Players: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 7) Read online

  Players

  A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

  Book 7

  Mike Markel

  Players: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

  Copyright © 2016 by Mike Markel

  All rights reserved. No portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental.

  The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series:

  Big Sick Heart (Book 1)

  Deviations (Book 2)

  The Broken Saint (Book 3)

  Three-Ways (Book 4)

  Fractures (Book 5)

  The Reveal (Book 6)

  Visit Mike Markel at MikeMarkel.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  The Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Series

  Prologue

  She had been sitting on a small folding stool for almost an hour, and now her back was seizing up. That was one of the things she missed the most: a real chair. But a chair wouldn’t fit. She struggled to her feet and, holding the tent pole for balance, bent at the waist to stretch her muscles. Last week, one of the guys helped her lash the tent to the shipping pallet on which it sat. Since then, she hadn’t worried that the tent would blow over in the winds, which she had seen happen. As your world gets smaller, she thought, small things become bigger.

  She couldn’t make up her mind whether to do it. For the longest while, she stared at the aluminum foil cigarette wrapper inside the clear baggie. She reached a decision. Rummaging through the clothing and boxes of crackers and water jugs scattered around the tent, she found her jacket under an old blanket.

  The rain had started some time ago, plopping on the roof and on the bags and lawn furniture and charcoal grills and the fifty-five gallon drum that served as a fire pit out near the center of the clearing. Drops had started to soak through the seams of her roof; soon they would begin to drop steadily onto her things.

  She slid on her jacket and carefully sealed the plastic zipper on the baggie. The bulge inside the foil wrapper felt like three or four good-sized hits. Crouching, she made her way over to the flap. She emerged from the tent and zipped up the flap.

  The guys who had been sitting in the lawn chairs around the drum had left a few minutes ago. The fire in the drum, already hissing in the drizzle, would last only a few more minutes.

  Off to the right, the lights from the trailer park illuminated the sky. Three of the trailers shone brightly, their residents not bothering to hide the reflections of the grow lights off the foil-covered walls. Off to the left was blackness. She stepped off her pallet, her feet sinking slightly into the damp dirt.

  The clearing was a rough circle about thirty yards in diameter. Lights bled from four of the seven tents and makeshift huts of wood, sheet metal, and tarps that ringed the clearing. She walked slowly and deliberately past the plastic buckets, old tires, toys, shopping carts, and bikes, past the hissing drum and the weather-worn redwood picnic table. The plastic bags hanging from branches on the spruce, pine, and junipers glistened in the rain. Wet laundry hung from a rope clothesline that spanned two thick branches outside a tent.

  She approached Lake’s tent, which was as small as hers. She didn’t know how he maneuvered inside; he was a few inches over six feet tall. The rain had already darkened the stained, threadbare quilt stuffed between the roof of the blue nylon tent and the bowed aluminum poles that held it upright. His tent sat on the bare ground; soon the floor would be wet through.

  She unzipped the flap, crouched, and entered the tent. She tried to breathe through her mouth until she became acclimated to the stench of the rancid foods, the soiled clothing, and his body odor.

  “Hey,” she said. A slender black man in his late twenties, he lay on the wadded-up blankets and foam padding that served as his bed. His head and feet distended the sides of his tent. His hair was uncut, with small grey tufts along the temples and in his beard. He wore a ragged gym-grey sweatshirt over a black T-shirt, navy sweatpants, and mismatched tube socks. He lifted his head slightly to see who had entered the tent. She lowered herself onto the overturned plastic bucket that served as a chair, then held up the baggie and smiled.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” He raised up his trunk and leaned on an elbow. “I told you I don’t have no money.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I’m not asking you for no money.”

  He looked wary. “Yeah, well, that’d be the first time.”

  She started to lift herself off the plastic bucket. “If you don’t want any, I’ll find someone else.”

  He smiled. “No, no, baby, that’s not what I’m saying.” His tone was gentle. “That’s not it, at all.”

  She returned his smile. “I didn’t think so.”

  “You wanna close up the flap?”

  She stood up halfway, grabbed the tent pole for balance, and duck-walked over to the flap to zip it up. When she turned back to him, he was sitting up, cross-legged. He had removed his sweatshirt. In his hand were a tiny spoon, a butane lighter, and a syringe. He pointed to the baggie. “You just get this?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “Had it a while.” She opened the baggie and removed the foil wrapper. She unfolded the wrapper and tapped the grey powder into the spoon, then leaned over and dribbled saliva onto it.

  He lit the butane lighter and held the flame under the spoon. Almost instantly, it began to bubble and turn a darker grey. He loaded the drug into the syringe and slid the needle into the flap of skin between the index finger and middle finger of his left hand. His blood snaked into the syringe. Then, with a steady motion, he pushed the handle down. Within seconds, his eyes clouded, his eyelids drooped, and the syringe slipped out of his hand.

  “This is good shit.” His voice was low and slurred. He looked at her, confused that she was on her knees, next to him, staring at him. “Ain’t you gonna do any, baby?”

  “Maybe I will. Just a little.”

  He smiled. “That’s it. Take a little pop, and we’ll see if we can get something going. I ain’t got any money right at the moment,” he said, “but you know I’m good for it.”

  “I know that. I know you’re good for it.”

  She picked up the syringe and held it up to the lantern hanging from a nail in the pole. There was still
some hit mixed in with his blood. She pulled up the right leg of her sweatpants and raised the syringe to her calf. Pretending to shoot a little into the muscle, she closed her eyes and made a low moaning sound, as if she were feeling the warmth. She dropped the syringe and crawled over to him.

  He had collapsed back onto the dirty foam pad. He rocked to one side, then the other, pulling his sweatpants down in small, slow movements. He wore no underwear.

  She removed her jacket and pulled up her sweatshirt and her T-shirt, exposing her breasts. Then she lowered her trunk toward his face. But his eyes, half-closed, did not focus, and his head did not move.

  Lowering her T-shirt and sweatshirt, she raised her trunk. She glanced at his groin and saw that his penis was flaccid. She put her ear to his mouth to listen for his breathing, straining to hear it over the tapping of the rain on the tent and the breeze rustling the leaves and the brush. He was already gone or soon would be.

  Suddenly, fatigue swept over her. She lay down next to him, snuggling close to get onto the foam padding. Shivering in the cool night air, she tried to grasp some bedding to pull up over herself, but there wasn’t enough. She didn’t have the strength to move him even an inch to free up a tattered blanket. In seconds, she fell asleep, snuggled against his still-warm body.

  Sometime later, she heard a distant voice outside the tent. “Lake, we’re going into town in the morning. You want to come?”

  Trying to crawl back into consciousness, she saw a man’s face shadowed against the tent flap. The zipper started to move, and the face came into view. “Sorry, man, didn’t know you had company.” The mouth twisted into a smile and then disappeared. The zipper on the flap closed.

  Lake was motionless. She touched his cheek, which had already begun to cool. She picked up the syringe lying next to him on the quilt. She held it up to the lamp and thought for a moment. She pulled up the leg of her sweatpants, bent her knee, and raised the syringe to her calf. This time, she inserted the needle into the muscle and squeezed the handle, just a little. After a few seconds, the warmth began to spread through her body. As she lay back down, her fingers relaxed, and the syringe slipped out of her hand. She drifted off to a dreamless sleep, far away from the still body next to her. She did not feel the cold drops that had begun to drip onto her right hip from a pinhole in the roof of the putrid nylon tent.

  Chapter 1

  It was 7:59 Monday morning when I hung my coat up on the rack in the corner of the detectives’ bullpen. Phones rang, computers clicked, printers hummed, and people chatted about their weekends as they settled in to work. The smell of fresh coffee filled the air. I threaded my way through the maze of desks and filing cabinets and the bustle of uniforms and civilian assistants carrying files and envelopes. I approached my desk, which is arranged head-to-head with Ryan’s. He was sitting in his chair, and one of the third-shift guys, Pelton, was sitting in mine.

  During the bad old days, when I danced every night away with my lover Jack Daniel, I would roll into work around nine-thirty or ten because I knew that Chief Arnold, a corrupt, nasty troll, didn’t arrive until closer to eleven. With his taste for strip clubs, he didn’t find early mornings any easier than I did. Only after he fired me did I realize the main reason we hated each other so intensely: We were quite similar in important ways.

  But now, during the less-bad new days, I dance with Jack only once or twice a year, after declining his persistent daily invitations. And I have a new boss, Chief Murtaugh, who arrives by six to lift weights for an hour and expects me to be at my desk at eight sharp.

  Expects means two things: It’s a job requirement, and I do it. For most people, showing up on time, sober and wearing clean, puke-free clothes, doesn’t call for a celebration. Since it’s still a fairly new experience for me, however, I think about it every day.

  When I saw Pelton sitting in my chair, at my desk, my first thought was, Well, that’s not my chair anymore, not my desk. But then I realized it would be the chief, not another detective, delivering the news. And the location would the chief’s office. No, Pelton wasn’t there to tell me to clear out my desk. More likely, he was there to drop a bag-of-shit case on me and Ryan.

  “Good morning, guys.” I made eye contact first with Ryan, then with Pelton.

  Pelton rose out of my chair. He was about fifty, face getting a little puffy, body losing its angles. Tie undone, shirt blousing around his waist. But he was still in the game, still trying hard to be a good detective. “Hey, Karen.” I caught a whiff of an apology in his tone.

  I turned to Ryan. “How bad is it?”

  Ryan put on a thoughtful expression. “Seven point five. Maybe eight.”

  Pelton spoke. “Homeless guy OD’ed.”

  “Wonderful. Downtown?”

  Pelton looked uncomfortable as he shook his head. “Ten Mile Park. It just came in. Less than a half-hour ago.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You know, I can look up when the call was logged. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  Pelton gave me a sad smile, turned, and walked slowly toward the coat rack. His gait said his back hurt.

  Ten Mile Park was about fifty acres of undeveloped scrub land off of Ten Mile Road. The city bought it about a dozen years ago at a fire-sale price. They hired some land-use people to study different plans, but the group concluded the land was too ugly and too far away from any housing developments to be worth putting money into. Then, when the recession hit and there wasn’t any money to put into anything, the city changed its position to “Park? What park?”

  Adjacent to Ten Mile Park, on the other side of Ten Mile Road, sat Lyric Mobile Estate. Lyric was built thirty or forty years ago on county land just outside the Rawlings city jurisdiction. With low taxes and almost no services, it remained a squalid dump where the adults didn’t work, the kids didn’t go to school, and the feral cats duked it out with the rats and raccoons for the food scraps in black plastic bags outside the dilapidated trailers.

  Actually, quite a few of the adults at Lyric did work. They grew, cut, cooked, and packaged the dope that the rural junkies bought before heading across Ten Mile Road to get wasted and pass out in Ten Mile Park.

  I turned to Ryan. “Him dropping this case on us—this is exactly why all women think all men are assholes.”

  “Thank you. I was wondering about that.” He nodded his appreciation. “You want to tell the chief we’re going to take a ride?” He turned and started walking out of the detectives’ bullpen toward the chief’s office.

  Because I didn’t have a rich asshole to support me so I wouldn’t have to drive a half hour to a homeless camp in a butt crack of a park to figure out exactly how some junkie killed himself, I followed Ryan out of the bullpen.

  We walked past the incident room, the dispatch call center, and some administrative offices and storage rooms until we reached the little hallway that led to the chief’s suite. Margaret, his gatekeeper, looked up from her computer and gave us an official smile and an official “Good morning” before picking up her phone to officially ask him if he was free. A second later she nodded to us.

  Chief Robert Murtaugh looked up from his computer. “Good morning, Karen. Ryan.” He gestured for us to sit in the chairs facing his desk. He was in his mid- to late-fifties, hair going grey, jaw still strong, no fat on him at all. He wore his daily uniform: dark two-button suit, pale blue shirt showing fold marks, and subdued tie. You could count on it, just as you could count on his precisely chosen words: direct, semi-formal, no-nonsense. The understanding was that, in exchange for us not wasting his time with small talk about football or fishing or some other crap, he would stop whatever he was doing and give us his full attention for however long we needed.

  Because I took no interest in football or fishing, I considered it an excellent deal.

  He glanced at his watch. “Caught a case already?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Think we caught it from Pelton and Malone.”

  He gave me an understated smile. “Would y
ou like to file a formal complaint?”

  “A homeless guy in the camp at Ten Mile Park.”

  He nodded empathetically. I thought he was saying he was sorry. Then I decided he was saying he would have tried to drop it on the next shift, too. Then I realized he was saying both of those things. “We know it’s homicide?”

  Ryan shook his head. “We don’t know anything, except that the first officer said he thought it was an OD. Probably accident or suicide.”

  “Need something from me?”

  I shook my head. “Just telling you we’re gonna head out there.”

  “Make it a great day.”

  This time I understood what he was saying. I put on a disappointed expression. “Sorry, I already have other plans.”

  We left the chief’s office and headed back to the bullpen. As I was sliding into my coat, I said to Ryan, “Did Pelton tell you anything about the vic?”

  “Black guy, my age.”

  “We’ll need to inform Harold and Robin.” Harold Breen was our medical examiner. Robin was our evidence tech.

  “I already did. They’ll be out there soon.”

  Over the two years we’ve partnered, Ryan and I had established a good routine. He did most of the routine stuff without asking me. He was only thirty, but a mature thirty. He knew that unless the death is obviously natural causes—a ninety-year old sitting at the bingo table at the home clutches his chest, makes a croaking sound, then croaks—the medical examiner needed to rule it an accident, suicide, or homicide. And we needed to have the evidence tech there to start taking pictures and video and cataloging all the evidence in case it became a case.

  I realized I did like Ryan and Chief Murtaugh. A dead homeless guy out in the woods, first thing Monday morning, before I even got some coffee? Not so much.

  We got in our shiny Charger. When we phased in our new vehicles a few years ago, we decided to get black-and-white Dodge Chargers for our officers and dark grey Dodge Chargers for our detectives. Not that the grey Chargers fool anyone. They’ve got red, amber, and blue strobe lights mounted inside the cabin, near the rear window, with a big searchlight next to the driver-side rearview mirror. Plus, sticking up between the front seats, a laptop and the barrel of a Remington 870 shotgun.