Charged - Book One Read online

  Charged - Book One

  Title Page

  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

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHARGED

  Book One

  By L.M.MOORE

  Smashwords Edition

  Charged

  Copyright © 2013 by L.M.Moore

  All rights reserved

  Sketch Artist for the Cover is

  Craig Chapman

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, organizations, etc; are only used fictitiously. All dialogue, incidents and characters are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  DEDICATIONS

  I dedicate this to my mother. Her support, in all of my endeavors, has been unlimited throughout my life. Okay, okay, not all of them, but most of them. To the one person who has read virtually every word I’ve ever written. I love you. Thank you for everything.

  Table of Contents

  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

  CHAPTER 33,CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35,CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37,CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39,CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41,CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 44,CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46,CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48,CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 1

  WHEN SHE STEPPED ASIDE, I could see his naked body laid out behind her. I didn’t need to see his face to know it was him. It’s hard to forget a man almost completely covered in tats. It was Richie. What was left of his black hair was matted against his head and he was much thinner than the last time I saw him. And this moment only reinforced the fact that he hadn’t changed his ways.

  In the room with me was a woman I wasn’t expecting. The older, larger woman stood before me exuding confidence even though I towered over her by more than a foot. Where the hell was Chris? The woman then straightened her back and crossed her arms; a clear sign she didn’t like me. And I didn’t know if I was going to like her.

  A combination of chemicals and cleaning agents lingered in the air, odors I was all too familiar with. The white tile floor had been recently cleaned with bleach and everything else was thoroughly sterilized. I became acutely aware of the echo of my footsteps and the lack of any background noises. The eerie silence made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  I followed her to the back of the room towards Richie and that’s when it hit me. I didn’t even need to look at him to know some organ was exposed. I was only a few feet closer and the smell of rotting meat saturated the air. It’s a smell you don’t forget. The acrid and slightly sweet odor penetrated my senses, making my stomach churn. I could tell by the smell alone that he’d been decomposing in a warm environment for at least a half a day before he was brought here.

  We stopped at the back of the room where she turned on an overhead lamp. The bright light needlessly exaggerated his mutilated skull. I had to look away for a second. He was lying on his back on a metal shelf extending from one of the refrigerated storage units. The entire left wall was lined in these stainless steel units, an upgrade since the last time I was here.

  I tried not to look at him too long, attempting to hide the nagging shiver under my skin. Something sank inside of me. Sadness started to creep in as forgotten childhood memories came back to me.

  I suddenly remembered the day I’d met Richie. Not because it was pleasant but because it was the first time any kid stood up for me. And it wasn’t really a fight. It was more like me taking an ice ball the size of man’s fist to the side of my face. I went down pretty fast, spilling out onto the cold snow, not really knowing what had struck me. And I could hear the kids laughing from the street. But it was only a moment before Richie was peering over me, trying to help me up, cursing at the other kids. That was a distant thirty years ago and the woman’s voice jerked me back to reality.

  “Mr. Kagen, Chris asked me to help you out,” she said, extending her hand.

  I’d mistakenly inhaled deeply. The stench and taste of decay filled my lungs and mouth. I quickly exhaled and tried to stifle a gag with my coat sleeve as the woman stared at me.

  Shannon didn’t give me her name. She didn’t need to. It was neatly typed on the plastic badge clipped along with her photo on the front pocket of her lab coat. If I didn’t know who she was, then that was my problem.

  SHANNON MILLER

  MEDICAL EXAMINER

  I was expecting to meet Chris, not Shannon. Now it was doubtful I’d get all the information I needed. I nodded my head politely and shook her hand.

  “Just Lewis, is fine,” I said.

  “You wanted to see the body of a ‘Richard Stakes’?” she said, paging through some papers attached to a clipboard. Her stiff posture and stern gaze suggested that she had more important things to do and was annoyed by my presence. She had one of those naturally unhappy faces where the lips tilted down at the corners.

  Unfortunately, I needed Shannon. Once you hand in your badge, that’s it; you can’t just walk into to a morgue to look at a homicide victim. That was one more thing I didn’t want to think about. Handing over your badge and weapon was a death sentence for most cops. It wasn’t the only badge I was ever issued. But it was the gold one that said detective on it.

  “Nothing is finalized yet, but I’m leaning toward a direct cerebral laceration as the cause of death. Someone literally tore this guy’s head open,” she said.

  “Weapon?” I didn’t know if she was going to disclose this information. Usually, you didn’t get any specifics beyond who discovered the body, who called it in and where the body was going. I was counting on the favor I asked of Chris, the coroner I worked with for the last twelve years when I was a detective.

  “At this point, your guess is as good as mine. No fragments in the wound, nothing significant under the fingernails, no fibers and no postmortem bruising on the body… nothing,” she answered
.

  It had been a few years since I’d seen a dead body, but I couldn’t recall any of them looking like this. Bodies flashed in my mind: suicides, drug overdoses, elderly that had no kin to look in on them and had been dead for months. Not pretty.

  Of course, there were the shooters. How many people shot this year? Twenty-one maybe, but it was only March and none of them matched this picture. I gazed at Richie’s corpse until I could hear that faint droning noise in my head from whenever I stared at something too long. And it never got any easier for me. I never became desensitized. Throughout my career I kept thinking that it was a flaw, a hindrance.

  “Any ideas?”

  “In my twenty-five years in this field, I’ve seen a lot, but nothing like this. The cut was made from the nape of the neck to the top of the skull… approximately a four-inch depth at the nape and a two-inch depth at the top, as if he was hanging upside down when he was attacked,” she said, tracing the wound with her left hand.

  She hesitated, like she was contemplating what she would say next. I was afraid that maybe she felt like she’d told me too much. I needed more information. There was a long moment of silence, but then she continued.

  “The initial blow cut through both the parietal and occipital bones.”

  I noticed the content of his skull was almost nothing. Whoever killed Richie had almost hollowed it out. I shook my head a little. I needed to focus, not take another mental snapshot of something else I didn’t want to remember.

  “Where was he found?”

  “In an alley off of Third Street,” she said.

  “Was the body moved?”

  “No.”

  “Is it possible the attacker was hanging upside down?”

  “I don’t think so, it’s too precise. It’s deliberate and not in a sloppy way. This was one swipe with an unbelievable amount of force behind it.” Then she quickly turned her back to me and pushed the metal shelf with Richie’s body back into the refrigerated cabinet, closing the door.

  I understood her expression. I’d seen it many times. This was heinous and she was afraid. When she turned back around, her body was more rigid, a protective stance. She would divulge nothing else to me at this point. It was more information than I anticipated and I was grateful. But Shannon was nothing like Chris. Chris was completely clinical about every homicide victim.

  I shook her hand gently and gave it a slight squeeze before letting go. And that’s when I noticed the pain. It was always a mild ache but now it was escalating into a pulsating sharp pain. I didn’t want to take the pain killers because it was hard to focus so I knew it was coming. It was inevitable and I wanted to leave before she realized I was disabled.

  “Richie was a friend of mine a long time ago. I really appreciate your help.” I looked into her gray eyes to somehow convey to her that I would do all I could.

  I headed out the door, my limp was now obvious. I was sure she saw it on my way out. But I was relieved to escape the lifelessness of the morgue and I kept thinking about the report she paged through. It wasn’t the official police report, but it could’ve shown me things that I couldn’t see and I knew I wasn’t going to get it. Thanks to Chris’ unexpected absence, I didn’t obtain all the information I needed.

  “We expect the tox screening back in the next couple days,” she said, calling out into the hall. “And tell everyone else to give me more notice. I have things to do here.”

  Now, I had to turn around and go back in there. I headed back through the doors, trying to look like I wasn’t that curious.

  “Everyone else?” I said.

  She looked up from her papers and said, “I wasn’t perturbed by the sister and the girlfriend, but the FBI. I need more time to sterilize my area.”

  Why would the FBI be interested in Richie? He was nobody and if he did have a girlfriend, I didn’t think he picked the type that would stick around to identify his body. Richie preferred to be a loner. I nodded my head like I understood her complaints. That was her polite way of saying that the FBI was involved and there was a girlfriend I needed to find.

  I walked back out towards the elevator, trying not to limp. And once I made it around the corner I could see it was being serviced. A maintenance man had a ladder blocking the entrance. I should have taken the pain killers or at least brought them with me.

  Memories of Richie started to push forward from the corners of my mind. We did have brief encounters through the years, usually him trying to hit me up for cash or information, which I never relinquished. I had many regrets about distancing myself from him, but he was unstable in more than one way.

  The image of his disfigured skull made me cringe. And it stayed with me, gnawing into my brain, cementing itself there along with all the others.

  Then I looked at the door to the stairs.

  “How much longer?” I said, to the maintenance man.

  “Half hour maybe.”

  I let out a long sigh and pulled open the stairwell door. I leaned on the rail as my bad knee shot out even more pain step by step. It was only one flight but the muscles in my knee pulled cruelly when I reached the last few steps. I grew frustrated because my body could no longer perform the simple task of climbing stairs. All because I couldn’t shoot a sixteen- year-old kid.

  Then the door flew open and a blond nurse paused as she looked at me. It was obvious I was in pain. I took a few slow deep breaths as I paused.

  “Sir, do you need some help?”

  Just what I needed. A witness to pity me.

  “No, thank you.”

  She started down the stairs but then she turned back around.

  “Have you been discharged? I can get a wheelchair,” she said.

  “I wasn’t admitted.”

  Slowly she proceeded down but I could feel her eyes on me. I waited for the pain to subside before I took the last two steps and limped out to the main entrance.

  CHAPTER 2

  LEAVING THE MORGUE, I stepped out into the perpetual overcast of Seattle. There was a light drizzle which paused only occasionally throughout the year. You were lucky if you got fifty-eight sunny days out of every three hundred and sixty-five, but today the overcast seemed appropriate. But the rain always made my knee worse. I had to sit down on a bench for fifteen minutes before I tried to walk again.

  I could’ve taken my truck, but parking in Seattle, to say the least, was a problem. So I took the light rail — a fancy name for an elevated bus — into downtown, a block from Pike’s Market. Marie, Richie’s sister, had given me the address over the phone earlier, but I didn’t need it. I knew the area. Plus, I spent the last twenty years trying to avoid Richie, so of course I knew where he lived. Marie called his landlord and asked him to leave a key under the mat.

  When I got there, I limped up the outside steps that wrapped around the small laundromat to his apartment. Immediately, I noticed the front door had been pushed off the top hinge and forced open. Quickly, I unsnapped my holster and pulled out my .357 Magnum. Almost instantly I wished I brought the .22. The 686 Smith and Wesson had a lot of kick back and would be difficult to handle with my bad knee.

  I slowly slid through the half-open door and searched the apartment. I honed in on every creak in the floor, every puff of the furnace and anything else I could hear: a window opening, a footstep, a breath. I checked the small hallway and two closets, turning on every light, checking behind every door. I was alone.

  I wiped my sweaty brow on my coat sleeve and snapped my gun back in its holster. I knew all too well the kind of person that busts through a victim’s door only a few days after his death — not the good kind. Not the kind that would hesitate a second before firing. It was the kind that was insanely desperate, completely crazy, or really stupid, none of which I wanted to encounter.

  Suddenly, I was brought back by the view of the dismantled room. The place was demolished. Over half of the drop ceiling tiles had been torn down exposing the ductwork and wood framing. The dresser and kitchen cabinet drawe
rs were dumped out on the floor. The wood paneling on the right wall had been pried off and left leaning against an old blue sofa. There were pillows torn open, papers scattered across the floor and the small mattress in the living room had been sliced open down the center. Someone was looking for what Richie had and I would’ve bet a million bucks it wasn’t his in the first place.

  I found a blue Ethernet cord protruding from the living room wall, but the laptop it had been attached too had been confiscated or stolen. The laptop probably didn’t belong to Richie either. This was disturbing. Someone besides the cops had been here.

  I didn’t call the cops. By the looks of the place, he didn’t have much to steal.

  Aside from the mess, the studio above the laundromat smelled nice enough. The smell of fabric softener lingered throughout the tiny living space. But it was sad to think that Richie lived like this, on a dirty old mattress on the floor. We had such good times together as kids. I started to remember a lot of things, but I immediately pushed the memories back into the recesses of my mind. I didn’t want to remember everything. I didn’t want to remember her.

  After thirty minutes of rummaging through papers and past-due bills, I was getting frustrated. I headed into the tiny back room he apparently used for storage. In the dim light, I could see brown boxes ripped open and a pile of dirty clothes in front of them. I tossed a few half-empty boxes to one side and then I saw it.

  There was a brand new patch in the wall. The tiny storage room was drywalled, unlike the living room and kitchen. The paint was even matched to the exact color. I knew that Richie was a whiz with construction and since the cops had found nothing — well, nothing that was leaked by reporters — I figured I’d knock a hole in the wall and see what I’d find.

  I turned on the ceiling light, which made it even more noticeable. He must have been in a hurry, because I could see a crack in the center of the patch, which meant the mud had been put on recently and too thick. The patch had sucked up a lot of the paint; it needed more than the few coats he’d put on. But the crack wasn’t large enough to catch your eye unless you were looking for it, maybe a quarter of an inch wide. Not really something you would notice unless you had done some construction yourself. Plus, patching any holes in this dilapidated apartment seemed odd in itself.