Lost Girl

Chapter Ten: The Bodies

In Detective Bill Crisp's opinion, the stories and TV shows were all wrong.

In the shows, there seemed to be a clear delineation between two different kinds of cops: good ones and bad ones. The good ones were knowledgeable, experienced beyond their years. Able to make a difference and willing to do so.

The bad cops were mostly incompetent, dirty slugs who slogged along at a job with good benefits but lousy pay until someone from the criminal underworld offered them more money than they – with their low self-esteem and even lower levels of opportunity for advancement – could afford to pass up.

In reality, though, Crisp knew that the correct way to categorize cops wasn't as good or bad, but just as "human." There were ones who had drug addictions but were stunning investigators; there were others who went to church and helped ladies cross the street, but couldn't even find a crime scene, let alone interpret it. There were cops who were devoted family men and who hugged their kids at night, but who thought nothing of beating a perp senseless if it was possible to do without getting caught.

Crisp's partner, Manny Garcia, was a strange mix of cop. Family man, but able to appreciate a good-looking gal when she walked by ("If God didn't want me to look, amigo, he wouldn't have given me eyes."). Gentle as a lamb usually, but could throw a devastating left hook when prodded. Mexican, but loved to listen to bagpipe music for Chrissakes. Garcia was a study in opposites, oil and water in the same short, pudgy-looking container.

Maybe that was why Crisp loved the guy so much. He was like the ultimate mystery. And Crisp loved a good mystery.

One thing that was not a mystery about his partner, though, was what his butt looked like. Spring had come early this year, so Garcia had taken off his jacket on the way over here. Now, bent over one of the bodies, his shirt had somehow fought its way free from Garcia's pants and the pants themselves had gone super low-rider. Garcia's butt-crack was not something Crisp wanted to see. Not when there was already so much horror in this alley.

"Pull your trousers up, Garcia," said Crisp.

Garcia didn't seem to hear him. "Where's the blood?" he asked.

Crisp shrugged, as though such things were beneath his dignity. "Haven't found any yet," he said. "Just that black crap. Pull your pants up, partner."

Garcia didn't move. He was staring at the boy who was farthest into the alley. Or rather, at the kid's body: the part of the kid that was closest to the squat detective. The kid's head was about ten feet away, sitting in a smaller puddle of the dark liquid that had pooled around all three bodies and their respective decapitated heads.

It was fairly easy to tell which head went to which body, even with the mutilations. The three bodies were strikingly different in size – one extremely lean, one just thin, and the third was enormously muscled – so Crisp could tell at a glance which head went to which neck.

Garcia leaned in close to the boy's body. He sniffed. "Stinks," he muttered.

"Maybe that's your buttcrack you're smelling," Crisp suggested.

Garcia refused to rise to Crisp's bait. "That ain't it, jefe." He smelled again. Crisp felt his gorge rising as his partner practically put his nose on the corpse and inhaled. "Smells like garlic," he said.

"Maybe they were Italian," Crisp said.

Garcia smelled the dead kid one more time. "Also smells rotten. Like dead skunk."

"Stinky Italians, then," said Crisp. Then the smell reached him as well. It was indeed a bit garlicky, almost pleasant at first. But then the odor settled in to stay, and underneath the garlic odor Crisp found something musty and rotten. The smell of a corpse long-hidden and finally brought to light. The tang of decomposition you might find near a dead animal on the side of a road.