To Serve and Protect: Virus Ch. 01

Based on the series of stories by patricia51 and Linda_s ©

This is Part 1 of an unfinished story where Linda will examine her life and watch over her loved ones while comatose (it's not the one where Linda dies in a shootout). It's also a crime story, so be forewarned of violence and its consequences.

As with my other stories, there is a long story buildup before any lovemaking takes place, and the lovemaking happens slowly and carefully. It's always my hope that the story itself will interest you enough that you want to keep following it while enjoying the sex scenes.

Thanks again to patricia51, Linda_s and LadyCibelle, my editor, for making this story possible.

* * * * *

Crime scenes are not pretty. This one was worse than most.

Lieutenant Linda Shannon drove up to the crime scene and was directed to a parking area by a Sheriff's Department patrol officer. The man who had summoned her, Officer Josh Crane of the Narcotics Task Force, waved hello. The patrol officer, Darrell Evans of the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, conferred with Crane, came over to Linda and extended his hand.

"What appeared to have happened?" Linda asked the patrol officer.

"Two guys going duck hunting found a human corpse. Male, Caucasian. Can't tell what he looks like. Most of the back of his head is missing and his face is pretty messed up."

"Where is the corpse?" Linda asked.

"Down there." The patrol officer pointed. The crime scene was an abandoned rock quarry which now contained a lake. A land speculator had bought the quarry a couple of years back, hoping to build lakeside homes. In the meantime, he issued hunting permits to men with shotguns, for a fee considerably higher than what the county normally charged, hoping to lure potential buyers.

The patrol officer continued: "The two men and their dog were walking through here –" a stand of high grass – "and the dog flushed a quail, I guess by accident. The older guy took a potshot at the quail and downed it. It fell over the lip of the quarry. The dog went to fetch it and came back howling and whining, scared to death. The dog's still pretty skittish. That's him hiding behind the older guy."

"Don't blame him," Linda said. She liked animals and didn't like bird hunting. She would have cited the man for reckless discharge of a firearm – shooting from the hip, extremely dangerous - but this was more important.

Josh Crane came over and saluted. "Lieutenant."

"Officer Crane, what are you doing here? You're Narcotics."

"Yes, ma'am. The patrol officer you talked to is a buddy of mine from training. He gave me a call – he found signs that this might be a drug-related homicide."

"How so?" Linda turned and asked the patrol officer.

"I'll show you." The patrol officer led Linda and Crane to a rocky outcropping. Beside it was a narrow trail leading down to the water. A dead man lay face down in the mud a few feet from the pond. A dead quail was near the body.

"Come with me and look at the man," Evans said. "There are signs of torture, even without moving him to look at him. And for some reason his shoes are missing."

Linda raised her eyebrows and looked at Crane. He had an explanation.

"I have an idea those shoes are identifiers. I think we may know this guy."

The patrol officer led Linda and Crane down the path. Crane offered Linda his hand but she refused aid. Evans continued to talk as they approached the body.

"I don't know how long he's been here, but my guess is less than a day. Can't tell if he fell where he was shot, or was thrown here."

"I'll check it out," Linda said. "But you said something about torture?"

"Just look. The fingers of his right hand are broken. Eyeballing it, it doesn't appear he broke them on somebody's face. You can see bruise marks on him right through his shirt. And look at this." Evans went over, picked up a twig, and pushed up the dead man's left pant leg. "I've never seen this before. Someone sliced off a good-sized chunk of flesh. I think it happened after his death."

Linda bent and looked closely. "You're very observant. We'll have to get a ruling from Doctor Taylor, but I believe you're right."

"Learned it from Officer Crane here," Evans replied. He's got a really good idea for detail."

"I agree," Linda replied. "That's what got him on the task force on his second try. He's been a good investigator ... when he has the time." It was an inside joke. Crane was moonlighting as a sign-language interpreter at the state university. He primarily helped Samantha Black, his girlfriend, but he would help anyone who asked.

Right now Crane was looking more than a little green in the gills. Linda turned to him. "You look like you need to go up and talk to the witnesses. I'll check out this poor guy, and then I want to come up and look at the area above the path."

Crane gratefully climbed back up the path.

Linda turned her attention to the dead man. It looked like he had taken a shotgun blast to the back of the head, from very close range. That fit the drug-related killing pattern, but it wasn't conclusive. Neither were the signs of torture, although those certainly fit the type of punishment criminals would give an informer. The interest was in his lack of shoes and the cut on the dead man's leg. Linda wondered ...

"Any signs of whether he was killed here or elsewhere?" Linda asked.

"Nothing conclusive," said Evans. "I guess his killers could have thrown him into the water if they really wanted to conceal him a while longer."

"Maybe they tried," Linda said. "I'm going back up in a minute to see if he was dragged to the edge and tossed over."

Evans asked: "Josh – Officer Crane, that is – said something about the missing shoes being an identifier?"

Linda replied: "You've heard of school kids getting beaten up or even shot for their fancy shoes?" Evans nodded. The trend had passed somewhat, but some people still put hundreds of dollars into their footwear and about 10 bucks into the rest of their clothes combined, or so it seemed.

Linda continued: "We know a couple of people who try to out-Imelda Imelda." The joke, about Philippine ex-First Lady Imelda Marcos, was lost on Evans, but he nodded blankly. Linda continued: "Meaning they really like their shoes and spend drug profits buying the fanciest ones they can. Sometimes they only wear a pair once and put it away, then buy a new pair for another couple hundred bucks. I'm thinking of one guy who liked to do that. He had a fancy tattoo on the back of his left calf, too."

It hit Evans. "I see, said the blind man," he joked.

"Don't give up your day job," Linda replied with a grimace. Then she softened a little. "You're good at what you do. Secure the area while I talk to the witnesses."

Linda went back up the path and met the two hunters, a man in his late fifties and a kid who looked to be fresh out of high school. Uncle and nephew, she guessed. Their names confirmed it. The dog, which had seemed afraid of everybody, brightened up when he saw Linda. He pricked up his ears and smiled. Then he sneezed.

"Bless you," said Linda to the dog. The dog panted. It was a hot day, after all.

"Can you show me the route you took when you found the body?" Linda asked.

The older guy, Jake Kinney, led the way back to his pickup truck. "Tommy and I, we drove up here and got out. Buford hopped out the back before we got fully parked, and we gave him his head. He went into that tall stand of grass there and went into a crouch. Guess it'd been too long since he was fed." He grinned. Linda didn't grin back, nor did she act embarrassed.

"Most of the grass between here and the quarry is pretty high," Linda commented. "Was he shy, or does he like tall grass?" She didn't expect a duck to favor the tall grass – Buford would have gone down by the path to look for ducks.

"Don't rightly know, ma'am. Anyway, soon as he did his business, he kinda kicked at it. That must have flushed the quail. I took a hipshot at it and took it out. Sent Buford after it. He went down the path OK, but he came tearing back up like he'd been spooked."

Linda tried to make her next comment sound casual. "Did you fire your weapon any more than that one shot?"

"No, ma'am," said the younger guy. "Uncle Jake, he likes to shoot anything with wings. We'd tried some other spots before this one." Then he got the drift, unlike Uncle Jake. "Ma'am, we pick up all our shell casings. Uncle Jake's got powder and shot and a reloading apparatus. We don't litter. You can check what we fired and the shells we got left. I promise, we didn't get near that guy until we went back to the truck and called the Sheriff's Department. The shot we've got is bird shot anyway – you might kill a guy with it but you wouldn't tear his head off."

"Thank you for the information," Linda said. "I didn't figure you'd kill a man by accident. Can you show me the exact route you took? But hold on a minute."

The reason for holding on was the imminent arrival of a University vehicle. The driver, Peter David Moskow, hopped out and got out a video camera, recorder and microphone equipment. He also got out a mask – it looked like an old-fashioned gas mask from the 1940s, which is what it was. He donned that and secured it while getting the video equipment ready.

"This man will follow us, videotaping as you describe your actions," Linda said.

"Like on Cops or something?" Uncle Jake said. He seemed mighty pleased at the chance to be on TV.

"Something like that," came a Darth-Vader like voice from behind the mask. "Please go ahead and state your names for the camera, and let me get some perspective shots. Lieutenant, please count off twenty-five steps at two feet apiece so we can put a distance marker there."

After Linda had marked off the space and returned to the scene, she and Pete started following the pair as they described their travels. During a break in the action, Linda asked Pete about the gas mask.

"You can't come from West Texas and not breathe dust," Pete said in that voice. And I breathed about 30 thousand cigarettes, second hand, at school parties in college. I've had bronchitis and sinusitis and asthma since I was a boy. Better safe than sorry in all this high grass."

"Whatever," Linda said. After some initial resistance, she had liked Pete. He had helped a lot on an earlier case where a police officer was killed and a man barricaded inside a house was wounded – Pete, through studying video footage of the event, had cleared the barricaded man of the capital murder charge. The man was her lover Sue Adams' father, upset because his daughter was living in an openly gay relationship. Sue's father had since left town, but Sue's mom had befriended Linda and her friends on the force.

Pete had later approached the department with a proposal to set up a video and computer laboratory in the Sheriff's Office to analyze crime scenes. Although the expense had cost Linda her promotion to Captain, she hadn't minded too much – money wasn't a problem with her, and she wanted some more experience as a Lieutenant before becoming an overall supervisor. Pete was also working for the University, videotaping teleconferences and lessons for people in the healthcare field for continuing education.

The quartet and the dog started out along the path Uncle Jake and Tommy had blazed through the tall grass. Uncle Jake gave statements, with Tommy adding an additional comment or two. Pete sometimes asked for distance markers to give perspective.

"This is about the point where Buford flushed the quail," Uncle Jake said at last. "I was about thirty feet behind him, I 'spect. Tommy was back of me about two steps." While Linda walked to the spot where Uncle Jake had stood, Pete asked what had happened then.

"I took one shot and the quail went over the lip of that hole in the ground there. Buford took off running toward that path. He came back up out of there maybe fifteen seconds later, yelping and whining."

"Back the way he came?"

"No," said Tommy. "He must have smelled something ... he cut a big swath to your right." He pointed camera right, and then went to an area of the grass which looked somewhat disturbed. Pete signaled him to stay where he was, and then focused his camera on the area. He saw plenty of agitated grass highlighted by a dog's paw prints in a muddy area, with the back two legs dug deep in the ground like the animal had gotten traction for running. He then swung around and looked at Linda, who was crouched low studying the ground.

"What do you see, Lieutenant?"

"The grass here is pressed down pretty flat and there are signs of two or three people's footprints. Come have a look."

Pete did, leaving the two hunters where they were, and recorded the scene. He followed Linda back to the spot where the quail had been flushed and continued on. Buford had taken the shortest route to the lip of the quarry; the drag marks were off to the side, indicating the grass had been used to make the ride smoother.

"Look at that," Linda said suddenly. It was a spot where Buford's path had intersected with the drag marks. Pete focused his camera and zoomed in. The grass was smeared with dried blood and brain matter. Tommy, who came over to look, suddenly got a "hurl" look on his face.

Pete said: "Maybe the dog got a sniff of this while returning, and panicked. Tommy, why don't you go over and show how Buford went around this when he came back."

They trailed the drag marks to the edge of the quarry. It looked like, rather than go to the bottom with the corpse, two people had dragged him that far and flung him off the edge.

"Okay, Lieutenant. Do you have any hypotheses?"

"The blood isn't fresh. I'd say the victim was killed some time earlier and brought here. It may have been at night. Two people threw him out, hoping to hit the water, and didn't stay around to see if he made it or not. The mud's wet enough to cause a splashing sound."

"And, for the record, the moon set at an hour after sunset last night – I looked it up," came the Darth Vader voice. "I wouldn't want to negotiate that path in the dark. Has anybody called the Medical Examiner yet?"

"I did upon seeing the body," said Josh Crane, who had somewhat recovered from his nausea. "But they may be a while getting here. I think the wagon is at the site of a house fire. A kid was trapped inside and died."

"Where was the house fire?" Linda asked. Crane looked through his notebook and gave an address. Linda cursed.

"That's a known drug hangout. A guy named Miguel Espinoza crashed there a lot. He had fancy shoes and a tattoo on his inner calf. Thank you, Officer Crane – tell Officer Evans a thank you as well. File your report with your Sergeant. And, if you are a praying man, say a prayer for that little kid's soul."

"Will do, Lieutenant."

The dog sneezed again and sounded like he was coughing. Linda went over to him and said, "Bless you, Buford."

* * *

The Narcotics Task Force met in an unused classroom at the police academy two days later. By prior agreement, Pete Moskow and his regular camera operator, Liz Guerrin, were also present.

Lieutenant Sam Cronin checked his watch and stirred uneasily. It was very unusual for his boss to be late. Cronin could handle the meeting by himself, but he deferred to Lieutenant Shannon whenever possible. She had been denied a promotion to Captain by a budget cut, but another Lieutenant had quit the force and Cronin had passed the exam and made the cut before Linda got the bad news. Cronin had applied to head the Narcotics Task Force under Shannon's overall supervision, and he stayed on as second-in-command despite their equal rank.

Officer Sue Adams, the Lieutenant's first recruit for the task force, also stirred uneasily. She knew Linda hadn't been herself for the last day or so. No wonder, given that crime scene and the revelation that the fatal torching of a house had been related to the murder. But Linda seemed very tired and short of breath. She had passed on a lovemaking session with Sue the previous night. Sue was hoping to make it up tonight.

Finally Linda walked into the room, rather slowly. She sat down in a chair as Cronin perched on the edge of the desk. Pete gave a signal and Liz started rolling tape.

"DNA testing proves that the deceased was, indeed, Miguel Espinoza. A known drug dealer out on parole for a controlled-substance-sales conviction. He was still dealing a little on the side, and we put the arm on him. Work for us or go back with at least fifteen more years of a prison cell.

"He went back as if nothing had happened," Cronin continued, "but he did tell us of some new boys in the area. Turn to the next page in your handout." Cronin looked up to Liz's camera and talked to it. "We'll insert the PowerPoint slide presentation of the mug shots here." Pete nodded; the slides weren't ready yet.

Cronin went back. "One guy is Yakov Olinsky, a former member of the Israeli Army. Dishonorably discharged for his role in a drug ring over there, he sneaked back to the States and is alleged to be a gun for hire. His specialty is the Uzi and the knife. Regard him as extremely dangerous, and underline extremely a couple of times. If he wanted to kill you and you didn't know it, you'd never know it. They'd be fitting you for a halo within two seconds of his approaching you."

Cronin mentioned a couple of names more familiar to the task force. One was a biker dude known as Curly Bill McKenzie, nickname taken from an outlaw leader of the 1880s. Curly Bill's specialty was the shotgun, and there was a strong possibility he had pulled the trigger on Espinoza.

Curly Bill was chief lieutenant to Carlos Ramirez, suspected lord of a dozen drug rings up and down the southeastern United States. One of the criminals Fidel Castro had dumped on the United States during the Mariel boat lift of 1980, he seemed to be the living embodiment of Al Pacino's Scarface – but notably smarter and less flamboyant than that character. There were no obvious ties or flaunting of money; Ramirez lived alone in a fairly modest house, with plenty of visits to ladies of the evening – but no divulging his secrets, except perhaps to one down-and-out streetwalker whose mutilated corpse had surfaced more than a year after her disappearance.

By this time, Linda had arrived. Pete signaled Liz to stop tape and replay it through her camera so Linda could see what had been said. Liz set up again, Linda introduced herself, then walked to the main desk and sat on the edge. Cronin vacated it for a chair. Linda looked worse than usual as she spoke.

"Turn to your next slide. That's a picture of the house that burned three days ago. A family of four lived there. Dad and Mom and two daughters. From rumors on the street, the house was a drop-off and pickup point for hard drugs, with a 'respectable' family living there rent-free for appearances' sake. It almost goes without saying that the parents won't talk, but the younger daughter did. Sergeant Gibson [Patricia Gibson, of Family Welfare Services and a close friend to Linda] is working with her now.

"She said two masked men came in and ordered everybody out except for Espinoza, who was 'playing cards' with Dad. Maybe he was, I don't know, that's what the girl says. All of them got in the car and took a long drive in a hurry. When they got back into town, they spotted smoke coming from the house. The older daughter bolted from the car and ran back in to get some mementos. That's when the flashover hit – where heat and smoke build up until there's no more room and it turns in on itself, burning all the oxygen and everything else like a blowtorch. She didn't make it halfway across the living room."

Linda bowed her head and took several deep, rasping breaths. Pete whispered to Liz, "Stay on her. Don't flinch." Liz shot him the finger with her free hand, but held the shot. Linda looked up.