3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (19 page)

Ted was the crime scene recorder and he made
me sign my name, give a saliva swab, recite my ATM code, and do a
ten-second headstand. I’m lying about the last few, of course, but
I was officially logged in, subject to deposition, and basically at
the county’s disposal.

At least Cole Trickle was.

They asked what the fastest way down to the
crime scene was and I told them the gondola. Ted laughed. Bill
didn’t.

I directed them to where the hill began and
said, “It’s steep. Don’t trip. Have an excellent adventure.”

They started down and I headed for the door.
In about an hour this place was going to be a three-ring circus.
The patrol car blinking in my drive would be joined by about five
of his brethren and God knows what else. Not to mention, if the
Ellen Gray story leaked—and it would, and quickly—the news vans
might get here before the police cruisers.

After drying off, I went
to the kitchen, grabbed another slice of pizza, and retired to the
living room, flopping into the black recliner. Twenty minutes
passed when I heard the first
thwack
of an approaching helicopter.
I could see its light move over my house and disappear into
Prescott Cove. The bigwigs had arrived.

I went to the front door
and peered through the peephole. I counted five police cars, three
unmarked Chevys, and a large van with
Seattle County Forensics
inscribed
on the side. No sign of any media moguls. Yet.

I made my way out to the balcony and
surveyed the scene below. A series of lights had been erected and I
could make out six or seven people milling about on the small
landing five hundred feet below. The rain had softened a bit,
coming down at a steep angle through the bright light. It looked
like they were shooting a scene in a movie. If I squinted, I could
just barely make out Ellen Gray playing the role of Half Eaten Dead
Governor. She committed to the scene like few could. I smelled an
Oscar nomination.

A man in a suit leaned over the body. It was
immediately evident he was the leading man, the actor who commanded
$15 million a picture. It was obvious he was calling the shots.
Crime Scene Photographer squatted and took snapshots. Hot Detective
in Red Sweater conversed with Cop 1 (Bill) and Cop 2 (Ted.) Plus, a
bunch of stagehands in the shadows.

Crime scenes are far less exciting than
people think. Within fifteen minutes the body had been bagged and
most of the people had departed. They left the lights on for the
science geeks—who would comb over the area with tweezers and
ultraviolet lights and Bunsen burners—but by 9:00 P.M. all the
major players were playing to the cameras in the street.

On this note, I made my way upstairs into
Lacy’s old bedroom and to her window. It had a good angle to the
street and I counted five news vans. Lots of prime numbers. Plus
CNN. I soaked up the scene for a couple minutes, then heard a knock
at the door. I descended the stairs and pulled the door open. There
were three of them.

My good friend Erica Frost and two
gentlemen. The man on Erica’s left had unruly black hair plastered
to his forehead, which complemented an untidy beard the same color.
He had designer glasses pushed down on his nose and wore a white
lab coat over a stained white undershirt. His glasses were foggy
from the rain and the man pulled them off, lifted his undershirt,
and began massaging the lenses. In lifting his shirt, he exposed a
thick belly of coarse black hair. He was covered in hair. Hands,
forearms, tufts peeking from his shirt. It was like the Cro-Magnon
man meets Peter Jackson.

The man to Erica’s right was the man I’d
seen leaning over Ellen Gray’s corpse. The leading man. He was a
good-enough looking fellow with receding blonde curls and a heavy
ten o’clock shadow. He had two inches on me, twenty pounds, and ten
years. Tiny crow’s-feet had begun to adhere at the edges of his
eyes, but overall he’d aged well since I’d last seen him. His nose
had been broken once. I’d know—I broke it.

Erica smiled and said, “Thomas, I’d like to
introduce Dr. Hans Rebstien, Seattle’s Chief Medical Examiner, as
well as Detective Sergeant Ethan Kates.”

Hans put his glasses back on then broke into
a wide smile. He extended his hand and said, “Thomaz. Thomaz. Zo
good to zee you again.” Hans was from Germany and still carried a
thick accent. Apparently they don’t make S’s in Germany.

Erica looked on, perplexed. Surely, she was
wondering why Thomas the Party Planner knew Hans the Medical
Examiner. Her confusion would increase.

I acknowledged Ethan with
a nod. If you looked up
self-righteous
prick
on
Wikipedia,
a picture of Ethan Kates
would come up.

I said, “So you’re a sergeant now.”

Ethan was always chewing gum. In the two
years I worked with him, I’d never seen him when he wasn’t chewing
his cud. Tonight was no different. He took three chomps on the
right side of his mouth, then switched sides. Three more
chomps.

Erica put her hands up and said, “Wait. How
do you know these guys?”

“
I’ll let you in on a
secret. I wasn’t a party planner. “

She furrowed her brow. “You were a cop?”

“
Detective. Homicide. Same
as you.”

Ethan took another chomp and said, “Let’s
cut the bullshit, Prescott. What the fuck are you doing here?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Um, I live here.
Usually when someone answers the door and stands in the doorway,
it’s because they live there.”

This guy was a detective?

He nodded to himself and started chomping
again, then he looked at Erica. “This is the guy who found the
body.” It was less of a question and more of an accusation.

She nodded.

Ethan’s cell phone rang and he flipped it
open. He took a couple steps backward and put the phone to his
ear.

Erica took a step forward and said, “How
long were you with the SPD?”

“
I don’t know. I did a
year on the beat, then I was a detective for a couple
years.”

“
What
precinct?”

“
South.”

“
What
happened?”

Ethan was back and answered for me, “He was
let go.”

Erica stared at me. “You were fired?”

I nodded.

“
Why?”

“
I stole some office
supplies.” I’d really needed a hole-punch. Life or
death.

Ethan smiled. “Actually, he beat a suspect
to within an inch of his life. The city was sued for millions.”

I kept my eyes on Erica. “He raped and beat
a thirteen-year-old girl.”

Ethan had testified against me in court. The
city was sued for $7 million and the case against the scumbag was
dropped. I, of course, was sent packing the next day. I may or may
not have smashed Ethan’s face against a locker on my departure.

I locked eyes with Ethan and said, “If I
could go back and do it all over again, I would have killed
him.”

This drew silence from everyone.

Ethan and I were left staring at one
another. The two alpha males. There were a couple dozen people on
this planet who would relish Mr. Thomas Dergen Prescott ceasing to
exist. In fact, I had a note in a safety deposit box somewhere with
a list of suspects should I take a bullet in the temple, get pushed
in front of a Greyhound, or develop a suspicious case of
necrotizing fasciitis. Ethan Kates wasn’t at the top of the list,
but his name was on there.

Ethan chomped on his gum and smirked. I was
tempted to rearrange some more of his cartilage.

Erica finally broke the tension. She touched
me lightly on the elbow and said, “Why don’t you tell these guys
how you found the body.”

I took a deep breath and started in.

Arrival

(Maddy Young Saga
1)

www.nickthriller.com

Chapter 1.

Arrival

“
How did you
die?”

I turned my head. The girl couldn’t have
been more than seven. She had light brown hair held back in a
ponytail. Her nose was dusted with light freckles, her cheeks as
well, only not as densely as the freckles on her nose.  She
waited a second for my response, then said, “I went into diabetic
shock.”

I nodded, like this wasn’t the craziest
thing I’d ever heard.

She continued, “I have an uncle here. Uncle
Trent. He died in a car crash when I was five. I’m supposed to go
live with him I guess.”

She wrinkled her nose. I had a feeling she
didn’t like Uncle Trent. Maybe Uncle Trent was like my Uncle Bill.
Maybe Uncle Trent liked to make up stories after ten cans of Miller
High Life, then get pissed off when you told him he was full of
shit.

“
So how did you die?” she
came again.

This was the hundredth
time I’d been posed that question in three days.
How did you die?
It was
yet to lose its level of absurdity.

I took a deep breath and said, “I slipped in
the shower.” I kept the part about how I’d been jerking off at the
time to myself. No sense upsetting this delicate flower more than
was necessary.

I surveyed the other people in the small
room. There were twelve altogether. Plus me. A baker’s dozen. Each
was clad in the same getup. Scrubs. That blue meets green color.
Coolmint. There were two black people. A man and a woman. Both
appeared to be in their thirties. A boy around fifteen, his hair
dangling in his eyes. Two old people. One in a wheelchair. One
sucking from an oxygen tank. A couple of men around fifty. An Asian
woman. Then four women of that indiscriminate age between fifty and
sixty.

I peered more closely at the woman to my
right. Her eyes were puffy, the lines of her face stretched tight
with fear. In fact, as I swept over each individual, I noticed the
only shared trait among the group was the fear. Like each was
staring into the face of a Bengal tiger.

My gaze returned to the small girl. She was
the exception. She didn’t have the fear. In fact, at the present
moment, she had something black in her hands. I was not so far
removed from childhood that I knew it was a PSP. Playstation
Portable. She noticed my eyeing her and smiled. She said, “Grand
Theft Auto.”

I found myself letting out a small chuckle.
My first in the past seventy-two-hour period. Not many laughs when
no one will tell you anything, you are asked thousands of
questions, are continually hooked to a machine, have a hand shoved
in your ass, your balls fondled, every mole on your body inspected,
your teeth cleaned, eyes checked, and are drained of at least a
gallon of blood.

The girl continued, “I was up playing it all
night. I forgot to take my insulin. I was playing it when I died.
They gave it to me a couple days ago.”

She broke eye contact and went back to her
game. Interesting. She died and her PSP had come with her. Did this
mean that when her parents walked into her room the next morning
and found her dead, her PSP was gone? Or was it there, clasped in
the whites of her hands. I didn’t have much else to go on. I mean,
the only thing in my hand when I died was my dick.

In three days, there hadn’t been many
answers—only promises that in time everything would make sense. The
only answer, the only definitive thing that anyone would share, the
only time anyone would look you directly in the eye was when you
asked them if you had died.

They wouldn’t waver, they wouldn’t blink,
they would only nod their head and say, “Yes.”

⠔

It was silent for the next ten minutes.
Everyone anticipating the door opening and answers walking through.
The room itself was antiseptic. A third grade classroom meets a
military quarantine. The windowless walls were a light blue. There
were four rows of four chairs. Three empties. The chairs were white
plastic, just slightly reclined, but not enough to relax, or be
comfortable in any way. There was a flat screen television on the
facing wall. I was in the front row, ten feet from the large-screen
TV. It was on screensaver and the manufacturer's name was plastered
on the icy blackness in giant white lettering.

SONYY.

The overall energy in the room was similar
to a doctor’s waiting room. Or more accurately, an oncologist’s
waiting room. Like everyone here had found a lump and was waiting
to hear they would be okay. Or if they would surely die. Only,
everyone here was already dead. That’s what I was trying to wrap my
head around when the silence was broken. Not by any sound, but by
the stale air diffusing into parts unknown.

The door exhaled, a leg propping it open.
The owner of the leg was also the proud owner of a white lab coat,
its bottom half hanging over brown slacks, which led to brown dress
shoes. A doctor’s leg. In the silence it was evident the doctor was
having a conversation with someone in the hallway.

I strained to hear the words, but I could
only hear the muffled, throaty voices of grown men. After thirty
seconds, the man straightened, and walked briskly into the room. I
squinted. He looked to be in his late thirties. He had that perfect
olive skin you only see on commercials and in magazines. He had a
sharp nose and thin, wispy brown hair. He was maybe 5’10”, maybe a
hundred and sixty pounds. This put him six inches shorter than me
and six pound lighter. He wasn’t unattractive. Nor was he striking.
He struck me as a Matt. If you took all six men leaning forward,
almost hovering over their uncomfortable white plastic chairs, and
put them in a blender, Matt might be what you came out with.