Naive Charles Royce (great novels .txt) 📖

isn’t it?” Detective Penance looks at Micah. “Mind if we talk downtown? I want to hear about your night from the beginning. Why don’t you come with me, let them do their work?”

Micah recognizes the question as a command. “Of course.”

Detective Penance nods to the police officers and to the crime scene team that has begun to document its findings. “Keep me posted.”

He stands behind Micah, nudging him in the small of his back as they enter the elevator. They ride down in silence and exit the building through what’s left of the front door. Glass crackles underneath their feet. Red and blue lights are now illuminating the entire city block, which is barricaded to through-traffic. A bevy of police cars begins to swarm the corner of Henry and Rutgers.

The odd evening chill rushes through Micah’s wavy blond hair, and he realizes he is still wearing his white tux shirt, discolored to a blackened crimson. A short, auburn-haired woman Micah has never seen before is holding the door open to a black Lincoln MKZ, motioning for him to enter. Lights are flashing in his eyes. Entire news crews are also assembling, photographing and filming the worst night of his life. A familiar voice calls out from the crowd.

“Micah!”

He scans and spots his friend, who is waving, dressed in her trench with her clutch still in her hands.

“Jenna!” Micah yells with a mix of excitement and relief, knowing he now has a brief link to the outside world. He locks eyes with her and makes a phone call mime with his right thumb and pinkie. “Call Shawn!”

Jenna nods and watches Micah get into the car with Detective Penance. They drive away.

“Who’s Shawn?” Detective Penance asks, turning around from the front passenger seat of the car as they make their way to the police station.

Micah, sitting in the middle of the back seat with his head down and his hands in his lap, never looks up.

“My lawyer.”

C h a p t e r   5

A flash of light. ((Buzzz.)) Another flash. ((Buzzz.))

“Turn to the left, and lift up your left arm,” says the female photographer, the same lady who’d opened the door to the Lincoln MKZ and driven Micah and Detective Penance to this place, a sticky little corner of Manhattan’s Seventh Precinct police station’s basement.

Her name is Lilith McGuire. She has been Detective Penance’s right hand for less than five months. Her hope has been to be considered partner within the year, but her three-month evaluation contained Detective Penance’s handwritten remark “hit or miss” underneath “Decision-Making,” a setback that still haunts her. Standing at only five-foot-four, skinny, beautiful by any standard, with long, straight, dark auburn hair that she puts up in a ragged ponytail most of the time, she is inherently eager, which is both her biggest strength and greatest weakness. In all aspects of her life, she is the dominant one, and most often does as she pleases, which is why her last long-term relationship with a woman ended in an ugly divorce. She hates her name, and would prefer “Lil,” but no one calls her that. Everyone who works with her loves the irony of calling her Lily. It’s like calling the Pope “Franny,” they often joke.

Having only been an investigator for a short time, she takes advantage of any opportunity to prove herself worthy of partner status. But right now, she finds herself in charge of taking nude photos in the basement of the precinct.

“Now turn to the right, and lift up your right arm,” Lily says to Micah, who is standing naked in front of her, covering his privates with whichever hand is available. “Thank you for consenting to these photos. We’re almost done. Just a few more.”

Micah’s muscles tense as his body shivers. “Anything you need.”

The computer screen in front of Lily flashes Micah’s different body parts frame-by-frame while she continues to snap photos.

Micah’s neck. ((Flash. Buzzz.)) His face. ((Flash. Buzzz.)) His hands. ((Flash. Buzzz.))

✽✽✽

Lennox’s mutilated chest. ((Flash. Buzzz.)) His punctured neck. ((Flash. Buzzz.)) The crime scene photographer stops, feeling nauseous at the site of the butchered body, one of the worst he’s ever seen. He turns his head.

Just beside the photographer stands Officer Palino on the phone with Detective Penance, filling him in on everything they’ve found thus far.

“You got the password I sent you for the victim’s phone, right?” asks Officer Palino.

“Yep, thanks, looking at it now. Shows texts to a Jenna, a couple of texts and voice mails from Micah, one unknown, and one that just says ‘WORK’ in all caps. Haven’t listened to them yet of course. Got the suspect’s bloody jacket. Got his bag too. We’ve also secured two laptops, looks like a work one and a personal one, and a huge iMac that has pictures of both the victim and the suspect floating on the screen saver, with a bunch of mail and papers sitting around addressed to Micah Breuer. You think the iMac uses the same password as the iPhone?”

“If not, he’s being cooperative, so I’m sure we can get that one too. Mark ’em, bag ’em. We’ll go through them and see what we can find. The suspect has also consented to photos and DNA sampling, so we will have some documentation on bruising, blood, signs of a struggle. Keep going, but I think we’re in good shape.”

“Wait, that’s not all,” Palino says. “I’m no detective or anything, but I’m noticing all this recovery literature on the bookshelves, and a couple of notes about sponsees and shit around one of the victim’s laptops.”

“Yeah, so this Lennox guy was probably a recovering drunk or drug addict, or both, and he sponsored people. So, what of it?”

“Well, one of my guys was searching through the closet in the back bedroom and found a box of old cards and letters addressed to Lennox, and at the bottom of the box were a couple of bags of what looks like heroin. One of ’em is half empty.”

“Hmmm. Maybe