“You’re with me, Brackett,” Hopper said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder toward the bluff. “You were first on scene. Fluke, you stand by here.”
The senior officer sputtered. “Come on, Sarge…”
“We all want action, Reed,” Hopper said in his all-knowing Texas drawl. “But somebody has to hold the horses… or hang back with the witnesses.”
Brackett avoided his old FTO’s glare and followed the sergeant to the trailhead. The Alaska sun was still sluggish this time of year, and the morning twilight was just reflecting off the few chunks of muddy pad ice in the chocolate-colored water below. Mount Susitna lay across the Cook Inlet to the west, like a sleeping lady cloaked in white. She’d be covered in snow for at least another month.
The path down was essentially a cutbank carved along the side of the bluff for fifty yards at a steep angle until it reached the beach. Brackett felt the stiff wind off the ocean as soon as he stepped to the edge. Patches of filthy snow adorned the side of the trail beneath the budding poplar trees. It had rained hard the day before and water dripped and oozed down the path. The officers stayed to the side, using their flashlights to be sure they didn’t obliterate any obvious tracks with their own boots. The wind gave way to the sound of breaking surf. A raven ker-lucked in the trees to the right. Of course there would be ravens here, Brackett thought. They were scavengers, and this looked like a place you might find something to scavenge.
Sergeant Hopper’s voice shook Brackett from his thoughts as they walked.
“Probably wondering why I left Fluke up there instead of you.”
“Not really,” Brackett lied.
Hopper looked sideways in the scant light, rubbing a bit of moisture off the tip of his nose with the back of his Mechanix glove. “I guess the bigger question is why a guy with one year of experience nine times in a row is a field training officer at all.”
Brackett found himself glad for the shadows. “If I’m honest,” he said, “I have to admit that has crossed my mind.”
“You were with him for a month,” Hopper said.
“Correct.”
“How far are you on the search warrant?”
Brackett blanched. Had he forgotten something important? “Search warrant?”
Hopper chuckled. “For the bodies in Fluke’s basement. You should be on line J of the probable cause affidavit after a single week with that guy. He is one weird motor scooter.”
Brackett gave a nervous smile, relieved, and more than a little flattered to be let inside the sergeant’s inner musings this early in his career.
Hopper stopped at the bottom of the hill, where gravel path became gravel beach. He turned his back to the ocean and the gray lump that had to be the body, as if he wanted to take just a second longer to steel himself before going forward.
“I’ll deny every word of this if you repeat me, but the thing is, I’m not in charge of training. And anyway, I guess a smart person can learn some little something from pretty near everyone, even if it’s what not to do in a given situation.”
“Yes, sir,” Brackett said, because Sergeant Hopper seemed like the kind of guy who wanted a two-sided conversation.
“Okay then,” Hopper said, ready to move on. He turned to play his flashlight slowly across the beach. Brackett caught his breath when the powerful beam stopped on a gray-white lump lodged at the edge of the gravel in the glistening mud thirty feet above the incoming surf.
The two men approached slowly, staying above the line of flotsam that signified the last high-water mark. Hopper raised his hand when they were still five feet uphill from the torso, signifying it was time to stop.
“Tell me what you see,” he said, holding his light steady. Brackett took a breath, happy there was no smell to go along with the image of butchery and rot before him. “Head’s gone,” he said. “Both legs cut off at mid-calf. Arms missing below the elbows. No clothing but for a bra…”
“That looks like a bra to you?” Hopper asked, moving the beam around the lump of flesh. For the first time, Brackett realized it was moving, alive with creatures that had ridden in with it from the water.
“Maybe a rolled T-shirt,” Brackett said, gulping, wondering if this was a test. “Hard to say. I think…” He swallowed again. “I believe it’s a female.”
He closed his eyes for a short mental break. The bright beams of their flashlights revealed tens of thousands of tiny creatures. Collectively known to fishermen as sand fleas, they’d taken up residence in their newfound food source. Saltwater had pickled the tattered flesh, leaving bits of white bone to contrast starkly against the shiny brown mud.
“You think maybe a boat motor did this?” Brackett mused, half to himself.
Sergeant Hopper took his phone out of his vest pocket and held it to his ear. “No,” he said, giving a sigh of the inevitable. “I’m pretty certain this was done with an axe.”
Mutilated bodies tended to activate the ass-magnet in every officer on shift, drawing in the curious like flies – and sand fleas. It was raining cops by the time the sun peeked over the Chugach Mountains to the east. The mud and gravel surrounding the body was protected by the bluff, leaving it in chilly shadow for another several hours.
Sergeant Hopper sent everyone from shift back to work except for Sandra Jackson, the roving officer assigned as uniformed investigator for this particular shift. The tide was rolling in and he wanted her to grab some photos in case it took the Crime Scene Unit too long to arrive. Assigned to regular patrol areas most nights, UIs got an extra week of training and an expensive camera to document crime scenes for detectives in cases that didn’t warrant calling out a full-time technician.
The waves lapped
