Reset: The Dowland Cases - One Read online

  Reset

  Kirk Dougal

  Copyright © 2017 by Kirk Dougal. All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors unless otherwise specified. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Worldwide Rights

  Created in the United States of America

  Edited by Tim Marquitz

  Cover & Interior Design by ST K•Kreations

  Acknowledgments

  The beginning of a new series is like raising a family and turning your children loose on the world. Kids don’t become adults without the help of friends and family and ideas don’t become books without the help of lots of people along the way. Thanks to Jamie, RL, and Stax for reading the ugly, bawling baby when it first arrived. Thanks to Shawn for once again taking gibberish I called description and turning it into art. And a special thanks to Tim for being brutally honest and forcing me to look at every word when it was called for while still encouraging me to reach the finish line.

  Table of Contents

  OUTSIDE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  INSIDE

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  OUTSIDE

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  INSIDE

  Chapter 44

  About the Author

  OUTSIDE

  Chapter 1

  Sunlight filtered through the empty whiskey bottle, throwing a narrow kaleidoscope across the coffee table between fast food packages and an overflowing ashtray. Cigarette smoke curled around dust motes floating in the light. The day was still too new for the first commuters so the silence of the apartment mirrored the streets below.

  A cell phone shattered the quiet. The man lying on the couch reached over and picked it up from the table. “Dowland.”

  “You’re up early, Slugger. I figured I’d have to pound down your door.” Detective Jim Boulden’s voice was a low rumble of warning, the darkening sky before the storm.

  “Yeah, it’s your lucky day.” Partner or not, Rick didn’t feel the need to tell Boulden he was awake because he hadn’t slept yet. Besides, he hated the nickname, just as much as he hated baseball. “What’ve we got?”

  “A body down in an apartment off 42nd. I’ll be at your place in fifteen.”

  Rick took another drag off the cigarette and stubbed it out, spilling more ash on the table. “I’ll be ready.”

  *****

  The plug-in air freshener tried but there wasn’t enough potpourri in the world to cover up the smell rising from the body on the bed. Jim gagged as they waded into the stench. The odor also explained the uniformed officer in the living room with his head out an open window.

  “Holy shit,” Jim said. “Let’s make this fast, Slugger.” He pulled out his notebook.

  Rick heard one of the crime scene techs laugh behind his mask as he stepped forward. He always did the victim exams even though his partner had twenty years more experience. Jim insisted.

  “I didn’t think that was possible.” Rick glanced over his shoulder.

  “What’s that?”

  “He actually smells worse up close.”

  Jim snorted. “Just tell me what you see.”

  Rick turned back to the body. “White male, late sixties or early seventies. Release of bodily fluids, swollen belly, protruding tongue, residual blood at the mouth…with this much swelling around the face it will be tough to photo match for identification.” He leaned in closer. “I can’t tell if there is any bruising with the skin turning color but no visible wounds. Are we sure this is one for homicide?” He started to stand but caught a glimpse of the inside of the victim’s arm. Rick reached out a hand. “Give me some gloves.”

  A few seconds later a package slapped into his palm. Rick slipped the purple gloves on and turned to thank the tech but it was Jim leaning over his shoulder.

  “What've you got?”

  Rick reached across to the victim’s opposite arm, gently pushing the forearm until the inside faced the ceiling, the skin slipping against the muscle. A thin line traced upward from the wrist, snaking back and forth until it reached the crook of the elbow. Along the path, six scarred knobs broke up the coloring with islands of lighter skin.

  “Is it Ice?” Jim asked. Ice was the street name of the new drug making the rounds. The city had seen its share of dead users in the past few months but none had been found in an apartment this nice.

  Rick turned to the arm closest to him. There was no thin marking on this forearm but an identical set of scars puckered the skin. He ignored the sweat building up on his lip despite the cool room. “No. Something a lot more addictive.”

  He stood and glanced around the area. All the bureau drawers were pushed in and the closet doors shut tight. Shoes lined one wall, heels standing at attention against the baseboard. Even the desk was clean, the computer touchscreen and air stylus in the middle sitting square to the edge. The room was perfect.

  “This is how you found the room?” Rick asked. “Nothing was moved?”

  “We’d barely started processing before you arrived,” a tech answered, tapping the pencil camera on the side of his head. “I can get you a copy of the video. Only the uniform beat us here.”

  Rick turned to his partner. “Go get him.”

  Jim’s footsteps disappeared down the hall. Rick bent over and stared at the top of the victim’s head, using a finger to gently move the thin hair back and forth until he found what he was searching for: a series of faint marks in a grid-like pattern on the scalp.

  “Rick.”

  He looked past Jim to the beat cop who found the body. The man’s face was white and he held a hand over his mouth and nose but the shield on his chest was still visible. “Who called this in, Officer Williams?”

  “The super.” The patrolman’s fingers muffled his voice. “The tenant usually paid rent by money transfer, but when he didn’t receive it this month, he came up to collect. One whiff and he called the station.”

  “Is this how you found him?”

  “Yes.” Williams shuffled his feet as he answered.

  “How about the room? Did you move anything or take anything out of here?” Rick watched the patrolman turn even paler. “I’ll pull your armor video if I have to.”

  The last of the blood left the man’s face. “The smell was so bad…I puked in the trash can.” He gestured at the empty can by the desk. “It had
a liner in it but it was empty. I pulled the bag out and put it in the garbage in the kitchen.”

  Jim laughed and shook his head. Rick was not in the mood to joke around.

  “Don’t piss around with me, Williams. Did you take anything else?”

  The officer shook his head hard. “Nothing.”

  Rick stared at him for a minute, letting his eyes bore into the man’s face, waiting for him to flinch or look away in guilt. The patrolman never stopped staring back.

  “Okay.” Rick waved at a tech. “You’d better have him show you the liner, just in case.”

  By the time they left the room, Rick was on his hands and knees, searching underneath the bed. He was rewarded with only a view of the other side.

  “Dammit, what are you looking for?” Jim asked. “There can’t be a weapon, there’s no holes in him.”

  Rick hopped to his feet and headed toward the closet. “I’m looking for a Becky.”

  “A what?”

  “Brain-Computer Interface,” the remaining tech answered from the other side of the room. “Gamers call them Beckys. You think he’s a sleeper?” He walked closer.

  Rick nodded as he rifled through the clothes on the top shelf. “I don’t think it; I know it.”

  “A sleeper,” Jim said, starting to catch up. “You mean one of those guys who go into the games and live in there? What? He stayed inside so long he died from no food or water?”

  “Maybe.” Rick heard the drawers opening on the dresser and turned to see the tech searching, too.

  “How’s that a homicide?”

  Rick sighed and looked at Jim. “In order to exceed the legal limit a person can stay inside computer games, sleepers either need to hack into the systems themselves or pay someone to do it for them. Either way, the deep sleepers, the guys that stay inside for weeks or months, they pay someone to take care of their body while they are buried inside. Gamers call them peepers, or peeps for short.”

  “Exceeding limits isn’t even a felony. Couple hundred bucks fine and they’re gone.”

  Rick stepped closer. Jim had him by about fifty pounds but the older detective was less than ten years from retirement and only went to the gym for his annual fitness qualification. Rick didn’t know what was on his face but he was mad—had been since he’d seen the first mark on the victim’s arm—and felt his muscles straining at the half-ripe T-shirt he had grabbed out of the corner of his apartment and thrown on when Jim arrived.

  “The peeps are paid to watch over the body. They feed the sleepers through tubes. They clean them up. The sleepers trust them with their lives.” He looked at the tech. “Some of the hair pulled out when I touched it, the skin was slipping but not loose. I’d say he’s been dead ten days.”

  “Maybe a day more,” the tech said. “The air conditioning was on high and the room temperature was at sixty degrees when we arrived.”

  Rick turned to the desk and pawed through the drawers. “Dead for a week and a half. So where’s the peeper?” He closed the lap drawer and looked at the tech. The other man shrugged and turned up his empty hands.

  Jim sighed. “And if he died while he was inside the game…”

  “Then where’s the Becky?” Rick turned to his partner. “Where’s the intravenous line that fed the poor bastard and left the scars on his arm? Someone knew our vic was dead and cleaned up the room rather than call for help. Something besides the dead guy stinks here.”

  Chapter 2

  By ten o’clock, Rick’s skin tingled. By noon it was doing jumping jacks on every nerve in his body.

  Jim shook his head and walked out of the precinct house with two other detectives for lunch. When Rick started to feel the crawl this bad, cigarettes wouldn’t do the trick so he headed the other way, down the stairs to the weight room where he could bury himself under some iron and forget what he really wanted—for a little while, anyway.

  Two uniformed cops sat in one corner on benches, talking softly with an occasional laugh. Rick didn’t recognize the male officer but the woman had been stationed in the precinct when he transferred in almost three years earlier. He had seen her almost every shift during that time, but when she smiled and said hello, all he did was nod politely and keep moving to the lat machine along the opposite wall.

  He didn’t know her name.

  Finding out would have involved talking to other officers at the precinct, maybe even to her. That meant small talk and smiling, giving up a little about himself so he could learn a little about her. From his experience, he was better off with the weights.

  Rick sat on the bench, curled his feet underneath, and settled the pin for a warm-up set. Time slipped away as he tacked on more weight, alternating between front and back pull down sets. Soon his skin stopped rippling over nerves and he felt only the smooth work of his muscles. The reminder disappeared, the memory put to sleep for a little while. When he stood to go to the locker room, the other two officers were gone.

  Jim sat on the bench in front of his locker when Rick walked out of the shower, a towel around his waist and another over his shoulders. “Cap wants to see us,” Jim said. “There was a suit inside his office.”

  “Chief’s office or political?” Rick reached into his locker and pulled out clothes.

  “I made him to be Fed.”

  Rick stopped moving for a second, but then continued to look for a shirt that did not smell like it could stand up on its own and salute. That was hard to do while keeping the towel across his back and his arms close to his body. Besides, the effort was beginning to look like a waste of time.

  “Jesus,” Jim said. He walked around the corner locker and returned a minute later, a polo shirt in his hand. “Here, put this on. You know, you’re not some punk kid straight out of the academy, Slugger. You’ve got to start acting like you give a shit about something besides the job.”

  Rick nodded. “Thanks for the shirt. I’ll bring it back.” He turned his back to the locker and slipped the towel from his shoulders. Jim stood a few feet away as Rick dressed, making an obvious show of cleaning his fingernails with the pocketknife he always carried.

  “I’m ready,” Rick said, slipping on a light jacket before shutting his locker door.

  “Not yet. I need to know something.” Jim put away his knife. “Is there anything you want to tell me about how you knew so much about the games and Beckys? You barely use the computers to type up reports.”

  Rick stared at the row of lockers, breathed deep, but did not answer.

  “Look here, Slugger,” Jim continued. “I may be old, but I sure as hell ain’t dead. You knew an awful lot about that sleeper, enough to make me wonder how you knew it. Just because we’re partners doesn’t mean you need to like me. You don’t even need to respect me.” He stepped closer. “But we sure as hell need to trust each other.”

  Rick took another breath and released it, the pressure building in a stopped kettle. “Let’s go see the captain.”

  Jim stared at him, red rising on his neck until the color bloomed across his cheeks. After a few seconds, he turned and walked out of the locker room.

  Rick rubbed both forearms, his nerves reacting to the pressure through the jacket. He’d never seen Jim that mad before, not even the time when a gang banger broke his nose during an arrest. What made the situation worse was he knew his partner was right.

  Damn. Lunch time or not, he should have gone home to a bottle of whiskey to forget.

  Chapter 3

  Rick walked into Captain Preston’s office and nodded at the sour look he received from his boss. Jim was there, too, glaring in any direction that did not include him. “What’s up, Cap?”

  “You’ve been requested, Detective.”

  “Requested? What do you mean?”

  “I asked for you.” The voice came from the back wall and Rick turned.

  The man was dressed like any of thousands of businessmen walking the streets around the precinct. He wore a nice suit with a nice tie over the top of a nice white s
hirt. The whole look was all very normal, the kind of normal that came from a concentrated effort to blend into the surrounding scenery.

  But Rick noticed the way the man took him in with one glance, labeled and categorized everything about him, and placed the findings into his mind’s filing system. Rick shivered under the cold stare, wanted to rub his arms to feel the sensation. Now he understood what perps felt when he had them in the interrogation room, breaking them down until they spit out a confession.

  “FBI Special Agent Peter Strick.” The man stepped forward and shook Rick’s hand before gesturing to the woman still along the wall. “This is Agent Talbot. I’m here to ask you—and your partner—to join a task force looking into a series of murders.”

  “Why us?” Jim asked.

  “Actually—and I mean no offense Detective Boulden—it’s because of your partner.” Strick turned to Rick. “The FBI believes he can help us solve these murders.”

  Rick stared back but his mouth remained shut, closed by a clenched jaw that threatened to grind his teeth to dust.

  “What can you tell us about the murders?” Captain Preston asked.

  Strick remained silent for a few more seconds before he tilted his head to the side and nodded. “Okay, I’ll tell you about the cases but you all need to remember these details have not been released to the public yet. You’ll understand why in a minute. In the meantime, what is said in here, stays in here.”

  Preston and Jim nodded in agreement while Rick dropped his gaze to the floor. Part of him hoped the agent would tell him to leave if he didn’t agree. But he knew Strick wouldn’t kick him out of the meeting. The agent needed him so what Rick wanted didn’t count.

  “We have five murders so far,” Strick continued, “and that doesn’t include the one you caught this morning. All of them happened in the last eighteen months, but so far we've been unable to find a reason to believe any of the victims knew each other.”