything else?”

  “Grab a couple of day watch patrol units from roll call. Send them to help with the crime scene search, but tell them not to use open frequencies.”

  Fey knew Brindle was smart enough to realize Fey didn’t want the press to pick up chatter on their police scanners and saturate the park with reporters.

  “Do you need the video camera or anything else?”

  “The video is in the back of my car. I could do with a hot cup of coffee, though, since we’re going to be here for a while. Would you mind doing a Starbucks run for all of us? You fly, I’ll buy.”

  “Caffeine IV on the way. I’ll brief Alphabet, and we’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

  Fey hung up without saying goodbye. Brindle Jones had a reputation for sleeping her way into good assignments and promotions. She had done little to change the rumors since arriving in WLA. Fey thought it a shame because Brindle had the potential to be a good detective without needing to use sex to get ahead. But, the situation didn’t s
eem to bother Brindle as much as it did Fey.

  Lily Sheridan’s loud voice broke into Fey’s reverie.

  “What took you so long, Sammy?” The big woman grabbed a shovel from Sammy as he returned from the coroner’s van. “I can’t be standing around all day waiting for you before we play Captain Kidd and dig up the buried treasure.”

  Sammy’s expression was long suffering. Marty, Lily’s other blank-faced assistant, appeared glad he wasn’t Lily’s target.

  “You coming to help dig up the body, Croaker?” Lily asked. “Or are you going to wait for the report synopsis?”

  “Hold on for five minutes,” Fey replied. “let me grab a video recorder and I’ll join you in the muck.”

  “Great,” Lily said. “Home movies – America’s Most Gruesome. I love that show, don’t you?”

  Chapter 10

  The following six hours were rough on Fey and her detective. It wasn’t the lack of sleep or the tedium of any homicide crime scene search. It was the sucking away any feelings of compassion or humanity – a hardening of the soul necessary to deal with the cold, calculated, humiliation and destruction of another human being.

  Level by level, the horror of the scene appeared from the shallow grave. As it became clearer, Fey had to detach from her humanity to deal with the atrocity being unearthed.

  Every cop learns how this is done. As a rookie, you’re entitled to lose your cookies at your first dead-body call. It doesn’t matter if the call is a gruesome murder scene or a simple natural death. The first time a cop confronts a dead body sharing your lunch with the tops of your shoes is acceptable. But it’s a one-time only deal. From then on, you better learn how to shut down, remove yourself from the scene, find something funny to laugh about, and turn off every compassionate emotion.

  You can’t think about how it would feel if it was your husband, wife, mother, father, son, or daughter, in the pool of blood with their entrails ripped out. You can’t think of the body – with its eyes plucked out, its breasts cut off, or a hairbrush jammed up an orifice – as human.