Brooklyn Body: The Madison Knox Brooklyn Mystery Series (Book 3) Read online

  BROOKLYN BODY

  MZ KELLY

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SPECIAL OFFERS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  COMING SOON

  CONTESTS

  STREET TEAM

  THANKS FOR READING...

  More by This Author

  ONE

  “You ever think we’d end up like this?” Max asked me.

  I stopped and drew in a breath of frigid fetid air. Night was falling in the Valley of the Moon as a freezing rain pelted down on us. We were working security at the Brooklyn landfill so that vandals wouldn’t trash the trash trucks coming and going from the dump.

  “I had higher hopes for myself back when I was in the third grade,” I said. “Like maybe cleaning up road kill.”

  My hefty roommate and partner on the police force laughed. “You and Corker musta really got some bad blood.”

  Corker was our new lieutenant at Precinct Blue, a place for wayward NYPD cops to be retrained after ostensibly violating department regulations. Max and I had been sent into landfill exile because Corker and I shared some history, none of it good.

  I folded my arms, trying to ward off the cold. “Let’s just say that the lieutenant could be the headmaster at an Asshole Academy.”

  A little background: My name is Madison Knox. I’m twenty-eight, divorced, and a detective, third grade, with NYPD. Max is a couple years older than me, African-American, and grew up in Detroit. She came east to New York a few years after her marriage went south, but, lately, her prospects with men were improving, thanks to her dating a cop named Sonny.

  We were both doing a bullet in reform school, just six weeks into our one-year sentence. My partner’s violation involved her failing to properly secure a sex offender after his arrest, resulting in his premature death from a fall, something that I, personally, felt deserved a promotion.

  My offense involved a fellow cop, who looked suspiciously like an extra-terrestrial, chasing a suspect before falling into a vat of grease, hitting his head, and drowning. I got the blame only because I believe that Satan has a personal vendetta against me, constantly poking my ass with an invisible pitchfork for some past life failings.

  Max and I are doing hard time in Precinct Blue while trying to make ends meet by living at Funk’s Forever Fields. We live in the caretaker’s quarters at the Brooklyn cemetery and do part-time security work there with our other roommate and my best friend, Amy Ross. Amy owns a private investigation business called Girl Gotcha. She’s a Jersey girl with more attitude than a sailor on shore leave with a belly full of rum. More about her later.

  “You really think Corker expects us to hang out here ‘til midnight?” Max said, her dark eyes sweeping over the steaming piles of trash. “I feel like some kind of alien prisoner who’s been abandoned on an asteroid made of shit.” Her dark eyes brightened. “Hey, maybe this place is an ass-troid.”

  I laughed, pulling my raincoat tighter. “I’d like to pack it in early, but my guess is the supervisor of this dung heap is reporting everything we do to the lieutenant. We screw this up and we might end up with a worse assignment.”

  Max regarded me. “When you figure out what this is, let me...”

  My partner’s words were cut off when she lost her footing on an icy patch of ground and slid down a small hill. When I tried grabbing hold of her, I did the same. We ended up in an icy, smelly bog of black goo.

  We came up for air, spitting and trying to get our bearings. I managed to grab hold of a rock and pull myself up and out of the sludge, then helped Max do the same. When we finally got to our feet and finished uttering every curse word ever invented, we took stock of our situation.

  “If we don’t get out of these clothes, we’ll freeze to death,” I said.

  “Let’s head for the car and get our war bags. I brought a change. You?”

  “Yeah, I think I got some pants and a sweatshirt.”

  Ten minutes later, after getting our bags from the car, we headed for the Valley of the Moon administration offices. We were asking a worker about a locker room when the landfill’s supervisor came out of his office, apparently headed home for the day.

  “You two look like you fell into one of the pits,” the supervisor told us. Ralph, as the name on his shirt announced, smiled at our predicament.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Max said. “Where can we change?”

  “The employee showers are that way.” He pointed down a dim hallway. “Just a warning, it’s full of guys finishing up for the day.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  We headed down the hallway and stopped at the shower room door, hearing men’s voices from inside. There was lots of laughter as Max rapped on the door.

  “Police,” my partner said. “We’re coming in to use the facilities.”

  Max poked her head inside the shower room, with me following. We were met by three men draped in towels, who seemed delighted to show off what little God had given them.

  “Come on in,” one of the men said, laughing and pulling his towel off, as another man behind him followed suit.

  “You need to give us a couple minutes to shower and change,” I said to them, trying to keep my gaze from lowering.

  What followed was like a scene out of a j
unior high school locker room. One of the men came over and dangled his “assets” in front of us. “We can all share,” he said, laughing and looking over his shoulder at his friends. He looked back at me. “I’ll wash your back, if you wash mine—or my front.” He made a thrusting motion.

  I looked at Max, rolling my eyes. “Can you believe this?”

  Max scowled at the men, her voice rising above the laughter and banter. “I’m officially commandeering these facilities for police use. You all got five minutes to finish up and get the hell out.”

  “You can’t do that,” a man with a big belly said, stepping forward. “These showers are for men.”

  Max lowered her gaze, seeing that his big belly hid what little he had. “Then maybe you got the wrong facility.”

  “Where are the women’s showers?” I asked, before the worker could take offense to what Max had said.

  The first man we’d encountered answered, still displaying his junk. “We don’t got any women here, so you’re out of luck.”

  Max held up her badge. “You got five minutes to dry off that little tallywacker, or I call for backup and have you all arrested for indecent exposure.” She lowered her gaze. “And believe me, that’s ‘bout as indecent as things can get.”

  We stepped outside and waited in our soggy clothes as the men began filing out, one by one, and grumbling that their supervisor was going to hear about what we’d done.

  “You think this will get back to Corker?” I asked Max.

  She huffed out a heavy breath. “Maybe, but we got no choice. I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “We’ll probably end up permanently assigned to this dump.”

  “Not if I got anything to say about it.”

  After the shower room was finally vacated, we took turns guarding the door while the other showered and changed. When we were dressed and in our raincoats again, we made our way back outside. It was dark now, and growing colder by the minute. A heavy, icy rain was falling as we made our way back out to the parking lot.

  After patrolling the area for half an hour and seeing that the parked garbage trucks appeared to be untouched, Max said, “Why don’t we call it a night, get a bite to eat, and head home.”

  I shined my light across the grounds and nodded. “I think we’ve suffered enough for one night.” I swung my flashlight back across the landfill for a final time as we began moving back toward the parking lot. That’s when it caught the reflection of something about a hundred yards from our location. I stopped, holding my light in that direction.

  “You see that?” I said.

  Max used her own flashlight to illuminate the area and squinted. “Yeah, it looks like...”

  A man suddenly stood, his eyes momentarily caught in the beam of our flashlights, before he took off running in the opposite direction.

  “Stop! POLICE!” I yelled, moving in his direction.

  Max followed as we began jogging toward the man, our orders for him to stop having no effect. In seconds, he was at the perimeter of the facility and made his way through the chain link fence. By the time we’d gotten to the barrier, he was gone, disappearing into the night.

  “Looks like he cut the wire,” Max said, examining the fence with her flashlight.

  I sighed and brushed a hand through my bleached-blonde hair. “What do you think he was doing in here?”

  Max cut her eyes and light back to the area where we’d first seen him. “Not sure. Let’s take a look over there.”

  When we got to the approximate location of where the man was last seen, we used our flashlights, cutting a swath through the darkness, examining the area. We were about to give up on finding anything, when my light illuminated a shoe.

  “There’s something here,” I said, calling over to Max as I bent down.

  She came over, shining her light on the area I was examining. I reached out, trying to pick up the shoe. I realized it was attached to something.

  “What the hell,” I said, moving a pile of trash back. That’s when I saw the dark hair and vacant blue eyes staring up at me. “It’s a girl,” I said, my heart breaking.

  I stood, being careful not to further disrupt the crime scene. I cut my eyes back over to the fence where we’d seen the man, but saw nothing.

  Max heaved out a breath and said what we had both realized. “I think we just interrupted a burial.”

  TWO

  “Why is it every time I cross paths with you, you’re up to your eyeballs in shit?” Lieutenant Corker said an hour later. He was standing inches from my face.

  Maybe because I’m standing in a sewer next to the biggest turd in existence. At this range, thanks to the smells from the landfill, the lieutenant’s breath came across as something akin to a dead skunk laced with whiskey. Corker was close to sixty; a misogynistic monster with almost thirty years on the job. The alcoholic’s round, hairless noggin gave me the impression I was being confronted by an angry, tubby tomato.

  “Max and I were on patrol when we saw a man...” I cut my eyes away from the tomato. “...who escaped through the fence. When we investigated, we found the body.”

  “We was just doing our jobs,” Max agreed.

  The lieutenant regarded her. “Is that before or after you forced your way into the men’s locker room and took a shower?”

  “We fell into a bog,” I explained. “We either had to clean up and dry ourselves or freeze to death.”

  Corker sneered at me. “That’s not the way I heard it. One of the workers said you practically assaulted him.”

  “What? That’s complete nonsense.”

  “We had no choice but to make them leave the showers, so we could clean up,” Max said, the anger in her voice evident.

  Corker shook his big head. “We’ll deal with this tomorrow.” His beady, dark eyes took in the landfill. “In the meantime, consider yourselves on night duty. I want you to help with the recovery efforts, assist the crime scene techs and detectives.” He started to leave, but came back for a moment and fixed his eyes on me. “And, for once, try not to fuck things up.”

  When he was gone, I uttered every curse word I knew, and even made up a few new ones.

  After I finished my rant, Max said, “You okay?”

  I exhaled and scowled at her. “No, I’m not okay. We were just accused of dereliction of duty and assault. If he tries to make an issue of this, I’m going...” I tried to gather my thoughts, as the rain continued to pelt down on us. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll do something.”

  “Like quit?”

  “No. That’s the last thing I would do.”

  “Good, cuz that’s exactly what Corker wants.” Max waved for me to follow, as we headed back over to the crime scene. “We gotta be smart about this, Madison. I got me a feeling that Corker’s ‘bout twenty years past due for a major payback, and we’re the ones who are gonna give it to him.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Not sure yet. But when I come up with something, you’ll be the first to know.”

  As we got closer to where we’d found the girl’s body, the older of two detectives examining the body stood up and looked over at us. “Stay back. This isn’t Dancing with the Stars. We don’t need you fucking up our scene.”

  “We was just trying to help,” Max said, as we stopped.

  “You can help by getting some tape and setting up a perimeter about fifty yards back.”

  After retrieving some crime scene tape from one of the CSI techies who had just arrived, Max and I began laying out a perimeter. While we worked, the detective’s younger partner came over to us.

  “Sorry about Al,” the detective said. “He’s not happy about the weather or...” He looked around the landfill. “...our surroundings.” He smiled, exposing perfect white teeth. “I’m Danny Becker.”

  Max and I introduced ourselves to the handsome detective before chatting with him for a couple minutes. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and hazel eyes. An outs
ider observer might describe Becker as charming. While I try not to be cynical, the term player came to mind instead.

  “Maybe, after we finish up, we can get some coffee?” Becker asked me, as his partner called over to him.

  I was dating an FBI agent named Sam Crawford. While our relationship wasn’t serious, I had no interest in seeing somebody else. “Sorry, we’ve had a long night. Maybe another time.”

  His hazel eyes held on me. I saw a flash of anger, even as he smiled. “Sure.”

  After he was gone, Max and I spent most of the night combing the area between where the girl’s body was found and the fence where our perp had gotten away. The rain had stopped, and the night had grown colder as I found a muddy book of matches in a pile of trash.

  “What is it?” Max said, coming over to me.

  I showed her my find, the name Herman’s Lounge written on the cover. “Could have been dumped before our vic ended up here,” I said, “but, other than being wet and a little muddy, it’s in pretty good shape.”

  Max nodded. “You think we should show it to Becker and his grumpy partner?”

  I shook my head, putting the matches in my pocket. “Let’s wait.”

  “What for?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got a feeling this case isn’t going anywhere. Maybe I’ll check the place out myself.”

  The sun was coming up, the freezing rain finally letting up, when Detective Becker and his partner, Al Collins, came over to us.

  “Why didn’t you go after the perp?” Collins asked, not bothering with pleasantries. He was a big guy, probably in his fifties, with thinning gray hair and rheumy dark eyes.

  “He was already through the fence and on the road when we got here,” Max explained.

  “Did you see a car?”

  Max shook her head. “No, we shined our lights on the road, but didn’t see nuthin’.”

  Collins and Becker went on for a couple minutes, questioning us about our actions. I had the feeling they disapproved of the way we’d handled things. The medical examiner, who the detectives called Dr. Charlie, then came over to us.

  “Tell us something good,” Becker said to him, with what, I decided, was an ever-present grin.