《Killer Bay》Death on Wheels
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Adalet entered Andrea's office at the start of her night shift. Dean and Hunter sat loyally at her sides once in the large circular room.
"Hello, Capt. Adalet, first off I'd like to congratulate you on your first successful investigation in Pacific Bay. You did a great job and I know Amy was thrilled, you really showed her the ropes," Andrea said proudly, "you won't be working with her today, however. Frank just got back from his anger management course and I'd like you to do a shift with him."
Just as she said this a grizzly-looking man in a Hawaiian shirt materialized in front of the glass walls encasing the front half of Andrea's office and waved through the glass as he got closer.
"Here he comes," she scratched her head in frustration, "and yes, I know he looks like a bit of a slob, but he's a great detective. Deep inside."
Frank barged into the room without knocking and continued straight towards Andrea, Adalet going completely unnoticed to him.
"Hello Andrea, miss me?" he joked, "anger management, what a bore! If taxpayers knew how we wasted their money! We went to Beerfest instead!"
"That's Chief Marquez if you don't mind. And we'll talk about this Beerfest thing a bit later," she promised, "for now let me introduce you to Captain Adalet Sadik-Halvorsen. You two will be working together from now on."
Adalet waved and Dean and Hunter barked to get his attention. Frank only just clued in to the woman standing there but didn't look embarrassed by that fact.
"So, you're the new cop in town," he said sizing her up, "word is you've got an arrest record longer than my bar tab, but don't expect anything special from me."
Adalet shrugged, "Fine by me, just don't slack off."
"I'm surprised you chose to come to this hellhole of a city," he grunted, "anyway, why don't you let me show you around Adalet? Amy probably took you to the bright side of Ocean Shores, I'll show you the underbelly."
He leads her through the bright neon-lit streets of Ocean Shoe city. Adalet had to put her sunglasses on with how bright the lights were to prevent her head from aching. They walked down a deserted street with the roar of car engines in the background.
"Can you smell it Adalet? Exhaust fumes, alcohol and piss . . . the true blend of Pacific Bay," Frank grunted breathing in the air, "this neighbourhood is usually busy, but no scum on the horizon, here. Everything's quiet. Too quiet . . ."
And as the universe had to make him eat his words a car engine roared to life at an incredible volume over all the others. Frank cursed as a green car speed across the intersection about a kilometre in front of them and kept going. A large CRASH! sound came a few seconds later from the area where the car went.
"It's those street racers again!" Frank growled loudly, "those creeps like to show off in big cars, riding the streets like it's a race track, and causing accidents everywhere they go!"
"Well we better go check it out, that crash didn't sound good," Adalet said rushing towards the source of the crash.
"I have a feeling it's going to be a long night. . ." he sighed fallowing her to the scene of the accident.
They arrived at the scene to find two cars, the green one they had seen and a red one flipped upside down, a few other cars were parked around them but none had any drivers behind the wheels. However, chained to the hood of the green car was a man with his head, or what was left of it, to the ground. Adalet checks for a pulse but shook her head finding nothing.
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"What did I tell you? Street racers! Worthless scum! Nah, this kind of scene is the reason I need to down a drink every morning!" Frank sighed. "Let's rule out accident Adalet, this is murder! This creep looks like he wanted to play ruff, but he ended up an open egg!"
Adalet stuffed her shaking hands into her pockets to hide them from Frank. This man's appearance reminder her of Madison Springer, her late friend killed by the Rorschach Reaper herself.
"That would explain why everyone fled the scene," she said looking for anybody, "they didn't want to be involved! But we can register this car as our murder weapon."
Frank dug into the body's pocket and pulled out his wallet, "his wallet says his name is Carlos Antonio. He's better off in the autopsy room, with this makeover he's just Roxie's type now!"
"You want to call this in while I look for clues?" she asked.
"Sure, less work for me," he said pulling out his cellphone and walking to the edge of the scene.
Adalet got to work. First, she pulled out her yellow police tape and ran around the perimeter of the cars wrapping it around lamp poles and signs. Once it was tape off she grabbed her gloves and inspected their murder weapon for anything of use to them. She saw that its steering wheel was missing and looked on the ground to find what must have been it but was now smashed to pieces. She grabbed a box off the curb and lined it with plastic and dropped the plastic pieces in it. A GPS device hung loosely from the front window and she reached in and pulled it out.
She headed back to Frank just as he finished his call. He turned around and blinked seeing what she had done in the short amount of time he was talking to dispatch.
"Guess I shouldn't have told them to hurry . . ." he said, "and what do you have there?"
She dropped the box at his feet and he peered inside.
"You sure you want to repair those car pieces?" he asked at her glare he chuckled, "you're the one with Captain before their name here, so let's see what you can do! And, uh-oh! That GSP device you picked up is locked. And let's be honest, I'm not computer compatible. So, first rounds on me if you manage to decode it!"
"You are on," Adalet smirked at his naivety. She dropped onto the curb and opened her kit on her lap. She found her glue and grabbed the plastic pieces and fit them back together in a snap. She put it back in the box for Yann and grabbed the GPS device, Adalet hooked it up to her laptop and with her decoding program (read as game) she had it unlocked before Frank could blink.
"How did you-? What is-? Huh?" he asked confused.
She laughed, "never bet against me, especially when it comes to my skills. I figured we should send the wheel to Yann for analysis."
"Oh, alright. He doesn't look like a car expert to me but he's surprised me before."
"And do you know this address?" she asked holding the device up.
"Well Adalet, looks like you managed to decode it! This ain't too bad, I guess, first rounds on me," he laughed scratching the back of his neck, "augh, how does this thing work? Oh, I see, the last entry of the GPS is: "42 Sunny Glades Estates, Ocean Shore."
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As they were talking reinforcements came and got to work. Roxie appeared with a stretcher and Adalet dropped the box with the wheel in her van with a sticky note saying "For Yann."
"Glades Estates?" Frank said once she came back, "talk about high standards. Your driving Adalet!"
They hurried back to the station and commandeered a squad SUV and drove over to the address. They got there just before sunrise and found the upscale apartment looking like a party bomb had gone off. They went up and Frank tried the door and found it unlocked. They un-holstered their weapons and headed inside.
"Hey! Anybody home!" Frank yelled into the large home, "Wakey wakey, it's the Pacific Bay PD! The door was unlocked, that's not very safe you know!"
A highly hungover man in a Hawaiian shirt, with dreadlocks and glow sticks around his neck, stumbled down the stairs.
"Hey yo wassup! Whoa Frank it's you! How do?" he asked groggily, "I'm having the worst hangover here. Hosted a party last night . . . gotta get my hands-on painkillers."
"Derek Stone?! YOU live here?!" Frank cried flabbergasted, "you really went up in the world, last time I saw you, you were living in a piece of trash in the suburbs!"
"I know right! did you ever think I'd be living in such a lavish crib?" he boasted, his eyes landed on Adalet, "but tell me, who's the new cop yo? She's hot!"
"It's Capt. Adalet to you Derek," Adalet replied coldly, "and we're here because a man named Carlos Antonio was killed with a car. A trail led us to your apartment."
"So just sit tight and shut up," Frank ordered, "Adalet will search your space and ask you a few questions later."
"Oh, she can do more than that!" Derek flirted leaving to find some painkiller and a bottle of whisky to wash them down.
"Damn punk," he growled.
Adalet pulled on a pair of gloves and started to look around. She spotted a pile of women's panties and shuffled through them.
"A pile of panties, seriously?" Frank grinned, "I'll let you handle those, I don't know what happened but I'll leave it to your imagination!"
"Never let my imagination run wild," Adalet smirked pulling out a phone from the bottom of the pile, "but whatever they did left us with a nice present."
He blushed, "what did-oh, it's just a phone."
"A locked phone, I deal with it later," she put it aside before slipping off her gloves, looking around and picking up a torn picture laying on one of the tabletops.
"That photograph is torn to shreds, seems someone wasn't too happy about it."
Adalet clicked open her case and tore pieces of tape from her dispenser and taped it back up. The picture was of their victim with a young woman hanging off his arm.
"It's our victim and some woman," she said passing it to him.
Frank squinted, "blondies like her are a dime a dozen in this city. How are we supposed to track this one down?"
"We send it to Hannah!"
He nodded, "what about the phone?"
Adalet lifted the false bottom and hooked the cell phone up to her laptop. She had it unlocked in a flash and the home screen was of the victim taking a selfie.
"You found the right code to unlock the phone," he said, "I should let you program my VCR one they."
She smirked, "maybe when we're not trying to catch a murderer. But we now know this is our victim's cell phone."
Frank looked at the screen, "how vain can this guy be, picturing himself as his phone's screensaver. But even though you have skills I think it'll be wiser to send it over to Hannah."
"No arguments here, want to talk to Derek now?"
He grunted, "all right, Adalet. Don't let this guy con you, there's more to him than some brain-dead party banger. Believe me, he knows how to trick people. He's been running many illegal errands. Smuggling, stealing, drug trade, you name it. And somehow, he hasn't been caught. Yet."
"Reminds me of Marconi," Adalet said thinking of the Italian gangster.
"Ah . . . Mar-who? Never mind, Derek is back, crap we better talk to him."
Derek stumbled into the living room splashing his whisky on the floor. He downed the rest of it and slammed it onto an empty table and grinned at the officers.
"Question me away baby," he slurred.
"Don't call her baby, you punk," Frank spat, "so Derek, Carlos was killed with a car, skull rubbed in half, in the middle of a street race. And the GPS of the car proved it parked in front of your place sometime before Carlos was murdered."
"You followed a GPS?" Derek snorted unconvinced, "pretty clever of you, but I didn't think you knew how they worked Frank! And anyway, what's that got to do with me?"
"You're the one who threw the part, you must have seen something," Adalet said, "that is if you didn't kill Carlos yourself."
"Easy, easy there! You know how messed up things get when the party's getting chunky, chick. I was too busy with the girls to care about Carlos, yo! And why bother anyway?" he asked smugly, "Carlos was a sorry-ass broke douche, always asking people for money. He would always treat me as his personal social worker or something. Embarrassing yo!"
"You seem to be touched by his sudden death," she rolled her eyes.
He frowned, "looks like I can't help you. I don't know anything about any car, and pretty much anyone could have killed Carlos! Good luck finding who, Capt. Adalet."
Frank and Adalet left the apartment with its hungover, soon-to-be drunken, owner to his shenanigans. They climbed into the SUV and Adalet pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road.
"I loved how you handle that punk, Adalet! I don't think he's ever had a woman talk back at him like that!" Frank laughed.
Adalet smirked, "I just reminded him who was in charge, now, back to the station."
She drove back to the station and they dropped their latest finds with Hannah before popping in to see Yann at the end of the hall.
"Sending me this steering wheel was a brilliant hunch Adalet!" Yann said, "I found out Carlos' killer forced the ignition to steal the car. Clearly, your killer has good knowledge of mechanics because those fancy cars can't be stolen by run-of-the-mill delinquents."
"Well, that's because the steering wheel came from a racing car. Goddamn street racers!" Frank barked, "if Andrea let me do it my way, all this flotsam would already be in jail!"
"Temper, temper Frank!" he set his coffee down, "as a monk once told me in Tibet: "Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won't see the tree!"
"If . . ." he took a deep breath, "if you say so let's just keep in mind that our killer is good at mechanics, shall we Adalet?"
"Yup! Thanks, Yann," Adalet said following the senior detective to the morgue.
"Oh boy, the body you brought me was such as mess! Did you see his skull? It was wide open like a strawberry jam jar! What a masterpiece!" Roxie rambled vibrating with excitement.
"See, Adalet?" Frank winked, "I told you she'd like him. So, Roxie, what, happened to our victim exactly?"
"Well, the cause of death is obvious. The contact of his skull against the concrete while the car was driving turned his brain into a real slushie!" she explained.
"Thanks, Roxie," Frank grumbled massaging his temples, "now I want to throw up everything I drank at Beerfest."
"Anything else?" Adalet asked.
"Well yes," Roxie recalled, "the victim had fresh bruises on his fists, which proves he didn't go down without a fight. He must have punched his killer very hard before yielding."
"Which means we're looking for someone with bruises."
"That shouldn't be too hard to notice, Letty," Frank agreed."
"Oh honey," Roxie sighed, "Franky's already given you a nickname."
Adalet laughed, "he's a little late, I'm already called Poliziotta."
Frank blinked, "pol-li-to-za? Who the hell calls you that?!"
"An Italian gangster," she smirked.
"I am really liking this girl," he told the coroner.
"Me too," Roxie said back.
"Wanna go see if Hannah's done?" Adalet asked
Frank grunted, "sure."
It hadn't taken Hannah long to analyze the phone and photo for them. She had just finished when they entered her lab.
"Thanks for bringing me the victim's phone, Adalet," Hannah said sarcastically, "reading the messages really brought me up to date on the latest slang going on around town.
Adalet smirked, "you're welcome, so, did you find anything interesting?"
"Yup, here's one message sent to your victim that caught my eye, it was sent a few hours before the killing," she pulled it up on the screen and read it off, "Act right, or I'm gonna chop your body up. Just saying . . ."
"Well that sounds like a casual conversation," she rolled her eyes.
"Could you find out who sent it?" Frank asked.
Hannah nodded, "the name of the sender is Shawn Bailey. I retrieved his information and uploaded it to your tablet Adalet."
"A tablet? What happened to a pen and paper?" Frank wondered, "anyway, we better call this guy in."
"Before you run off," Hannah said, "the girl on the picture you found in Drake's apartment is Memphis Banach. She dropped out of school when she was 15 and found shelter in the street racing community. That's how she became your victim's girlfriend."
"I'll never understand how you can figure this stuff out," Frank said shocked, "do you go through people's garbage or what?"
"It was all on her Friendnet profile," she said, "you know what Friendnet is? It's what kids call a social network."
"I know the owner," Adalet said, "I could ask him to explain it to you, but first we better go talk to these two."
"Well the kids can go shove it, and just how many people do you know?" he said directing the first to Hannah than the second to his partner.
Hannah meanwhile was fangirling, "you know the owner of Friendnet?! He's like, one of the best programmers ever!"
"Well you two can have a nice geeky conversation about this later," Frank grumbled, "but for now we got to call them in."
They put both Shawn Bailey and Memphis Banach in separate interrogation rooms. They decide to talk to the heavily tattooed man first.
"Carlos was killed? For real?" Shawn pounded his chest, "oh man . . . Carlos and I were friends. I'll be missing him, yo."
"Is that so?" Frank cupped his chin, "if we are to consider the last message you sent him, you had it in for him."
Adalet slid a picture of the text message across the table for him to read. Shawn skimmed it and his eyes widened.
"I was just kiddin' with him, that's all! This text was just a joke; you know what I'm sayin'?" he insisted, "sometimes he'd just go ballistic randomly, and I was here to bring him back to some kinda sane. But even though he was violent, he was my brother, yo! Carlos always wanted to prove he was a tough guy. Arm-wrestling, gambling . . . you name it. He meant trouble, many people wanted him gone, yo!"
"Would you be one of those people?" Adalet asked.
Shawn looked at her with determined eyes, "I, personally had no beef with Carlos. I loved him, you know what I'm sayin'? So whoever killed him, I really hope you bag them soon officers. True that!"
Frank bit back a growl, "that's all for now."
They let Shawn see himself out and walked down the hall to the room that Memphis was waiting in. The young blonde stripper had on a tight revealing blue shirt and low-cut jeans.
"Memphis, my name is Capt. Adalet and this is Detective Frank, I don't have any easy way to tell you this," Adalet said softly, "but we found Carlos Antonio dead last night."
"Oh, Carlos!" Memphis had tears spring to her eyes, "my poor Carlos! I told him it was too dangerous to stay in this street racing game. And now he's dead! Oh, what am I going to do?"
"We were told you and Carlos were in a relationship," Frank said trying to distract the woman, "how did you meet him?"
She pulled at her pink bubble gum to calm herself down, "I met him at the strip club. I was just starting this whole new career. He spent all his money on me, that was so cute! Then he showed me his ride and, you know . . ."
"Do you have any clue who might have killed him?"
"Hum, Carlos had many rivals in this car racing thing," she blew a large bubble, "but he wouldn't tell me about it. He said I couldn't understand this street business."
"Nothing?" Adalet repeated.
"The only thing he asked from me was to love him and be pretty. And I just did that."
"Thank you, Memphis, we will be in touch."
They led her to the exit and showed her out of the station, they then headed back to their office space to regroup and go over what they had learned.
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