A BRIEF EXCERPT from the forthcoming novel
The Injustice of Valor
by Gary Corbin
Chapter One
The moon ducked behind the clouds mere minutes after the power grid failed, plunging the small Berkshires town of Greenville, Connecticut into unexpected darkness. No home lights pierced the darkness, as the seasoned veterans of year-round rural living, many of whom had already gone to bed, hadn’t yet switched over to their generators. The few that remained awake knew that these outages, so common in the mountains in winter, rarely lasted longer than a few minutes. Fewer still drove anywhere that late, so the winding roads like Torrington River Highway and Valley Park Drive remained unlit by glaring headlights.
It was the perfect time and place to dump a body.
The corpse hit the Torrington River’s swift current almost exactly midway between sunset and sunrise on the second day following the fall equinox. Stirred up by stiff winds and threatening rain, the river swallowed the body into its black depths within seconds, each crash of whitecaps against the surface an exclamation point to its haughty declaration: You are mine. Nothing but food for the fishes, more bones to litter its cluttered floor.
So it happened, anyway, in the imagination of the individual who dumped the body down the rocky cliffs that hugged the frothy cascades below. No time to wait around to see the fishes devour the victim’s flesh. Unfortunate. To have seen the muscle and skin torn from bone would have crowned the evening’s achievement. Ridding the world of another sex offender who’d escaped justice, freed on some bullshit technicality argued by unethical lawyers, was a sight to be witnessed. Savored, even. Hell, the lawyers responsible for the perv’s freedom should join them.
Perhaps someday they would.
But not tonight. Tonight the world became a slightly better place, with one less sicko to prey upon the innocent. One fewer person—or perhaps several—would have to endure the painful, humiliating experience of that almost unimaginable violation of their body.
Almost unimaginable. To the unlucky few, they were all too imaginable.
Unforgettable, even.
Chapter Two
The phone rang on the desk of Officer Valorie Dawes, echoing off the pale walls and government-issue metal desks of the Women’s Anti-Violence Emergency Squad office. The ringing phone shattered her concentration on the case file open on her computer screen, a suspected sex offender dealing in child pornography. With reported cases of violence against women on the decline—a temporary phenomenon, Val believed—the Clayton police chief had sent some “crossover” cases, as he put it, onto their docket.
Val hated the “crossovers.” They diverted resources and effort away from the critical need of protecting women from rapists and domestic abusers, and the department had people better suited to the task of chasing down so-called “victimless” perverts. So, anything that distracted her from those cases was a welcome diversion.
The phone rang again, and this time she noticed that it was the main WAVE Squad line, and it also rang on all of the other desks in the office. Desks that, for the lunch hour, remained unoccupied.
“Dawes, WAVE Squad,” she said, answering on the third ring.
“Val, it’s Gil.” Her boyfriend, Sergeant Gil Kryzinski, headed up the police Dispatch unit, two floors down in the Clayton PD Headquarters building. “We’ve got something for you.”
Val sat up at attention. “Hello to you, too, darling,” she said in a teasing tone.
“Sorry,” he said, his tone warmer. “I wasn’t ready for you. I expected Petroni or Grimes to pick up. How’s your day going?”
“Boring,” she said. “Please tell me you have something good. Dinner reservations, perhaps. Or, you know, something in our actual mandate.”
Gil laughed. “You want me to tell you there’s been another horrible act of violence against a woman in Clayton? My sweet Valorie, I dare say you’re getting jaded.”
“Did you not hear the part about dinner reservations?”
“Touché. Unfortunately, what I do have might stand in the way of you getting dinner at all this evening.” His voice lowered an octave. “Greenville PD found a body in the river, and they think it might be one of ours.”
“One of our what?” she said. “Female residents?”
“Suspects,” he said. “A cold case you guys worked a few months ago. Guy by the name of Jason Larkin. Ring any bells?”
“Sure,” Val said. “Grimes headed up that case, but I helped him on it. Teen predator, got picked up soliciting high school girls with drugs and alcohol. I thought he was in jail.”
“His case went to trial a week or so ago, and he walked on some bullshit technicality,” Gil said. “Some irregularity about his confession, I think.”
“Bobby never mentioned that.” Val groaned. Grimes, her partner, enjoyed a stellar reputation as a master interrogator, getting confessions from suspects no one else could break. But he could get a little overly aggressive at times.
“Anyway,” Gil said, “Greenville wants to meet with you guys, compare notes, see if you have any leads on who might have offed him. Today, if possible.”
“But that’s over an hour away,” Val said. “And, wait a minute. They’re upriver from us. How would one of our bodies floated up to them?”
“They wouldn’t,” Gil said. “Which is why they’re keeping jurisdiction. But they need our help. I promised someone would call this afternoon.”
“Thanks a lot,” Val said. “Crap. This is what I get for volunteering to man the phones while everyone else gets Italian food.”
“I’ll it up to you,” Gil said. “I haven’t eaten either. Meet at one out front? I’ll make reservations at Girardo’s.”
“Ah, my wish has come true,” she said with a grin. “I can taste the cioppino already.”
Val’s smile persisted long after she’d hung up the phone and dug into the Larkin case file. She and Gil hadn’t gone out for lunch together in months. She’d blamed the tough winter weather and the alarming news about this so-called COVID-19 outbreak that had so many restaurants closing out of panic and short staffing. But she also wondered if some of the spark in their relationship had begun to fade. An impromptu lunch could prove just the antidote to their relationship doldrums.
***
Val got up to speed on the Larkin case and briefed Grimes on the news before slipping on a jacket to meet Gil for lunch. She sloughed the task of calling Greenville onto him, though. “I have a lunch date, and anyway, it’s your case,” she said.
“I can’t go out there today,” he complained, rubbing his balding pate and slumping in his chair. “Bobby Junior has a follow-up appointment at the doctor’s, and I promised Audrey I wouldn’t miss this one.”
“Try to handle it all by phone, then,” Val said, her stomach growling. She paused at the door, noting the worry on his face. Doctors had been treating his nine-year-old son with radiation for a brain tumor for the past six months, and the ordeal had aged and exhausted her partner. “If there’s no other way,” she said, “I’ll go, okay?”
“Thanks, Dawes. You’re the best.” He stared at his hands, folded on his desk, and appeared on the verge of tears.
Val exited to the hallway, pulling the office door closed behind her. Poor Grimes. She crossed her fingers, hoping the doctor’s news later that day would bring him fresh hope.
The news at the restaurant, though, brought only distress.
“Closed due to COVID,” read the hand-written sign on the front door of Girard’s.
“I take it you didn’t call to make reservations,” Val said, turning to face a disappointed Gil.
“They didn’t answer. I assumed it was because they were too busy,” Gil said. “Crap. Well, what else is open?”
They found an open hoagie shop nearby, but a sign on the door informed them that they could only enter if they wore masks. “I left mine back in the office,” Gil said. “Since when do restaurants require masks? I thought that was only hospitals and doctors offices.”
“It’s getting more common, according to CNN,” Val said. She searched her coat pockets and found a spare—a used one. “I’ll pop into Rite-Aid and buy a box of them,” she said.
Gil stopped her and took the used mask from her. “We’re fine reusing each others’ masks,” he said. “Hell, we’re swapping spit and God-knows-what-else on a regular basis. If we haven’t infected each other, we ain’t got it.”
“You say so,” Val said, dubious.
They ordered—turkey club for Val, meatball sub for Gil—and took a booth in the corner, away from other patrons.
“I can’t wait for this COVID thing to pass,” Gil said. “Some people are saying it’ll be over by Easter. I hope so.”
“Nobody’s saying that who knows what they’re talking about,” Val said. “Have you seen the news reports on hospital emergency rooms getting overwhelmed? And the doctors have no idea of how to treat it. It’s pretty scary.”
Gil shrugged. “I keep hearing it’s like a bad case of the flu,” he said.
“People die of the flu every year,” Val said. “Besides, Mr. I-Never-Get-Sick, when’s the last time you’ve gotten a flu shot?”
He waved her off. “In sixth grade. Which, by the way, is the last year I got the flu. So there’s that.”
She started to argue, then held off. He could be so damned stubborn, and, well, she didn’t really know any more about it than he did.
They nibbled at their lunch in silence for a while, their appetites suddenly dulled by the tension rippling through their conversation. After several minutes, Gil sipped his lemonade and asked, “So, are you heading to Greenville this afternoon?”
She shrugged. “Grimes is calling them to see what’s up. But he can’t go, so I told him I would.”
“So you won’t be home for dinner?” His tone seemed sharp. Agitated.
“I…don’t know. Why? You have plans?”
He rolled half of his sandwich up in its wrapper and closed his bag of chips. “I guess I’m having leftovers.”
“Gil, come on. What’s eating you? Something seems…wrong.”
He looked away. “I’m fine.”
She put a hand on his arm and spoke in a soft voice. “Did I do something wrong? What did I say?”
“Nothing. You haven’t done anything wrong, Val. I told you, I’m fine.”
She waited. Nothing more came. “You seem upset. If I—”
“I’m not upset, okay?” He glanced at his watch. “Are you almost done? I gotta get back soon.”
She glanced at her sandwich, half-eaten on her tray. “I’ll finish it at my desk.”
“Let’s go, then.”
They held hands while walking back, but left their masks on until they returned to headquarters, neither one talking until they reached the door.
“Let me know about Greenville,” he said, giving her a perfunctory hug.
“Are you sure nothing’s—”
“I’m sure. Val, I’m sorry, I just—there’s something on my mind, and I need to work through it.”
“Let me help you work through it.”
He shook his head. “I will. Not yet. It’s fine, though. Don’t worry, okay?”
She waited until his eyes met hers. “And we’re okay? You and me?”
He smiled, pulled off his mask, and kissed her. “We’re better than okay. We’re amazing.”
She held him for a long moment.
She worried.