Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller)

1

^{___________________________} 

This was the part of the job I hated the most.

No matter how many times I hauled myself through the process it never got any easier.

Some things are like that.

We are told, as children, that fear comes from not knowing. On this particular occasion I knew exactly what to expect: I knew the horror that awaited me – and yet fear was gripping my stomach like a vice. The rationalist within me argued it was my old ulcer in need of lubrication, when really, if I was brutally honest, I was chilled to the core at the thought of what was to come.

2

^{___________________________}

It was 4 a.m. on a cold January morning in Los Angeles – the kind that sucks the warmth right out of the skin. I should have been in bed, oblivious to all that is terrible. Instead I was attending a murder scene.

There are three things you should know about me: The first is, I used to look after myself. Keep myself in some kind of shape. One of those guys you see sweating down the street first thing on a Sunday morning, working his way toward his first heart attack at thirty-five. I used to do a lot of things. Not anymore. The second is, I don’t believe in coincidences. And the third? Trust me, you don’t need to know about that just yet.

The Union Pacific rail yard is an eerie place after dark. Littered with the corpses of rusting freight cars and skeletal cranes. Through the murk, I could see six or seven police units parked alongside the train tracks, deep in the impenetrable shadow of the 7th Street Bridge. Two or three plain-clothed automobiles. A Crime Lab van. Flashing neon casting luminous specters. Not the kind of place you bring the kids for a picnic.

I watched my step as I crossed oily shingle. Made my way toward a willowy officer standing on her own in the middle of the tracks. She looked lost. Indecisive. Fear had carved the words
scared shitless
into her face. I wondered if mine looked the same.

‘They reckon it’s your boy,’ she called as I approached.

No meet and greet. No ID request. No polite pleasantries on what an unusually cold morning it was. Just straight for the kill.

‘This your first homicide?’ I called back.

Diesel clawed at my throat.

The willowy officer offered a stiff nod.

‘I think they put me up here for a joke.’ She said, hugging herself for warmth. ‘Do you think they put me up here for a joke?’

She was probably right, but I shook my head all the same. She was a week out of the Academy and shy of street seasoning by twenty years. Somebody was enjoying a laugh at her expense. Not me; I would have run a three minute mile if only my legs were game.

‘Where is everybody?’

She pointed with a flashlight. ‘Under the bridge.’

The beam struck riveted stanchions, lost itself in the darker cavities.

‘Down by the river,’ she said. ‘You get there through a gap in the chain-link. That’s where they found the body. Down there. I never seen nothing like that before. Want me to show you?’

She wanted to. Desperately. I could sense it.
Feel
it. Anything to get out of this godforsaken rail yard and back among the living.

‘I know the way.’ I said to her dismay.

The crime scene lay under the dark, ribbed underbelly of the bridge. Down along the manmade river channel: where the missing showed up – either drugged or dead and sometimes both.

Let’s make no bones about this: ordinarily, I am unfazed by the process. Dead bodies don’t give me the creeps. I have seen enough of evil to know it exists and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. But tonight was different. Tonight I was on tenterhooks. Wound up and as jumpy as a kid on his first date. The location, its significance and the fact I was working my first homicide in twelve months were all conspiring to jar my nerves and throw me off balance.

Sometimes staying in bed isn’t a bad idea.

‘You took your time.’

I nodded a
fashionably late
nod to my fledgling partner of the last three weeks, Jamie Garcia. She was holding open a flap in the chain-link. Even at this unholy hour her whole demeanor spoke business.

I ducked through the gap.

She handed me a raised eyebrow and a patrolman’s flashlight. ‘What took you so long?’

‘I got pulled over for running three stop lights in a row.’ I shook the flashlight. ‘This thing work?’

I banged it with my fist. The light spluttered, then stayed lit.

I shone the beam across Jamie’s face. ‘Sure you’re up for this, Jamie?’

Jamie gave me one of those glances that women do when they want a man to know they have all their bases covered.

‘I’m not the one who looks like they’ve seen a ghost.’ She said.

3

^{___________________________}

The first attending officers had rigged a gaudy yellow-and-black tape cordon around the crime scene. Given our isolation, it was more window dressing than functional.

We worked our way down the steep cement slope. Sending loose grit skittering ahead of us as we went.

Behind the flimsy tape, a Forensics team were cataloguing potential bits of evidence in the glare of portable lamps. Scrupulously. Like archaeologists. Nothing like you see in the movies. In real life, death is far from glamorous. No Gucci sunglasses or Jimmy Choos here. These boys and girls from the Crime Scene Unit wore surgeon’s slippers and hair nets. Here to collect evidence, not compliments.

Captain De La Hoya of our neighboring Hollenbeck Division acknowledged our arrival with a wave, broke off his conversation with one of his detectives and met us at the tape. I hadn’t seen De La Hoya in over half a year. There was a time we’d meet socially, at least once a week. Those days were long gone.

‘Gabe,’ he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Hard enough to show he meant business. ‘Good to see you, mi amigo. It’s been too long. I keep meaning to call. But you know how it is. How are you? I heard you were back. Missed you, bro.’ The handshake turned into a brotherly hug. I let it go its course.

De La Hoya and I have history. Good history. I’d been neglectful.

I felt him pat me out. ‘You feel thin. Here, let me look at you.’ He held me at arm’s length and looked me over like a parent examining a muddy child. ‘You look like shit. Real shit. None of that candy cotton shit these kids call shit. Can’t be easy for you being back here. How you holding up?’

‘Fine.’ A fib. A little white lie. Call it what you will. No one wants to hear a moan. It felt like someone was playing a bad Scott Joplin rendition in my stomach. Everything jangling. ‘You?’

My old friend from Hollenbeck backed off a little. He looked older than I remembered. Tired. Like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘Maria lost her mom right before Christmas. She’s taken it real bad. We all have.’

‘I’m sorry.’