The White Angel Murder

9

The body had stiffened to the consistency of a 2 x 4.

It lay in the sand, one arm up, reaching for help that never came. The surf rolled in on the beach and the sun was rising above the horizon, painting the ocean a soft hue of orange.

A group of sand crabs were crawling over the corpse and Maverick “Hunter” Royal kicked them off with his wingtips. One fell near him and he crushed it, a green gelatin splashing up over his pant leg.

“Shit.”

“Hunter, what the fuck you doin’ here?”

Detective Daniel Childs walked next to Royal and folded his arms, seemingly not noticing the body two feet away.

“Danny boy,” Royal said, “Oh Danny Boy, Oh Boy,” he sang.

“Cut the shit, Hunter. What’s going on?”

“Just doing some reporting for the fine people of San Diego.”

“You’re not a reporter, you’re a damn parasite. And how’d you find out about this so fast?”

“I got my sources. And five thousand daily readers disagree: I am a reporter.”

“Fuck off. And if you fucked with my crime scene I’m taking you to the cage for the night.”

“I didn’t touch anything,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender.

Royal began walking away, just far enough for Childs to turn toward the body. He then pulled out a small camera and began taking photos. There was a particularly good one of Childs slapping on latex gloves as he examined the head of the victim from up close. Even if he was an asshole, Royal thought, I’m still gonna make him look good.

He took about twenty photographs and turned to leave. Two uniforms leaned against a cruiser next to his Viper. One of them ran his hand over the hood and looked inside the sports car, checking the door to see if it was open. Royal would have to payback that little disrespect. Maybe make something up about the officer getting sex from hookers instead of taking them in. They all did it anyway, he figured.

When he got closer to his car he saw that one of the uniforms was Henry Oleander. He nodded to him and Oleander said something to the other officer, causing him to walk away and go farther down the beach.

“What’s up, Hunter?”

“Henry. How’s the Mrs?”

“Good. We’re having our second kid soon.”

“Congrats.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking over to Childs. “So you want a line?”

“What’ve you got?”

“How much?”

“Something I can sell to the Times or Examiner, thousand bucks. Something I gotta put on my blog, hundred bucks.”

“There was a murder couple years back. Young girl named Tami Jacobs. You remember it?”

“Yeah,” Royal said. He had paid five hundred dollars to be let into the apartment to snap a few photographs before the coroner’s body movers took the corpse. It’d been a shit-storm when the San Diego PD saw photos of their crime scene all over the web the next day.

“Been assigned to the Cold Case Unit. Guess who’s the detective? Jonathan Stanton.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

Royal pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket. He gave five hundred dollar bills to Henry and said, “Five now. Twenty more if you can get me the files of everyone in Cold Case.”

“How would I do that?”

“Figure it out, you’re a smart boy. They gotta eat sometime, right? They don’t live in their offices and I bet they don’t take their personnel files with them.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good,” he said, slapping the officer’s arm on the stripe.

Royal climbed into his Viper and turned the key, the ignition roaring to life. He peeled out of the parking lot and blew a kiss to Childs as he yelled something to him about impounding his car.