701

By Stephen Johnson

The New Orleans murder rate is on the rise in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the city is reeling. With police resources on the decline, Homicide detective Sarah Renner and her partner Gabriel Lucas investigate a case where a gang member is found fatally stabbed in a local bar. The deeper the investigation leads them the more both detectives learn the lengths people will go to when their lives are torn apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Johnson
• Release date: Apr 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311688002

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701

A Detective Sarah Renner Short Story

By Stephen Johnson

Cover image by Lidia K.C.Manzo – New Orleans, March 2011

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Stephen Johnson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

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It was the kind of dive bar you had to go out of your way to find and was the perfect combination edgy and gross.

Nestled on the shoreline of the Industrial Canal, two blocks from the Claiborne Avenue Bridge, it was surrounded by potholed streets lined with derelict abandoned houses. Some of the lots were so consumed by weeds it was like a cancer as a cruel second act to Katrina. The pool table in the corner of the room and the Saints game that glowed on a screen hung precariously above the entrance seemed to draw in the loyal few stayers like mosquitos to a Louisiana porch light.

The kitsch and dimly lit bar created a place for the locals to retreat and go unnoticed. The gloom almost concealed the dark smear that ran down the tiled wall to the victim who sat slumped, hands loose on his chest. Head tilted, his lifeless eyes stared outward as if he were questioning his abrupt end – but no answers came. A Picture knocked from the wall had settled in the blood that had pooled around his body and tracked along the joints between the floorboards.

Detective Sarah Renner scanned the room; her eyes stopped on a paramedic shuffling paperwork on a nearby counter.

This how you found him?

The paramedic looked up.

Expired on arrival. We didn’t attempt to resuscitate, he replied, matter of fact, eager to get away.

She knelt and leant in to take a closer look. The cool air from the fan above washed across her back and cut through the sticky heat that hung in the room. Light from the bar flickered and reflected off the resin-like sheen from the sweat coating his dark skin.

Hey, who’s our victim? Renner asked, as she wiped her forehead with the back of her arm.

Detective, we done here, the paramedic interrupted. You’ll arrange someone to collect the body?

Renner nodded as she reached into the pocket of her dark grey trousers and retrieved a pen.

Sure, go. We got it.

She positioned the tip under his black t-shirt and lifted it to expose his torso. A heavy gold chain that hung around his neck settled into the loose fabric.

No entry wound, she muttered under her breath.

She looked up at her partner. "There’s what? six pints of