Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1)

The phone rang and rang.

On the seventh or eighth ring, I answered. I already knew who it was. “This is Kane.”

“Kane, we have one.”

I let out a puff of air in disappointment. I hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in weeks. “You really need me there?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Where?”

The captain rattled off the address. “Right away,” he said and hung up.

The address was the Manchester office building a couple miles from my condo.

While my schedule said I had Sundays and Mondays off, I couldn’t recall the last time I didn’t work a Sunday. Mondays were the only days I could somewhat count on not being bothered—murderers weren’t as active on Sunday nights and Monday mornings. However, as a department lead, I was always on call. That led to a lot of overtime. The clock on my nightstand read 7:33 a.m. I rolled out of bed.

I rummaged through my closet and selected my day’s attire. The pants, shirt, and tie tucked under my arm were somewhat clean. The walls of the hallway guided me toward my bathroom. I splashed water across my face and ran my hands across my couple-day-old stubble. Though I’d just turned thirty-eight, the color of my beard was becoming more salt than pepper every day. I was positive my hair would match if I’d had any. For the past fifteen years, I’d been sticking with the Mr. Clean look. I kicked on the shower and rinsed off the lingering smell of bar from the night before. Dressed, I grabbed my badge from the gun safe in my closet and pulled on my shoulder holster.

In the kitchen, I picked up the bag of coffee from the counter and gave it a shake. A few stray grounds remained at the bottom. I remembered my to-do list from the day before. The third task from the top was
get coffee
. My caffeine fix would have to wait until I found a gas station.

Butch looked up at me from the couch. He meowed and dug his head back into his pillow. I walked over and gave him a pat on the head. My keys jingled as I scooped them from the kitchen counter. I locked up and left.

My Mustang’s thermometer read seventy-nine degrees—the temperature would flirt with a hundred by midday. I liked the heat. Only a handful of years had passed since I moved from Wisconsin. I still enjoyed the fact that it was always some form of summer.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic lay before me as I headed down Kennedy. Tampa’s entire first-shift workforce had apparently decided to avoid the freeway on their work commutes. After a quick stop for what gas stations called coffee, I made a right off of Kennedy into the Manchester building’s parking lot.

The office building was a large tan high-rise with mirrored glass windows. It stood over twenty stories tall. Two smaller outbuildings, five stories each, sat to the sides. Impeccable landscaping surrounded the entire complex. The building’s courtyard was home to a pyramid shaped water fountain. Water bubbled from the apex and cascaded down the sides. Benches lined the front entryway. On a towering pole in the center of the courtyard, an American flag flicked in the morning breeze. As I pulled through the employee parking lot, I caught flashing red-and-blues at the side of the building. I found my way around to where four squad cars sat. The flashing lights and police cars were drawing employees from every office in the complex. I pulled the Mustang into the first vacant spot I found, grabbed my coffee from the cup holder and got out. I hung my badge from my neck and started over to the scene.

The crime scene spread out before me as I rounded the back of the building. The rear parking lot butted up against the freeway. More parking for the employees and a bank of dumpsters lined the back. A handful of uniforms stood at the police tape surrounding an area twenty feet from the building’s back entry. They were keeping the building’s employees at bay. I stepped over the barrier and headed for the first familiar face I saw, Sergeant Hank Rawlings.

Rawlings was a tall, thin, forty-something-year-old cop, complete with police-issue mustache and buzz cut. I was his superior, yet through all the homicides we’d worked together, I considered him my partner. He stood talking with a uniformed officer twenty feet inside the yellow tape. His designer suit didn’t have a wrinkle on it. His tie was crisp. The sun shone off the toes of his shoes. A set of aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. His wife had been doing his shopping again.

“Go out last night?” he asked.

“For a little. Got in around midnight.”

Hank raised his sunglasses so they rested on his forehead. “Did you make it to the gun show after you left yesterday?”

“Yeah, I caught the last hour. The place was packed. I scooped up a few things and left.” I guzzled down a swig of the coffee. “What’s with the outfit, Slick?”

“Karen says I should present myself better at work. She picked me up a couple of new suits.”

I smiled and nodded, making a mental note to bust his chops later about his wife dressing him. “Give me the short version.”

He motioned for me to follow him as he walked toward the gray, fenced-in area where the dumpsters sat. “D.B., female—employee found her by the dumpsters over here.”

Inside the fence, a yellow tarp covered a body lying on the ground. Ed Dockett, the county’s chief medical examiner, knelt next to the tarp. I caught a view of the body over his short gray hair and thin shoulders.

“What are we looking at, Ed?”

He ran the back of his hand across his bushy gray eyebrows. “Female, blond, thirties.” Ed folded back the corner of the tarp, exposing the victim’s face. Her eyes were open, foggy, and fixed on the morning sky.

“Smells like bleach,” I said.

Ed nodded. “Body was cleaned.”

He pulled the tarp back farther. The woman lay dressed in green lingerie. He pointed to some purple marks around her wrists. “We have ligature marks on her wrists—same on her ankles. Someone had her tied up. She’s got a wound on the side of her head here. It may have penetrated into the skull cavity.”

“Bullet?” I asked.

“I’m not so sure. I’ll have to wait to give you the cause of death until after I do the autopsy.” He pointed at the area over her right ear. “More damage to the skin around the wound. It’s weird looking.” Ed moved his face closer. “It almost looks like a burn. I’ll have to take a peek at it under magnification back at the office.” He turned the woman’s hand over, showing me the back side. “She has a fresh brand here. Not more than a day old would be my guess.”

I cocked my head. The brand was a circle divided into fourths. Four small triangles sat to each side of the center circle.

“Kind of looks like a reticle in the center,” Hank said.

“Guess it could be.” I had a bad feeling bubbling deep in my gut. Women didn’t voluntarily get their hands branded. I jotted it down in my notepad. “You have an approximate time of death, Ed?”

“Three to six hours. Eyes are cloudy. Rigor has started to set in.” He laid the tarp back over the body, removed his latex gloves, and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “The forensics guys are done with the body, so we’re going to get her loaded up.”

A few guys from Ed’s team approached with a stretcher and a body bag. Hank and I gave them space to bag the body and load it into the coroner’s van.

“Stop by later this afternoon. I’ll have a full report by then,” Ed said.

“Thanks.” I surveyed the scene and spotted a nervous-looking office worker. He was standing with one of our detectives against the building. “Is that the guy who found her?” I nodded toward him.

“That’s him. I guess he works in one of the offices upstairs.”

“You don’t say?”

“He was taking out the trash when he spotted the body. Jones is getting his statement. He was first on the scene.”

“Let’s go have a chat.”

Hank and I walked over to Detective Maxwell Jones. He’d gotten promoted to our homicide division a year prior. He was speaking with the man leaning against the wall. While I wasn’t small, standing over six feet and having spent a decent amount of time in the gym, Jones was a mountain of a man. He was at least six-foot-six and had to be over three hundred pounds. He should have been a professional wrestler.

“Jones,” I said.

“Lieutenant.” He nodded at me then at Hank. “Sergeant.”

I turned to the man standing to his side. “I understand you’re the one who found the body?”

He nodded. The guy was clean shaven and in his later twenties. Two creases ran down the front of his khakis. He wore a white short-sleeved button-down shirt. A yellow tie hung around his neck. The apparel appeared to be that of a stereotypical office worker. I imagined he had himself a nice cubicle inside somewhere.

“I’m Lieutenant Carl Kane. This is Sergeant Hank Rawlings. Can you give us the run-through on how you found the body?”

“I came out to dump the trash and saw her lying on the ground back behind the dumpster. That’s about it. I walked over and could tell she was dead.”

“How could you tell?”

He pulled his head back. “Did you look at her?”

“And then you dialed 9-1-1?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Recognize the woman?” Hank asked.

“No.”

“Touch her at all?” Hank asked.

The guy wrinkled his face. “Why would I touch a dead body?”

“What time did you call?” I asked.

Jones flipped a page on his clipboard. “The call came in at 7:18 a.m.”

I wrote the time down. “And you’re sure you haven’t seen the woman before?”

He shook his head.

“Thanks.” I motioned toward Jones. “Detective, can we get a quick word?”

He followed Hank and I out of earshot from the guy.

“What can you tell us, Jones?” I asked.

“Not a lot. No identification on the body—no purse, no cell phone. We have a body by a dumpster. That’s about the extent of it.”

I glanced at the fence. “Is the dumpster area supposed to be locked?”

“I don’t think so,” Jones said.

“Witnesses? Did anyone see anything?” Hank asked.