The Sewer was loud with laughter as Danny walked in. He’d just come from Vice, where he’d been trying to get some info on John Baker’s hooker friend. The Vice cops helped narrow it down to a couple of dozen girls who frequented the part of town that Baker lived in. They promised to put the word out on the street. Danny had figured that it wouldn’t be easy to find the girl. The woman was probably smart enough to know that her man had been killed, and if that was the case, she might have gotten spooked and gone to another state by now.
The laughter he heard came from some of the cops who were assembled and listening as Lisa Meadows told a story. Some clerical people were there as well as a couple of uniformed cops. Danny drifted over to see what was going on.
“Wha’sup?” Danny asked Erik.
“You missed it,” said Erik.
“Tell it again, Lis,” said Joe Canelli, a husky Italian cop. He was still laughing when he asked her.
“You do it this time, Gretch,” said Lisa to her partner, Gretchen Taylor. Lisa’s Brooklyn accent was still detectable even after years of living in the Midwest.
“Okay,” said Gretchen. “Lisa and me got a call that someone had a tip on that serial rapist working the west side, right? So, we go to this house and we hear a man screaming and something hitting the walls like this—” Gretchen rocked a desk. “‘Go, go, go!’ he screamed.”
The other officers who had heard the story laughed a little at this, knowing where it was going.
“So we kick in the door, pull out our guns, and identify ourselves as cops,” said Gretchen. “Well, what should we see but a man bent over a chair with his wife…”
“His two-hundred-pound wife,” added Lisa.
“…fucking this guy in the ass with one of them plastic strap-on dicks!”
Danny and Erik laughed along with the other officers at the visual image in their heads.
Gretchen waved everyone to quiet down then, “So they just look at us for a second in shock that we caught them, right?” Gretchen continued. “Then the man says ‘Latasha, we gotta talk to them. Take yo’ dick outta my ass.’”
They all laughed again at the punch line. Danny leaned on Erik and burst into laughter once more as Joe Canelli bent over and Gretchen demonstrated on him, smacking his backside and yelping like a cowboy.
The laughter stopped when Jim Cole’s door burst open. He thundered out of his office.
Jim made a beeline for Erik and Danny, and hardly stopped as he headed for the door. “Got another body,” he said. “In the river. We think it’s your man again.”
The Detroit River was choppy and tossed the big Coast Guard cutter up and down. The boat floated by the body, which was just off the Detroit shoreline. The corpse had actually been found on the Canadian side of the river, but it was a U.S. citizen, so they’d brought it over here. The Ontario police were present, but they were not doing much. The Canadians, just a mile from Detroit, had not had a murder in their city for several years and were eager to push the floater off on Detroit.
Fiona and her crew were already on the scene, and their preliminary investigation had led to a call to the SCU. The dead woman, though found in the river, had not drowned. She’d been shot several times with a small-caliber weapon.
It appeared that the body had been rolled into the water close to a construction site. The body was tangled in some debris, and had been hit by some kids in a boat.
The corpse was down a low grade by the shore. Danny motioned to Erik and walked down. Erik stayed behind talking to Jim Cole.
As Danny made his descent down the grade, he heard a helicopter overhead, then saw a big black sedan pull up. He knew the police brass had to be inside. The killer was now a multiple murderer, and that meant political control would be put on the case. Detroit was making an economic comeback and nothing was worse than a case like this. The press was being kept away from the scene, and all the detectives and uniforms had been told not to talk to anybody about the case.
Fiona and her team worked on the dead woman’s body, which was slimy and discolored. It was hard to tell what had caused the lack of color, the river or the method of death.
Danny regarded the body and suddenly it turned into his mother’s corpse lying there twisted and broken, a lifeless vessel. He was aware that he had stopped breathing in that instant. He calmed himself. No one could see him react this way. It was not professional.
“You okay?” asked Fiona.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Who is she?” He had to speak up because he’d stopped a good distance away from the forensic crew.
“Don’t know,” said Fiona. “She had ID on her, but the smart guys took it away.” Smart guys was Fiona’s word for Danny’s police superiors.
“Is it our man?”
“It’s our boy all right. Looks like he used the same weapon, a .22, and same kind of tape on the wounds. At least he didn’t cover the scene with dirt. He let the river do it for him this time. Smart bastard.”
“Why would he try to hide this one and not the Bakers?” Danny asked himself. “Why dump her like this?
“Don’t know,” said Fiona. “Who can figure out a sick fuck like this?” Her voice had a note of defeat in it.
Jacob, the new kid, barged into the conversation and before Fiona could stop him he was talking to Danny. “You know, it’s a miracle we ever found her,” he said. “The undertow in the river is strong.”
“Jacob, what are you doing?” asked Fiona. “Get back over there with the others and check the shore.”
“But there’s nothing there,” he said like a petulant kid in grade school.
Fiona just glared at him and soon he walked off. “Eager fuckin’ beaver,” she said. “But he was right. The undertow should have carted her off to the Eastern seaboard, but see this big gash here.” Fiona pointed to an unsightly wound on the woman’s back. “Our boy didn’t do that. We think her back got caught on something down there and it held her. Then the joyriders hit her.” Fiona turned suddenly and admonished one of her workers.
“Fiona, I’m gonna need all your genius on this, baby. I want to know everything. If our man is trying to throw us off the trail, then we gotta stick to it that much more.”
“You got it, Danny, and I like that ‘baby’ thing. Sexy.”
Danny moved back up the grade and saw that Erik and Jim were in a crowd now. With them were Tony Hill, the Deputy Chief, and Chief of Police Vernon Noble. Erik stood a few paces off from the big shots and said nothing. Danny did the same as he joined them.
“The mayor wants this shit wrapped tight, fellas,” said Chief Noble. “We need a lid on this and anyone who talks is ass out.”
“Impossible,” said Tony. “We got a crew of seven down there, six uniforms, not including the Canadians, and three detectives already, not to mention the reporters with their fancy camera lenses.” Tony pointed to the helicopter hovering over the scene. “So, it’s gonna get out. Tell the mayor that he has to beat the press to it and release a statement ASAP.”
Noble nodded and pulled out a cell phone. Tony and Jim shared a quick smile. Everyone knew that Noble was just warming the Chief’s seat for Tony. Tony was running the department and every officer understood that if you had a real problem, he was the man to see. Tony motioned Danny and Erik to come closer.
“Okay, fellas, you caught the case,” said Tony. “So you’re gonna be the men on this. You’re gonna hear some shit about how Jim and I are personally taking this case, but don’t believe it. This is yours, and we’ll need you to act like it.” Tony looked over to Jim.
“The floater is Olittah Reese, one of the mayor’s chief aides,” said Jim.
Danny thought for a second, then he remembered the name. It was the flirtatious woman he’d met at Virginia Stallworth’s fund-raising party. Instinctively, Danny looked back at the body, remembering how pretty she was. He saw her walking away from him, the subtle sway of her hips, the elegant way her long legs stepped, and the smoothness of her neck as she turned to look back at him. A sadness washed over him. He looked at Erik, who had the same emotion written on his face.
“If this murder is related to the first,” said Jim Cole, “then we’ve got two killings linked to the mayor.”
“I assume his security is going to be beefed up,” said Erik.
“Already done,” said Tony. “So you can see the greater implications of this.”
Tony said nothing, but Danny knew he was referring to Harris Yancy, the former mayor who’d been murdered in office. It was a nasty affair, one that no one had forgotten.
Noble came back and shoved the cell phone at Tony. He took it and stepped away with the Chief.
“We’ll establish a team of men to assist you,” said Jim. “From this moment, the case is your top priority. Got anything that looks like a lead?”
Before Erik could answer, Danny said, “Yes, sir, we got a hooker who had a little booty thing with Mr. Baker.”
“A hooker?” said Jim with interest. Danny knew that Jim was making the same sordid connections in his head that he had. “Where do you think she is?”
“She’s a local girl, so we’re going to shake some trees,” said Danny.
Erik dummied up. Danny knew he’d get it as soon as this conversation was over. But Danny didn’t like to tell his boss that he had nothing.
“Good,” said Jim. “When you get her, I’m your first call.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jim walked away, and at the same time, Erik tapped Danny on the shoulder.
“What the fuck, man?” said Erik.
“You know Jim,” said Danny. “If we had said we had nothing, what would he say?”
“Get your asses out and find something.”
“There you go. We got the same pressure, only he’s not pissed at us.”
“I won’t argue,” said Erik. “We’ll be waiting forever on Vice to find her. So, let’s go find us a hooker.”
“I think we should split up, ask around. We’ll cover more ground, and if we go together, people will think we’re looking to bag her. She’ll get tipped off and scatter.”
Erik agreed. If they went together, it would look like an official investigation to the folks in the hood. People would be less likely to give up info. And if the girl was connected to a murder, everyone on the street would know it.
The other reason Danny wanted to separate was that he liked to work alone when he went into the neighborhoods. Each time he went back, it was like opening a door to his past, a past where danger was always a word, thought, or mistake away. Danny was already excited about the prospect, his mind running lists of contacts and things he might have to do.
“You takin’ the east side, I guess,” said Erik.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “I got a couple of people who might have something.”
“I’m gonna do the same on the west side,” said Erik.
They walked back to their car, and Danny could see the line of uniforms holding several TV crews at bay not far off. Absently, Danny thought about Vinny, and how this case would now consume him, and that might make things worse between them. Danny turned and looked back at Fiona and her crew. They were lifting the body and placing it into a long, black bag.