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.
Crisp put the back of his forearm over his nose. "Jeez," he muttered. The urge to puke was growing stronger. Strange, he thought. I'm in an alley where a trio of teenagers got their heads hacked off, their eyes and mouths sewn shut with thick black thread, their hearts cut out. I'm in an alley covered in what should be blood but somehow isn't. I'm in an alley with death, and the thing that pushes me over the edge is the smell?
Crisp looked at Garcia, almost hoping that his partner would draw back and spew his guts out, but the man was still looking at the one corpse. Another way Garcia confused – and delighted – him: nothing seemed to bother the guy at a crime scene, he was stone cold calm all the way; but put him in rush hour traffic and he all but melted down completely.
Crisp looked away. Tried to focus on the facts. Three bodies with their heads cut off. Heads with eyes and mouths sewn closed with thick black thread. Hearts cut out. No blood.
No blood. No blood, for God's sake, where was the blood?
He felt his thoughts edging toward panic again. He looked up, tried to find the sky. The alley was dark, the sun not yet high enough to make its way in here with any strength. Maybe that was what was making him so edgy. Just the weird lack of sunlight. Just the –
"Huh," Garcia said.
"What?" They'd been partners for six years. That was a lot of time to work together, to drive together, to do everything together. Partners were often closer than spouses, and Crisp knew when Garcia made that sound he had found something interesting.
Garcia reached behind him and waved for Crisp to join him at the body. Crisp was loathe to move, worrying that he'd just puke all over the corpose, but when he removed his arm from his nose he found that he had acclimated to the smell. It wasn't so bad now – or he'd simply gotten used to it – and he was able to squat next to Garcia.
The pudgy Mexican lifted the dead kid's arm and turned it slightly. Crisp's brows drew together.
"What the hell does that mean?" he asked.
"You got me," answered Garcia.
Crisp's eyes traveled along the corpse's arm, away from what Garcia had found, and saw now that whoever did this hadn't just sewn the eyes and mouths closed. The boy's fingers had been sewn together as well, creating a fleshy mitten out of the appendage. Same thick black thread as the other spots.
Crisp suddenly knew that he was going to puke if he didn't get out of here. He stood and moved quickly away. He didn't say a word, knowing that if he opened his mouth more than speech would escape. He didn't run, exactly, but the only reason he didn't was that the rational part of him insisted on avoiding the two spots where the asphalt was cracked as though someone had dropped an anvil from the buildings on either side of him; on stepping over and around the trails of black liquid that had spattered and splashed all through the alley.
What is that stuff?
Later. Concentrate on not taking a second look at that Sausage McMuffin you had for breakfast.
He got past the Dumpster that had been moved across the alley. The green metal trash container shielded him from viewing the bodies, enough that he was able to get calm again. He took a few deep breaths. This close to the Dumpster the air was redolent with the scent of garbage... but it was a vast improvement over that garlic/rot smell over where Garcia still was.
The back of Crisp's neck grew suddenly warm. He thought at first it was just blood flushing through him as he strove to regain control of his emotions. Then he realized it was the warmth of the sun as it finally made it high enough to reach into the alley. The light calmed him, made him able to look over the Dumpster, back toward Garcia.
Garcia was still looking at the dead boy's arm, staring at his strange find. Crisp wondered if they'd find the same thing on the other boys' arms. He suspected they would.
A hissing sound drew his attention. He looked on the wall and saw the sunlight proceeding like an advancing army, pushing back the alley's shadows in a steady forward attack. One of the sunbeams had struck something. Crisp didn't realize what it was at first, then saw that it was a thin line of that black crap that wasn't blood –
(but what is it if it isn't blood what is it what is it?)
– and which had splashed halfway up the side of the alley, probably when one of the teens' heads had been cut off. The black stain sputtered and spat, sounding vaguely like one of those sparklers that kids ran around with on the fourth of July, then suddenly erupted into flame.
Crisp had a moment in which his jaw dropped so far it almost touched his chest. Then the spitting sound was replaced by a lower whoosh that sounded the way his water heater did when he ignited the pilot light. The black stain disappeared, replaced by a white flame so bright that Crisp almost couldn't bear to look at it.
And it was moving. The fire was moving! But how was that possible?
Then he realized it wasn't possible. And it wasn't what was happening, not really. The fire wasn't moving on its own, it was igniting that black crap like a gasoline trail.
No, not like a gas trail, more like jet fuel or napalm.
That thought tore through his mind, followed by another one, a worse one. One that he expressed in a single terrified cry.
"Manny!"
Crisp took two steps around the Dumpster.
He saw his partner look back at him. Saw Manny.
The flame spat its way toward the body that the black trail had originated from.
Crisp took one more step.
He saw his partner's face, looking back, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping in surprise.
The flame touched the first corpse.
Boom.
The explosion rocked Crisp back. It was followed by two more explosions that registered as sharp cracks, chased almost instantly by shockwaves so powerful they knocked the Dumpster – which even empty had to weigh at least four hundred pounds – back into Crisp. The green metal hit his right hip and ribs with a hollow thock that he barely registered before white waves of pain overtook him. He flew backward, his tailbone cracking down on something hard, then his head flipping backward as well. The back of his skull smashed into the sidewalk.
His eyes closed. He didn't know how long they remained closed. Not long. He forced them open, thinking that he had to help his partner. Had to get to his feet. Had to help Manny.
He heard something. Something high and whining. Screaming. He thought it was him, and the thought worried him. Then he realized it wasn't him, and that thought terrified him.
The sound was coming from deeper in the alley. The dark place that was no longer dark. It was bright now, lit from above by the sun, from below by the white flames that lurched upward like greedy hands reaching for the sky. The sound was coming from there. The screaming. The shrieking.
"Manny," he whispered.
His eyes closed again. Then opened. The screaming was gone, replaced by whimpers. Crisp's eyes closed again. Opened. And this time there were no screams, no whimpers, no cries. Only the sharp crackle-pop of the flames, sounding like green logs in a fireplace.
"Manny," whispered Crisp. He felt wetness on his neck and knew it was blood. Wetness on his cheeks, too, and that wasn't blood. No, it was tears. Tears for his partner, for a good cop who lived and died a mystery.
Crisp's eyes closed again, and he drifted away on a tide of tears and blood, dreaming dreams of his partner driving their car and laughing while he listened to bagpipes until he caught fire and exploded in flame, and all the while he saw words written on dead arms in thick black thread, words that meant nothing at all, words that meant everything, words that held the key to understanding how Manny died, words that echoed in Crisp's mind louder than the screams of his burning partner:
"Wendy was here."