Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) Read online

  My God! The knife had appeared in his hand before he realized it, the jab thrust before the thought existed, the deed done without conscious intent.

  Done. Over. Finished.

  He stood another long moment, confusion battling common sense.

  What compulsion had brought him here to the wide, dark expanse of Ryder Park? What had made him leave his car several blocks away and enter the area on foot? He hadn’t searched out the homeless man, didn’t even know him, but the sight of the filthy rags curled beneath the tree had disgusted him, and provoked an anger so deep he felt like a stranger had attacked the man.

  Suddenly, white, hot rage had boiled up inside him, a pressure cooker gone mad.

  He’d meant only to roust him, warn him off, but something had snapped inside him. It wasn’t personal. He hadn’t planned to kill the man.

  Had he?

  Reality bathed him with chilling sweat while he looked around the park. Agitation skittered down his spine. Like an automaton, he reach for the man’s backpack, swung it over his shoulder. The sleeping bag was sodden with blood. No help for that.

  He scuffed damp leaves over most of the bag, digging up dirt and debris around it. Then he rolled the body over and over, edging it toward the creek bank.

  He stared down at the figure. He needed to shift focus on this, he thought, calculating the risk of remaining too long against the swift practiced wound to the chest. Couldn’t have the police looking for a skilled person.

  He bent over the dead body, reached for another weapon. First, a vicious blow to the head, shattering bone and cartilage. After pausing only a moment, he finished the job, each blow of the stick a determined strike, each knife slash to the cooling flesh a shameful thrill of pleasure.

  While it was harder work than he’d imagined, he felt more alive than ever before.

  Long minutes later, finished with the task, he toed the body until it sank beneath the creek’s shallow water. How long now before someone would stumble on it? A neighbor? A jogger? The police?

  There’d be shock, of course, some outrage, but in the end no one really cared about a hobo.

  Chapter 8

  Searching for Dickey Hinchey, Santiago Cruz walked toward Washington Street Church, which offered breakfast to the homeless every week day. The regulars had already left, so he made his way back to Jesus Saves – a nonprofit organization which provided shelter at night and always had a group of parolees looking for a place to hang, chill or sleep.

  About a third of Cruz’s parolees had no permanent residences. To save time and work for himself, Cruz could round up a bunch of them here, pee test them on the spot, and fill out his reports.

  Although the organization ran a daily bus up to the county seat in Placer Hills where the parole office was located, most parolees couldn’t wrap their brains around details like bus schedules. Alcohol, drugs and mental illness had messed with too many of them.

  Cruz passed back by the convenience store located directly in front of the Jesus Saves building, noting Officer Rawley – the responding officer – had already left with his teenage thief. On Sheldon Street he turned right toward the shelter. Although Dickey Hinchey had paroled two weeks ago, he’d never reported in. Missing parole check-in was a big deal.

  Dickey was heading for three strikes and this violation could send him straight back to prison. Cruz shook his head in disgust. Some of them never learned – hell, most of them. Dickey probably wasted his discharge cash on booze, drugs and a cheap hooker.

  As he rounded the corner of the building, a tall bony man with bright green eyes, nearly knocked him down. Not an easy thing to do, for Cruz was a dark and mean-looking man.

  He reached automatically for his weapon, heard his handcuffs jangle at his waist, and steadied the Russian man. Sergei Petrovich, not one of Cruz’s parolees, but he’d noticed him around the railroad tracks and made a point to learn his name.

  “Hold on there, man.” Cruz grabbed Sergei’s arm. “What’s your hurry?”

  “Oh, man, you no hear ‘bout Dickey?” Sergei jabbered with his heavy eastern European accent. “Is one of yours, right?”

  “Dickey Hinchey? What about him?”

  “Is bad, man, real bad.” Sergei continued, babbling in an unintelligible mixture of English, Russian and street Spanish.

  Cruz grabbed the other arm and shook him, raising his voice. “Cut it out, Sergei. Slow down. English. Now!”

  A small crowd of homeless men and a few women had gathered around them, sullen and silent. Curious, but not wanting to get too close in case they got jammed up.

  “Any of you know what he’s talking about? Something about Dickey Hinchey?”

  Their eyes slid away, feet shuffled, but no one answered.

  Dragging Sergei down the sidewalk and through the incongruous white picket fence that surrounded the Jesus Saves building, Cruz pulled him through the doorway. He shoved Sergei onto a worn Naugahyde sofa and looked for Angie Hunt, the woman in charge.

  “Stay there,” he growled, and turned left to the office.

  Angie, a recovering addict herself, looked fifty although Cruz knew she was only in her late thirties, not much older than him. She tugged on her long dreadlocks and eyed him cautiously. “Anything new?” she asked.

  “What?” Cruz felt stupid, as if he was the last person in a game of gossip.

  “Hinchey. Your parolee, right?” Angie dabbed at her nose. “Heard he’s dead.”

  “What the fu – ?” Cruz ran his hand through his thick short-cut hair. “When? How?”

  “At Ryder Park, down by the creek.” Angie covered her mouth with one bony hand. “Pretty awful they’re sayin’, lots of blood.” She sniffed. “But you know how these guys like to exaggerate.”

  Cruz eyed her carefully, noting the troubled look on a worn face the color of toffee. “Yeah,” he said, jerking his head toward the crowd outside the building, “but something has scared them.”

  “Yeah,” she repeated. “God. Dickey was an okay guy, a drunk and a felon, but he was all right. Tryin’, you know?”

  “Aren’t they all?” Cruz replied, placing a large hand on her shoulder, and handing her his business card. “Let me know if you hear anything else, will you?”

  Curious, Cruz swung by Ryder Park on his way to the Rosedale Police Station, slowed down at the sight of the blue and red flashing lights and the gathering crowd. Even this early nearly fifty people hovered around the park perimeter and across the one-way street.

  He wouldn’t stop, add to the chaos, but searched for Sheriff Ben Slater’s battered Chevy pickup. The city outsourced many of their services to Bigler County, so Slater had ultimate jurisdiction over any homicide in the county.

  Cruz stopped his mind from going to murder.

  Sometimes they just ... died.

  When he didn’t see the Sheriff’s pickup, he drove on, wondering if the body could belong to his parolee, and if it was Dickey Hinchey, how he’d ended up dead in a Rosedale park.

  Vagrants like Dickey, with no family, died all the time, but few mourned their passing.

  Chapter 9

  The doctor saw Cole Hansen quicker than he expected. Usually it was weeks, if not months, before an inmate got an appointment to the clinic. Long enough to either be cured or dead of whatever ailment they had. Where was the usual bullshit politics and delay?

  He puffed up a bit. Maybe debriefing was the right decision. Maybe it would be all right if he took the deal prison admin offered.

  Cole admired Dr. Jones. She didn’t play favorites, but he knew she liked him. She was what his older sister would call an “old soul,” a person who was born gentle and kind.

  Not that she looked gentle, mind you, – or old. She had a severe expression to her face that overshadowed her wide smile and sympathetic gray eyes. She wore no makeup on her pale face and pulled her thick brown hair into a tight bun at the back of her neck.

  Rather than making her look hard, though, one loose curl tugged from the k
not and made her seem approachable. The doc’s eyes were ... safe.

  Escorted to the SHU medical ward by two officers, wrists and feet shackled, Cole waited patiently for the doctor to appear in the examination room. It was uncomfortable, but he’d long ago given up the idea of comfort, and at least his hands were cuffed in front of him.

  “Hello, Mr. Hansen.” Dr. Jones smiled as she entered the exam room. “What’s wrong this time?”

  She observed him without waiting for an answer, noting the sweaty palms and moist forehead, taking in the pallid color and jittery eyes. “You’re not looking so good today.”

  Cole always had a lot of stomach trouble, a condition that became more severe with his hurried transfer to the SHU. He’d used that excuse, along with a complaint of migraines, to request the medical visit.

  Dr. Jones leaned against the wall, eyeing him neutrally. She never seemed afraid of the inmates when they visited her. Never alarmed or disgusted with the signs and symptoms of their degeneracy.

  “Even so, you’re pretty healthy, Mr. Hansen. Sleeping troubles, too? Or – ?” She cocked her head to one side in invitation.

  Cole coughed, cleared his throat, and looked uneasily around the room. He jerked his head, motioning her to come closer. There was no privacy anywhere in prison, even with the shrinks, counselors and medical personnel.

  “I need to make a decision,” he whispered when he was sure his voice was low enough not to be overheard if there were hidden microphones in the room. “But – but I’m kinda nervous.”

  A startled look crossed her face. For an inmate to express fear rarely happened. The whole system of bully or be bullied was built on macho bravado. Dr. Jones lay down her clipboard and leaned her ear next to Cole’s mouth, placing her stethoscope on his exposed chest.

  “What are you worried about?” she murmured quietly.

  Cole coughed and took comfort from the placid depths of her calm eyes. “I – I wanna drop out,” he stuttered.

  Her hands froze a moment. She didn’t pretend not to understand the term for snitching. “Why would you do something so dangerous?”

  After a long pause, a flicker of understanding clouded those storm-swept eyes. “You didn’t do it, did you?” she said. “You didn’t kill that man.”

  Of course, she would’ve heard all about the fracas that resulted in murder in the yard. “No – no, ma’am, I didn’t.” He straightened his back in a semblance of pride.

  Sucking in his cheeks to produce saliva, he edged the note he’d retrieved in the SHU corridor to the front of his teeth. “I’ve got something – you know, just in case I – I don’t ... ”

  He willed her to look up at him. When she leaned over to place the stethoscope higher on his chest, she twisted her head to glance at him and he spat the sodden note neatly onto her knuckles.

  As smoothly as a professional card player, she palmed the note, and it disappeared from sight. She waited a long moment, contemplating the situation, and even though she hadn’t glanced at the note, she urged, “Do it, Cole.”

  She placed one capable hand over his linked ones, pretending to take his pulse, her breath a sweet sensation on his cheek. “If you didn’t kill that man in the yard, you need to debrief. Set the record straight.”

  She tightened her grip in encouragement. “You’ve got to get out of the SHU, Cole. You won’t survive there. You – you’re not ... brutal enough.”

  She smiled wanly and straightened up, patted his shoulder, and walked to the door. “I’ll prescribe acetaminophen for the pain and something to help you sleep,” she said as smoothly as if they hadn’t been talking about Cole Hansen putting his life on the line for a system that didn’t give a shit whether he lived or died.

  Chapter 10

  Inside the newly built Rosedale police headquarters Cruz buzzed the phone connection and displayed his badge through the window. After the female officer pushed a release button, he wound his way around the inside corridor to the bullpen.

  Considering all the patrol cars and the gathering crowd at Ryder Park, Cruz figured the incident had to be a murder, so he wasn’t surprised to find Sheriff Ben Slater relaxing in a chair by Officer Jeff Rawley’s desk.

  Slater rose when Cruz approached. “Officer Cruz.” The Sheriff’s eyes were a slate gray color, cool and hard as the metal file cabinets on the far wall, but he extended his hand in welcome. They’d met before, but it was a while ago.

  Rawley looked sullen and dissatisfied from this morning’s event at the convenience store. He was a beat officer who itched for the action found in inner city precincts and always seemed bored with his job. He nodded stiffly toward Cruz, but didn’t rise.

  “Crime scene at the park?” Cruz asked the Sheriff. “The victim could be one of my parolees.”

  “Another meth head identified the vic,” Rawley supplied. “Says it’s Dickey Hinchey.”

  “Damn,” Cruz said. He looked from Slater to Rawley and back again. “Who has jurisdiction on the case?”

  Rawley opened his mouth, but Slater answered first. “RPD can have it. We’ve got enough on our plate right now.”

  There’d been a rise in meth production in the county over the last several months. Although the Sheriff wasn’t one to ignore a homicide case, he already had his hands full, and figured Rosedale PD could handle this one.

  Rawley smirked, assessing Cruz carefully. “Flood caught the case, but I gotta tell you, no one’s going to worry much about a dead bum.”

  That was what Cruz was afraid of.

  Sheriff Slater’s cell phone beeped and he checked the message. “Crime scene’s finished. I think I’ll take a quick look around before passing it off.” He lifted an eyebrow at Cruz – an implicit invitation to join him.

  Ignoring Rawley, Slater tossed these last words over his shoulder. “Have Flood give me a call.” He exited the bullpen, Cruz behind him.

  Fifteen minutes later Cruz and Slater walked silently across Ryder Park’s baseball field toward the group of people cordoned off from the crime scene.

  “Don’t worry about Rawley,” Slater said out of the blue.

  “Sir?”

  “These Rosedale police are like a dog with a bone.” Slater twisted his mouth in what could’ve been a smile. “They get territorial as hell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Slater frowned. “And don’t ‘sir’ me,” he warned. “You may be – what, twenty-five, thirty? – but I’m not old enough to be your granddaddy.”

  Cruz laughed in spite of himself. “Been on the job five years,” he offered, feeling far older than he was. College, then law school at McGeorge in Sacramento, mostly nights while he worked a beat.

  “Good, then you’re only a few years younger than me.” Slater grinned while his keen eyes took in the rugged face above the muscled body of a football player. He didn’t have to look up to many men, but Santiago Cruz was one of them. “Call me Slater.”

  Cruz nodded. “My friends call me Chago.”

  At the park they flashed badges and made their way through the outer perimeter of the crime scene. The detective in charge, Andrew Flood, was already on scene. He motioned the Sheriff over, simultaneously growling orders to several police officers, trying to disperse the crowd. “Get these goddamn vampires outta here!”

  Nice PR, Cruz thought.

  “Look, Slater,” Flood began when he saw Cruz, a crimson flush creeping up his tanned face. “We got this under control. There’s no need – ”

  “Ah, don’t get your tidies in a bunch,” Slater answered. “I’m turning the case over to RPD. Just wanted a quick look-see.” He turned to Cruz. “You know Parole Officer Cruz?”

  “Yeah,” Flood answered darkly. There was no love lost between Rosedale PD and county parole officers even though their clients were often the same desperate people. The detective, built like a bulldog, had a corresponding pugnacity.

  Slater crouched to inspect the damp, crumpled sleeping bag. “Looks like enough blood for two adults. Nothing
but the sleeping bag?” he asked Flood.

  Flood nodded toward the creek. “The body’s down there. Some water decomp, but not much. Medical examiner says about four hours ago.”

  "Ah, hell!" Slater looked toward the garish sight of mangled flesh and viscous fluid that shadowed the edge of the creek.

  "Looks like a werewolf’s been here, doesn’t it?" Flood observed, a vaguely amused look on his face. “Careful,” he cautioned as they approached the body.

  “Asshole,” Slater murmured under his breath.

  The body was a hacked lump of flesh and blood, and although Flood’s comparison was crude, he wasn’t far from wrong. The victim lay on his back, arms splayed out from his sides. His head was bashed in and his face almost unrecognizable. The shirt had been ripped open and the pants pulled down to his knees. Someone had made a ragged cut from sternum to groin, then chopped away at the torso until the intestines straggled wildly from the body into the water.

  What maniac did this?

  Chapter 11

  The prison release process went faster than Cole Hansen could’ve imagined. According to his deal he didn’t have to finish out his original sentence, and in exchange for the early release, he gave up everything he knew about the Lords organization – identified gang members and leaders. Which was precious little and probably confirmed what admin already suspected.

  He could tell during the interview that the warden had already figured out who'd really sliced up the new inmate in the prison yard. Normally Cole would’ve served out the remainder of his original sentence in Special Needs with the pedophiles and other gang drop outs. In SNY he’d be vulnerable to a bad beat-down by a gang member or another inmate could’ve shanked him, thinking he was a child molester.

  But Cole lucked out, and it didn’t go down that way.

  After a short time in the SHU, he spent only a desperate few hours in SNY. Restless, he waited for someone to attack him, but no one bothered him.