Monsters Got Blamed for Murder, So I Relived the Victim's Last Hour novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Hold

At dawn on the dock, Halina shows the club the difference between a claw and a hook, the Bureau's own seal log puts the killing thirty minutes after the Crack closed, Inspector Reiss refuses the courier, and the killer's yellow tag with her name on it is waiting on her car seat.

The Marine got to the dock steps first, and Deloris and I came out behind him into the cold.

Seven dead folds lay on the apron under the floodlights, each with a numbered orange tag in its ear.

The tall man in the gray windbreaker stopped at the foot of the steps with his stamp in his fist.

"Inspector Reiss, Fissure Bureau, Great Lakes Region," he said. "I'm here for the Directive decedent."

He was about thirty-seven, lean, with the gray skin of someone who slept in his car, and yellow FB letters on his chest.

Inspectors carried paperwork and Kevlar and no skill at all, because the Bureau said a skill could lie to a form.

"He isn't a Directive decedent," I said. "I signed him as a homicide at 3:04."

Reiss looked at me for a long moment.

"Doctor, homicide isn't a category the Directive recognizes."

"It's one the State of Illinois recognizes."

Behind me, five rifles shifted on their slings.

"Then say how you know it, Doc," the Marine said. "Say it to us."

I took out my phone and held up the photographs, the row of four punctures beside the ruler.

"These are a hook's tines," I said. "They run straight, an inch apart, and they have no slime on them."

The nearest dead fold lay on its side at the foot of the steps, its left forefoot toward us.

"Look at that foot."

The Marine crouched and spread the toes with his boot.

Three claws, thick and curved, splayed far apart.

"Three," he said. "Curved."

He looked at my screen, and then back at the foot.

"Terrence has four, in a line."

Nobody on the dock made a sound.

The Honore Street men went quiet one at a time as the arithmetic reached each of them.

"A fold didn't do this," the Marine said.

"No," I said. "A person did, with a tool."

Reiss came up two steps and studied the phone for longer than I liked, his stamp lowered to his side.

"There's another problem," I said. "When did your log say the Honore Street Crack sealed?"

He pulled a tablet from his bag and thumbed it awake.

"Nine-oh-four p.m.," he read. "Crew twelve filed it. Eleven folds tagged, no live fold left at the scene."

"Terrence was found at 9:50. Where is his phone, Deloris?"

She had the effects bag already, clear plastic with the county tag, and she held it up under the floodlight.

I pressed the phone's button through the plastic, and the screen lit on a missed call.

Outgoing, 9:34 p.m., to Mrs. K, no answer, no seconds.

[Reading confirmed: the call at 9:34. +100 XP.]

"Half an hour after the seal," Reiss said slowly. "No live fold on the street."

"Nothing alive on that street could have done it to him," I said.

I watched him do the sum, and I watched what it cost him.

He stamped Directive forms for a living, and he had just learned that one of them was wrong.

How many others, I could see him thinking, and I thought it with him.

"A crew carries a hook on every truck," he said, more to himself than to me.

The man in the orange vest stood by the Bureau van with his thumbs in his belt.

He had been there the whole time, chewing his toothpick and listening to every word.

"Here's mine, boys," the tagger said pleasantly, and unhooked the drag hook from his hip.

He held it out handle first to Reiss.

Reiss crouched under the floodlight and laid it beside the photograph.

Four tines, steel, straight, an inch apart.

The orange powder-coat on the handle was whole, with not a chip missing, and the tines had been wiped to a shine.

"Spare's in the truck," the tagger added. "Take that too, Inspector. Every crew in Illinois carries these. There's eleven hundred of them out there."

Reiss bagged both, and I knew he would learn nothing from either one.

The man had known which tool to bring out and which to leave in the truck.

I felt the morning tip away from us, and my left side ached where Bayne's had been opened.

"Inspector," I said, "the flake in his wound is from a handle that's missing a chip."

"I believe you," Reiss said. "I can't prove it from these."

Headlights swung into the lot, and Dr. Pashek's gray Buick pulled across the apron.

He climbed out in a bow tie and a wool overcoat with a handkerchief already in his fist.

"Mr. Reiss," he said. "Colleague. Whatever this is, it ends at six o'clock with the courier."

"It's six-ten, Doctor," Reiss said.

He looked at the stamp in his fist.

Then he put it back in his pocket, and in eight years I had never seen anyone in that jacket do that.

"State hold on the decedent," Reiss said.

"A licensed pathologist has signed a homicide, and my Directive doesn't reach one," he said. "I'm not releasing the courier."

"This is a Bureau matter," Pashek said.

"It's a hold, Doctor," Reiss said. "Take it up with the Attorney General."

He typed it into his tablet in front of all of us, and I watched his thumbs not shake.

[Finding filed and held: homicide, Terrence Bayne. +200 XP.]

[Last Hour, Level 2. XP: 600 of 1,200.]

The Marine nodded once, and the rifles came down off the shoulders, one after another.

Pashek turned on me with his handkerchief pressed to his upper lip.

"Dr. Mroz, you are off the autopsy floor," he said. "You are on Intake, effective this minute. I will do Mr. Bayne myself."

"There's a chain of custody on the flake, Dr. Pashek."

"There will be a chain of custody on you."

He said it softly, and then he walked inside with his overcoat flapping.

Deloris squeezed my elbow, hard, and went after him to make sure he touched nothing.

Reiss was still looking at my phone.

"Doctor," he said. "The photographs. Can I have them?"

I sent them to him, and I did not know yet if that had been brave or stupid.

At 7:20 I walked across the lot to my car with the sun just up behind the medical towers.

Something lay on the driver's seat through the window.

It was a yellow Directive-7 tag on a wire loop, the kind the crews clipped to the dead.

Under DECEDENT someone had printed in block capitals: MROZ, H.

Cause: MONSTER-RELATED.

The date line was blank, and beside it lay a cinnamon toothpick.

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