Read The Devil's Menagerie for Free Online Page B
Authors: Louis Charbonneau
She looked dead.
Harry Malkowski didn’t want to stop riding. He didn’t want to give up his Saturday outing, he didn’t want to get involved. For a long moment he sat motionless on his bike, sweat drying under his fleece pullover and pants, a chill beginning to penetrate—and not only from the damp, cool air and drying perspiration.
He couldn’t leave her there like that, eating mud, dumped like a bag of garbage below the road. He just couldn’t.
There was a telephone next to a roadside cafe, the Bright Spot, about a mile back. Harry made it in record time on the ten-speed.
D ETECTIVE /F IRST C LASS Timothy Braden of the San Carlos Police Department’s Investigations Unit got the call at 6:08 A.M. that Saturday morning. He had had one of those nights where he went to sleep around midnight, woke up at two-thirty in the morning, the air heavy and the sheets clammy, and was still awake at four, watching the end of a 1940s
film noir
in which Dick Powell acted like a tough guy and the cops acted like surly jerks. Pretty much the way cops still acted, Braden mused.
Bleary-eyed and unshaven, he made it out of his apartment in ten minutes and pushed his unmarked car hard through the empty streets.
Mist swirled over the highway as he pulled up behind the flashing red and blue lights on a pair of black-and-whites. Two uniforms were waving curious drivers along. There wasn’t much vehicular traffic, but even at this hour—Braden logged in at the scene at 6:39—there were gawkers on the highway and along a bike trail on the inland side of the road. Braden immediately sensed the potential for a jurisdictional problem. The uniforms were sheriff’s deputies. Braden was San Carlos PD, and he wasn’t exactly sure if this wetland strip was within San Carlos city limits or was county land. More likely, it was U.S. government property.
Braden parked a short distance down the road on the apron and walked back to the bridge. The highway crossed a shallow creek, its bed about ten feet below the road. There was another bridge about thirty feet or so in from the highway, a wooden structure about five feet wide. It was here that most of the gawkers were clustered—morning joggers and bicyclists in their designer exercise outfits and Nikes. Braden had given up wondering what drew people to gape at scenes of blood and mayhem.
Braden nodded at two deputies who stood at one end of the bridge. He knew the older one, Al Borland, a beefy man with close-cropped gray hair, the mottled complexion of a heavy drinker and the generally skeptical view of humanity that cops acquired after twenty years on the job. Braden, whose own disposition was often questioned, got along with him fine.
“Morning, Al,” he said, nodding also at the younger deputy, whom he didn’t know. “What have you got?”
Borland stepped aside, giving Braden his first glimpse of the green plastic sheet at the edge of the muddy creek below them. “An ugly one,” he said.
Braden suspected he wasn’t talking about the victim.
“We haven’t touched her, just covered her up. We’re waitin’ on the techs.”
“You see enough to fill me in while we’re waiting?”
“Yeah, sure. She’s a young woman, maybe twenty. Caucasian, no ID. Not a stitch on her—that’s why the deputy used the tarp. Those footsteps on the bank, those are Deputy Reardon’s. He’s the one covered her.” Borland caught Braden’s glance and said, “Shit, Braden, you can’t blame him. There was already a crowd building up on that path over there. Some of those ghouls even have cameras, for Chrissakes. They’ll be peddling pictures all over the college campus by this afternoon. This is … she was a good-looking woman. Talk about sickos … these gawkers are almost as bad as the perp.”
“How was she done?”
“There’s a little blood, not much. She wasn’t done here. That’s why Reardon figured he wasn’t messin’ up a murder scene goin’ down there. There were no tracks.
Harry Malkowski didn’t want to stop riding. He didn’t want to give up his Saturday outing, he didn’t want to get involved. For a long moment he sat motionless on his bike, sweat drying under his fleece pullover and pants, a chill beginning to penetrate—and not only from the damp, cool air and drying perspiration.
He couldn’t leave her there like that, eating mud, dumped like a bag of garbage below the road. He just couldn’t.
There was a telephone next to a roadside cafe, the Bright Spot, about a mile back. Harry made it in record time on the ten-speed.
D ETECTIVE /F IRST C LASS Timothy Braden of the San Carlos Police Department’s Investigations Unit got the call at 6:08 A.M. that Saturday morning. He had had one of those nights where he went to sleep around midnight, woke up at two-thirty in the morning, the air heavy and the sheets clammy, and was still awake at four, watching the end of a 1940s
film noir
in which Dick Powell acted like a tough guy and the cops acted like surly jerks. Pretty much the way cops still acted, Braden mused.
Bleary-eyed and unshaven, he made it out of his apartment in ten minutes and pushed his unmarked car hard through the empty streets.
Mist swirled over the highway as he pulled up behind the flashing red and blue lights on a pair of black-and-whites. Two uniforms were waving curious drivers along. There wasn’t much vehicular traffic, but even at this hour—Braden logged in at the scene at 6:39—there were gawkers on the highway and along a bike trail on the inland side of the road. Braden immediately sensed the potential for a jurisdictional problem. The uniforms were sheriff’s deputies. Braden was San Carlos PD, and he wasn’t exactly sure if this wetland strip was within San Carlos city limits or was county land. More likely, it was U.S. government property.
Braden parked a short distance down the road on the apron and walked back to the bridge. The highway crossed a shallow creek, its bed about ten feet below the road. There was another bridge about thirty feet or so in from the highway, a wooden structure about five feet wide. It was here that most of the gawkers were clustered—morning joggers and bicyclists in their designer exercise outfits and Nikes. Braden had given up wondering what drew people to gape at scenes of blood and mayhem.
Braden nodded at two deputies who stood at one end of the bridge. He knew the older one, Al Borland, a beefy man with close-cropped gray hair, the mottled complexion of a heavy drinker and the generally skeptical view of humanity that cops acquired after twenty years on the job. Braden, whose own disposition was often questioned, got along with him fine.
“Morning, Al,” he said, nodding also at the younger deputy, whom he didn’t know. “What have you got?”
Borland stepped aside, giving Braden his first glimpse of the green plastic sheet at the edge of the muddy creek below them. “An ugly one,” he said.
Braden suspected he wasn’t talking about the victim.
“We haven’t touched her, just covered her up. We’re waitin’ on the techs.”
“You see enough to fill me in while we’re waiting?”
“Yeah, sure. She’s a young woman, maybe twenty. Caucasian, no ID. Not a stitch on her—that’s why the deputy used the tarp. Those footsteps on the bank, those are Deputy Reardon’s. He’s the one covered her.” Borland caught Braden’s glance and said, “Shit, Braden, you can’t blame him. There was already a crowd building up on that path over there. Some of those ghouls even have cameras, for Chrissakes. They’ll be peddling pictures all over the college campus by this afternoon. This is … she was a good-looking woman. Talk about sickos … these gawkers are almost as bad as the perp.”
“How was she done?”
“There’s a little blood, not much. She wasn’t done here. That’s why Reardon figured he wasn’t messin’ up a murder scene goin’ down there. There were no tracks.