Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (3 page)

Despite the fishy smells permeating the old wharf, the air seemed nutritious and refreshing. It was a day made for hikes and picnics, for apple picking and seeking the perfect Halloween pumpkin. For breathing in the crisp fall air and being glad to be alive. For law enforcement, it would be a long, slow day for death.

The general public's view of crime scene investigation was formed by television, where entire crimes were discovered, processed, and solved in an hour. The public, general or otherwise, didn't know squat. In the real world, after good observation skills, deep curiosity, the ability to spot a lie, and a healthy skepticism, a detective's most important characteristics were tenacity and patience. Half the job was patiently watching and waiting, like they were doing now. Once the body came ashore, their job would begin. But hours of work by public safety personnel had already gone in.

The general public, going about their business on this lovely Saturday, probably never gave a thought to how many people's days had been disrupted by this event. The dive team—at least three divers, two to retrieve the body and a safety diver on the boat, as well as a supervisor—had to be called out with all of their assembled gear. A police boat and crew—in this case, two police boats and their crews—had to be deployed to carry the dive team, retrieve the body, and keep the public from mucking things up. Detectives and crime scene techs had been called in, ready to go when the body arrived on shore. Because it was protocol to treat a body like this as a potential homicide, someone from the ME's office had to be there to do a preliminary exam.

Nor did the salacious crowd have any idea what was actually taking place under the surface of the choppy sea. A while ago, he'd heard someone complain, "The fuck's takin' so long? I wanna see this before I gotta go to my grandma's for dinna. Cops are just doin' it for the overtime. That's what they all do." Like they enjoyed standing around for hours enduring public scrutiny and the pressure on bad backs and knees. Like they didn't want to be enjoying this beautiful weekend day just like any other citizen.

There was nothing simple or quick about retrieving a body in the water. They didn't just swim down and stuff it in a bag. It took a series of dives and a set of carefully choreographed steps. First, the divers would make a preliminary location and verification dive to determine whether they were, in fact, dealing with a body. Divers had been called out for dead dogs and deer bones, dead sharks and bundles of clothes that people had reported as bodies. On those initial dives, the team would carry slates and pencils and, if the presence of a body was confirmed, take notes on what they found, including information about the state and position of the body.

Conditions permitting, a second dive would be made with underwater cameras to record the scene. On subsequent dives, divers would bag the hands, head, and feet to preserve any evidence that might remain, including foam in the nose or anything in the corpse's mouth or under the nails. Only after these evidence-preserving dives would they go down with the body bag and the Stokes basket, bag the body, and put it in the basket for retrieval. As Burgess knew from friends who'd done it, getting a decomposed body into a bag, or doing it under murky conditions, could be a real bitch. Some dive teams practiced doing it with blacked out masks to prepare for the difficult reality they sometimes faced.

A gruff voice pulled his attention away from the operation out on the water. A grizzled man in a shabby army jacket, the hood of a gray sweatshirt pulled close around his face, waved a dirty hand. "Joe... I needa talk to ya." The people standing around him had moved away, leaving a small clearing where he pressed against the tape. Some ostentatiously held their noses.

Burgess walked back to the tape. The man was short and his bent posture made him shorter. He smelled of poor hygiene, tobacco, and unwashed clothes. He coughed into his hands as Burgess leaned down. "What's up, Benjy?"

"Oh, hey, Joe. It's—"

"Excuse me." A woman with a peremptory voice tapped him on the shoulder. Turning, Burgess found a well-dressed blond woman with two children, maybe eight and ten. Something about her seemed familiar. He erased a dozen years and three dozen pounds, and came up with a name. Shelli something. He'd dated her briefly. She didn't seem to remember him.

"Are you with the police?" she asked. He nodded. "Well, look, officer, my kids are having a real hard time seeing from here. Couldn't we just slip under the tape and go a little farther out on the wharf so we can see what's going on?"

"Joe?" Benjy said. "I only need the minute."

The woman glared at Benjy, her sculpted brows lifting, carefully drawn mouth pursing with disapproval. "Get away from us, mister. You're disgusting," she said.

With a hurt look, Benjy ducked his head and turned away. Burgess put a hand on his arm. "Wait."

He turned to the woman. "There's no call for that. Benjy here does the best he can." He watched the self-satisfied face register surprise. "You want to know what's really disgusting, Shelli? People like you bringing their kids to gape at tragedy like it's some kind of entertainment. Some poor soul has lost his life. Why would you want your children to see that?"

The woman's face went red. She took a step back, slapping a hand with bright red nails against her chest. "My God," she said. "My God. I can't believe the police are allowed to talk to me like that. I should report you."

"If you want to report that a police detective refused to allow you to cross a police line and interfere with an investigation so your young children could get a closer look at a crime scene, ma'am, you feel free."

She grabbed her childrens' hands and dragged them away, her shoulders stiff with outrage. He turned back to Benjy.

The old man's rheumy pale eyes stared out from a chapped and wrinkled face as he rubbed a couple day's white stubble. "Sorry to trouble you, Joe. It's only that Maura's worried about Reggie. He didn't come see her last night."

Reggie was one of the street people Burgess tried to keep an eye on. Home was a shabby room in a cheap rooming house on the back side of the hill. And Maura was a delusional on again/off again alkie who, when she didn't take her meds, was as likely to see people who weren't there as notice those who were. Still, she and Reggie had been a couple for the last decade. It was probably nothing. Reggie was back in detox or in the tank drying out or had gone to see his brother. Reggie's cycles were like the seasons. Spring he vowed to reform. Summer he did pickup work and got healthy. Went up north to his brother's farm to work or worked in the city parks. In the fall, without work to structure his life, he'd fall apart, drinking through winter until he ended up in the hospital, jail, or a program. Then he'd dry out and start the cycle again.

"You see her, tell her I'm checking around, Benjy, okay? Tell her I'll come see her if I learn anything. She called his brother?"

"I dunno." Benjy ducked his head. "I'll tell her, Joe. I will. She's real worried is all. Hope you can find him."

His phone buzzed. The supervisor on the boat. They had the body loaded and were coming in. At the end of the wharf, a slanted ramp led down to a waterside dock. The fishing boat that docked there had been moved to make a space for the police boat.

He ducked under the tape and walked back to Stan and Dr. Lee. "They're coming in."

Lee checked his watch and nodded. "I've got a two o'clock tee time. Should make it in plenty of time."

"I can't see you as a golfer," Burgess said, his eyes on the boat heading toward them. On the anonymous black bagged shape. "What's the attraction?"

Lee shrugged. "Gets me out of the morgue? I can take out my frustrations on a little white ball, which beats fighting with my wife. You should try it, Joe. You might lighten up."

"Not sure the brass wants homicide light," Burgess said. "It's kind of a dark calling."

Lee raised one eyebrow. "And that makes me what? The merry medical examiner?"

"With a slice and a dice and a hey nonny nonny," Burgess said. "Has a certain ring to it."

"And we can just imagine how the defense attorneys would use that."

"Fuckin' bloodsuckers," Perry said. He'd just had a case come to trial against Portland's meanest and most effective defense attorney. After a day on the stand, he'd come back to 109 snarling. "Feels like he's pulled out my guts and put them through a shredder and the prosecutor couldn't do a damned thing." They all went through it. Put heart and soul on the line, then watch your work get pissed away by the injustice system. No wonder cops were cynical.

Together, they walked to the end of the dock to meet the boat, Wink Devlin, the head evidence tech, trailing behind them with his gear. Dani Letorneau was there with a camera, looking cute as a bug and distinctly uncoplike in soccer shorts and shin guards. She shrugged off Burgess's scrutiny. "Came straight from the field when Wink called. Captain Cote doesn't like it, he can drive down here and bring me some clothes."

They stood somberly while the Stokes was unloaded and the divers gave their preliminary reports. Then Dr. Lee reached for the zipper.

"We bagged him face-up, not face-down the way he was floating. Otherwise, he's just like we found him. Not fetal," Rick Chaplin, one of the divers, said, "and he wasn't wearing shoes. You need us anymore? We'd like to get back down. Do the evidence search while the water's clear. Way the wind's coming up, it's gonna get a lot murkier."

"Later's fine," Burgess said. "Here or at 109." Police headquarters was at 109 Middle Street, about a quarter-mile away.

Chaplin waved his thanks, and he and the other diver stepped back into the boat. While the detectives were processing the body, they'd do an evidence search of the area within one hundred feet of where the body was found. A balloon floating on the surface marked the spot where they'd start.

Burgess turned back to the body. The bagged head and hands seemed alien. The wet clothes gave the body the dark, slick look of a marine creature, the only scent the briny tang of the sea, suggesting the body was fairly fresh. Decomp started fast and even coming out of cold water, the smell was unmistakable.

"Let's get a look at him. See what we've got," Lee said. Carefully, he peeled the bag off the head and handed it to Wink to preserve, then leaned in to examine the body.

Peering over Lee's shoulder, Burgess stared down at the wet, white face. Lee pushed back the long tangled hair that obscured the features, and Burgess found himself staring down into a face he'd known most of his life. Reginald Woodford Libby. Reggie the Can Man.

He closed his eyes against his sudden, unwanted tears, then rose to his feet and moved away. This was where Reggie had been heading since they were both nineteen years old in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Burgess had been hauling Reggie out of the pit, sticking on bandaids, and setting him back on the path for decades. It had been Sisyphean work, and he had done it gladly. There but for the grace of God and all. It hurt like hell that it had come to this.

Chapter 2

Long before the boys fishing off the wharf this morning had spotted him, Reggie the Can Man had been lost. Reggie was—had been—an alcoholic, mentally ill Vietnam vet who'd supplemented his disability by collecting cans and bottles and returning them to the redemption center. He'd lived on the streets or in shabby rooming houses for decades. Reggie and his shopping cart were a familiar sight on the streets of Portland, and he'd been called Reggie the Can Man so long most people had forgotten his last name. Not Burgess. He'd known Reggie in high school, where Reginald Woodford Libby had been popular, handsome, and a star athlete.

After high school, both unsure what they wanted to do with their lives, and with Uncle Sam offering an inflexible option, they'd gone to Nam together. A year of his life Burgess kept in a lockbox in his brain. Burgess had come back okay, scarred but okay, become a cop and found his calling. Reggie had come back seeming okay, fallen into a black hole, and bounced between fine and seriously disturbed ever since.

Still cradling Reggie's head between his gloved hands, Dr. Lee looked up from his careful examination. Seeing Reggie's head cradled, and the peaceful stillness of death, even if the hands were gloved and impersonal, pinged something in Burgess, starting a train of wishes that there had been more touches and caring while Reggie was alive.

"You know this man, Joe?" Lee asked.