The Junior Officer

By Judith Boswell

Chief of Police Bret Skoal is being blackmailed. A videotape showing his excessive use of force on a group of unarmed teenagers has been shipped overnight to the department, just in time to complicate an ongoing homicide investigation. Officer Robbie Brooks is five years sober, and barely hanging on to his job thanks to Chief Skoal. He's desk bound and bored, but at least he's still alive, so long as his old partner doesn't come back to finish him. Rookie Lou Culpepper frequently blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, because reality is often so damn unsatisfying. That's all about to change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781613091739

Book preview

One

Sheila Vance found the body next to her morning paper. The delivery man had thrown the newspaper into the bushes again, and grousing, she was in her slipper feet in the half light, poking through the dead leaves twenty seconds or so before she realized what was there. To her credit, Ms. Vance did not scream. She shuffled backward, and the only thing she could be heard to utter was I’ll be damned. Through the morning fog of her mind, she tried to remember whether it would be 911, or the local police station line she should call.

Officer Robbie Brooks answered on the first ring as he had been trained, and also because he had, truth be told, been playing with the cord for the past fifteen minutes, instead of finishing his paperwork on the recent spate of vandalism reported in the north side neighborhood.

Ms. Vance had been slowly but surely working herself into a tizzy. She was semi-coherent, but quite loud about it. The first words poor Robbie could make out were dead and newspaper. He wondered if he shouldn’t refer the woman to a circulation desk, but he asked her to repeat her story again, and to take her time at it. He was as patient as he could be, considering the last cup of coffee had worked its way through his system at that point and he needed to relieve himself.

I don’t know who it is, or if it’s really dead. I couldn’t check for a pulse, you know. It’s just a body by my newspaper...there’s never been a body there before, but it could have turned up before the paper did. They just chuck it out of the moving car, you know?

The body was thrown from a vehicle, ma’am?

Not the body. The newspaper, she positively shouted.

That’s generally how it’s done, Robbie said blandly.

The body??

No, the paper. Look, I’ve sent an officer around. I need you to be calm, and stay put until he shows up. He’ll take a look and he’ll need to take your statement again. I suggest you don’t try to get your paper, or go near the body again.

But I’ve already brought it indoors, Ms. Vance yelped.

The body?

No. The newspaper. And the line went dead.

Robbie went to pee.

THE FIRST COP ON THE scene was Lou Culpepper. He had heard Robbie’s dispatch, and did a U-ey in the empty street. It was still predawn, and his shift wasn’t begun yet, but he was closest to the scene, and he put his siren on and floored it away from the station.

Lou liked to build up speed. The police standard issue engine couldn’t race the way he’d like it to—it hiccoughed a bit going up steep hills, and hesitated just between eighty and ninety mph, but he could still pretend he was a drag racer coming down the track. Lou was the youngest cop on the force, and he worked as if he had something to prove, except for those times when his head was as far from his work as could be. He could never help these flights of fancy, as his first grade teacher used to call them. He’d be engaging in a perfectly routine sweep of the block when suddenly, he just knew he was a jaded detective with a full moustache and a passel of hungry mouths to feed at home, on the trail of a desperate fugitive, a fugitive who had a few tricks up his sleeve... He swung a wide corner, momentarily distracted by his music choices.

That was when he heard Robbie’s radio signal, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure whether his fugitive hadn’t just left another body in his wake, or whether Lou was just a junior small town police officer, looking into a reported body by notorious storyteller Sheila Vance.

Sheila answered her door before he had finished knocking. She was still dressed in a fuzzy nightgown and a pair of muddy men’s work boots. She looked positively indignant.

Would you mind showing me where you found the body? Lou asked, after she had finished her account/tirade. Sheila did not alarm him in the slightest, as she was a fairly good representation of the neighbor ladies he had tormented with noise and boisterousness growing up.

In response, Sheila mutely gestured toward the overgrowth of creeping vine and brambles on the far side of the driveway. She did not volunteer to accompany him, which gave her story a bit more credibility.

Lou flipped on a flashlight, although it did not make a huge difference in the grey half-light of early morning. He approached the bramble with some trepidation, having a vivid imagination and a less than manly stomach. The body was indeed there, and would have been immediately visible had he turned off the high beams as he had pulled into the drive.

The victim was male, large, at least 250 pounds, and lying face down. Lou couldn’t discern any other characteristics until the paramedics showed up to move him. He did jot down the clothing (khakis, blazer, white Adidas sneakers) and the blood pool thickening around his head. Lou had seen dead bodies before, in funeral parlors, in hospitals, and a few horrible times in car wrecks and the like. This body, though, had not succumbed to old age or happenstance, and more closely resembled the corpses of his imagination than he would have thought possible. The victim had most likely been lying there since his death, possibly even killed on the spot a short time ago. Lou Culpepper looked around the driveway wildly.

The paramedics came before he had a chance to freak out completely. They were followed shortly by four other squad cars. Lou let out a groan as he saw the chief’s car careening to a stop across the street. He straightened his uniform, squared his shoulders, and tried by force of will to keep his stomach from churning. The chief made Lou nervous in a way that a fresh corpse couldn’t even manage.

Chief of Police Bret Skoal swung himself out of his car. At six foot seven inches, he towered over the paramedics and officers alike as he strode briskly across the street. A lonesome howl came from his car, but he ignored the sad brown eyes glued to the cracked car window. You, he barked to Lou, Fill me in here, and made it quick.

Y—yes, Chief, Lou stammered, trying to straighten his posture. He became more flustered as the chief advanced toward him. He tried to make eye contact, but found himself staring at his neck for no reason. We found a body here in this shrubbery. It was first noticed by the resident, a Ms. Vance, who notified headquarters d—directly. I’ve t—taken her statement and the paramedics have collected samples and, um... Lou had a sinking feeling he was forgetting something important. In fact, he was sure there was something else he should have done—booked the dame, checked the bushes for fibers, or something. He glanced back down at his notes and was relieved to see that he’d touched on the important points.

And by your observation, then, Chief Skoal peered down at him through bushy eyebrows, his eyes narrowing a bit as he spoke the words slowly, is there anything suspicious about this scene?

Y—yes sir, this was a h—homicide. Sir.

Was it now? Skoal’s eyes widened spectacularly. I expect you should lead off with that then, don’t you?

BACK AT HEADQUARTERS, Robbie was finishing up his emergency call log and looking forward to falling asleep in front of the TV. As eventful as the night had been, his eyes couldn’t help but feel heavy, his neck a little looser, and his brain a little fuzzier. He could swear he heard Columbo, the department’s canine mascot, barking out in the parking lot. But that couldn’t be the case. He had to be imagining things. Working nights was no good for one’s mental health. He walked over to the conference room to refresh his coffee and returned the long way through the lobby, whistling a slow singsong melody.

But the barking continued, followed by a scratch-scratch of canine claws on the plexiglass siding. Rounding the corner, Robbie saw a pair of mournful brown eyes and heard the joyful yelp of a puppy home at last.

Columbo, down boy, Robbie laughed. What have you done with the rest of them? Columbo just wagged his tail and licked Robbie’s hand while he looked around for a leash. He caught a glimpse of something caught in Columbo’s teeth. Whoa boy, he said, holding the Husky mix still. Let me get a look at you. What’d you bring back, hm?

Lodged in Columbo’s mouth was a chewed up piece of paper. Robbie was about to chuck it when he saw that it looked like a legal document of some kind. He could just make out a state seal and the blue ink of a watermark. Curious enough, he tried to unfold the paper to read it, but it was so wet, he was afraid of tearing it. He was also kind of nonplussed to be handling a dog chew toy. Columbo barked and licked Robbie’s arm. Obviously he thought this was some swell kind of game.

Setting aside the paper for a moment, Robbie found a tennis ball and tossed it down the hallway, bouncing it neatly off the chief’s office door. Columbo had about as much focus as he did, though, and the game devolved into a single player session. Not too long now, thought Robbie, noticing the chewed off bits of leash at the end of Columbo’s collar.

Chief Skoal pulled into the police department parking lot, and squeezed into his spot by the front door. He took the frayed leash out from the back seat and stormed up the walkway. No one spoke when he entered the building, and Columbo appeared to be sleeping under Officer Brooks’ chair.

Go home, Brooks, he said. We’ll need help around the clock with this one. He swung around and made his way to his office, where he slammed the door shut and threw the defunct leash down on the desk.

THE CHIEF’S DESK WAS covered with stuff. Papers, yes, but also paper cups, sweatshirts, books, candy wrappers and a large bottle filled with loose change. He had a small, 9 X 13 inch space which he created each morning by pushing the previous day’s debris into a more compact heap. Many times, the janitorial staff had offered to tidy up and file/throw out the horde, but he had always responded with a rhetorical, Do I look like I need a maid?

Now he was looking for a newspaper clipping he knew he’d seen earlier in the week, and he was cursing his disorganized junk. He yanked over the trashcan and began throwing out the take-out boxes and coffee cups, making decent headway until he came to what he’d been looking for. This obtained, he sank once again into his chair, the cleaning project wiped from his mind completely.

He had clipped the article yesterday, without quite knowing why it had caught his attention. A Virginia bartender had been found dead on a well-manicured golfing green in a small suburb of Richmond. The case had been ruled accidental, no sign of foul play, but had caused a great amount of disturbance to the neighbors. One neighbor was even quoted as saying, If something like this can happen here, it really makes you feel like nowhere is safe.

Sure, the chief had guffawed at that. Accidental deaths can happen anywhere at any time, but he had still felt sorry for the police up there, trying to investigate a dead body without stirring up a public outcry. Now, here he was, sure that this one had been no accident, and equally sure that the town would balk at any suggestion otherwise. He set the article aside to think about later. Maybe there was some truth to it. Things like this didn’t happen in a town like this, but it didn’t make it any less ordinary.

LOU CULPEPPER WAS PRETTY shaken up still, and he couldn’t understand how the other officers could sit and do paperwork while there was a murder to solve. Sure, they had to wait for fingerprint analysis in hopes they could find a match on the John Doe victim, and okay, they also needed an autopsy to confirm the manner of death, but didn’t they have something to work on yet? Someone to bring in for questioning? He would have brought in everyone on the block and put them in separate rooms, grilled them to see if their stories matched. At least, that was one idea he had, just off the top of his mind. He wished the department could afford an honest-to-god homicide division, and a crack forensics team too. Then he wouldn’t be sitting on his hands and waiting for the phone to ring.

Exasperated by his under-utilized skills, Lou went for a coffee run. He got himself a red eye, with five packets of sugar, his usual pick-me-up. He felt a little better and gunned his car back to the station, the Who’s Pinball Wizard on his iPod.

Dispatch came over the radio, and he had to turn the music down—a peeping tom complaint south of campus. He made another U-ey and gunned his way down the highway. This was more like it, doing something, getting things done. He hummed the last few bars, tapping his fingers in rhythm on the steering wheel, and coasted through downtown, missing all the red lights, heading for the college campus.

He could just see it, a young college sophomore, alone in her room, poring over her books, so intent on learning she doesn’t see the masked man in the tree outside her window, until she gets up to refresh her cup of green tea, and there he is. She shrieks. Her tea cup falls to the floor, the leaves spelling out her fate. But not so fast, masked tree climber—help is on the way. For the young college maiden has a cell phone handy. She calls 911, and mere minutes later...

Actually, the response time was nothing to write home about. Lou was stuck at a grinding halt on campus, where meandering pedestrians didn’t even look up from their smartphones to cross the street. He couldn’t risk weaving through the jammed intersection, not without hitting some dumb kid. He thrummed on the steering wheel in frustration, radioed his location, and thrummed some more.

Finally, the light turned green, and he crawled across campus, turning onto a side road and pulling up to a flat brick quadplex. The woman answering the door was apologetic in demeanor, and she wiped her hands on the back of her skirt before she reached out to shake his hand. She had a child with her, a boy of four or fice, half hidden behind her. Lou stepped inside to take down his report.

I guess I should have called earlier, but I didn’t believe Dennis at first. He has such a vivid imagination, you know, but usually it’s something he’s seen on TV the night before, or something from a book. Anyway, he woke me up in the middle of the night. The time was two-thirty when I tucked him back in, so this was probably at two-twenty or so. He told me that he was scared and that he had seen a large man outside the window. He said the man was hurt. I looked out his window as I was leaving his room, but like I said, I thought he was making believe, so I didn’t look very hard. I didn’t see anything myself, but this morning when he woke up, Dennis just couldn’t stop talking about it, and I could tell he was real scared, and he remembered details too, that the man had dark hair, had a cut on his arm, and was carrying something. Dennis said he couldn’t tell what the man was carrying, and that’s what convinced me to call you... she paused and put her arms around her son. If he had made this all up for fun, he could have told me what the man was carrying, see?

Yes, ma’am, Lou replied, jotting the rest of the description down in his notebook. He squatted down and made eye contact with the boy. Can you tell me what you told your mom, Dennis, about the man at your window?

Dennis blushed and hid behind his mother’s arms. I dunno, he said. He was very scary. His coat was bleeding. Except that Dennis was popping marshmallows or something in his mouth as he spoke, so the words didn’t come out that clearly. It could have been throat, or tote, or even boat. His mother didn’t seem to notice.

Lou stood back up and thanked the woman. Let me know if your son remembers anything else. I’ll take a walk around the property, but since this was six hours ago, I doubt he’s still hanging around. Thanks for your time.

Lou did a perimeter check, looking for signs of a large man, or for any trace of blood around. He couldn’t find anything of interest in the yard. He figured he’d knock on the neighbor’s doors too, to see if any of them had heard or seen anything. It seemed like a dead end though, in a morning that had so far been one weak episode.

VI CLEMMONS FROM CHANNEL ten showed up with a camera crew ready to go. Chief Skoal had no idea where she got her tips, but he had known she would be the first to hound him...she always was. Columbo leapt to alert and growled at her as she walked through the door. He slipped him a biscuit on the sly, pretending to make him stay. Then he walked out to meet her.

No names, no findings, no comments, he said, almost as a mantra.

Why, Chief, I haven’t asked you anything yet. Vi smiled.

What do you want to know?

I’m so glad you asked. Would you go on record, confirming that a body has been found earlier this morning, around five forty-five a.m. to be precise?

Well, yes, I can confirm that.

No, say it into the camera. That’s the ticket. Just repeat the words on this script I printed up for you.

The chief ripped the page out of her hands and took a cursory glance at it. There was a lot of hooey in it, probably taken from Sheila Vance. The description of the victim sounded pretty close to accurate, but there was no way anyone had run a head shot through the FBI’s database. They had barely cleaned the head up in the morgue. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Clemmons, but I can’t imagine where you’re getting your information.

Vi teetered out in her ridiculous heels, cameramen in tow. He figured he had 20 minutes of peace before the phones started ringing off the hook.

The chief spent the next few hours poring over the FBI’s most wanted headshots with no results. The man he had seen dead this morning was not a man he had ever seen, and that was a fact. He gave Columbo a biscuit from his pocket and called the morgue to get a progress update.

The ten o’clock news brought a special announcement to the community. A body had been found, possibly of a convicted felon, though possibly not, but definitely on Sheila Vance’s property. Several other members of the community had possibly seen the same man during the night, in his final hours, but nothing had been confirmed. There was a killer on the loose. Or possibly it had been an act of self-defense.

In other words, you’ve got ‘bupkis’, Chief Skoal seethed at the TV monitor. He was sitting in a booth, waiting for his coffee and ham biscuit, and wishing he had not seen the news. The coroner still had nothing for him, DNA tests would take time, and might bring him nothing, and he had no witnesses to question, and no evidence to catalogue. He had spent the morning on the phone, which gave him a pinched neck and a surly disposition.

LOU WAS PRETTY SURE he had landed on something important. The boy had obviously seen the man mere hours before he was discovered dead uptown. The fact that no other neighbors had noticed anything did not discourage him; they’d all been sleeping after all, and he was sure that if he brought in a crack team of forensics types, they could piece together the whole tragic story with shreds of microscopic skin cells, and the like. However he was called back up by the chief to report in and bring him a coffee, so he made his way back. At the coffee shop, he saw the pretty anchorwoman from Channel ten, and told her they may have had an eyewitness to the victim already. He couldn’t go on record yet, of course, but it could be the same guy.

She agreed to keep things quiet until he knew more, and gave him her card with her cellphone number, Just in case you think of something else, she smiled. She really did look just like she did on TV, and Lou thought how exciting her job must be, dashing about and finding the latest news on everything, and then broadcasting it to thousands of viewers. This is all off the record, right?

Of course, she said, her smile fading. But you really haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know.

Lou blushed a little, undeterred. I guess you probably already spoke to Chief Skoal, that makes sense, but he might not have mentioned that I was the first one on the scene, though. I saw the body with my own eyes. As he talked on, Lou was pleased to see that Vi Clemmons’ eyes showed a growing interest. He finished his story with an anecdotal account of Columbo, the canine detective racing through the scene of the crime, having somehow managing to escape through the four inch crack in the window Houdini-style. Lou enjoyed telling and listening to stories, and stories were almost always better when a dog was in them.

THE CHIEF CLEARED A large portion of his desk by sweeping nonessentials to the floor. He spread out the reports he had in front of him, including photos he had taken at the crime scene. The bullet wound had entered the front of the chest, but the body had been found face down. The body had either been moved post mortem, or else the victim had not died immediately. He was a large man—he would have been difficult to move, suggesting the probability of an accomplice, and the amount of blood at the scene suggested that it was indeed the scene of the crime and not just a drop off. When he knew more, he could question the neighbors, but he didn’t have much to go on yet.

Columbo was scratching at the door. He let him in, and scratched behind his ears absently. Columbo began eating one of the paper cups the chief had just flung to the floor.

IT WASN’T UNTIL LATE in the day that the chief received the call he’d been waiting for. The coroner finally had some findings to share. He hurried down immediately. The coroner was a petite woman in her 40s, Kendra Singh. She was serious and matter of fact, never saying a word more than necessary. As a greeting, she promptly pulled out her clipboard and commenced with the recitation.

"Blunt trauma to the forehead, bruises to the shins and forearms indicative of breaking a fall. One gunshot wound to the upper chest, with a clean exit wound. Cause of death, a combination of exposure, minor internal bleeding and lack of immediate medical attention. Time of death is based on final blood loss from head wound and placed between four and four-thirty this morning. The gunshot wound was inflicted