Bentley Little - The Walking

He continued slowly forward into the darkness.

It wasn't a day he recognized anyway.

The body was torn in half lengthwise. Literally torn. Like a piece of paper. With the entire right side of the connected head, torso and abdomen pulled down so that the man's left half and right halves were touching only at the feet.

He had never seen or heard of anything like this happening before, and Miles stared with revulsion and horror at the spilled guts and broken bits of bone that littered the bloody hardwood floor. He felt like throwing up, and it was only through an effort of sheer will that he managed to keep down his breakfast.

It was the smell that was the worst, the disgusting stench of bile and excrement and bodily fluids. He was forced to hold his hand over his nose, and he wished that the policemen and forensic experts would offer him a surgical mask like the ones they were wearing.

Graham Donaldson had called him find Graham Stood next to him now, watching as the police dusted for fingerprints, collected trace evidence, and photographed the crime scene. Miles didn't know why the lawyer wanted him here-as a witness perhaps, as a nonofficial observermbut Graham was a friend, and he had come automatically.

He had not been prepared for what he'd found.

A criminalist crouched near the shattered left half of the head and gathered a sample of blood from the brain cavity. Miles turned away.

His no irish fantasies had sometimes involved murder cases, but those dreams had crashed to earth

in the first second he'd seen the body---or what was left of it. He realized how lucky he was to be working in a downtown office suite with computers and ergonomic office furniture and nice clean paperwork.

He'd never complain about being a glorified clerk again. Miles turned to Graham. "So why, exactly, am I here?" The lawyer shrugged. "I thought you might be able to help me find out who did this. I figured it'd be better if you were at the scene and could oversee what the cops were doing rather than simply read about it afterward and look at pictures."

At this, two of the nearest policemen turned toward them.

Graham ignored the hostile stares. "I need to know if it was someone from or someone hired by Thompson."

Miles turned back toward the body. Montgomery Jones was supposed to have met Graham at Jerry's Famous Deli in the Valley to go over their strategy before heading over to a deposition session with Thompson's lawyers. Miles had managed to dig up some pretty good statistical dirt on the company's minority hiring practices, as well as a rather incriminating quote from Thompson's CEO, and Graham had been excited about his client's chances for a settlement and was anxious to discuss it with him.. Only Montgomery had never shown.

His body had been found, two hours later, here, in the old carriage house near the Whittier Narrows dam.

"I have no legal status here," Miles pointed out. ]hey told me to stay behind the tape, and I have to---"

"I know that," Graham snapped. "Don't talk to me about 'legal status."

"'

Miles raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry," the lawyer apologized. "It's just ... It's a stressful situation. I know you can't go conducting a private investigation of your own. You weren't even hired by him or technically working for him. You're working for me. But

I was hired by him, and I mean to see that his killer is brought to justice."

'he cops seem to be doing a thorough job."

"I just wanted you as a witness in case they weren't. I don't know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to handle this, and I want to make sure all my bases are covered from the begining

It was what he'd figured, d Miles nodded, satisfied. He glanced around the carriage house, at the antique horse carts and livery, at the huge ham like doors. Were the doors open all the time? There didn't seem to be any padlocks or locks of any sort, and the chain-link fence around the Whittier Narrows recreation area had been breached in several places. Anyone could have come in here.

Thompson Industries could be playing hardball, but somehow Miles didn't think so. Ruthless businessmen they might be, but he didn't think they could afford the public relations nightmare of being associated with a criminal act. Particulary not one this heinous.

Besides, even if they were into this stuff, they would've been more discreet. Montgomery would not have been so publicly dispatched. He would have just disappeared.

This wasn't the work of a corporation trying to avoid a lawsuit, this was the work of... of what?

A monster, was his first thought, but that didn't make any sense. There were no such things as monsters. Still, he could not imagine how this could have been done, how a person or even a gang of people could have physically accomplished this act, and the only image that would come to mind when he looked at Montgomery's torn form was that of an overgrown Frankenstein, a huge, grotesque creature angrily grabbing the man and tearing him in two.

Goose bumps cascaded down the skin of his arms.

The two of them stood there for a moment, watching the police at work.

"You don't think it's connected to Thompson," Graham asked, "do you?"

Miles looked at him. "Do you?"

The lawyer shook his head. "I don't know what did this."

Miles parked his car on the street instead of in the lot, pulling into an empty space in a green twenty-minute zone. He just needed to grab some files and addresses, to rush in and rush out, and he didn't want to waste any more time. The trip out to Whittier had cost half the day, and he had to tie up several loose ends on old cases before getting to the stalking of Marina Lewis' father.

He got out of the car, walked into the building. He felt tired, and he understood for the first time how cops and lawyers, psychiatrists and doctors became burned out. Death was draining. Between his father and Montgomery Jones, he'd seen enough of sickness, death, and dying to last a lifetime.

He punched the button for the elevator. The doors slid open immediately, and he rode up to the agency's office. He closed his eyes. He could not get the image of Montgomery's body out of his mind, and he realized that he knew some thing about himself he hadn't known this morning when he woke up: he was not cut out to have a high-stress job. He was not one of those people who rose to a challenge, who thrived under pressure. It was a sobering thought, and as the elevator doors opened, he understood that despite his petty complaints, he was generally content with his lot in life. He didn't want to be a real detective, he didn't want to solve real crimes. He wanted work that was mildly interesting, mildly stimulating.

He nodded to Naomi, Hal, Tran, and Vince, walked straight over to his cubicle, grabbed the folders he needed, and headed back down the elevator and outside.

He'd called Marina Lewis last night and apologized for

the delay, asking if she'd rather have the case transferred to Hal or one of the other investigators, but she'd been understanding and assured him that she'd rather the case remain with him.

He'd talked to her father Liam over the phone, and the old man had been a cipher. He realized Marina was the one pushing the investigation, that her father didn't want to talk about the subject or face it, and Miles wondered why. He had the feeling that the old man knew more than he was telling, and Miles had decided to interview some of Liam's friends to find out whether he'd revealed anything to them.

He got into the car and quickly sorted through the top folder on his pile. The Gonzalez divorce.

It was going to be a long day.

After work, he went to the hospital.

His father's condition had changed little since the first day, and while his dad didn't seem in imminent danger of dying, it was clear that he was not going to recover to the extent that Miles had initially hoped.