Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes
against his face. She leans in. ‘You asked me to take you somewhere I like. Not somewhere you could find a blog post.’
‘Maybe that’s a blog post in itself.’
‘Very Zen of you.’ She slams the car door and starts walking out to a wannabe lighthouse in the grass. He scrambles out after her, pulling his jacket on.
‘Hey!’ he shouts. ‘I hope you’re not luring me out here to kill me!’
She turns, walking backwards so he has to jog to catch up, and gives him the wickedest grin. ‘Keep up the oral and I won’t have to.’
It takes them about twenty minutes of tramping along the path to get there. His jacket is useless against the vicious little wind. They turn off the path to tramp through waist-high weeds and springy bushes, until finally they push through, and the grasses part to reveal a scrubby stretch of beach and a narrow channel of dark water that opens onto the river past the bend.
She spreads her arms like a magician’s assistant. ‘Secret beach,’ she says. ‘Also called hipster beach.’
Also vastly overrated. There’s no story here.
‘What do you think?’
I think I’ll say whatever will get me into your pants again. Which is the trouble, isn’t it, boychick? Talking your way into things? Like petite Monique. Who had a screw loose. Emphasis on ‘screw’, which allowed him to overlook the ‘loose’. She used to crawl under the table at fancy restaurants to blow him. His cock stirs in his pants at the thought. Or Trish, who had a kid. Although he didn’t like the kid, and the kid didn’t like him. Which is fair enough, because the kid was old enough to see him for what he was, just another tourist stopping off at MILF Island for a cocktail and a picture on the beach before moving on to less complicated destinations. Or Cate, who was everything he wanted. Until … Shut up. Stop it.
‘It sure is secret,’ is what he manages. The wind nips and tugs at them, rustling through the grass.
She frowns. ‘It’s hard to get a real sense of it in winter. They don’t really like people coming here. There are no lifeguards, and there’s a bad rip current just off the point. A kid drowned there a couple of years ago.’
‘What’s that?’ He points at the columns of black stones, improbably stacked on top of one another, adorning some of the bigger rocks.
She shrugs. ‘Art.’
That’s a generous description. ‘Are they glued together?’
‘No. I think that’s the idea, that they’re not. The craft is in balancing them.’ She frowns at the cairns. ‘Hey, these are different to the ones I’ve seen before. Help me.’ She grabs onto his hand for purchase and hefts herself up the rock to see.
‘Yeah, look. There are faces. Sort of melted together. Neat.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ But he can make out the roughest of features hollowed out of the stones, shallow eyes, stretched mouths, as if they’re screaming. How romantic.
‘Woah,’ Jen Q says as her boot skids out from under her. Her shoulder slams into the artwork, if that’s what it is – if there’s a reason it’s stacked up out here and not in the Detroit Institute of Art. The column topples like Jenga and the stones plop-plop-plop into the water. He’s still holding her hand, and yanks her back to safety. She comes down on top of him, bringing them both crashing to their knees in the wet sand.
‘Jesus. Remind me not to take you into a china shop,’ he says. Which sets her off again, shaking with laughter. He holds her, freezing damp soaking into his jeans, warm girl in his arms.
This could be alright, he thinks.
Just don’t fuck it up.
The quote of the week (written in red marker on the whiteboard in the detectives’ meeting room): ‘It’s not very neighborly.’ It came from a witness statement regarding one Mr. Jackson Brentworth of Livernois Avenue, fatally shot over a borrowed fly mower that wasn’t returned. Best part was the damn thing had never even been taken out of the box. Now Mr. Brentworth is residing in a box forever and ever, amen. Not very neighborly at all. Man shoulda returned the lawnmower, am I right? The leaden mouths of the general public sometimes drop gold nuggets.
Half of Homicide is here for the briefing, waiting on commanding officer Captain Joe Miranda. Gabi is pinning up the official photographs provided by Evidence Tech. Every angle on the body, every scrap of material recovered from the scene, including trash. Only way the streets get cleaned up these days.
Her partner, Bob Boyd, is picking at his teeth with his fingernail and examining the gunk he scrapes off with forensic interest. His size is useful on the street, although his bull-neck is starting to go wobbly around the edges, and he sweats a lot through the shiny suits he wears to impress. Gabi knows all about it because she gets to share a car with him. In summer, she tried to give him subtle hints, like pulling up outside a laundromat and demanding he go wash his fucking shirt or she wouldn’t drive another inch. He doesn’t approve of her dressing down, jeans and sweatshirts, but then he didn’t have to deal with some knucklehead leaking all the female officers’ bra sizes when they got measured for bulletproof vests.
She’s pleased to see Ovella Washington, even if she has her head in her own case file, making a real point about it. She’s got a lot of hours. She worked Vice before they started running morality out of individual precincts, and Robbery before she transferred to Homicide.
Luke Stricker looks even more brutish since he shaved his head, the kind of guy you would expect to be on the other side of the handcuffs. It complicates matters having him on this, but he’s one of the most competent cops on the force. And competence is very attractive. Especially now.
Mike Croff is ticking off the seconds by making little popping sounds with his lips. He notices her annoyance and freezes, mid-pucker. He widens his eyes with cartoonish innocence, turning it into a whistle. Peter and the Wolf. Doo-doo-di-dit-dit-doo.
Oh yeah, and young Marcus Jones, sitting on the edge of his seat at attention, his straight-out-of-the-academy eagerness undone by his ridiculous hair style; cornrows with a little rat’s tail. She almost feels bad about the lipgloss stunt. Turns out he wasn’t such an FNG after all, called it in on his cell phone instead of the radio, so the press only got wind of it after the meat wagon was already loaded up. Nothing to see here, move along folks. Saved her ass, and in return she’s got him saddled with a dumb nickname. There’s already a picture on the noticeboard, his personnel photo badly photoshopped onto Tinkerbell’s body, surrounded by fairy dust.
Joe Miranda sweeps into the room and starts talking as if he’s been the one waiting around. ‘All right, let’s get this on the road already. Versado, you landed this show, you’re running with it.’ He sits down on the end of the desk, slicks down his wave of black hair, and knots his hands.
‘Yes, sir.’ Gabi goes to the whiteboard and uncaps one of the marker pens. ‘Officer Jones, if you could run us through your report?’
‘Don’t forget your magic unicorn, Sparkles!’ Bob Boyd cups his hands around his mouth. The good detectives, finest on the force, titter. All except Ovella Washington, whose focus tightens on her file.
Marcus Jones aka Sparkles, now and forever, stands awkwardly, thrown off his game.
‘Relax,’ Gabi says. ‘Just like in the report. But if there’s anything you left out the paperwork, now’s the time to fill in the details. Start at the beginning.’
‘Okay. Right. I was straight off a shooting called in at Vernor and Clarke, round two a.m. Sunday morning. I’m on my own – my partner’s in hospital with a burst appendix. By the