John Steel Collection - Books 1-3

Chapter 10-2

As they moved deeper into the dank and filthy alley, McCall stepped quickly out of the way of a fresh-faced uniformed officer, who almost bowled her over as he rushed past in the opposite direction. Goddamn rookie, she thought, watching him heading for a mass of heavy-looking dumpsters.

Goddamn rookieThe three detectives rounded a corner to find a tall, slender, dark woman leaning over something. The woman wore blue medical overalls in yellow print with Medical Examiner. Her back was towards them, which obscured their view of the body.

‘Hi, Sam,’ the ME said without turning around. ‘Well, we got a mean one here.’

‘Hi, Tina,’ McCall replied, always happy to see her friend. ‘What do you mean ‘a mean one?’ McCall asked as her eyes gazed past the ME, and the sight before her made McCall want to lose her breakfast.

‘Jesus, what the…!’ She said just as the other two covered their mouths and turned around.

The naked body of a young woman lay on the cold ground. It had obviously been posed, and her clothes lay neatly folded beside her as crime scenes went; so far, so good. That was, everything apart from the body itself.

‘Yeah, like I say, this person is nasty… brilliant but nasty,’ said the ME, instantly regretting calling him brilliant.

‘Why, what do you mean?’ McCall asked curiously.

‘As you can see,’ Tina pointed with a gloved finger towards an area where the abdomen should have been, ‘the area here has been completely removed.’

Once occupied by the abdominal wall and its contents, there was a gaping hole. All that remained were the upper and lower parts of the trunk and the flesh and bone structure of her back. McCall could see the kidneys on either side of the spine.

The bottom section of the rib cage, body tissue, and muscle held it all together.

‘Till I get her back to the lab, I won’t know any more, apart from the fact that she wasn’t killed here,’ the ME said.

‘Lack of blood- there’s none to speak of.’ McCall noted after a slight pause for thought.

‘Lack of’ isn’t the phrase.’ Tina continued, ‘I mean, I found no blood anywhere. It’s as if she had been completely exsanguinated. But, hey, don’t go shouting about vampires just yet,’ she said, looking up and giving Tooms and Marinelli a don’t even think about it gaze just before they could comment.

don’t even think about it Tina waved at two orderlies to come and take away the ‘Jane Doe.’ In their late twenties, two men wheeled a gurney with a body bag on top over to the remains; then, taking great care, they placed the corpse in the bag and wheeled it back to the coroner’s wagon.

The three officers waited for CSU to finish their sweep.

Instead, McCall watched impatiently while the team started to take photos and collect fibres and prints.

‘OK, detective,’ called a familiar voice. The grey-haired man was in his late forties but still had the style and bearing of a much young- er man. ‘You’re clear to go in,’ he said smiling, treating her just as a grandfather might treat his granddaughter.

‘Did you find anything?’ McCall hoped that the killer had left something, but she already had a bad feeling about this case.

‘Not really. Son-of-a-b***h is smart. Put her in an alley. Which means we have far too much information,’ the CSU tech said, making her uneasy smile.

‘Thanks, Jim. Oh, say hi to Denise for me, will you?’ McCall responded with a gentle smile.

He waved and left, leaving the rest of the CSU to finish their information gathering.

‘OK,’ McCall turned to her two colleagues. ‘We need to canvass the area. I want to find something that this bastard may have left. I am going to talk to the couple in the ambulance.’

Adam and Sue sat shivering with fear from what they had seen. Blankets covered their shoulders, and they each grasped a cup of steaming coffee.

McCall nodded to the paramedic attending them as she approached.

The medic immediately recognised her ‘give us a minute’ gesture. Then, she gave him a quick, silent thank you as he left them.

He just smiled.

She took a minute to jot down the time, date and location in her notebook, then proceeded to start the interview:

‘Hi, I am detective Sam McCall.’

‘Hi, I’m Adam Mitchell, and this is my wife, Sue.’

Sue Mitchell gave a slight nod in response.

‘I know it’s difficult, but I need you to go through what happened.’ McCall gave them a sympathetic smile. They both looked at each other and nodded. Then, sue started talking: ‘Well, we had just had dinner at the Italian restaurant a couple of blocks away.’ Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her.

‘You see, it’s our anniversary, and it was the first chance we’ve had to go out alone without the kids,’ Adam explained, making an effort to keep his voice calm.

Sue continued after giving his hand a little squeeze. ‘Well, we were just walking, enjoying the evening, when Adam pulled me down here too, well… to be alone.’ She looked down at the ground and blushed.

‘Why?’ McCall enquired, and then she figured it out. ‘Oh–OK. Got it.’ She felt embarrassed for the woman. ‘Go on, Mrs Mitchell. But I think you can leave those details,’ she added, trying not to smile. ‘Well, we got down here too, you know, and it wasn’t until we got to the end before we saw it – her.’ Sue Mitchell broke down into wracking sobs that shook her, and she buried her face in her husband’s shoulder.

McCall realised she wasn’t going to get any further sense out of the woman in the foreseeable future, so she waved to the paramedic to take the couple away. McCall wasn’t sure she would get anything more worthwhile from the couple anyway.

McCall walked back to the huddle of police at the entrance to the alley. She called over the other two detectives to join her.

‘What we got, guys?’ she asked.

Tooms flipped open his notebook. ‘Well, those guys over there.’ Tooms pointed with the end of his pen towards the students sitting on the doorstep. ‘They saw the couple go down the alleyway and thought nothing of it till they heard screaming and thought the guy was doing a special on the woman. So they ran up to try and help. And that’s when they saw what the couple was looking at.’ He closed the pad and returned it to the inner pocket of his blue suit jacket.

‘We got nothing over here, just some passers-by, didn’t see anything,’ Tony Marinelli said, pointing to an elderly couple standing be- side an ambulance.

McCall noticed that it was still the early hours, dawn hadn’t yet broken, and the alleyway was bathed in darkness.

She motioned for her colleagues to go to the other end of the blocked alleyway while she went back to try and mentally reconstruct how he may have got ‘Jane’ there. Then, finally, she reached the mouth of the alley and realised that all the onlookers had gone. Their interest had left when the body had been taken away.

Studying the entrance, she imagined a vehicle pulling up and stopping. Then went through a person"s movements getting out and walking along the alleyway.

McCall assessed what the killer may have touched or come into contact with. Then, again, she tried to imagine the scene and what he might have encountered. ‘Why here?’ she thought aloud. ‘What’s so special about this place?’

As McCall stared down the breadth of the dark cobbled passage, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then, as she slowly opened them, she was ready, taking her time, checking for something, anything.

anything‘Sometimes things are just plain fecking obvious,’ her father used to say. McCall stopped for a second as the thought of her dad brought a slight, unwelcome distraction to the moment. Then, she shook off the memories and proceeded down the alley.

There was nothing.

Damn it, she thought. Who was this guy? Suddenly she had a feeling of not being alone. She turned to find a tall, dark figure at the alley’s entrance, silhouetted by the bright sun behind him. She could make out a long jacket that flapped in the breeze of the large truck that powered past. She drew out her badge and held it up, moving towards the figure.

Damn it, ‘ Hey, excuse me, can I talk to you?’ she yelled. ‘Hey, you!’

But the figure remained motionless for a moment. Something seemed wrong about this guy, whoever he was. Suddenly something jammed up against her leg, and there was a loud screech as she kicked a ginger cat that had only been trying to be affectionate. She looked down, shocked at what she had just done, but when her focus returned to the figure, he was gone.

‘Stupid animal!’ she screamed, running toward the man. Reaching the mouth of the passage, she burst out, half expecting to see him running off or a car speeding away. But there was nothing; he had disappeared entirely. So, who the hell was he, and where did he go?