First Chapters Page 2

  “Big man, fit-lookin’ bugger, too,” Frank said.

  “Two hundred yards to the next camera,” Aussie said, anticipating Quinn’s question.

  The detective glared at the back of the technician’s head as if he were to blame for the camera locations. Time clicked away at the bottom of the screen.

  “He should be here by now,” Quinn said.

  They waited two minutes, three, still nothing. A few business types passed, but no hooded terrorist.

  Frank straightened and rubbed the small of his back. “Lost him.”

  “Let’s wait,” Quinn remained bent forward, staring at the screen, willing the man to show. The timer showed five minutes, fourteen seconds when a tall tourist in a T-shirt strode along the sidewalk.

  He had a blue arrow over his head.

  “Come on, you prick, smile for the camera,” Quinn said.

  As if he had heard, the man looked up. Aussie tapped a key. The screen split, and a face appeared on the left. Dark hair and eyes, well groomed, tanned, and clean-shaven.

  “Handsome bastard,” Frank said.

  “Check his physique, the way he holds himself, the way he walks,” Quinn said as the killer strode out of the shot. “That’s no brainwashed Arab fanatic. He’s a pro.”

  Their quarry didn’t show at the next camera. After ten minutes staring at the screen, Quinn straightened, and rolled and cricked his back.

  “Good job, Aussie. Can you extract the piece we viewed and send it to my desk along with the cleanest mug shot you can manage?” Quinn handed him a business card.

  “Send it here as well.” Frank produced his card.

  “Be glad to.”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said. “If you see anything else, call my cell.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Frank glaring at him and about to speak. Quinn’s phone rang and postponed the confrontation.

  “It’s Mike Mitchell, Quinn. Can you come to the staging area and look at something?”

  “What?”

  “It’s … you need to see this for yourself.”

  “Give me thirty minutes.” Quinn closed his phone and turned to Frank. “That was Mike Mitchell.”

  “The City Coroner, has he got something for me?”

  “Dunno, let’s go find out.”

  ~~~~

  Frank pulled into traffic. His face was hard and set. “Quinn, this is my jurisdiction.”

  “We both want to catch the bastard, Frank.”

  “I know you were first responder, Quinn, but terrorism is my patch. Back off, or I’ll make you.”

  Frank Browning had been Quinn’s partner in the Met’s Murder Division before his recent move to Special Branch. He knew Frank’s limitations, and watching him pissing on a pole to mark his territory was all the proof Quinn needed—Frank wasn’t up for a job this big. Uncomfortable silence settled over the remainder of their journey.

  Processing two hundred and four bodies was far beyond the resources of the City of London Coroner’s Office. The Met had commandeered a local school as a temporary mortuary.

  Once they’d passed through the rigorous security procedures at the entrance to the school’s gymnasium, Quinn spotted Mike Mitchell observing a pathologist who was bent over a gurney, working on a corpse. Mike had been City of London coroner for twelve years. He and Quinn first met professionally, but their relationship had morphed into friendship, and they got together at least once a month for a beer. Mike joked that he felt obligated to buy for his best customer.

  Quinn scanned the room. Sixty or more white-sheeted gurneys were double-parked along the walls. Quinn couldn’t tell whether they’d been autopsied or still waited. It brought home the human tragedy of what, until now, he’d been dealing with as hunt-the-hoodie. These people had families and jobs and lives. But now, all they were was dead. Anger surged through him. He forced it down. To catch this murderer he needed focus, not fury.

  Quinn tapped the tall, thin doctor on the shoulder. “So what’s the big secret, Mike?”

  Mike spoke without looking around. “Give me a minute, Quinn.” The female pathologist he was observing was bent over a corpse, and speaking in a low, fast voice into a handheld Dictaphone. Once finished, she stepped back, revealing a woman’s body. Quinn checked the corpse’s face: thirty maybe, no more. No rings, perhaps they’d already been sealed in her personal baggie.

  “Damned shame,” Quinn said.

  “Tell me about it. We’ve pulled in staff from five counties, and it’ll still take us three or four days to process them all. Anyway, thanks for coming, Quinn.” Mike nodded to Quinn’s partner. “Hi, Frank. I thought you two had a lover’s tiff and split up?”

  “This is a Special Branch investigation,” Frank said and handed Mike his card.

  Mike turned to Quinn, who rolled his eyes.

  “Oh. Right. Um, come with me.” The Coroner led them past the gurneys to a small, windowless office. He closed the door behind them.

  “What do you make of that?” Mike pointed to a three-foot-tall, black, headless, armless torso perched at the center of a battered, old metal desk.

  “Don’t tell me you brought me here to admire a new work of art,” Quinn said.

  “No, Dummy. What do you think it is?” He waited.

  Frank laughed. “Did someone chop off ET’s head and legs and leave him here?”

  Quinn glared at his ex-partner. This was no time for jokes. “I’m not sure, but the ribs aren’t sculpted correctly.”

  “Close, but no cigar.” Mike stepped toward the bust and ran a gloved hand down the front of its neck as if the contact might give him inspiration, provide an explanation of how the object had come to be. “Not sculpted, molded,” he said. As though someone poured quick-setting concrete down their throats … or, you know, the foam-in-a-can stuff that you squirt into gaps and it expands to fill them? Something entered through the airway, filled the lungs, expanded, and hardened to this black compound. Look here.”

  He ran his finger along the corrugated neck of the bust. “This is an exact impression of her trachea.”

  “That’s why the ribs are indented. It’s molded from the inside,” Quinn said.

  “Exactly, and that’s not all. With this muck in their lungs you’d expect them to die of asphyxiation, right?”

  Quinn and Frank nodded.

  “Wrong again. See that?” The coroner pointed to a grapefruit-sized indentation midway down the left front of the casting.

  “This stuff expanded so fast that her heart was crushed to a stop. I have two hundred and four heart-attack victims in my lab.”

  The coroner moved back from the bust to allow them an unobstructed view. He held out a box of latex gloves.

  “Pick it up. Go ahead.”

  Quinn started to move but checked himself and let Frank take the lead. Frank pulled on gloves, put his hands either side of the ribcage, and raised the torso a few inches off the desk.

  “Solid, but lighter than I expected.” He rapped with his knuckles and rubbed the surface. “Feels like those charcoal briquettes you buy for the barbeque.”

  When Frank finished, Quinn also lifted and felt the material. He checked his hands. They were black. “Soot?”

  “Have you seen anything like this before?” Quinn asked the coroner.

  “Come on, Quinn … no one’s seen anything like this before.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born into a blue-collar family in Liverpool, England, Pete Barber missed The Beatles but did go to The Cavern a few times. He immigrated to the US in the early 90s and became a citizen. After twenty years in the corporate madhouse, he moved to Western North Carolina where he lives with a couple llamas, two spoiled dogs, a brace of cookie-eating goats, one ferocious cat, and a wonderful wife who thankfully understands his obsessive need to write fiction.

  The Broken Saint

  A Detective Seagate and Miner Mystery

  By

  Mike Markel

  Copyright 2014 by Mike Markel


  In The Broken Saint, Karen Seagate and Ryan Miner investigate the murder of Maricel Salizar, a young Filipino exchange student at Central Montana State. The most obvious suspect is the boyfriend, who happens to have gang connections. And then there's Amber Cunningham, a fellow student who's obviously incensed at Maricel for a sexual indiscretion involving Amber's boyfriend. But the evidence keeps leading Seagate and Miner back to the professor--and LDS bishop--who brought her into his dysfunctional home. Karen Seagate takes it in stride when she and her partner learn that the professor can't seem to tell the truth about his relationship with the victim. After all, Seagate's philosophy is, If he breathes, he lies. But to her devout partner, a high-ranking fellow Mormon who has violated every sacred trust deserves special punishment.

  Please press “Next Page” on your e-reader for the first chapter of The Broken Saint.

  The Broken Saint

  by Mike Markel

  PROLOGUE

  From the little stand of trees and shrubs between the river and the Greenpath, he gazed across the narrow river toward the municipal golf course. The moonlight, flickering behind the rushing clouds, outlined the rolling mound of a hazard beyond the silhouettes of the naked, gnarled black cottonwoods, mountain alders, and river birches on the far bank. The river ran fast, tossing invisible spray over the rocks that broke the shallow surface near the bank. Dead leaves scratched across the gravel and brush at his feet on a frigid February night.

  No one was visible on the modest swell of the fairway near the fourteenth hole. He looked to his left and his right on the Greenpath. No one. He turned and scanned the parking lot adjoining the three-story corporate building in the small industrial park. There were no cars in the lot, no lights on in the building.

  Reaching down and gently touching the artery in her neck, he felt a faint pulse. He kneeled down beside her body and placed his ear next to her mouth and nose. He felt a slight breath, warm in the frozen night.

  He began to undress her. She was wearing no jacket or coat. He looked at her clothing, all of it tight fitting—the dark tee shirt with some indecipherable writing on it, the jeans that seemed too narrow to slide over her ankles. Even the socks seemed too small. Sweat forming on his upper lip, he strained to bend her arms so he could remove her shirt. He felt a slight release as it ripped when he pulled it over her shoulders.

  Carefully he raised her shoulder and reached behind her back to unhook her dark bra, but he found no clasp there. He grasped the bra in the front, his trembling knuckles grazing her small, cold breasts as he lifted it and pulled it up toward her chin. It caught on her jaw, then on her nose, but finally it was over her shoulders. He disentangled it from her arms, the elbows stiff in the cold. He folded it and placed it next to her on the sandy gravel.

  He stared at her breasts, the nipples dark smudges in the dim moonlight. His trembling finger touched a nipple, hard in the cold. He pulled his finger back. He held his hand in front of his face, the five fingers spread. Then he lowered his hand gently until each finger touched the soft breast, pressing it delicately, feeling it yield only slightly. With an unsteady hand, he slowly traced the delicate arc of her breast, from her sternum, downward, then beneath its gentle curve. Suddenly, horrified, he jerked his hand away from her body. For many months he had dreamed of her, but now he was choking on guilt, shame, and despair.

  He unbuttoned her jeans, tugged at the zipper to lower it, and tried in vain to pull the denim over her hips, first one, and then the other. He pulled at the jeans from her knees, but the fabric was so tight against her skin that he could not gather enough in his fist to secure a grip. He placed a palm in the hollow above her hip to keep her from sliding across the gravelly dirt. With his other hand he pulled hard on the denim. Finally, the fabric moved, and he managed to release her hips. He looked up as he heard the growl of a passing motorcycle, its rider oblivious to the scene in the patch of trees and shrubs not ten yards from the Greenpath.

  He reached down to remove her thong. He could not look away from the narrow, straight line of black hair that led down to her vagina. As he folded her jeans and thong and placed them next to her shirt and bra, he began to weep.

  He crouched beside her and tried to lift her in his arms, to carry her to the river. Feeling the soles of his shoes sink into the sand and gravel, he studied the uneven, sloping surface, with its river rocks, tree roots, and stumps half-hidden beneath the tall brown grasses. He did not trust himself to carry her safely to the river. He lowered her carefully to the dirt and then stood straight and walked around to her head.

  He grasped her arms, above the elbows, surprised by their thinness, and lifted her trunk. Now only her heels were touching the ground. He smelled coconut in her jet-black hair, thick and straight. He gazed at her breasts and her sex, indistinct in the flickering shadow cast by his body in the dim moonlight.

  His hands gripping her slender arms, he walked backward, slowly and haltingly, hunched over, her hair pressed against his chest, down the bank toward the river. Struggling with unsteady steps, he walked backward into the water, dragging her silent body. His feet tingled as the water rose over the tops of his sneakers. The water rose higher and higher on his jeans, over his knees, until it reached his crotch and he gasped.

  Her ankles and legs and buttocks now slid beneath the surface, and he felt her body shudder. He thought he heard her moan from the sudden chill. Although the water was warmer than the freezing air, it felt ten times colder.

  He walked backward, deeper into the river, the water covering her truck. Now he was sure he heard moans of pain through the gurgle of the rushing water.

  His left foot slid off a large river rock covered in a slick film and he lost his balance. Instinctively, he released her arms, watched them rise slightly in the cold night air, then fall, slapping the surface, as he tumbled backward into the river. The river enveloped him, the frigid water stabbing at his face and his neck. As the water began to penetrate his heavy coat, then his flannel shirt, he turned over onto his stomach and struggled to right himself, his hands grasping for something secure on the riverbed. The icy water rose inside his sleeves. Finally, his churning legs touched the riverbed, and he could extend his head, his arms, his trunk into the freezing air. The water had now soaked through his clothing. He gasped for breath, shivering. He scanned the rippling surface, panicking because he had lost her in the black river.

  Then she appeared, fifteen feet away, half-floating on her back, with only her knees and breasts breaking the surface of the dark water. She was caught up on some rocks, her head invisible beneath the surface.

  He fought to maintain his footing, his sodden clothing now weighing him down like anchors as he trudged over to her. He lifted her head out of the water, bending down to listen for a breath. But the lapping of the water against his chest and over her body was too loud. He placed one hand on her forehead, the other on her chin, and pushed her head beneath the surface. The weight of his jacket started to pull him over, but he pushed back with all his might against the flow, trying to maintain his footing.

  He held her head beneath the surface for another long moment, feeling his tears against his frozen cheeks, hearing his teeth chattering in the night. “I am so sorry,” he whispered as his body convulsed in the freezing river.

  He grasped her arms, above the elbows, and walked backward toward the shore. His body shaking, numb from the water, he slowly pulled her from the river. Her breasts and her sex glistened in the faint moonlight. Pulled down by his wet clothing, he slowly made his way over the rough surface of the river bank, back toward where he had left her clothes. Exhausted, he carefully let her trunk sink until she was reclining on the ground. He was breathing heavily.

  He lifted her again by the arms, and as his hands felt the sand on the back of her arms, he began to weep again for what he had done. He dragged the body farther until, finally, sheltered by the gnarled cottonwoods and the shrubs, he laid her softly on the scrub brush and gravel, next to where he
had placed her clothing. Once again he tried to hear her breathe, tried to feel a pulse, but this time he was certain she was dead.

  He struggled to shake off his own coat, heavy with river water. He started to dress her, but he struggled to get her thong, her jeans, her bra, her tee shirt, and her socks onto her wet, sandy body, rigid in the cold. He pulled and tugged at her clothing. It was necessary to cover her naked flesh. He worked in the faint silver moonlight that dodged the swift clouds down at the river on a frigid February night.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I eased my Honda into the lot at the Prairie Title Company, one of a few dozen companies in the East Rawlings Industrial Park, nestled next to the Greenpath and the Rawlings River, a few hundred yards upstream from the university. I parked between my partner Ryan’s blue Mitsubishi and the old green minivan that Harold Breen, our Medical Examiner, has been driving since forever. A couple spots over sat the ’68 Beetle, hand-painted black and white to look like a Holstein, that Robin, our Evidence Tech, drives.

  The icy air hit me as I got out of my car. Up ahead I saw the yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around a bunch of trees, cordoning off an area a good thirty yards wide between the Greenpath and the river. I glanced over my shoulder at a bank of windows on the river side of the two-story Prairie Title offices. They were all dark except for one on the second floor. I checked my watch: 7:38 am. I hate it when I’m on the job before the cube dwellers. This time of year, a good rule of thumb is, if it’s not light out, you started your day too early or you stayed too late.

  Ryan was wearing his long charcoal wool coat, open, over a blue suit, with a white buttoned-down shirt and red striped tie. With his close-cropped hair, blue eyes with gold flecks, and a perpetual smile that showed off forty or fifty unblemished white teeth, he was just too damned good-looking and too well-dressed for our little city located quite close to the exact geographic center of nowhere in Montana. Ryan was also a no-kidding-around Mormon who was extremely married to an equally serious Mormon who, in their three years of wedded bliss, had already popped out forty percent of their five-kid quota.