Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Read online

  His first thought was that Suzan’s psychiatrist had called him in, or worse, placed a complaint. But given his history, he knew that the strangely silent radio now clipped to his hip would have crackled like the Fourth of July if that were the case.

  You’re imagining things just like back at the school, he scolded himself.

  They had nearly reached the yellow police tape with the ubiquitous CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS written on it, when a young woman, not much older than Suzan herself, came toward him. She was short, maybe five-four, with dark brown hair tucked neatly behind her ears. Her eyes, which were locked on him, were a brilliant green color, but aside from them and a slight blush to her cheeks, her face was otherwise devoid of color.

  A reporter? Some broad straight out of NYU trying to boost her blog ratings? How did she get past the uniforms?

  Drake reached out and put a hand on the officer’s shoulder in front of him.

  “Hey, what’s she doing here? She a reporter? I—” hate reporters, he was about to say, when the man shrugged him off awkwardly and continued forward.

  Before he could speak again, the woman, for despite her short stature and smallish features he now saw was in her mid-thirties, lifted the yellow tape and tilted her head as an invitation for him to duck under.

  “Homicide Detective Damien Drake,” he said curtly. The woman nodded and again gestured for him to pass under the tape.

  This time he obliged.

  When he was on the other side, she turned and started down what he now saw was an alley that extended for maybe a hundred and fifty yards.

  He reached out again, but pulled his hand at the last second.

  “Umm, and you are?” he said, trying not to sound like a complete asshole.

  She craned her neck around, and he was surprised that she was holding a hand out to him.

  “Chase Adams.”

  Drake hesitated, his eyes darting to her hand, before coming back to her face.

  “Yeah, but who are you?”

  A hint of a smile crossed her lips.

  “Homicide.”

  Drake raised an eyebrow, then quickly lowered it when he realized that his reaction was not only expected, but desired, as well.

  “I’m your new partner.”

  Chapter 4

  Drake scratched at the beard that was starting to grow on his face, the length of which surprised him.

  “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”

  Chase squinted up at him, her manicured eyebrows knitting.

  “You don’t know about that? Well, here’s what I know: there’s a dead body here,” she sighed as if this whole interaction was an incredible bore. “If this is going to be a problem, take it up with Sergeant Rhodes.”

  And with that, she spun on her flats and started down the alley. Drake watched her go for a moment, trying to catch his bearings.

  Partner? No one told me about a partner—shit, nobody told me about anything. Just, “take six months off, get cleared by the head shrink, then come back”.

  That was it.

  Not, hey we are going to team you up with some rookie homicide detective, a replacement for your partner. Shit, he’s been dead for a half year now, isn’t that long enough? Aren’t you over him yet?

  He cleared his throat, and then wished that he still had another sip of Johnny to get him through what was already turning out to be a bumble fuck of a day.

  With a shake of his head, he hurried after Detective Adams.

  “Wait up,” he said, but she didn’t slow. It was only when he made it up next to her did she start speaking, only she didn’t look at him this time.

  “White male, mid- to late-thirties,” she said, her voice flat, even. “Naked from the waist up, hands bound behind his back.”

  Drake’s brow furrowed.

  “Shirtless? What about the shoes?”

  Chase hesitated, but only for a moment.

  “Ah, dispatch,” she said with an air of understanding. “Yeah, dress shirt, suit jacket. Laid out nicely on a chair. Was still wearing his shoes; looks like they’re made of snake or alligator skin. Expensive.”

  Drake nodded. Clearly, robbery was not the motive.

  “Cause of death?”

  Chase shook her head.

  “Unknown.”

  As they walked, Drake was keenly observing his surroundings, trying to piece together what had happened. The alley was narrow, devoid of street lights. A place to be avoided by a man wearing six or eight hundred dollar shoes. Clinton Hill was known for its junkies and the occasional prostitute, but mostly the former.

  Alligator shoes was a new one for him.

  “Is the medical examiner on the way?”

  Chase nodded.

  “A senior medical examiner by the name of… Dr. Beckett Campbell? Yeah, I think that’s it. You know him?”

  Something happened to Drake’s face then, something so foreign that at first he thought he was stricken by some sort of palsy. But after a moment, he realized what it was: a hint of a smile.

  Beckett was young, with bleach blond hair and tattoos covering both arms, which Drake suspected extended to his back and chest too, although he hadn’t had the opportunity to confirm.

  Beckett Campbell was pretty much the antithesis of Drake himself, but maybe that’s why he appreciated the man as he did. That, and Beckett had a way of speaking that made Drake feel like he had been to medical school, and not a fucking idiot who squeaked through high school by the thinnest of margins. In fact, it was probably this attitude and approach that had made Beckett so amenable to both his peers and to homicide, which had, in turn, more than likely contributed to his rapid rise to Senior Medical Examiner.

  “Yeah, I know him. Good guy. Better doctor.”

  Drake allowed his eyes to drift as he spoke. The alley was long and narrow, flanked on one side by a chain-link fence, and a row of buildings on the other. There were doors marking the building, all of them handleless and flush with the brick wall, mostly as a deterrent to burglars, although Drake hadn’t an idea what a potential robber would hope to steal here.

  All the doors looked the same, except for the red one that he didn’t need his detective skills to know that they were headed towards. That one was covered by yellow crime scene tape.

  “Who discovered the body?” he asked, eyes drifting to the windows that started ten or more feet up, all of which were covered with bars.

  “A junkie—Rachel Adams, no relation.”

  Drake waited for her to continue, but when she offered nothing else, he prodded. It was like pulling teeth.

  He shook his head and resolved himself to starting over.

  “Look, Chase, I think—”

  Chase suddenly stopped and turned to look at him. He expected coldness based on the abruptness of the maneuver, but was surprised by the solemn, almost sad expression on what he now conceded wasn’t just a face, but a pretty face.

  “Damien—”

  “Please, just call me Drake.”

  She raised an eyebrow as if to say, oh, so now we’re chummy, but then the look vanished.

  “Okay, Drake. I just want to let you know that I’m not here to replace Clay. I heard that you guys were close, and I’m sorry to hear about what happened to him. I know…” her eyes became vacant for a moment, then she shook her head briefly. “I just want to solve this crime, and move on to the next, you know?”

  Drake nodded and then surprised himself by holding out his hand. She looked at it, and he instantly recognized the expression.

  It was the same one that he had given Chase when she had offered her hand to shake. But unlike him, she grabbed his and pumped it twice.

  Her hand was soft and strangely cool to the touch despite the sun beating down on them. Drake went to pull his hand away, but she held firm and then drew him closer. The act, as well as the strength in her small frame, surprised him.

  “And don’t drink next time you come to my crime scene, alright?”

  Drake’s ey
es bulged slightly, and he looked away, feeling his ears go hot again. Chase released her grip and a smile returned to her face.

  Then she turned and continued down the alley, and Drake followed.

  Chapter 5

  “So the tweeker Rachel called it in?”

  Chase nodded, lifting the police tape across the red door and gesturing for Drake to enter. He hesitated.

  “After you.”

  Another eyebrow raise, but Chase made no move to enter.

  Drake shrugged.

  Chivalry really is dead.

  He crossed the threshold first.

  “Yes,” Chase answered, following him inside. “She’s down at the station now giving an official statement. Said that last night around three am, she was awoken by someone pounding on the back door, yelling to open up.”

  Drake’s shoes crunched on the ground and he looked down. It appeared as if someone had laid a thick layer of sand across what he thought might be concrete.

  “And she did?”

  Chase nodded.

  “She opened the door, then says that our vic pushed by her and went inside. Said he looked scared, eyes red, like he had been crying, maybe. Could have just been the rain though.”

  Drake remembered the drying puddles in the alley outside.

  “And then what?”

  “Rachel says someone bopped her over the head, and she was knocked out cold. Woke up in the alley a few hours later, came inside and found the body.”

  Drake cocked his head.

  “She said that the man knocked at three and she was out cold for an hour or two… so why are we only getting here at—” he checked his Timex, “eleven-thirty?”

  “She says she was scared, didn’t know what to do.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Rachel Adams is well known to the police—the uniform that took her to the station had arrested her twice himself: once for possession of crystal, the other for soliciting. The way I figure it, is that she needed to clean up some of her product before calling it in.”

  Drake thought about this for a moment.

  “Which would explain why she opened the door at three am instead of calling the uniforms right away. Probably expecting a custy or a delivery. She mention that she was waiting for someone? Her pimp? A dealer?”

  Chase reached over to a small box on the floor and pulled out blue shoe covers. After putting them over top of her flats, she offered a pair to Drake. He took them and slid them over his worn loafers.

  “That’s what I was thinking. But no pimp. Uniforms say that she just turned tricks on her own in order to score—wasn’t a regular thing. A dealer makes more sense.”

  Drake bit his lip.

  “Did you ID the vic?”

  Chase shook her head.

  “No wallet.”

  “Hmm. Give the station a call, get them to question her about a wallet. If she was turning tricks to score some dope, I wouldn’t put it by her to steal a dead man’s wallet.”

  Chase stared at him for a moment, and Drake looked back, confusion washing over him. When her eyes darted to the radio on his belt, he realized why.

  “Sorry,” he grumbled. “It’s just that Clay was always the one to call things in. We can talk to her directly when we get back to the station.”

  Chase reached for her radio and unclicked it.

  “That’s alright, I’ll let them know to hold her until we come in.”

  While she made the call, Drake looked around.

  They were in what appeared to be some sort of warehouse. One of the officers had set up a bright light in the corner, which cast the entire space in an artificial glow with hard shadows.

  He guessed the main room was eighteen to twenty feet long, but only about ten feet wide. The sand on the ground was disturbed in many places, and he saw long, flat depressions at regular intervals.

  It was a crack den, he was sure of it; the deep indents were from people sleeping on the floor. Toward the back of half of the room was a white plastic sheet that ran floor to ceiling, behind which he could make out the bright halos of other lights.

  There were several used condoms on the floor and a smashed bong by one wall, all of which had yellow tags with numbers on them placed beside each item. There were two uniforms inside the warehouse, and perhaps more behind the plastic curtain based on the shadows he noted within; one was busy taking pictures of the paraphernalia, while the other had his nose buried in his cell phone.

  He kicked at the sand with his covered shoe. Then he turned to Chase, who had since reclipped her radio to her hip.

  “Not going to find any usable footprints here,” he said. “What’s with the sand?”

  Chase started to walk toward the plastic curtain.

  “Junkies lay it down,” she paused. “You ever see someone deep in a k-hole?”

  Drake shook his head. He was familiar with the concept: essentially, if you injected enough Ketamine, your brain would completely disconnect from your body and you were lost in a sort of void.

  The k-hole.

  “Well, sometimes if you go deep enough, you can shit or piss yourself and not even know it.”

  Drake screwed up his face, and then leaned down and adjusted the boot coverings so that they covered his entire loafers.

  “So this is like some sort of kitty litter for crack addicts?”

  “Something like that.”

  When Drake continued to look at her, she raised a hand defensively.

  “What can I say? Worked as a Narc in Seattle for seven years.”

  Again, Drake was taken aback by this comment.

  Seven years? She can’t be older than… what? Thirty-three? Thirty-five at most?

  Chase looked away, clearly uncomfortable now.

  “Anyways, there’s something else you are going to want to see.”

  Drake had a feeling that this was coming.

  “The reason why our vic was shirtless?”

  Chase smiled.

  “Bingo,” she replied, then pulled back the curtain, revealing the crime scene.

  Chapter 6

  The man lay face down, his arms and legs bound behind his back by a single length of rope. There was a worn chair off to one side, and on it were laid a shirt and suit jacket, both of which looked to be draped with care as if to avoid wrinkles.

  The man’s back was bare, and on it was a crude, almost child-like image of a butterfly painted in a dark brown substance. The body of the butterfly, a simple, sausage-like shape with two projections near the top, ran nearly the length of the man’s spine, and the wings, two ‘B’ shapes, one backward, extended to his shoulder blades.

  “A butterfly,” Drake muttered unintentionally. This, he had not been expecting.

  “A butterfly,” Chase repeated. “Can’t confirm it yet, but it appears to be drawn in blood.”

  As Drake processed this information, he moved closer to the body. The uniformed police officer stepped aside to allow him access.

  The blood, if that was indeed what it was, didn’t appear to have come from the man’s back. In fact, aside from the drawing, his flesh appeared unmarked.

  Drake moved closer still, stepping near the man’s head and crouching on his haunches.

  The vic’s eyes were open, and what he suspected were hazel irises had turned slightly milky in death. He was clean-shaven, and his hair had recently been cut—short, professional.

  His pale lips were open slightly.

  “He was placed here after he was already dead,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  Chase appeared beside him.

  “How can you tell?”

  Drake reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pen, and then used it to indicate the area around the victim’s mouth.

  “See here? The sand is the same height as the rest of the area around the body. If he had still been breathing, his breath would have blown it away.”

  Drake squinted hard. In moving his pen around, he noticed what looked like a small a
mount of dirt at the corner of the man’s mouth, which didn’t fit with his otherwise manicured appearance. He got the impression that this was the type of man who would be mortified if caught with a piece of spinach lodged between two perfectly white teeth.

  He moved the pen toward the man’s face.

  “It looks like—”

  But the sound of the curtain being drawn back gave him pause.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Drake, my man. You should know better than to touch the body before a doctor is in the house.”

  Drake turned to see Beckett moving toward him, his shock of white blond hair spiked high atop his head. He was grinning, showing off a winning smile.

  Drake stood.

  “You’re not a real doctor.”

  The man shrugged.

  “That’s right, I only play one on TV,” he turned to Chase next. “And who’s this?”

  Chase extended her hand.

  “Chase Adams, Homicide.”

  He shook her hand, a short and perfunctory process, unlike his own experience, then turned to the body on the ground.

  “Beckett Campbell, at your service.”

  He whistled loudly.

  “Butterfly, huh?”

  In one fluid motion, he pulled a set of purple lab gloves from the pocket of his leather jacket—how many doctors wear leather jackets, Drake wondered—and slipped them on.

  “I think there’s something in his mouth, dirt maybe,” Drake offered.

  Beckett held up a finger.

  “In time, my friend. In time.”

  He straddled the victim’s body, and then closed his eyes as if in some sort of trance.

  Chase moved forward.

  “We think the vic died—”

  Beckett sucked in a deep breath and waved his arms dramatically.

  “Silence while I do my work.”

  Drake rolled his eyes, and Chase looked over at him. He shrugged and turned back to the charade.

  Beckett squatted over the man, looking as if he was going to sit on his back, and then gently prodded his ribs with two fingers. Apparently satisfied, he moved his hands upward, ending at the base of the man’s neck. After cradling his head briefly, Beckett stood straight, and then stepped over the body, moving toward where Drake had been moments ago.