Broken Saint, The
Authors: Mike Markel
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Police Procedurals, #Women Sleuths
The Broken Saint: A
Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery
Volume 3
Second Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Mike
Markel
All rights reserved. No
portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any form
without the express written permission of the publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal
copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is
investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison
and a fine of $250,000.
This is a work of fiction.
All characters, events, and locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental.
The Detectives Seagate and
Miner Mystery series:
Visit Mike Markel at
MikeMarkel.com
From the little stand of trees and shrubs between the river
and the Greenpath, he gazed across the narrow river toward the municipal golf
course. The moonlight, flickering behind the rushing clouds, outlined the rolling
mound of a hazard beyond the silhouettes of the naked, gnarled black cottonwoods,
mountain alders, and river birches on the far bank. The river ran fast, tossing
invisible spray over the rocks that broke the shallow surface near the bank. Dead
leaves scratched across the gravel and brushed at his feet on a frigid February
night.
He looked to his left and his right on the
Greenpath, then across the river to the modest swell of the fairway near the
fourteenth hole. There was no one. He turned and scanned the parking lot
adjoining the three-story corporate building in the small industrial park.
There were no cars in the lot, no lights on in the building.
Reaching down and gently touching the artery in her
neck, he felt a faint pulse. He kneeled beside her body and placed his ear next
to her mouth and nose. He felt a slight breath, warm in the frozen night.
He began to undress her. She wore no jacket or
coat. He looked at her clothing, all of it tight fitting—the dark t-shirt with
some indecipherable writing on it, the jeans that seemed too narrow to slide
over her ankles. Even the socks seemed too small.
Sweat forming on his upper lip, he strained to
bend her arms so he could remove her shirt. He felt a slight release as it
ripped when he pulled it over her shoulders.
Carefully he raised her shoulder and reached behind
her back to unhook her dark bra, but he found no clasp there. He grasped the
bra in the front, his trembling knuckles grazing her small, cold breasts as he
lifted it and pulled it up toward her chin. It caught on her jaw, then on her
nose, but finally it was over her shoulders. He disentangled it from her arms,
the elbows stiff in the cold. He folded it and placed it next to her on the
sandy gravel.
He stared at her breasts, the nipples dark smudges
in the dim moonlight. His trembling finger touched a nipple, hard in the cold. He
pulled his finger back. He held his hand in front of his face, the five fingers
spread. Then he lowered his hand gently until each finger touched the soft
breast, pressing it delicately, feeling it yield only slightly. With an
unsteady hand, he slowly traced the delicate arc of her breast, from her
sternum, downward, then beneath its gentle curve.
Suddenly, horrified, he jerked his hand away from
her body. For many months he had dreamed of her, but now he was choking on guilt,
shame, and despair.
He unbuttoned her jeans, tugged at the zipper to
lower it, and tried in vain to pull the denim over her hips, first one, and then
the other. He pulled at the jeans from her knees, but the fabric was so tight against
her skin that he could not gather enough in his fist to secure a grip. He placed
a palm in the hollow above her hip to keep her from sliding across the gravelly
dirt. With his other hand he pulled hard on the denim. Finally, the fabric moved,
and he managed to release her hips. He looked up as he heard the growl of a passing
motorcycle, its rider oblivious to the scene in the patch of trees and shrubs not
ten yards from the Greenpath.
He reached down to remove her thong. He could not
look away from the narrow, straight line of black hair that led down to her
vagina. As he folded her jeans and thong and placed them next to her shirt and
bra, he began to weep.
He crouched beside her and tried to lift her in
his arms. Feeling the soles of his shoes sink into the sand and gravel, he
studied the uneven, sloping surface, with its river rocks, tree roots, and
stumps half-hidden beneath the tall brown grasses. He did not trust himself to
carry her safely to the river. He lowered her carefully to the dirt and then stood
straight and walked around to her head.
He grasped her arms, above the elbows, surprised
by their thinness, and lifted her trunk. Now only her heels touched the ground.
He smelled coconut in her jet-black hair, thick and straight. He gazed at her
breasts and her sex, indistinct in the flickering shadow his body cast in the
dim moonlight.
His hands gripping her slender arms, he walked
backward, slowly and haltingly, hunched over, her hair pressed against his chest,
down the bank toward the river. Struggling with unsteady steps, he continued backward
into the water, dragging her silent body. His feet tingled as the water rose
over the tops of his shoes. The water rose higher and higher on his jeans, over
his knees, until it reached his crotch and he gasped.
Her ankles and legs and buttocks now slid beneath the
surface, and he felt her body shudder. He thought he heard her moan from the
sudden chill. Although the water was warmer than the freezing air, it felt ten
times colder.
He walked backward, deeper into the river, the
water covering her trunk. Now he was sure he heard moans of pain through the gurgle
of the rushing water.
His left foot slid off a large river rock covered
in a slick film and he lost his balance. Instinctively, he released her arms,
watched them rise slightly in the cold night air, then fall, slapping the surface
as he tumbled backward into the river. The river enveloped him, the frigid water
stabbing at his face and his neck. As the water penetrated his heavy coat, then
his shirt, he turned over onto his stomach and struggled to right himself, his
hands grasping for something secure on the riverbed. The icy water rose inside
his sleeves.
Finally, his churning legs touched the riverbed
and he could extend his head, his arms, his trunk into the freezing air. The
water had soaked through his clothing. He gasped for breath, shivering. He scanned
the rippling surface, panicking because he had lost her in the black river.
Then she appeared, fifteen feet away, half-floating
on her back, with only her knees and breasts breaking the surface of the dark water.
She was caught up on some rocks, her head invisible beneath the surface.
He fought to maintain his footing, his sodden
clothing weighing him down like anchors as he trudged over to her. He lifted
her head out of the water, bending down to listen for a breath. But the lapping
of the water against his chest and over her body was too loud. He placed one
hand on her forehead, the other on her chin, and pushed her head beneath the
surface. The weight of his jacket started to pull him over, but he pushed back
with all his might against the flow, trying to keep his footing.
He held her head beneath the surface for another
long moment, feeling his tears against his frozen cheeks, hearing his teeth
chattering in the night. “I am so sorry,” he whispered as his body convulsed in
the freezing river.
He grasped her arms, above the elbows, and walked
backward toward the shore. His body shaking, numb from the water, he slowly
pulled her from the river. Her breasts and her sex glistened in the faint
moonlight. Pulled down by his wet clothing, he slowly made his way over the
rough surface of the river bank, back toward the spot where he had left her
clothes. Exhausted, he carefully let her trunk sink until she was reclining on
the ground. He was breathing heavily.
After a moment he lifted her again by the arms,
and as his hands felt the sand on the back of her arms, he began to weep again
for what he had done. He dragged the body farther until, finally, sheltered by
the gnarled cottonwoods and the shrubs, he laid her softly on the scrub brush
and gravel, next to where he had placed her clothing. Once again he tried to
hear her breathe, tried to feel a pulse, but this time he was certain she was
dead.
He strained to shake off his own coat, heavy with
river water. He started to dress her, but he struggled to get her thong, her
jeans, her bra, her t-shirt, and her socks onto her wet, sandy body, rigid in
the cold. He pulled and tugged at her clothing. It was necessary to cover her
naked flesh. He worked in the faint silver moonlight that dodged the swift
clouds down at the river on a frigid February night.
I eased my Honda into the lot at the Prairie Title Company,
one of a few dozen companies in the East Rawlings Industrial Park, nestled next
to the Greenpath and the Rawlings River, a few hundred yards upstream from the
university. I parked between my partner Ryan’s blue Mitsubishi and the old
green minivan that Harold Breen, our medical examiner, has been driving since
forever. A couple spots over sat the ’68 Beetle, hand-painted black and white
to look like a Holstein, that Robin, our evidence tech, drove.
The icy air hit me as I got out of my car. Up ahead,
yellow crime-scene tape was wrapped around a bunch of trees, cordoning off an
area a good thirty yards wide between the Greenpath and the river. I glanced over
my shoulder at a bank of windows on the river side of the two-story Prairie
Title offices. They were all dark except for one on the second floor. I checked
my watch: 7:38
am
. I hate it when
I’m on the job before the cube dwellers. This time of year, a good rule of
thumb is, if it’s not light out, you started your day too early or you stayed
too late.
Ryan wore his long charcoal wool coat, open, over
a blue suit, with a white buttoned-down shirt and red striped tie. With his
close-cropped hair, blue eyes with gold flecks, and a perpetual smile that
showed off forty or fifty unblemished white teeth, he was just too damned
good-looking and too well-dressed for our little city located quite close to the
exact geographic center of nowhere in Montana. Ryan was also a
no-kidding-around Mormon who was extremely married to an equally serious Mormon
who, in their three years of wedded bliss, had already popped out forty percent
of their five-kid quota.
I’m fifteen years older than Ryan, and I possess
not a single one of his virtues. I routinely fail at almost everything I try in
life, including my persistent attempts to dislike him. The best I can muster is
to officially disapprove of him.
I am what they call a recovering alcoholic. It’s a
truly stupid phrase, and I despise it. I still have enough brain cells to
understand why you don’t want to call yourself a recovered alcoholic. After
all, what’s the point of tempting God or Fate or the Boss of All Shit That
Happens? You tell him you know you’re not going to drink anymore, he’ll make
time in his busy schedule to stomp your sorry soul once more—and then hand you
a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
You know that old saying, If you want to hear God
laugh, tell Him your plans? From where I sit, that’s no compliment. It’s one
thing to be omniscient and therefore know that, for most people, things are
going to turn to shit. But then to laugh about it? Guy in the next cubicle acts
like that, everyone calls him an asshole.
So I’m a recovering alcoholic, which means I’ll be
done worrying about liquor when they pump me full of formaldehyde. I go to AA
almost every day, and most days I stay sober. Drinking cost me my family.
Losing my ex-husband, Bruce, was inevitable anyway and probably goes in the
Good Riddance column. Not being able to help keep my son, Tommy, out of some
serious trouble because I was busy puking, pissing myself, passing out, and
frequenting motels that charge by the hour—that one brings me to my knees quite
often. But I know I’ll get over that regret—just as soon as I get that
formaldehyde.
Ryan was talking with Harold Breen. At
forty-eight, Harold was a little older than me. He was about five-seven,
three-hundred and fifty pounds, and he walked by pushing the left side of his body
forward a little, then his right, then his left. Finally, he built up a rhythm and
his body just kept moving until he needed to slow it down and stop. He huffed
and puffed when he walked, like a steam engine hauling too many cars up a steep
incline. He dressed head-to-toe in polyester, shiny with wear, the more hideous
the pattern and putrid the color, the merrier. He had Velcro on his Hush
Puppies, stubble in the folds of his chins, sweat on his shiny scalp, even out
here—in Montana, in February, before the sun rose and the temp hit double
digits. If I was a guy who ate like I used to drink, I’d look just like Harold.
Because he was just about the kindest man in the world, I loved him completely
and expected to do so until I died or he did, whichever came first.
The third party near the yellow tape was Robin,
our evidence tech. To compensate for the indignity of being tall and slender,
with good bones, smooth skin, faint freckles, and the kind of blond hair that recalls
the early Beach Boys, Robin was on an endless quest to reject traditional ideas
of feminine beauty. This week, her hair sported pink and aqua highlights, there
was a new turquoise stone on the end of her silver eyebrow loop, and a second
diamond stud had appeared on the left side of her nose. She was the only other
female I worked with routinely and, against all odds, the only person in the
whole department who cursed more than I did. Her eyes lit up and she got a big
grin when she discussed a fan-fucking-tastic semen stain on a vic’s skirt or a
motherfucker of an orange pube she just yanked from some dead guy’s crotch. Although
I admired her skills and enthusiasm, we didn’t socialize.
Ryan, Harold, and Robin were standing just outside
the crime-scene tape that formed the perimeter of this little patch of gnarly trees,
scrubby shrubs, and wild grasses. The river took all kinds of weird curves down
here, but the Greenpath was laid out a little straighter, presumably so bikers
had a better chance of seeing and therefore not flattening any of the hundreds
of doddering old bats out for a walk with Snowball. When the Greenpath was
paved about twenty years ago, the city left the little patches of trees and
brush as they were between the pavement and the river. And that’s apparently where
our vic was resting, presumably in peace.
I walked over to the three of them, buttoning up
my coat against the icy breeze. It was always a few degrees cooler here on the
river than it was among the buildings downtown, which could be pleasant in our eight-
or ten-week summer but wasn’t that wonderful when the sun hadn’t appeared yet
in the middle of a typically ferocious February. My feet crunched the patches
of frost as I walked carefully over the uneven ground littered with exposed
roots, brittle sagebrush, and river rocks the size of grapefruits.
I turned and looked back at the parking lot. Even
though I didn’t know anything except that there was a croaker in the area, my instinct
was this was probably a drop site, not the murder scene. It was a little too
exposed for killing someone. With the Greenpath and the company buildings
within sight, it would be smarter to kill the vic in the comfort of your own
home, then take him for a ride. If you knew what you were doing, you could
carry a body from your car to the cottonwoods in less than thirty seconds, then
be back on the road in another ten.
“Good morning, gang.” I nodded to my three
colleagues.
Ryan gave me a good smile. Harold and Robin
muttered something about morning. We all had our hands shoved in our pockets
and were bobbing up and down on our toes.
Ryan said, “Female, eighteen to twenty-five. Three
stab wounds in her abdomen. Some green slimy stuff from the river stuck to her
body, and sand all over her back, her buttocks, and the backs of her legs. All
underneath her clothing.”
“Two sets of tracks on the ground, probably heel
prints,” Robin said. “Like she was dragged down to the river and then back up
to where she is now.”
“She was stabbed and dunked?” I said.
Harold pulled his hands out of his pockets and
shook them. He blew on one fist, then the other. “What it looks like. Can’t
tell what order. Robin might be able to figure it out by looking at the holes in
her t-shirt.”
“Yeah,” Robin said. “I took a quick look at the
shirt. The holes in the fabric don’t exactly line up with the wounds.”
“Come again?” Did I mention it was early? And really
cold?
“Follow me,” Robin said.
I lifted the tape so Robin could duck under it and
lead me to the body, which was underneath a tent that had been set up earlier
to protect the crime scene from shit falling onto it. The common-approach path
had already been laid out with our new metal stepping-stone plates. We started
using them a few months ago. Robin had put out the plates on a path she hoped
didn’t have any forensic evidence. Everyone who entered the scene had to walk
on the plates. It was a pain in the ass, but worth it: we didn’t waste as much
time looking for a murderer wearing the shoes on Ryan’s feet.
The vic was fifteen yards in. A young girl. Black
hair, pretty. Asian or something. The copper skin on her arms and face was a
mottled gray, the arms covered with goose bumps. She was wearing just a t-shirt,
jeans, and socks. Looking at her, I felt a shiver run through my body.
Robin bent down, still standing on a metal plate. “She
had her shirt on when she was stabbed.” She pointed to the three identical slices
through her shirt in an area maybe three inches square, stomach-high but a
little to the left. “If you look close at the area, you can see the ridges on
her skin through the cloth.”
“Yeah.” I crouched down to see it.
“The holes in the shirt don’t line up with the wounds.
Same pattern, but they’re about an inch off.”
“As in the killer took her shirt off and then put
it on again.”
Robin nodded, then stood up straight. It took me a
little more effort to stand up. We walked back on the metal plates, out to the
tape, and over to Ryan and Harold.
Ryan said, “For some reason the killer took the
girl’s clothes off, dunked her, getting the slimy green stuff on her, then
brought her back on shore, laid her down on the sand, and dressed her.”
Harold said, “I might be able to help you with the
sequence when I put her on the table.”
“When did she die?”
“Rigor is just starting,” Harold bobbed up and
down on his toes. “I’d say ten
pm
to two
am
.”
I looked at Ryan. “She didn’t have a coat or
anything?”
He shook his head. “I’ll get some uniforms to do a
grid search, but I didn’t see anything when I did a quick once-over in the area
here.” He was pointing to the area inside the tape.
“You see it as a dump job?”
“Looks like it.” Robin blew on her hands. “No
blood under her or in the area.”
“You got a purse or something?”
“Nothing yet. No ID. A twenty and three ones in
cash folded in her pocket,” Robin said. “A bandanna in her back left pocket.”
“No keys, no phone?”
“Not that I’m seeing.” She pointed her chin toward
the river. “Maybe they’re in there. Wanna roll up your pants?”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Lemme see what we’ve
got first. Who discovered the body?”
“A jogger,” Ryan said, “about an hour ago. He saw
her from the Greenpath.”
“The jogger legit?”
Ryan nodded. “He stuck around for me to get here.
I interviewed him.” He patted his chest pocket, where he keeps his notebook. “I
let him go a few minutes ago. He was all dressed up in spandex gear, complete
with those shoes that look like feet. I got his contact information. He’s a
lawyer downtown.”
“Okay.”
Ryan said, “Want to get the dive team to look for
a phone?”
I shook my head. “There won’t be anything in the
river. He killed her somewhere else, dropped her here. All he’s left here is
the stuff he wanted us to find. If there’s a phone, it’s at his place or he tossed
it somewhere else.”
“Any thoughts on why he wanted her to be found
here?”
“No idea.” I shook my head. “There’s a bunch of
other places he could’ve dumped her if he didn’t want us to find her. So he
thought it through, at least a little bit.” I paused. “Why don’t we wait and
see what Robin and Harold figure out. We’ll probably be able to ID her easily
enough from a Missing Persons, and we’ll get her phone records. The only thing
we lose from not having a phone is her speed dials and her pissed-off birds.”
I looked over at Harold, who was gazing across the
river at nothing in particular. “You okay?”
He shook his head. “Hate it when I see a kid like
this get killed. Young girl, I look at her and see my daughter.”
We stood there a moment, and I squeezed his arm
gently through his puffy coat. “Okay, Harold, anything you need from us before
we head back?”
“No, the scene is secure.” He gestured to the tent.
There was one officer there, and two protecting the perimeter. “The wagon will
be here in a couple of minutes. I’ll get together with Robin when we get the
girl back to the station. We’ll talk to you later this morning.”
“Thanks, Harold.” I turned to Ryan. “Think it
might be time to figure out who this girl was.”
He nodded. “See you back at headquarters.” He
started walking toward his car.
I pulled my coat tighter against my body and
walked back toward the tape. I ducked under it and followed the steel plates to
the tent. I looked down at the girl’s body. “What happened to you?” I said
softly.
“Did you say something to me, Detective?”
I looked up, startled, at the uniform on duty, a
woman whose nametag said Brown.
“No, I just … No, I didn’t say anything.” I turned
and headed back on the steel plates.