Crime Rave Read Online Free Page A

Boss.” Nothing gets through to Murphy like threatening his cash flow. How else would he keep himself in noir-inspired custom tailored suits and video box sets of black and white detective films? Anderson shakes his head and walks to his office, leaving Murphy to pull himself together.
    “Fuck that,” Murphy whispers, thinking of all the times he’s heard his colleagues and patrolman snickering about him behind his back. How they call him half-wit. Retard. Dumbo. How his daddy pulled so many strings to get him into the academy he should be a puppeteer for a second career. Murphy’s gonna show ’em, and show ’em good. He’s gonna crack those kids open like Christmas chestnuts. “Ok, punks,” he sneers as he turns up his collar, thinking he looks like Humphrey Bogart but looking more like an Irish Joe Pesci. “Here comes papa.”

3:15 AM The Wreckage
    C SI Mazzotti is in a state and a half at the site of the Crane Massacre. He waves baggies of body parts in the faces of his team. “What the hell is wrong with you people? Your eyes don’t work? You can’t fucking manage to bag these pieces in appropriately-sized receptacles?”
    Tina Vasco, slight, long dark hair pulled back into a bun, vintage cat’s eye glasses with gems in the sides, steps up. “Calm down. This isn’t our bad!”
    Mazzotti, red-faced furious, picks up a bag with Tina’s initials on it. “Look here, you bagged this one, Tina. How the hell are you gonna tell me this isn’t your bad? ”
    “Mazzotti, when I put that hand in there it fit and there were three inches of space on the top. I photographed it. Just check. Why would any of us shove these parts in there like that?” Tina’s heart pounds.
    “Then explain this to me!” The bag in Mazzotti’s hand bursts with a long-nailed hand and forearm, the forearm bending to fit in the bulging plastic sack.
    “I can’t. I have no idea how that’s happening.” Tina hates it, but she feels tears pricking at her eyes. There’s no crying in forensics, she tells herself, over and over.
    Tina fishes in her crime scene tote and pulls out her stack of Polaroids. She glares at Mazzotti for singling her out. A silent promise: I’ll get you for this, as she finds the photo she snapped. “There! That’s the bag you’re holding, take a good damn look, Boss. ” By boss she means shithead, and he knows it.
    Mazzotti takes a long look at the Polaroid. “This can’t be right.” His brow furrows. Confusion is not his natural state.
    “Evidence doesn’t lie, Boss. Only people lie. And I’m not fucking lying.” Arms akimbo, she stares him down.
    Mazzotti’s hand trembles as he hands Tina’s photo back. “Okay!” He half shouts to get his team’s attention. “I want you all to go through and match your pics with the items bagged. Now!”
    Detectives Red Feather and Günn walk back over.
    “What’s going on here, Pete?” Günn doesn’t fail to catch the hurt look thrown Mazzotti’s way by Tina Vasco.
    “Oh, you know, the usual incompetency,” Mazzotti sighs. “They didn’t bag these properly. Just shoved ’em in instead of putting them in bags that fit. Look at this shit!” Mazzotti hands one of the bags in question to Red Feather, who turns it over in his hands noting how the digits scrunch against the top and the forearm wraps around the bottom making a balloon shape of the thick plastic. Mazzotti sighs. “But actually, there’s something else that’s just…weird. Tina, give me that Polaroid again.”
    Tina hands it over, the glare not leaving her eyes.
    “This is what the hand looked like when Tina bagged it.” Mazzotti’s disbelief is palpable.
    Red Feather and Günn stare, brows furrowed at the incongruous images of the same body part: in one, a perfectly bagged remnant of a hand, acrylic nails even intact. The second, a hand plus forearm.
    “This doesn’t make any sense,” Günn frowns at Tina. “You sure this is the hand you bagged?”
    “Detective, absolutely.