| Writing Samples - Novels "Riverbend" Chapter One- Riverbend |
Chapter 1. Riverbend Les Moore arrived at 9:36. He’d received a call the night before in Coeur d’Alene where he’d been assisting sheriffs with a bizarre rampage-style murder: twins in a doublewide. It made a good headline, just the kind Local hates. Les picked up the message from Brinkman just after four a.m. and was on a plane by six. His plain-blue rental (the Seattle field office was short a car) crunched onto what little gravel there was on the far side of the road directly across from fifty feet of yellow crime tape which had been draped between two orange highway cones cordoning off a long, six-inch wide black slick left when the brown Monte’s bald tires failed to find purchase on the lush, green highway grass: not a mountain of evidence, but someone thought it was worth preserving. The Monte Carlo was missing. A bevy of local authorities, to use the word loosely, gazed at the blue Buick. Some FBI-bashing was in order: “Hoover’s here, everybody shape up.” Cigarette tips glowed red as tin stars rose fast and fell in snatches under tar- filled laughs. No one moved. When the door fell open, Sinatra spilled out, crooning Nice and Easy from the tape deck; smooth, effortless. A moment later, Special Agent Leslie Francis Moore shut the motor and stepped out onto the blacktop, holster on— but empty. A County Sheriffs lieuie felt inspired to remark: “Must build ‘em brave in D.C., these days.” There were more glows and a phlegmy cough followed by something wet and heavy hitting the blacktop. Then Les’s other hand came out of the car, gripping his 1989 Ruger P-85 Mark-2. Fifteen round clip. “Maybe not,” someone else cracked, and the Winstons went quiet. A young cop from Bellingham who happened to have been driving past on vacation when he saw the hubbub and stopped to mingle with some of his own, scratched under one eye and asked, “Wonder, do they pay for those suits or just the dryclean on ‘em?” “I hear they have the maid take care of everything,” came the answer from down the line, and the row was aglow again. Les checked for traffic and crossed. “Fellahs,” he said, nodding to the lineup of chiseled faces shaded against a non-existent sun under wide tan brims and blue ballcaps with stars on the crown. Most nodded back, extending professional courtesy only as far as they figured they had to. “Don’t worry,” Les assured, “I’m just here to assist, not to steal anyone’s thunder.” “Just our evidence,” a voice came back, low. Les looked to his left. A young Tacoma cop with no business out here in the first place wore a smirk that said he thought he was clever beyond his years. (He’d heard about the body in the woods on his radio at Denny’s and called in a temp’ off-air to check it out; so of course he had to be the most vocal.) Some of the older Locals braced, but Les Moore was decades past letting a rookie uniform get to him. He just shrugged and said, “What Wilstrong wants: His employees take.” He meant Bureau Chief Wilstrong, Hoover’s positional descendent, and the first African-American ever to hold the job. Tall, tough and highly regarded, Evertt Wilstrong had taken a position. There were more nods, less grinning and Les, grinning. Everyone takes orders, even Feds. “He doesn’t want it, it’s all yours,” Les assured the kid, and walked on. Just back of the crime tape was a coroner’s van. Two beefy ex-jocks dressed in white, farm boys gone soft, reposed against it, one on either side of the hippocratic snake, Camel Lites dangling from their lips. It was a sight not wasted on Les. “Hey, you guys die of cancer, you can haul each other in before you get cold.” The one with longer hair looked up and said, “Huh?” The other never moved. Les wondered if they were both having the same dulling daydream and started down the steep bank, catching his first glimpse of bare flesh through the undergrowth—probably a buttocks and lower back, smooth and pale, with blood spatters. There was the flash of a Crime Scene camera, a pin-prick in daylight, and it all came back like yesterday. Standing off to one side of the body, Major Frederick J. Bondini of the King County Sheriffs Department watched with three of his underlings—one of them a salt and pepper veteran from the Major Crimes Unit—as an attractive female M.E.’s assistant did her dirty work. From his canted view across the body Bondini spotted “Les!” coming down the bank, and turned up a friendly round face. The two young sheriffs—one of them a woman— shared a discreet look. They had heard. “How are ya? What’s it been?” Bondini asked Les. He knew exactly how long it had been, but he wasn’t bringing that up. “Three years,” Les said, graciously, as if nothing else had ever happened out here. “I see they made you Major.” “Had to. No one around with more grey hair,” Fred said with what sounded like a genuine laugh. “Here to snake my case?” “You bet,” Les replied about the same way, and threw an honest handshake. “Wife and kids?” “Let’s see. A broken leg, four sets of braces, two state tuitions, one out of state, new caps, face-lift, partial, and a Volvo. Oldest one lost it on Old 82. Rearranged a row of mailboxes and a brick shed, but didn’t pop a pimple.” Les gave up a chuckle. Raising kids was safe talk, and it never really changed; just variations on a theme. But that was as much banter as anyone got out of Les Moore. “I heard chatter on the radio,” he said. “You think this may be him.” Bondini’s deputies shared another muted glance as their boss’s good humor evaporated quicker than a raindrop on hot summer asphalt in Arizona, which was exactly where he wished he was at the moment. “That’s right: You heard chatter,” Fred Bondini said, having a way of making the simplest remark come out as complex caveat. So, the two of them, along with the two sheriffs and the MCU guy, a captain, watched in silence as the brunette forensics woman measured spatter trajectories on the Killer’s back and shoulder. Killer, killed. “I guess we can rule out Personal Cause Homicide,” Les said, his expression never changing. He meant domestic stuff. The killer’s thin blond hair was matted in back, red-going-black, at the exit wound. He had been shot through the face, they eye—probably while on his knees—and left here, naked, to be discovered. No attempt at hiding the body or the deed. A statement, indeed. Bondini gave a quick glower followed by a snort of appreciation, glad to see Les hadn’t left his sense of humor wherever it was he had sent his body and soul during those three years in absentia. Someone had said it was Tahiti, but Bondini thought it more was likely somewhere like Outer Mongolia or the middle of the Sahara Desert—South Jersey, maybe—some anonymous nether region where Les could loiter unnoticed until the pain ebbed, or he drank himself to redemption or death whichever came first. Done with measuring, the coroner’s brunette—a young Kathleen Turner with a dark rinse—stood, seeming to realize only then that Les was there, and that he was a very good looking man. She appraised his smallish features— calm dark eyes which could no doubt go stormy on short notice—and said, “All yours,” ostensibly for Bondini; but her eyes never left Les’s. After letting the look linger a moment, smolder really, she smiled and started up the bank. Les kept his eyes on her retreat, hopeful for something to admire; but her lab coat obscured anything of real interest, so... She removed it. This brought into play some very thin slacks, tight and white enough to reveal her choice in panties; only, none showed. A moment later, the alluring assistant M.E. crested the hill and the coat went back on. She never looked back. Les grinned. It was as open an invitation as he had gotten in weeks, if not months. Or was it years? He’d lost count when he lost interest, back in Ninety-Whatever. Before Riverbend changed everything, forever. “Okay,” Bondini pronounced, moving on. He had other things on his mind, one of them at his feet. “Ever seen ‘im before?” he asked Les, rolling the body over with his boot. Where his right eye had been, the killer now sported only a gooey black pit, his left eye clear and staring straight ahead as if still surprised in death that he had turned out to be victim rather than executioner. Otherwise, their Doe Boy, as Bondini liked to call unnamed male stiffs (or the more oblique: Pillsburys; unless a situation called for the gender nonspecific DWIA: Dead When I Arrive), looked like any other average guy asleep on the ground in the woods, naked—except for one prominent feature: He had the largest sex organ either lawman had ever seen in person; and it was cinched up in a three-quarter inch wide yellow ribbon looped into a bow, tips trimmed to perfect 45-degree angles. Les stared down a moment then said, “Can’t say as I have. But the giftwrap looks familiar.” Bondini glanced over at Les a long moment then told the others: “You guys take five.” The two deputies shared another look, and one with the MCU captain. This was followed by a group glance at Les, then at Bondini, then the three of them left. Bondini watched them hike up to the road, then turned back. His eyes fell on his old friend. “Are you...doin’ okay these days, Les?” “Fit as a fiddle, Fred,” Les said. “And that’s not easy to say if you’re not.” Bondini didn’t seem to get much of a charge out of it. “Anyone can buy yellow ribbon.” “But not everyone knows what to do with it,” Les said amiably. “How to give it the proper decorative flair, that Martha Stewart touch, if you will.” “I won’t,” Bondini grunted. “And you’re assuming it is.” “Are you trying to say something, Fred?” Les asked. “Because it sounds like you are. Trying.” Bondini’s glower cut deeper. “I’m asking, Les,” he said softly. “Well, go ahead, ask,” Les said. Plain, emotionless, very FBI. Bondini swallowed hard, keeping down what he really wanted to say. He hated that detached Bureau crap, what the agency did to men, taking away their hearts and souls, replacing empathy and humanity with inductive reasoning and redactive response. What the hell was that? “All right,” the greying major finally said, digging in. “I’m saying: You don’t want him to be him more than you should want him to be him, do you?” When Les didn’t answer, Bondini added, “He’s gotta fit the rest of the profile, Les. The evidence. All the evidence.” Now, Les looked over. “You’ve got some?” he said. “Does the Bureau know about this?” He was definitely running Agency bullshit on his old friend. Bondini would have fired one of his own men on the spot for such impertinence, but he knew what Les Moore had been through. And he was a Fed. And he was a friend. So, Fred Bondini just sighed, looked off and said, “There’s some out there somewhere.” He pined for it. “There’s gotta be.” After a sorrowfully long moment, he looked back. “In the meantime,” he said, “we’ve got a profile,” stating fact. Then he nodded down at his Doe Boy. “And we’ve got him. He’ll match or he won’t.” “You’re guessing he won’t,” Les guessed. “I’d like nothing better and you know it. But my gut on it is: He won’t. It’s just too easy.” Reflecting on a thousand cases at once—a dozen years on this one alone—Bondini shook his head. “Call it an old lawdog’s hunch, but something just ain’t right. I got a Henry Li on this one, Les,” he said glumly, referring to the famous forensic expert’s often accurate hunches. Les nodded and took a step around what had been a fit body before it became evidence. The killer’s corpse wore alabaster skin, with the sharp lines of a blue collar tan on his forearms and neck. Several dark moles stood out incongruously on his hairless chest and milky abdomen and could easily have been confused with dried drops of blood if you didn’t look closely. His pubic hair was thick and fair, wet and peppered with ground litter; and he had a red birthmark on his left hip which resembled a crow in flight. Then there was that huge purple thing in the yellow ribbon. “Well, it’s true,” Les mused, “most of them aren’t hung like him. You know, they have those little peanuts.” He pressed his thumb nail to the first joint in his little finger. “Marjorie always thought it was what made them kill.” He nodded agreement with his dead wife’s assessment then concluded, “But this guy?” Les shook his head. “He did a sex show in Tijuana? He’d cause penis envy in the mule.” Bondini fought a smile. He wasn’t going to let himself laugh until he’d had his say and heard what he needed to hear in return. This was more than the discovery of a naked Pillsbury in the woods; this one was found shot through the head, assassination style, at the Riverbend Killer’s favorite dump site, in the exact spot Marjorie and Melissa Ann Moore’s nude bodies had been discovered three years before, raped and mutilated beyond comprehension; and this was Les Moore, husband and father, standing in the same spot, heading the investigation again. Bondini had to wonder how Phil Brinkman had ever pulled enough strings to get Les back on the job, much less on this case, leading the Bureau’s new TASK Force. Christ, it even had a catchy name; reporters were going to glaum onto it like free food. Bondini knew the answer without asking: Les was just that good. Policy becomes quickly moot and easily ignored when the brass wants a job done. “I know what Marjorie thought,” he finally said in a steady tone, conceding without caving. “That’s not what I’ m saying.” “I know what you’re saying, Fred,” Les said. “And I’m not going to make a joke about it being a mountain of fertilizer even though the temptation is there, Major Bandini.” “I thought you said you weren’t gonna do that,” Bondini grumped, trying hard to see into Les’s charcoaled soul. “Maybe I can’t trust anything you say, anymore.” His brow was as tight as a six-foot jack in a one-foot box. Suddenly, Les was all Bureau; no angst, no anger, no accusation. No ambiance. “You ran your forensics, you’ll get the results. The Bureau will assist and review. If he is, he is, if he’s not, he’s not. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do about the truth other than accept it. Whatever it is.” Bondini was hopeful but cautious. “And you’ll keep looking?” “Wherever the Bureau tells me to. Unless you give me a great lead; which of course would supersede anything the Bureau might say at any time. Just don’t tell ‘em I said so, they’re touchy about that sort of thing. God forbid Local should get a leg up and squirt the first drop on the hydrant.” Bondini took the compliment well. He appreciated the analogy, old lawdog that he was, and his brow loosened all the way down to his knees. He wasn’t a hardass; in fact, he was a soft-hearted old fart in a sheriff’s suit, and he knew it. He just didn’t like anyone else knowing it—with the possible exception of the man standing next to him. “I know how bad you want him,” he said to Les, sounding almost apologetic. He had a further thought; but it didn’t find light. Les said, “Enough to be sure it is him, Fred,” his eyes a deep hard aqua, like a warm sea, and clear as a new purie. “Otherwise, what’s the point?” He smiled and shrugged. There it was, what Bondini had been waiting for: the old Les Moore—pragmatic, confident, detached; grinning with relaxed ease over a fresh corpse before he’d even had his morning coffee. Black. Bondini’s smile broke through, unabated. “You’re back!” he declared buoyantly, feeling instant, deep relief. “Big as life,” Les assured, with a matching grin. “Big as that?” Bondini beamed down at the ribbon-wrapped leviathan; then actually seeing it, winced. “Lord God, look at the size’a that thing. No wonder she killed him. If I had to look forward to servicing that horse dick I’ d’a probably shot him too. Or shot myself so I wouldn’t’a had to.” He chortled contentedly and shook his round head. Les only seemed to hear one word. “She?” Bondini’s joy sputtered noticeably; but there was no sense pretending he hadn’t said it, that he didn’t know more than he was letting on. “Heels,” he confessed. “Megan guessed about 140, 145, probably tall. Leggy.” Les threw him a That’s it? look and Bondini shrugged honestly. So, Les asked, “Megan-the-one-without-panty- lines?” Bondini grinned broader than before, maybe than ever. “You’re back, all right!” he confirmed, and swatted Les on his shoulder blade. Then he called up the bank: “Hartley, get Heckell and Jekyll down here with that gurney, on the double.” “Okay, Major,” came a response, presumably Hartley’s. His voice then shot off in another direction, “Hey, wake up; time to get your deceased,” which was followed by a “Huh?” then an “Okay,” then another voice, a woman's. She didn’t sound happy. “Hold it, goddammit, I haven’t seen the friggin’ body! Jesus Christ! You hillbillies ever hear of a thing called procedure?” Les looked at Bondini who looked at him and both shrugged with their eyes. A beat later, a dark blonde woman of about thirty half-slipped, half-ran down the drop, gatling away: “Did you move it? You did, didn’t you? You turned him over! Jesus. You just couldn’t wait, could you?” She said it from twenty five feet away, apparently able to tell even from a distance that the dead had been disturbed. As she shoved past them, eyeballing the corpse for signs that she was right, the two lawmen looked her over, more as men than cops. Noting the opaque, impenetrable pantyhose hiding her calves and the plain grey business suit hiding everything else—hair pulled back, no discernible makeup—neither thought yet that with some fixing up she might pass for fairly attractive. “Good ol’ boys, God love you!” she said, squatting down, and sniffed at the wounds, seeming to savor the nose, as if approving a fine wine. Her eyes were even closed. When she opened them again, she caught both men staring at the white cotton crotch of her pantyhose. “Do you mind?” she demanded, misanthropically. Both men looked away. She then rocked back on her heels, pulled a pushbutton ballpoint from her jacket pocket and poked at a flaky deposit on the killer’s forehead. “Is this semen?” she asked, then answered, “Yeah,” then asked: “What’s it doing way up here? Anyone wonder that? Or is this fairly standard trajectory out here in the woods?” The last part had a mean twang. When it solicited no response, the woman made a snorking sound and went back to smelling the dead man’s face. Bondini turned to Les, his irritation on display for anyone caring to notice. “Who is this? Do you know this person!” Les smiled, “Why do you always ask me? Maybe she’s a vampire. She seems to like blood.” A short cackle bubbled up under Bondini’s cholera and made him feel better. None of it seemed to faze their visitor. “Hell, this blood is nearly, what? 14-hours old?” she said. “Vampires like fresh blood. Don’t you read?” She was looking at Les. “Well no, obviously not, or you’d know not to move the goddam body until everyone’s had their chance at it.” “I only got here, myself,” Les said in a thinly veiled way which pointed the finger of blame directly at Local. Bondini started to object, but the woman cut him off by informing Les: “No, I like the smell of Standard American load.” Then she turned to Bondini. “Did you run powder tests yet?” Bondini pinked up pretty good and looked away, damned if he’d answer, so she finished with Les. “That’s what I like the smell of,” she said, and bent down so fast she almost fell over, narrowly catching herself by jabbing her hand into the soil, rather than soiling the evidence. This time, she sniffed the killer’s mouth. “And garlic and beer,” she said. “Probably pizza.” Suddenly, she was up in Bondini’s face, again. “Are we looking into pizza joints, yet?” It sounded confrontational. Damned again, Bondini sputtered, “We’ll wait for the contents of the stomach to come up.” Then he heard what he’d said and added, “From downtown, goddammit!” and looked to Les for backup. Les looked away. It was time for Bondini to take back his crime scene. This usually necessitated yelling, so he bellowed, loudly enough for his loitering lackeys to hear, up above: “Who the hell let you down here? I told them no press until I told them!” Realizing that sounded not much better, Bondini decided to switch to his always effective Rant-and-Rave tactic, guaranteed to run off even the most determined scandal hound or bureaucrat; but the oddly disturbing young woman stopped him short. “This gets me past ‘em every time,” she said, and held up her plasticized photo I.D.: Special Agent Cyndra L. Baker, TASK Force. Three, large blue letters underlaid it all: FBI. Cindy nodded toward Les. “He knows who I am. He’s just being the arrogant ass Brinkman warned me about in D.C.” Phil Brinkman, their bloated Bureau boss, had long since abandoned the Quantico Hole, six floors down, for a highrise suite with a partial view of The Mall. An unapologetic career climber, he was feared by some and avoided by all; which was precisely why Cindy dropped his name: It always got a reaction. Though in this case, it wasn’t the one she anticipated. Les said, “Well, I guess it’s easy to have opinions when you’re sitting behind a desk, checking boxes and filling in blanks all day. You know, someplace safe where you can’t get shot at. Personally, I wouldn’t know.” He offered a smile that wasn’t genuine. Bondini followed with one that was. He hated Phil Brinkman; but then Brinkman was an easy man to hate. Cindy shot a quick glare at Bondini then told Les, “I wouldn’t either, but so far, you’re making Brinkman look pretty sage.” She turned back to Bondini: “That means smart.” She offered him the same approximate smile Les had given her. Bondini’s grin departed. Satisfied, Cindy turned back to Les. “So I think I’ll keep listening to him.” Les shrugged. “Your life. Give it to ‘em if you want. They’ll be happy to take it.” He’d already given one to the Bureau; it hadn’t worked out. This one was his. Cindy stared blankly a moment, then started up the bank, calling ahead: “Tell that Forensics team to hold up.” When no one replied, she shouted: “I said, tell that fucking Forensics team to hold up! Somebody answer me, goddammit!” An anonymous voice came back, “Yes, ma’am,” followed by “Tell Megan to hold up. The FBI bitch wants her.” Some muted laughter rolled behind that then an HP guy at the top of the hill added, “Maybe for a date,” and a few more raspy law laughs trailed off. They’d all thought Agent Baker was a trifle butch for their tastes. Halfway up, Cindy turned back and called down, “Did you find the car, yet?” Bondini looked away. “Why am I not surprised,” she said, then continued dodging and slipping back up the hill, admonishing the hapless HP on top, “If I wanted a date with a woman I’d be man enough to ask. Can’t say it looks like we can say the same for you.” Les and Bondini could just see Cindy through the leaves as she reached the top, looked both ways and said, “All right, who called me a bitch? Anyone man enough to take credit?” There were no takers. “That’s what I figured.” Finally, she turned on the steroid Camel twins: “Hey, you two wake up and go get the stiff if it’s not too much goddam trouble. And try not to drop him, we might need him for evidence. You know what that is, right? Evidence?” There came a low, unison, “Yes, ma’am. We’ll be careful.” “And put out those cigarettes. Didn’t your mothers tell you not to smoke? Those things’ll kill you worse than a drunk in a pickup.” Together the two young bodysnatchers weighed at least 500 pounds and could rip a twelve-cow barn down with their bare hands in under an hour, but they gave another unison “Yes ma’am,” flipped their butts away—without a last puff—and grabbed their gurney. They would not drop this body. Bondini let go a string of unintelligible expletives, but somehow feel no better for it. He had a Henry Li about her, too. “My new partner,” Les said. “Looks like we’re in for a lotta laughs.” Bondini wasn’t laughing already. |
