1
“Detective King, there is a report of a warehouse fire with a dead body off of Livingston in the old warehouse district. Patrols are on scene, and a cordon has been established.” The dispatcher's voice was far too fucking perky for 1:00 a.m.
He blinked hard and tried to bring the light fixture and fan on the ceiling into focus. It wasn’t working too well. He closed his eyes again and mumbled, “Roger that. Send the address to my phone. Have you notified Detective Whitt?”
“I called him first, sir. He told me to remind you he’s with Vice tonight.”
Crap that’s right. He glanced at the clock. He’d just fallen asleep. Thirty-five minutes ago, to be exact. “Fuck.”
“Sir?”
“Sorry. Never mind. Text me the address. Tell the responding patrols I’m on my way.” He flipped the blanket back and headed to the bathroom. Two minutes later he made a quick detour into the kitchen. He had two coffee pots, one of the drip-brew big boys that made a pot the size of the Titanic, and a different machine that made coffee quickly, by the cup. He used three coffee pods, enough cream to sink the aforementioned Titanic, and a fuck-ton of sugar to fill his travel tankard before he headed downstairs to his truck. The three-minute delay waiting for his coffee was a necessity. The general public needed him awake when he drove, and the dead body wasn't going to get... deader. Damn, it was going to be a long night.
The tires of his old truck crunched against the scattered gravel on the patchwork asphalt as he came to a stop outside the charred remnants of what once was a warehouse. Now it was a fucking shell, a huge husk burned and purged empty of any contents. Thanks to the lack of sleep he'd tallied over the last three weeks, he felt a strange kinship to the hollow, gutted structure. The outsides were still present, the insides? Desolate, charred and unusable. Fuck, he was tired. When the morbid comparisons started rolling it was well past time to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. If only the fucking criminals who worked overtime in Hope City would read that memo. He rolled his shoulders and groaned when the vertebrae in his neck and back popped.
He focused on the building. The outer structure of the warehouse still smoldered in places. While the rest of the responding firemen were busy emptying hoses and replacing them on the trucks, a hotshot crew scrambled, hunting down unextinguished embers. He glanced at the number on the side of the hook and ladder truck—his baby brother’s battalion. He had no idea if Blay was on shift or not. That was a moot point because right now, he had a dead body to meet and a death scene to process; there was no time for catching up with his brother.
It wasn’t difficult to find where he needed to be. Instead of the flashing red lights of the fire trucks, the slow-rolling blue strobes of the responding patrol units heralded the position of the body as if a lighthouse’s million-watt beam cutting through the grayness of a fog bank. He took his time walking up to the crime scene. It was his habit to take in the entirety of the area prior to approaching the body. He needed to get a feel for the location and any circumstance on the outside that could contribute to what he was about to see inside.
This warehouse was on the outer edges of the Inner Harbor, a few miles and a couple lifetimes from the classy shops, high-dollar restaurants, and upscale bars that had taken over what used to be run down fisheries, storage warehouses, an old cannery, and a plethora of failed businesses in Hope City, Maryland. Young, eager money flowed into the Inner Harbor now. This area of the city was being revitalized, if you believed the hype in the Hope City Journal.
He put his hands on his hips and looked away from the building, absorbing the oppressiveness of the outer edges of his city. Revitalization. Not from where he stood. In his district, he worked amongst the poorest of the poor, people who had no hope, people who didn't have a way out. Crime, hell, that was the constant for his people. For the ones who lived in his district, crime equaled income. As money flowed into Hope City, crime became a lucrative investment. Drugs, prostitution, illegal gun sales, smuggling, and larcenies had all taken notice of new money and had bumped up the crime rates for his district.
His attention centered on the shadowy images of old, vacant warehouses that lay further from the smoldering ruins where he now stood. His job had taken him there in the past. A large homeless population had settled just beyond those warehouses. They lived scattered among the desolation and decay of better times.
A strong wind blew, lifting his father's old, green field jacket away from his body. Fall was slipping into winter. Brock closed his eyes. The annual coat and blanket drive organized by the Hope City Humanitarian Alliance should be wrapping up. He prayed the organization got enough donations this year. Far too many died last year due to exposure to the cold. There weren’t enough shelters to hold all the people who had nowhere to go. Life on his side of the city was brutal.
He turned away from his thoughts and faced the charred walls of the warehouse. The yellow crime scene tape flickered and snapped in the brisk, cold wind. Careful to avoid any of the debris surrounding the building, he picked his way through the rubble that littered his path.
Carrying the duffle that held his crime scene kit, he rounded the corner, entered the warehouse, and stopped short. A small smile spread across his face. “Well, if you’re here, why the fuck am I? Someone said this was a homicide.”
Sean McBride’s head snapped up. “About time you showed up, King.” His best friend of damn near thirty years stood and carefully backed away from whatever he studied on the wall. The latex gloves Sean wore snapped off and Brock was enveloped in a hug a heartbeat later. “How have you been, man?”
“Not bad. How’re your mom and dad?” He slapped Sean’s back a couple times before they broke apart. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, feeling more than a little guilty about not going home lately. He hadn’t been by to see his parents or Colm and Sharon McBride in far too long. Life had a way of becoming complicated, busy, and downright unpleasant. It was the unpleasant he tried to keep from his family and friends, though they were well acquainted with life in law enforcement.
“They’re good. Hey, did you hear Rory and Erin are getting out of the military?” Sean mimicked Brock’s position as they stared at the dead body.
Neighbors their entire life, the King and McBride clans were practically family. Erin and Rory were Sean’s younger brother and sister. Twins. It seemed to be a rite of passage in both families that almost all the children had served in the armed forces. “No. I hadn't heard. Are they coming home, or are they spreading their wings and conquering the world outside of Hope City?”
“Not sure yet. Mom just told me Erin had put in her paperwork. We knew about Rory getting out last month. We need to have dinner and drinks and catch up—” Sean motioned to the dead body not more than fifteen feet from them “—but I think both of us may be busy for the foreseeable future.”
The dead body they stared at was the reason he’d been called from his warm, seldom used bed. The victim wasn’t the toasted remnants of a homeless person trying to stay warm. The man in front of them wore designer clothes. Barely a scratch marred the soles of his shoes, although there were a few tiny scuffs on the toes. His hair was styled with product. The slacks he wore were obviously expensive. The fall of blood from the man’s severed neck coated the front of the man's chest, a stark difference from the pristine white of the shirt's sleeves and cuffs. That material shimmered in the headlights of the patrol cars and the temporary lighting Sean had set up by the scorched wall.