Marshall Law Read online

  MARSHALL’S

  LAW

  PAUL KILMARTIN

  CONTENTS:

  THINGS THAT COME OUT IN THE DARK

  PARK LIFE

  SAND AND BABIES

  HOLY DOORS

  WEST AND LIVELY POLICE STATION

  A STEADY RED RIGHT HAND

  CUTTING THINGS APART

  ANGEL OF MERCY

  DRINKIN N’ FIGHTIN

  EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT

  AS STILL AS NIGHT

  THE GORY DETAILS

  EVERYONE GETS A JOB

  LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

  DAWN OF SUSPICION

  HEAD TO HEAD

  BLOOD WORK

  GENERATIONAL GROANS

  LITTLE RED RIBBONS

  NUMBER THREE

  MEAT ON THE BONE

  DEAD ENDS

  ALL EYES ON HIM

  ANYONE’S GAME

  DEATH OF A COP

  GOD IN THE DOCK

  GHOST IN THE PARK

  MAYORLY BUSINESS

  THE RUN AROUND

  DR NEEDS A DR

  SNIFFING CONCRETE FLOORS

  SMOKE AND MIRRORS

  DEATH CAME CALLING

  OVERDUE REST

  Abbots Municipal Park

  THINGS THAT COME OUT IN THE DARK

  The clear moonlit night sky illuminated the trees and shadows and the little creatures of the small City Park in an almost effervescent glow, as all around the area, things that slept in the daytime, suddenly began to come to life.

  The light danced along the crevices and peered down into the burrows of the park's inhabitants. The shadows cast by the small furry animals, who were busily munching the grass, now darted left and right as first the scream and then the crashing noises aggressively descended upon their once quiet home.

  One startled rabbit watched from a nearby bush, as the drama unfolded around him. He weighed up in his little rabbit mind about whether there was a chance to run to his burrow. The rabbit moved back on his rabbit paws as he felt the tremors below him in the earth. Something was coming towards the clearing, in the center of the park.

  Suddenly, and with a great crash, a thing came through the trees and bushes and landed in a dense thicket. Leaves and branches exploded outwards from the scene, as the woman jumped straight over the dense foliage. It was as if some wild deer was rushing through the park at two am on this Summers July morning. The sight could not have been more out of place.

  The rabbit turned on its heels and ran for cover as the woman finally landed and then fell through the ditch, her forward momentum taking her two steps after the crash through the foliage. The thud of a thump upon the ground reverberated through the planet and in one scramble for some traction, the fallen person was up again and running.

  Her pursuer was grace defined, bounding through the trees, and landing upon the grass like a silent breeze. In a straightforward piece of human agility, a hand had grasped the trunk of a sapling, and propelled the attacker back into that very same stride, away and towards the first assailant.

  The predator gained upon the person like a wolf upon a startled human deer.

  The woman got to her feet and tried to run, exhaling some oxygen, and trying to throw away the twigs from the bushes that had caught in her hair. She started to lose control over her breathing and could no longer resist the searing pain in her lungs and chest. She had run as fast as she could, screamed her heart out, and now merely, ran out of puff. She grounded herself in the dirt and panted heavily, while on all fours.

  He mumbled, incoherently, as the woman, rifled through pockets and threw her wallet, and then her watch at the maniac.

  ‘Here, take it all. I don’t have anything else.’ She said.

  He walked towards her, more casually now, still mumbling, but with murderous intent.

  He grabbed a fist full of hair as he sprang at her, and then threw her face hard into the floor of the grassy park, stunning the young woman into silence.

  The brute began to walk, menacingly around the fallen figure, exaggerating his steps and toying with her. He was living on her fear, as she began to choke on her tears.

  The shaken, hurt, and distraught young woman began to brace herself for one final scream. She felt an impending death arrive upon her but not without one last fight would she let him complete his murderous act. She looked up, opened her mouth, but then for a moment, lost her voice.

  The attacker had kidnapped the young woman, not far from where she now lay so very still. He had brought her to this precise location, before he had simply let her run away, through the park. The bastard, had only one thing on his mind, and that was to kill, but he wanted to make a statement by doing so.

  He had slipped on his mask, and now looked through it, at her distressed facial features contorting up at him, and he smiled and realized that she would be his first.

  It would start tonight.

  She stared deep into the dull eyes of the cow-face mask, a black and white dairy cow by any other name. The killer stuck his tongue through a tiny slit in the mask, to terrify his victim yet further.

  The plastic from the mask reflected a little moonlight on the temples, but also on the six-inch Bowie blade that the attacker held in his hand. Still, her eyes were transfixed on the murderous blood lust from the eyes beneath the mask.

  The blade went deep into her left-hand side with a forceful push, filled with effort. He let out a blood-curdling grunt, and then slit her throat. He hurriedly stabbed her fifteen times in rapid succession around the chest and abdomen. The murderer grunted and huffed little breaths from his mouth as he did so.

  The young woman lay dying on the grass, and from her porcelain skin upon her face, there sat a single tear, which fell into the pool of blood, and dissolved away. The life ebbed away from her young body and the wildlife came to stir again, and there descended an eerie silence upon the park once more.

  PARK LIFE

  Named locally, by all who loved the area as Park Lane, its official name was Abbots Municipal Park. The name had been dropped not long after the end of World War Two when the Abbot in question went from friend to foe. The Abbots died out or moved on, as the years passed by. People had always tended to call it Park Lane, due to the four lanes that led to it, and the name stuck.

  A one-hectare greenfield site, that was primarily used by the four occupants of the buildings that surrounded it. A private space, but this morning, it was anything but. Cops were roaming the interior of the Park and Crime Scene Investigators in white boiler suits dusted gates and branches for prints.

  There was a very official looking man, older than the rest, in a beautiful pressed, blue uniform that was covered in small silver badges on his chest, standing in the center of the Park. He stood beside a younger Cop, over the body of the young woman.

  ‘Twenty-six-year-old female, Chief, says here on some identification that her name is Annie-Anne Richards. I found her wallet over here, as well as some jewellery.'

  As the young cop handed over the wallet of young Annie, he had to use all of his will power to stop himself from throwing up all over the crime scene investigator, who was crouched over the body.

  ‘What kind of sick bastard does this?’ The rookie asked of the Chief. Once more, the young man bent over and covered his mouth. He tried to turn his back on the Chief and dry wretched into his fist.

  The Chief of Police, Martin Edwards stared intently at the picture of Annie-Anne and tutted privately to himself. He looked down at the body and compared the images of her face with that of her photo identification. She was beautiful, of that there would have been no doubt. But indeed, no prom date, or boyfriend, would have seen her face, arranged like it was now.

  The body was lying sprawled out on her stomach,
with the arms and legs spread wide to all sides. The grass underfoot of everyone was drying in now with Annie's blood. Edwards noticed that each arm and leg had been stretched out as far as it could go.

  ‘This here is your classic crime of passion kid. See that area before the body that’s been all tangled up with leaves and brush?’ Edwards pointed to the spot where the victim had come through the hedge.

  The novice cop nodded.

  ‘That’s where the victim’s attacker threw her onto, to force himself upon her, the sick bastard.’

  The young cop played it all back in his head as if it were some movie scene.

  ‘Yeah, I see it Chief.'

  ‘And see here kid. If you look at this angle of the body, we can tell that they must have had a moment of discussion in between the final attack.’

  Edwards began to mime and move, playing out how the final acts might have occurred.

  ‘He grabs her just beyond that thicket, and then they come through these saplings, and suddenly he tries to force himself onto her,' Edwards moved away from the hedge and closer to where the body lay.

  ‘She refuses, probably kicks him in the balls and he hits the ground here,’ He pointed to a depression in the earth where a body had hit the ground hard.

  ‘She is walking away, he calls out, and she turns around, they talk and argue again, he stabs her, cuts her throat.' He continues.

  ‘You see if she wanted to run, why did she stop and turn around? You can tell because the body is facing the area where the first attack happened.' The young man had a question.

  ‘But what if the perpetrator moved the body?’

  ‘Well, why would he do that? You see Tomlinson; you have got to look at cases like this in simple terms. Why in the hell would a perp move a body? Why would he incriminate himself?'

  The rest of the crime scene investigators, including the senior CSI, James McIntosh, moved around the Chief of Police as he made his points. They wanted to start cordoning off the area with some tape, but the Chief had wanted to show the rookie what real police work looked like. Extra police officers waited further back at a yellow-taped cordon and felt like it was a starting paddock. As soon as the Chief was finished with his show and tell, the real investigative work into the murder would begin.

  ‘Tell you what Officer Tomlinson. Maybe you can check up on the victim's associate’s and boyfriend’s and the like. Nine times out of ten, the victim will have known her attacker.'

  ‘Yes Sir, I can take care of that.’ replied Tomlinson.

  He had been tasked, via an order from up high, with shadowing the Chief of Police. His father, Mayor Edgbaston Tomlinson had insisted on it. Chief Edwards knew it, but he knew how the game was played. By filling out a most favorable report on the conduct of the young cop, it would smooth his path to a run at the Mayor's office after Edgbaston's final term had finished in six months.

  The police officers behind the outer cordon outside the park, at the entrance to the Police Precinct, heard the gruff and abrasive Detective before they could see him, as he walked from the station house, out onto the site.

  Officers Mandel and Burke smiled at each other, knowing who was coming, though for him, they never smiled. The man, who carried an air of danger about his person, was known to be particularly irksome towards the Chief. It was an open secret that Chief Edwards would be reducing numbers on the force as soon as he was elected Mayor, and they expected Detective Lance Marshall, to be the first to go.

  Burke stepped aside as the driver walked through the gate, carrying more than a suggestion of Vermouth on him. Mandel nodded to Burke to go inside behind the detective and bring back the juicy details of the conversations to follow. Burke followed inside at a discrete distance, knowing full well, it would be his hide on the pan if Chief Edwards knew, that it was he who had let this particular detective through from the precinct gate.

  ‘Ah, Christ, who the fuck let him in?' roared Edwards.

  Lance Marshall walked through the line of police officers on the edge of the crime scene, and such was his standing in the department that some officers shouldered Marshall while others let him pass freely. If ever there was a man to divide opinion, then this was he. He wore a smart suit, and a tie, that like the mooring of a boat that had sank to the bottom of the bay, had been left, knotted and wrinkled. Tied once, and never again.

  Marshall looked around, at the buildings that surrounded the area, and then towards the scrum of men, all gathered in the center of the park. He was a handsome man, with a shiny bald-head. A fit man, once upon a time.

  He walked across the grass towards the crime scene, and all the while ignored his Chief of Police.

  ‘Marshall, this is my crime scene. Go and crawl back under that rock, from where you came from.’ The Chief of Police tried in vain to use his authority on the rebel detective, but he realised quickly that Lance Marshall was the most Senior Detective on duty and the park, lay firmly inside of his jurisdiction.

  Marshall leaned down beside the victim and answered without looking towards his superior.

  ‘Chief, this crime scene is within my beat and seeing as you haven't even arrested anyone yet, this is still an open investigation.'

  He was right, the crime was not hours old, and indeed no suspects had even been identified. The Chief knew the steps to this dance, and seeing that Marshall was the most senior detective on scene, had to acquiesce to protocol, but he didn’t have to enjoy doing so.

  ‘You see this guy, Officer Tomlinson?’ Chief Edwards pointed towards Lance,

  ‘This is the wrong kind of cop. He drinks, he cusses, he comes in and gives his half-assed view of what he thinks happened and then slows us real Police officers down in the hunt of a murderer, by dicking around.'

  Marshall smiled and patted his bald-head, full of lethargy and alcohol. Standing close to the body, a flash of red satin, that had been blowing in the wind through the park, got caught on the leg of his trousers.

  ‘Ok then Chief, I guess you have this all figured out then, huh?’ Marshall stood up and waved his hand around the scene, before standing on the sliver of red fabric that he had seen, and that the others had missed.

  ‘You care to share this with the rest of us?’ goaded Lance. The rest of the on-looking CSI’s, beat cops and the investigating team moved closer than they dared.

  ‘I’m afraid a dead-rubber detective like you would never understand?’ replied the Chief, now mocking Marshall, who smiled.

  It was real playground stuff, and it looked like a professional tennis match, when everybody present, looked over and back, between the senior detective and the Chief of Police.

  The investigation had turned into a pissing contest for control of the crime scene.

  ‘Well Deputy Mayor, you care to enlighten me?' Marshall pushed at his Chiefs buttons. The rumors that the Chief of Police bowed to the Mayor were rife among the units of Metro City.

  ‘Tomlinson? Do you want to tell the Detective here what happened?’ said Edwards to the rookie cop, who stood in shock at the hind legs of the Chief.

  ‘Well Detective,’ began Tomlinson in a matter of fact. ‘The perpetrator tried to assault the victim at the gate over by the church. She crossed the gate and ran through the Park. She fought off his advances, and he fell to the ground. She then began to walk away, and he called out to her. She turns back around, and they have a dialogue. He stabs her in the chest and then slits her throat. He stabs her again multiple times and then runs off, again past the gate.'

  Brian Tomlinson drew breath again and exchanged a satisfied smile with Chief Edwards.

  ‘Wow, I am impressed’ said Lance. ‘That was very impressive.’ Marshall, bent over, and picked up the sliver of red ribbon, that had refused to flutter away, and he casually scrunched it up into his palm, before standing back up.

  The rookie didn’t notice what he was doing, and almost believed what the detective was saying and fell for the trap of Lance Marshall’s sarcastic wit.

  ‘I ca
n’t believe you managed to stick your hand up his ass and work him like a marionette puppet, Marty.’ The detective laughed as did the rest of the investigating team.

  ‘You are out of line, Detective,’ barked Edwards, as he looked but failed to notice the sliver of red material that Marshall had pocketed. ‘You will call me Chief, or I will have your badge, again.’

  The less than a thinly veiled threat of another suspension hung in the air.

  ‘How about you tell us all your crock of bullshit theory, and we can all have a proper laugh.' The Chief smiled at the circle of Investigators, which were now quite close to the trio of men.

  ‘Ok then Martin, I mean Chief.’ Marshall took a step back and began to spell out how he saw it.

  ‘Well first of all, pretty much everything you said was wrong.' He walked to the hedge. ‘You see these branches, they all bend out. She wasn't leaned on from this side. She came straight through the hedge'.

  ‘So where are the scrapes from the bushes?’ said the Chief, questioning. Marshall continued as he began to piece together the evidence.

  ‘She must have jumped from the other side, crashed through the bush and landed on the ground. Her attacker must have climbed the hedgerow, or maybe there were two and the second attacker was in the past the gate, already waiting for her,' Lance moved towards the body. ‘He cut her throat quickly to stop her from screaming, and then he stabbed her in the chest. But he moved her, and she was fleeing.’

  ‘How do you know this? Where is the evidence that she was running away again when he stabbed her?’ Tomlinson spoke up.

  He was now more convinced of the Chief's version instead.

  ‘I didn’t say she was running away when he stabbed her, but she was in the direction of fleeing, away from the gate. And you can tell, look at her knees,’ He ordered the rookie to bend over and examine the victim.

  ‘She dropped onto her knees. She fell into the ground after the fall, but her hands protected her then. Here, she just dropped upon her knees, and he knifed her from behind.’