Cody McFadyen - Shadow Man

"No one's talked to me."

"You come up with anything?"

He shakes his head. "Not so far. I wish I could say that the cops here are fuckups, but they aren't. Detective Chang runs a tight ship." He snaps his fingers, smiles at Charlie. "Oh yeah--sorry. And her faithful sidekick too, of course."

"Blow me," Charlie replies without looking up from the file.

"Keep at it. I'm going to call James and Leo."

He gives me a thumbs-up, goes back to reading.

My cell phone rings. "Barrett."

I hear James's sour voice. "Where the hell is Detective Chang?" he snarls.

"What's up, James?"

"The ME won't start cutting until your little friend shows up. She needs to get her ass over here now."

He hangs up on me before I can reply. Asshole.

"James needs you at the morgue," I tell Jenny. "They won't start without you."

She smiles a little smile. "I take it the dick is pissed off?"

"Very."

She grins. "Good. I'll head over there right now."

She leaves. Time to call Leo, our rookie. A disconnected musing as I dial: What kind of jewelry does he wear in his ear when he's not on the job? It rings five or six times before he answers, and when he does, the sound of his voice puts me on alert. It is hollow and terrified. His teeth are chattering.

"C-C-C-Carnes . . ."

"It's Smoky, Leo."

"V-v-v-video . . ."

"Slow down, Leo. Catch your breath and tell me what's happening."

When he speaks next, his voice comes out as a whisper. What he says fills my head with white noise.

"V-v-video of the m-m-m-m-murder. Terrible . . ."

Alan is looking at me, concern in his eyes. He can tell that something's happened. I manage to find my voice. "Stay there, Leo. Don't go anywhere. We'll be there as fast as we can."

I REMEMBER THISarea from when I came to visit Annie after her father died. She lived in a towering apartment building--again, a la New York state of mind, where the apartments are more like condos, replete with dining rooms and sunken baths. We pull up to the front of the building.

"Nice place, nice area," Alan remarks, looking up at it through the windshield.

"Her dad did okay," I say. "He left her everything in his will."

I look around at this clean, safe area. While no area of San Francisco can truly be called suburban, it definitely has its "nice neighborhoods."

They take you away from the noise of the city, the good ones taking you up high so that you can look out across the bay. There are the old neighborhoods, with their Victorian-style homes, and then there are the areas of new development. Like this one.

It strikes me now as it did before: No place is safe from the possibility of murder. No place. The fact that it is less expected here than in a slum will make you no less dead in the end.

Alan calls Leo as we climb out of the car. "We're in front, son, hang on. We'll be up in a sec."

We head through the front doors and into the lobby. The man at reception watches us as we pour into the elevator, but says nothing. We ride in silence to the fourth floor.

Alan and I were quiet on the way over, and we are quiet still. This is the worst part of the job for anyone who does it. Seeing the actuality of the act. It is one thing to process evidence in a lab, to peer into a killer's mind as an exercise. It is another to see a dead body. To smell the blood in a room. As Alan once said, "It's the difference between thinking about shit and eating it."

Charlie is silent and grim-looking. Perhaps remembering last night, turning that knob and seeing Bonnie.

We arrive at the floor and exit, walk down the hallway and turn. Leo is outside. He's sitting down, back against the wall, his head in his hands.

"Let me handle this," Alan murmurs.

I nod and we watch as he moves to Leo. He kneels down in front of him and places a huge hand on the young man's shoulder. I know from experience that as big as that hand is, the touch is gentle.

"How're you doing, kid?"

Leo looks up at him. His face is white and pale. It shines with a greasy sweat. He doesn't even try to smile. "I'm sorry, Alan. I lost it. I saw it, and then I puked, and I couldn't stay in there . . ." His words taper off, listless.

"Listen up, son." The big man's voice is quiet, but it demands attention. Charlie and I wait. As much as we want to get inside and move forward in our jobs, we both have compassion for what Leo is going through. This is a crucial moment for those in our profession. It is the blooding. The point where you peer into the abyss for the first time, where you find out that the boogeyman really does exist and really has been hiding under the bed all those years. Where you come face-to-face with real evil. We know this is where Leo will either recover or find a new line of work. "You think there's something wrong with you because you got freaked out by what you saw?"

Leo nods and looks ashamed.

"Well, you're mistaken. See, the problem is, you've seen too many movies, read too many books. They give you this crazy-ass idea about what being tough means. How a cop is supposed to act when he sees dead bodies or violence, stuff like that. You think you're supposed to have some smart one-liners on the tip of your tongue, a ham sandwich in your hand, and be all unmoved and shit. Right?"

"I guess."

"And if you don't, then you must be a pansy, and you have to be embarrassed in front of the old-timers. Shit, maybe you're thinking because you puked you're not cut out for this line of work." Alan swivels, looking back at us. "How many scenes did you see before you stopped barfing, Charlie?"

"Three. No, four."

Leo's head pops up at this.

"How about you, Smoky?"

"More than one, that's for sure."

Alan turns back to Leo.

"Me, it was about four. Even Callie's puked, though she won't admit it, since she's the queen and all." He squints at Leo. "Son, there's nothing in life that prepares you for seeing that kind of thing for the first time. Not a damn thing. Doesn't matter how many pictures you've looked at, or case files you've examined. Real dead is a whole different game."

Leo looks at Alan, and I recognize the look. It's the look of respect, bordering on worship, that a student gives a mentor. "Thanks."

"No problem." They both stand up.

"You ready to brief me, Agent Carnes?" I make my voice a little stern. He needs it.

"Yes, ma'am."

He has some color in his cheeks again and looks a little more determined. To me, he just looks young. Leo Carnes is a baby, introduced to murder, now destined to get old before he should. Welcome to the club.

"Well, go ahead, then."

His voice is calm as he talks. "I came over and ran through the initial checks, verifying that there were no booby traps or viruses present. I then did the first thing you always do--I checked to see what file was last modified. It turned out to be a text file named readmefeds ."

"Really?"

"Yes. I opened it up. It contained a single sentence: Check the pocket of the blue jacket. There was no blue jacket I could see, but then I looked in the closet. Inside the left pocket of a woman's blue jacket, I found a CD."

"So you decided to take a look. It's okay. I would have done the same thing."

He continues, encouraged. "When you make a CD, you can give it a title. When I saw the title of this one, I got very interested." He swallows. "It was named The Death of Annie ."

Charlie grimaces. "Son of a bitch. Jenny's going to be pissed that we missed this."

"Go on," I say to Leo.

"I looked to see what files were on the CD. There was just one. It's a high-quality, high-resolution video file. It essentially fills the entire CD." He swallows again. Some of the paleness is coming back. "I clicked on the file, which launched a player, which then played the video. It was . . ." He shakes his head, tries to get a grip on himself.