Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes
The bosses will turn a blind eye if you keep it on the down-low. She didn’t get involved in any of that while she and William were still trying to work things out. But here she is now, screwing brutally competent Detective Stricker on those days their off-duties coincide.
‘All right, so what’s the motivation? Apart from being a sick fuck?’
‘It’s on display. He wants attention,’ Washington says.
‘Not like he put it up on a pedestal on the riverwalk.’
‘But she’s right. He did want it to be found. He’s not trying to cover it up. Kid and an animal.’
‘Black kid and an animal,’ Washington points out. ‘What’s that say?’
‘Could be racially motivated.’
Washington: Race crimes / local hate groups
‘What about Satanists?’ Croff says. ‘Could be an occult murder.’
‘Sure.’ Gabi rolls her eyes.
‘Or voodoo hoodoo shit.’
Satanists. Occult. Voodoo hoodoo shit
‘You good with that, Ovella?’
She folds her arms, revealing glittering fingertips – the diamanté appliqués on her nails lead a lot of people to underestimate her. ‘Because I’m black? Or because I’m Catholic?’
‘Satanists are usually white,’ Boyd chips in, trying to be helpful.
‘That’s racist,’ Croff grins. ‘You’re insulting Satanists of color.’
‘You wanna throw in the Michigan Dogman?’ Washington complains.
‘Knock it off,’ Gabi says. ‘We need warm bodies on the phone calling the other precincts and districts on broadly similar murders. Don’t let anyone try to dump their cold cases on you.’
‘Can I sit down now?’ the rookie asks.
‘Not yet, Sparkles. Was there anything else you noticed at the scene?’
‘There was no blood or nothing. And he looked real peaceful. I think he didn’t even see it coming.’
‘Don’t speculate on that until we have more facts.’
‘Forensics?’ Miranda pushes.
‘I’m going to see the ME after this,’ Gabi says. ‘The dismemberment would have been fatal and there was a wound to the back of his head, near the base of his skull.’
‘And the glue holding the two parts together?’
‘I’ve put in a priority request for identifying the bonding agent. Industrial, probably, which should make it easier to trace. But testing is going to take a few weeks unless we can get a lead.’
She writes in her own name.
Versado: Autopsy / Adhesive
‘ETA on the results?’ Miranda asks.
‘Six to ten days. Would have been longer, but we piqued their interest. It’s a nice change from bullet wounds and semen.’
Sparkles is still musing. ‘There was a lot of graffiti at the scene, but I guess that’s normal.’
Gabi scans the photographs. ‘Might be worth checking out the tags.’
‘What, the killer left his signature?’ Croff snipes. ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’
‘Like the idiot who murdered his wife and posted the picture on Facebook?’ she says, honey-sweet. ‘Or the knucklehead who robbed the gas station on Dearborn two weeks ago still wearing his McDonald’s namebadge? Criminals do stupid things all the time.’
Suspicious graffiti tags
‘You got an ID on your kid yet?’ Miranda asks.
‘Stricker and Boyd started on that this morning.’
‘Pulled all our missing kids reports and put in a request with the other precincts. Got about a hundred we’re going through. Ditched the girls already, working through the boys. Lucky it was cold out, so he looks like he looks.’
She knows what Luke means. Preserved. Couple of days in July, and he’d be swelled up like the Michelin Man. She had that once with a teenager pulled out the water after three days. Her mother kept saying, ‘Nah, nah, that ain’t my baby. My baby ain’t fat like that, my baby ain’t got those chubby cheeks.’ It took two hours to persuade her otherwise, and she only succeeded because of the tattoo of the seahorse on the girl’s ankle. Gabi gets it: you don’t want to believe. Not in real life.
‘We could hand over the kid’s photo to the press,’ Boyd says.
‘We are not releasing the photo,’ Miranda says.
‘Doesn’t have to be the whole thing. Crop it to a head shot.’
‘You gonna make me repeat myself?’
‘Just saying.’ Boyd scratches his beard.
‘We’ll give it another day. It’s going to be traumatic enough for the family without seeing it in the press.’
‘Can I come with you to the medical examiner?’ the rookie says. ‘I found him. I feel like I should see him through.’
‘Fine by me, Sparkles,’ Gabi says. ‘If your precinct commander signs off on it. But you better know that if you’re in, you’ve bought a ticket for the whole ride. I will use you.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Ovella, can you get on the Michigan Intelligence Center? Mike, you’ve got a friend in the FBI, right?’
‘I don’t have any friends, Gabriella, you know that.’ No, just three kids and a happy marriage to a human resources manager. It’s what makes him such a colossal wise-ass. He can afford to be.
‘If you could talk to someone with access to a better database than we have, that would be helpful. And it would be worth a beer.’
‘Make it a six-pack.’
‘Okay, people, everybody clear? You find anything, you let me know soon as.’
‘What if we run out of minutes and have to radio it in?’ Sparkles asks.
‘Use a code.’
‘How about “Faline”?’ Croff says, tapping away at his smartphone.
‘What’s that?’
He turns the screen to show them. ‘Bambi’s girlfriend in the movie. And that’s you now, isn’t it, Gabriella?’
There’s enough laughter that she lets it go. ‘Fine. Faline it is. Everyone else, we’re calling in to all the precincts. Similar stiffs, MOs, any connections. Start local, go as far as it takes. Biggest priority is identifying the boy and finding the rest of him. The deer too.’ She writes it down. The marker gives out on her halfway through ‘find the rest’. She throws it at the wall.
‘Is there one fucking pen in this precinct that writes?’
Clayton disappeared into the work. Otherwise he had too much time to think, about his cracked windshield and the dent in his grill and the blood on the tarpaulin in the back of his truck. Everything was so muddled in his head. The memories were like silverfish, that skittered away into dark corners. It was