Nothing To Lose: Part 7

Another murder, a wide-open crime scene, and more eyes on them than they realize. Jonas and his partner are on the wrong radar.

Part 7

The humidity was so thick it made it hard to breathe comfortably. Just walking from the Riverside Center was work. Above the seemingly endless clouds, the intense sun tried to burn them off. Cars running their air-conditioning had condensation building on the windows, forcing the drivers to use the wipers. It was just that thick.  

Jonas could see the reds, blues, and amber lights flashing in the distance. It was barely after daybreak, but the downtown area was a mess. The Riverside Center, along the waterfront, looked like a first responders' convention. And the onlookers were already starting to amass with the press. After one murder in the usually quiet, more upscale area, emergency vehicles were going to attract unwanted attention.  

He left his car behind. The roads all had eight to ten inches of standing water between each curb. His department-issue Suburban sat high enough it would stay above the water, and he kept more equipment in the Suburban, equipment he imagined needing sooner than later.  

Danny alerted him to a suspicious scene. The Riverside Center area was well-trafficked and frequented by runners, tourists, and locals enjoying the local nightlife and daytime attractions. One of the shelters was completely taped off.  

Jonas showed his badge to one of the patrolmen working the perimeter. They raised the tape for him to drive beneath it. No extraneous personnel were allowed inside the football-field-sized perimeter. As Jonas drove inside the perimeter, he could see the department's tent near the shelter. He pulled up next to the portable shelter, Danny noticing he was there.  

"So, you do have a department-authorized ride," commented Danny as he walked alongside Jonas's Suburban.  

Jonas shrugged. He liked his car better than the standard investigators' unit. It looked less like a government-issued ride and more like something a regular Joe would drive. It didn't stick out like a sore thumb when doing stakeouts or surveillance.  

"Have you ever been doing recon and taken fire from your target," he asked Danny. "That's why Amanda lets me drive my personal on duty." 

Danny nodded his head, understanding the reason for not wanting to be noticed. He hadn't been in a gun fight. Jonas had been in several. Danny held up his clipboard with notes as Jonas got his gear out of the back end.  

"Where's your vest?"  

Danny looked at Jonas as he put a tactical vest on. He hadn't considered putting one on for the scene they were at. It was a shelter in the middle of one of the park areas.  

"You've got a possible crime scene, no remains as of yet, but blood spray. You don't know where the perpetrators might be, and you're out in the open with about two dozen sniper nests close by."  

Danny's shoulders slumped. He knew Jonas was right. When he looked up, he noticed Jonas holding a second vest. Danny hesitated as Jonas pushed it toward him again. He told him not to get shot.  

"Yes, sir."  

Jonas asked him why there was such a large response. They didn't have anything yet. He learned quickly that Danny had been overruled. The chief wanted extra officers to canvass, and the third shift patrol division was all held over.  

It was only a matter of time before the brass would start getting involved. With Danica's connections, they were undoubtedly feeling some pressure to get answers. After the first murder in the city in years, the idea that there might be a second victim was a daunting one. Until they solved the case, they'd never know.  

"Alright, bring me up to speed."  

Jonas closed his Suburban, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and started walking to the shelter. Danny explained that one of the Casino guests went out for a morning run since the rain had stopped for a while. They stopped at the shelter, and that was when they noticed what looked like blood. Hotel security looked at the security tapes outside the hotel, counted the number of people going north, then returning, and found they had a missing woman.  

"She's described as being about five and a half feet tall, athletic, blonde haired, and wearing running gear. Here's a grainy image pulled from the surveillance system. It shows her running by yesterday and she never circled back," explained Danny.  

The two detectives walked to the shelter so Jonas could see the blood splatter. As Danny pointed to where the blood was, Jonas cringed. He'd seen splatter patterns enough that he could tell that someone died there. The pattern told him what happened.  

"We're not going to find her alive," he sighed.  

Danny stood there, realizing that Jonas's acknowledgment meant something. As he listened to Jonas describing how the spray pattern landed on the picnic table, and how it was arterial spray, Danny knew it meant she was going to bleed out. Only an arterial bleed sprayed that much, Jonas told him.  

"So, she's gone?" 

"I'm afraid so," sighed Jonas.  

The next question to pop into Danny's imagination was more daunting than the last. If the spray pattern was from an artery being ruptured, then where was the body? The thought sent a chill down his spine. As he followed Jonas around the shelter, watching his every move, Danny made notes on how Jonas examined the crime scene. He was trying to understand Jonas's gift for getting a read on things, and how he tracked.  

Jonas followed a path through the shelter, between the tables. He imagined the time of day when their jogger stopped at the shelter. What went on during that time of day, and who might have been around, all things that he pictured in his mind. The old industrial center on the opposite side of the property line would have been full, once upon a time. But that was a different era. Now, there were no potential witnesses, other than the squatters.  

He took out a pair of binoculars. Jonas scanned the windows and the entrances to the old industry buildings. There wasn't anyone around. The floodwaters, he thought, had undoubtedly moved them indoors and out of the weather. With nobody there, it made it the perfect place to conveniently hide a body.  

"Have they cleared those buildings?"  

"Not yet," admitted Danny.  

Jonas started toward the old, decrepit industrial area. Once, it was a hub of local employment. Now, they are abandoned and rotting. As a patrol officer, he had been through them many times. By the current city policies, the buildings should have been condemned long ago. The roofs leaked. The floors were in a shoddy condition. And they were hazardous. But he knew squatters and some of the mentally ill, homeless, and addicts were hiding there.  

Danny followed Jonas to the main building, the two of them calf-deep in water. The river was overflowing from its banks, and the parking and lower edges of the property were already underwater. The main door was still just an empty frame. Signs saying no trespassing had long since been ignored or outright torn down. As they arrived, Jonas pulled out a flashlight and his sidearm.  

"Be ready," Jonas cautioned.  

The main building was the office complex. It was attached to everything else but was directly on the riverside near the receiving center. Danny was young enough; he couldn't remember the facility being operational. He knew his father worked there at some point, but he'd lost his job before Danny was in middle school. As he went left, looking through each office, Jonas went right.  

"What kind of businesses were housed here?"  

It made Jonas feel like an old man. But he remembered there was a textile plant and a distribution center that shipped goods to local stores and suppliers. He remembered his father being a manager in the warehouse. As they moved through the offices, clearing the administration building, they made their way into the warehouse.  

There were still a hundred pallets of goods in the warehouse. A flood years ago ruined the entire stock. Danny stopped and looked at what was there, commenting on how much he wished he had the room for an 85-inch television. It left Jonas speechless.  

"Focus," Jonas said, reminding his partner they were hunting for a possible murder suspect.  

They searched through the warehouse for nearly twenty minutes before finally deciding there wasn't anything to find. The deserted buildings aside, Jonas feared the killer picked the right time of day to strike in the open. It was a very opportunistic moment, and likely to embolden their unknown suspect. If so, they'd be picking up more bodies in the killer's wake.  

Jonas called for extra officers to help clear the industrial complex buildings. Danny and Jonas weren't going to find much without more eyes. As extra units started making their way toward the building, Jonas stepped out on the loading dock.  

"What are you thinking boss?"  

Considering how close they were to the river, and the lack of tracks from the shelter to the nearest buildings, he feared the body was dumped into the river. In his mind, it wouldn't be shocking for it to turn up miles from the crime scene. By then, it would be bloated and half eaten away; any forensic evidence completely washed away.  

"It's how I'd do it," he told Danny.  

"Makes sense," Danny replied.  

When the patrol commander found them in the warehouse, Jonas asked them to go over the area with a "fine toothed comb." It irritated the patrol commander, but the patrol commander wasn't used to having so much to do during the day. He reluctantly agreed and started handing out assignments.  

"Let's get ahold of the department SRT commander. They've got a boat team that can start searching the area. Maybe they'll luck out," explained Jonas.  

With all the activity along the riverfront, none of the officers noticed the set of eyes watching them. There were nearly sixty cops combing the area, and they were all being watched from a seventh-floor apartment with a river view. The person watching them chuckled as they scurried around, many heading to the industrial complex center. None of them were veering far enough from the river to pick up the watcher's tracks, not that any had been left behind.  

He turned and looked at the girl on his floor. Her body was still covered in blood. She was barely breathing, her blood loss nearly killing her. He licked his lips and let out a soft, guttural moan. She'd been far more satisfying a kill than he'd had in a while. And there weren't going to be any distractions this time.   

After a lifetime of waiting, he knew who he was. He was accepting that this was the natural order of things. Fighting the urges was no longer something that he was willing to do.  

Looking back to the riverfront, the watcher's eyes fixated on the two detectives leaving the industrial complex and heading back to the command center. He watched as Jonas and Danny talked about their failure to find a clue. The frustration on Jonas's face was palpable. He could see that Jonas was also a hunter, and he was frustrated.  

Young Danny was the trainee, the one who meant something to Jonas. He recognized Danny as the Achilles heel any real hunter had. There were always two: a hunter and an apprentice. If he took young Danny, it would embolden Jonas to make ending him Jonas's life mission. But they'd been close to his work before. Together, they spelled trouble.  

Standing behind the shaded curtains, peeking into the outside world, the watcher reveled in the challenge ahead. His creepy voice echoed through the room.  

"The game is afoot. Cry havoc, dear hunter, Cry Havoc," he said eerily.  

Going back to his most recent victim, he knelt next to her. Her pulse was weak. The bandage on her neck was soaking through as crimson stained the floor. She was too weak to move on her own. As he picked her head up, holding her in his arms, he looked down at her near-lifeless eyes.  

"Now, what are we to do with you?"  

As he wiped her porcelain skin, gazing into the lifelessness on her face, he could hear her heart beating harder. She was struggling to hold onto life. There was little left, as he brushed the hair out of her face. But he could see into her soul.  

"Don't worry, my dear. It will feel better soon..."  

Danny and Jonas got back to the command post, and Danny called the SRT commander to get the boats into the water. They were looking for a missing jogger. They had a description, but no identification. Jonas pointed south, telling a couple of patrol officers to start canvassing the parking lots.  

"Check every vehicle. Run the plates and find the owners. Maybe we'll get lucky and our victim drove to one of the park areas."  

Going to his Suburban, Jonas opened the hatch and stood beneath it as he took off some of the extra gear he wore. He slumped into the back opening as he started to cough and hack. He pulled his hand away from his mouth, noticing blood in his hand.  

"Dammit," he said, not knowing that Danny was behind him.  

Jonas turned, seeing the look on his partner's face. He held up his hand and pointed, telling Danny, "DON'T!"  

"I was just going to tell you that SRT says the boat team will be here within an hour. They'll put two search boats in and troll the bank areas for five miles. Oh, and it looks like we've got eyes on us," said Danny, nodding his head toward the main road where a man in a black suit was standing.  

Jonas looked to his left, seeing the man Danny noticed. He had shorter, salt-and-pepper hair, and a five o'clock shadow. His suit looked expensive, but the all-black look made him stand out more. He wasn't a fed. That much, Jonas could tell. The car next to him was too expensive-looking for a federal agent's assigned ride.  

As Jonas and Danny started to walk towards the main road, the man got in the black sports car, a McLaren, and drove off at a high rate of speed.  

"What do you think that was about?"  

Jonas shook his head. He had to hope that the traffic cameras would pick up more than they could from their vantage point. If not, his gut told him they might see their mystery man again.