David Jackson - Marked

Chin checks with the crime-scene people that he can proceed, then he snaps on a pair of latex gloves and sets to work. He picks up the head, rolls it around in his hands for a while, then puts it down again.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen it. Now I can go back to bed. Get it bagged, tagged and shipped, and I’ll get on it as soon as I’ve caught a few z’s.’

‘That’s it?’ says LeBlanc.

Doyle glances sharply at him, but it’s too late.

‘What do you want from me?’ says Chin. ‘Like I told your wisecracking bozo friend over there, this ain’t a crime scene. She wasn’t killed here, and aside from her head, she wasn’t even dumped here. That ain’t a lot to go on. You want me to do more, you need to find me more. So get out there and do your job before you start criticizing me over how I do mine.’

LeBlanc looks helplessly at Doyle. ‘I wasn’t criticizing. I was just saying-’

‘You know there’s another body part, don’t you?’ says Fenster.

‘Yes, I do know that,’ Chin snaps. ‘Because, unlike you guys, I have already visited the site where the other part was found. And what I also know, with all my years of expensive and intense medical training, is that a head and a pelvis are not the sole components of the human body. There are other pieces out there, gentlemen, and finding them is your job, not mine.’

He starts to move toward the door, pausing only when Doyle says to him, ‘Norm? Anything you can give us to go on right now?’

Chin turns to him. ‘Now that’s more like it. A civilized intelligent question. Okay, a coupla things. There are cuts, abrasions and burn marks on both body parts. Looks like this girl was tortured before she was killed.’

‘And the other thing?’

‘It may be nothing, but the girl had a tattoo at the base of her spine. Picture of an angel.’

‘Lots of girls get tattoos done there,’ says Fenster.

‘That’s true. Like I say, it may mean zilch. But this tattoo looks fresh to me. Like it was done in the past few days.’

He heads toward the door again. ‘Happy hunting, guys!’

LeBlanc mutters something, but Doyle doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy thinking about something Chin just said.

Something that summons up dark memories and an unquenchable thirst for justice.

A second after midnight. It’s now my birthday. Happy birthday, Nicole.

She says nothing out loud, and the voice in her head is a dull monotone. She doesn’t even smile. Last year, at this exact time, she started bouncing up and down on the bed and singing birthday wishes to herself like an over-excited child, waking Steve so she could demand to know what presents he’d bought for her.

Not this year. This year she remains motionless in the bed. Stares at the illuminated face of the alarm clock and counts the seconds as they eat into what should be a special day.

When the digits blur, she doesn’t dab at her eyes. Just lets the tears come. Lets them roll down her cheek and slide over her nose and pat softly onto the pillow.

This is not a day for celebration. Never will be again unless things change. Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving — how will she ever be able to enjoy them in the same way again?

But I should be positive, she thinks. This being my birthday, maybe I’ll receive the only gift I really want.

And then I can sleep again.

It becomes a long, dirty night. Long because Doyle was supposed to have gone home when his shift finished at one o’clock in the morning, and now he can’t. Dirty because of what he has to spend his sleepless hours doing instead. Which is submerging his arms elbow deep in piles of crap.

He’s not the only one, of course. Every available cop in this and the neighboring precincts, uniformed or not, has been called in to help out on the search, and the Department of Sanitation has been told not to do any collections in the area while it proceeds. The cops move from building to building, opening up trashcans and dumpsters, shining their flashlights into them while they sift and root and examine.

It’s not something that can be done furtively. An army of cops on the prowl like this attracts attention, and it’s too big an area to cordon off. Passers-by stop to ask questions. Vehicles slow to a crawl so that the drivers can lower their windows and yell questions. Residents leave the warmth and safety of their buildings just so that they can put their damn questions. To each and every one of them Doyle and the other cops say the same thing, which is basically nothing.

The task has its lighter moments. One woman asks Doyle to let her know if he manages to locate her missing dentures. Another tells him that she has just thrown away the last of her apple pie, but that he can have it if he finds it. One bedbug warns him that the trashcans are really the pods of alien visitors, and that he should leave well alone. In response, Doyle assures him that his flashlight is equipped with the latest extraterrestrial threat alert systems.

The media are less easy to shrug off. Who would have guessed that lifting the lid from a trashcan would make such a newsworthy photograph? Or that the sight of a patrol officer poking his nightstick into a garbage bag would make for footage so exciting that it would be replayed endlessly on the news channels?

Eight hours later, when daylight returns almost grudgingly, and the streets start to overflow again with people and cars and noise and the hustle and bustle of life, it is time to take stock. Time to assess the results of the exercise. To wit, a bunch of exhausted cops who smell like they haven’t bathed in years.

Oh, and one other thing.

A human arm.

She feels a little better the following morning. A little more hopeful. She even manages to force down a few spoonfuls of breakfast cereal.

And then Steve has to go and spoil it.

He spoils it with a book-sized rectangular package wrapped in bright-pink paper with pictures of balloons and cakes and all kinds of happy words on it. Words such as ‘Celebrate!’ and ‘Hooray!’ and ‘Yippee!’

‘Here,’ he says simply, and he accompanies it with a smile. As if that’ll work. As if that’ll make it all right.

And she puts down her spoon and stares into his face and says what shouldn’t need saying.

‘Steve, what are you doing? We agreed. No presents. Not yet.’

‘I know. It’s not from me. It’s from Megan. She asked me to get it for you and she wanted you to have it today. You know what she’s like. She hates the idea of belated presents.’

Nicole suddenly wants to bring all that cereal back up again. She looks at her husband in disbelief. She can see that he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong, but that doesn’t make it any more right. He should have thought. He should have known. He can’t just pretend that carrying out Megan’s wishes puts her back in this room.

‘Take it away.’

‘Nicole. Please. She wanted you to-’

‘Then she can give it to me herself. Take it away. Don’t you understand? She needs to give it to me herself. Here, in person. From her hand to mine.’

‘Nicole, look, it’s just a-’

She picks it up then and throws it across the table at him. ‘Take the fucking thing away!’

‘Jesus Christ, Nicole!’ He looks at her in silence for a while, then he picks up the gift and leaves the room.

Doyle goes home while others continue the search. He wanted to carry on, but neither his body nor his boss would allow him. He goes home and he takes a fifteen-minute shower, finishing off a bottle of shower gel in a desperate attempt to eliminate any lingering odors. He shampoos his hair three times. The foam blocks his ears and stings his eyes. He wishes he could force it into his head. Brainwashing. A clean mind in a clean body. He needs to wipe it spotless and start all over again. There are too many dark thoughts in there.