Dark Remnants (Street Games #1)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

    By the time Gabe arrived, the scene was blocked off, the crime scene unit already hard at work. The body lay in a narrow alley—just wide enough for a standard car to drive through without destroying its side-view mirrors. There were no lights on the buildings sandwiching the alley, which would have made it awfully dark a few hours earlier. Now, squad cars stretched across the entrances on both sides, their spotlights illuminating the scene from either end. Tape stretched across both entrances as well, and half a dozen blue-uniformed cops did their best to keep onlookers away from the scene.

    Gabe didn’t know what time it was—after midnight, surely—but there were still plenty of people out in this part of the city. It was one of the things that made the Slip Mire so dangerous. When the first squad cars showed up, the Mirelings would have scattered. Gabe had seen it dozens of times when he was still working a beat. They would disappear into the shadows in fear of the police or to do their deals in secret. Once they were done, or at least had successfully hidden anything incriminating, their curiosity got the better of them and they eventually slinked back out to gawk at what was happening. The crowd peering into the alley held gangsters, hookers, pimps, gaunt-faced users, homeless teenagers, all come to see what the commotion was.

    Bypassing them all, Gabe ducked under the police tape and headed toward a blond woman wearing a CSU vest. She squatted near a body lying supine across the alley.

    The deceased was a hooker, by her garb. Dark, wavy hair fanned out across the street, and makeup that might have been applied with a paint sprayer—now smeared—adorned her eyelids, cheeks, and lips. Blood covered her chest and abdomen, ribbons of it lying delicately across her arms and legs.

    “Evening, Bailey,” Gabe said as he fell into a squat beside her, pulling out a mini legal pad and pen. “Busy night?”

    Baily tossed her shoulder length blond hair as she turned to him. A pretty, athletic woman, she had blunt features and a blunter temperament. They worked together often on the night shift. “You have no idea,” she said drily. “You?”

    He shrugged. “I’m here by myself, aren’t I? Actually, it’s supposed to be my night off, but apparently there are lots of people getting themselves offed tonight. What can you tell me?”

    Bailey smirked at his last comment, but was all business a moment later. “Female vic. Hooker. Shame, too. She’s real pretty.”

    Gabe let his eyes run over the girl’s face. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “Yeah, she is. Did the M.E. release the body?”

    “Yeah, but I already checked. No I.D. Nothing at all in her pockets. Either her killer was the first customer of the night, or he took anything she’d already made. Mike says she’s only been dead an hour.”

    Gabe nodded, making notes on his pad. 

    “I count eight stab wounds to the chest. There’s plenty of cast-off as you can see.”

    Gabe looked at her, arching a questioning eyebrow. She pointed to the alley wall. For the first time he saw long, streaking, mostly vertical ribbons of blood. They covered the walls on both sides of the body.

    “That’ll be from when he brought the knife back between stabbing motions.” Bailey clenched her hand into a fist, as though she held a blade, and brought it over her head to illustrate. “There’s a void in the blood over here.” She stood to examine part of the alley wall.

    “What does that tell us?” Gabe asked, staying where he was.

    “I think she was standing here when the first two or three stab wounds was inflicted.”

    “Standing?”

    “Yeah. He had her pinned against the wall. They were…doing their business. Then he started stabbing her.”

    “So how’d she end up all the way over here?”

    Bailey shrugged. “In the struggle. She has defensive wounds on her hands and arms, which means she fought back. My kind of girl. There’s a void in the blood on her abdomen, too.” She walked toward the body and leaned over it, pointing. “See?”

    Gabe peered down to see a circular void just below the victim’s sternum. “Is that a knee mark?”

    “Good eyes, Nichols,” Bailey nodded approvingly. “He probably knelt on her, used his weight to anchor her down so he could stab her five more times.”

    Gabe let out his breath and shook his head. “That’s a lot of rage. What else?”

    “Not much. I’ve already swept the scene. Not much to be found that’s useful.”

    “What’s this white stuff on her abdomen, crisscrossing the blood?”

    Bailey barked a laugh. “Given that she was a hooker and what their ‘business’ was, what do you think it is?”

    Gabe glanced from Bailey, to the void on the wall, to the victim. He registered vague revulsion. “Oh. Right.” He wiped his hands on his pants, though he hadn’t actually touched the body. Bailey would have ripped him a new one for trying it without gloves.

    “I’m not positive,” Bailey went on, “but I already took samples to send to the lab. It if is semen, we’ll get a DNA profile. At least we’ll have that, even if the killer’s not in the system.” She said it almost cheerfully, and Gabe smiled. Bailey managed to cheerful about the strangest things.

    A noise from behind made Gabe spin on his toe. Mike, their plump, gray-haired medical examiner navigated a gurney between the squad cars and under the yellow tape. A black body bad was strapped to the top.

    “Hey Mike,” Gabe said, straightening his legs as the gurney rolled up.

    “Gabe,” Mike gave him a nod.

    “Actually,” Bailey said, “before you transport her, I’d like permission to print the body. Gabe?”

    “What for?”

    “Given how they were standing, how he had her pinned, there’s a good chance he left prints on her shoulders or arms.”

    Gabe nodded. “That’s fine with me.”

    “Can you give me a few minutes, Mike?”

    Mike shrugged. “Sure. Take your time. I don’t mind a breather or two.”

    Gabe smirked. Busy night all around, it seemed. “I’m gonna interview some witnesses before this crowd disperses.”

    Bailey nodded without looking at him, already busy digging into her kit. Mike gave him a tight smile and Gabe moved toward the onlookers, wondering if anyone would admit to having seen anything.

    Before reaching the police tape, he turned back to take in a broad view of the entire alley. It was something he always did to get a feel for the overall scene. There was nothing scientific or logical about it, but he found it helped him get in the right mindset for a specific crime scene, which in turn helped him pick up on subtle details better than he otherwise would have.

    Gabe had worked literally hundreds of homicide cases in his three years since making detective. Abstreuse was one of the murder capitals of the world, and the Slip Mire was the gyrating center of it all. 

    As he swept his eyes down the alley, something seemed different about this scene than others he’d worked. He registered a sense of something dim and sticky lurking nearby, as though the shadows outside the light fields were oozing together somehow. It didn’t feel like something that was actually present, though—not like Bailey or Mike or the onlookers peering into the alley. No, this felt more like something that had been left behind.

    Shaking himself to ward off the strange sensation, he turned toward the crowd.