David Jackson - Pariah

Doyle is already on his way to the youth standing near one of the radio cars angled into the sidewalk, his arms folded and his head bowed.

‘Hey, kid. You okay?’

The student looks up. His eyes and nose are red with alcohol and the cold. ‘Yeah, yeah. I just. . I never seen a dead body before, you know? Much less two of them.’

‘Sure. So can you tell me what happened?’

‘Yeah. It was like I was telling the other cops before. I been drinking, see, and with the cold air and all, I really needed to pee.’

‘So you stepped into the lot. You really have to go all the way to the back wall to do that?’

It’s one of the few fragments of information Doyle was given before he arrived. Two DOAs found in the far corner of a vacant lot. One his partner, the other a woman who was not his wife. All the ingredients for one of the shittiest days imaginable.

‘No, no. I just went about halfway down. But when I was doing my thing, you know, I saw this light.’

‘A light?’

‘Yeah. A little light. And I wondered what it was. So I went down there to take a look. And that’s when I found them.’

‘And the light was. .?’

‘A flashlight, in the guy’s hand. It was really dim, like the battery was dying, you know? But it was just enough so I could see them. There was a lot of blood, but it didn’t look like blood, because it was so black, you know? And the girl’s face, it was wrecked, man. I thought she was wearing a mask at first. And you know what the really freaky thing was?’

‘What?’

‘Literally while I was standing there, the flashlight went out. Slowly dimmed, and then just went out, totally. Man, was I spooked. It was like. .’

‘Like what?’

‘Like. . his soul just left him. I know it sounds crazy. He already looked stone-cold dead when I found him. But that’s how it felt at the time. Like his life was draining out of him while I watched.’

An image enters Doyle’s brain. A memory. Of standing over a body drenched in blood. He is aware of the life force leaking away, and is powerless to prevent it. He is crying in frustration. .

Doyle shivers, and blames the cold. He asks the student a few more questions, thanks him, and returns to the crime scene. Slipping wordlessly between his colleagues, he enters the lot. It is brightly lit by banks of floodlights. He can hear the thrum of the generator that powers them. Members of the Crime Scene Unit are scouring the weed-pocked ground and sifting through garbage. Doyle gets as close as he can without disturbing them. Close enough to get a good look at the bodies.

The woman is young. Perhaps not yet twenty. To the uninitiated she might appear older, but her line of work adds years in that way. She is wearing a faux-fur jacket that ends at the waist and a skirt that extends not much farther. The signs of a severe assault are not hidden behind her face mask of caked blood. Her features are contorted and misshapen, her nose looking like a squashed strawberry. Her mouth is open and the tip of her tongue is wedged in the gap where one of her teeth has been smashed out.

He has seen this woman before. Well, not her exactly, but quite a few like her. She’s another corpse, another DOA. As yet she doesn’t even have a name. She’s paperwork, she’s tracking down friends and family and acquaintances, she’s interrogating suspects. She’s his job. She’s what puts bread and butter on his table.

At least, that’s what he’s learned to tell himself at scenes like this. It’s a defense mechanism that doesn’t always work. Sometimes the sheer waste of it all still gets to him. Sometimes he cares a little too much for his own good.

And then there’s Joe, and for him Doyle cannot make even the pretense of detachment. That crumpled lifeless mass lying there in a puddle of its own blood is the body of a man who, just yesterday, was telling Doyle a joke about a blind beggar and a nudist. This was minutes after they had worked in perfect harmony in the interview room to get a confession from a suspected rapist. Which in turn was not long after they had spent over three hours freezing their asses off doing surveillance from a rooftop coated in pigeon shit.

There are strong ties here that Doyle cannot and does not choose to deny. They make him wonder whether he made the right decision in requesting this case: he knows that the end of Parlatti’s journey is the start of a new one for himself, and that it’s going to be a rough ride. But they’re also the reason he doesn’t trust anybody else to get to the bottom of it.

He sighs, slowly and heavily, and feels as though he exhales more than just breath.

He looks around the enclosed space. He guesses that the chain-link fence separating it from the street has been broken for some time, making it an ideal dumping ground. Against the walls are huge piles of boxes and bags, overflowing with garbage. The air is thick with the stench of rotting food, making Doyle grateful that December is not noted for its muggy nights. The mountains of junk have converted a perfectly rectangular area into a landscape filled with dark, forbidding recesses.

Doyle heads back toward the street, conscious of the sea of faces studying him. He pushes through, finds the lieutenant. Franklin is instructing a couple of his men to initiate a door-to-door. Doyle waits for him to finish before delivering his thoughts.

‘The killer’s not somebody Joe knew as a friend, not someone he trusted.’

‘Okay. Why?’

‘Because a friend could have killed Joe anywhere. He could have talked his way into Joe’s apartment and done it there, or in his car. Anywhere.’

‘I’ll give you that. What else?’

‘Although the killer wasn’t a close acquaintance, he knew a lot about Joe. Or he was hired by somebody else who knows a lot about Joe.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because last night was Wednesday. And every Wednesday night, without fail unless he’s on duty, Joe hooks up with some buddies at a bar on First. They sink a few beers and then move on to a pool hall farther down here on Third Street. At midnight precisely, Joe leaves the pool hall and walks down here, past this lot, and on to the subway station at Houston to catch the F train.’

Franklin removes his hands from his pockets and holds them up.

‘Wait a minute. That’s kind of a leap. Why does the hitter have to know all that info? Maybe he’s just following Joe around. He sees an opportunity, gets the drop on Joe, forces him onto the lot and. . and that’s it.’

Doyle catches the way that Franklin puts a stop sign on his mental journey past the fence bordering the vacant lot, as if he cannot yet fully accept what has happened to a member of his squad.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think it went down like that. First of all, Joe wasn’t the kind of guy you just sneak up on, even with a couple beers inside him. Even if he was, the killer wouldn’t know that. All he would know is that this guy’s a cop, and cops have guns, and cops have street smarts. An amateur or your average stupid mutt might take a chance, but from what we’ve seen, our hitter was careful. He wouldn’t want to risk this thing blowing up in his face. Besides, we have to fit the pross into this somehow.’

‘Yeah, I was wondering about her. Somehow I don’t see Joe as the type to-’

‘He wasn’t, and I’m certain that Norm will confirm that. I don’t believe he beat the shit out of her either.’

Franklin nods, and Doyle can almost hear the wheels turning. ‘So explain to me how Joe ended up like this. If it wasn’t for sex, what was he doing with this girl?’

‘Joe had his flashlight and his shield out, right? That means he went in there looking for something, and that he needed to identify himself. Suppose the girl was already in there, that she’d already been beaten up.’