Page 3 of The Broken Places

CHAPTER TWO

The recently closed Surfside Motel was within walking distance of the homes featured inMrs. DoubtfireandFull House. Unfortunately, the people inside room 212 wouldn’t be engaging in any tourist activities in the near future—or anything else, for that matter. One DOA was lying prone on the floor, only her legs visible, the two others supine on the bed.

She smelled blood, and also the evidence that the victims’ bowels had emptied in death. “Hi, Sullivan,” she said to the first-responding officer standing in the outdoor hallway to her left.

“Hi yourself, Lennon.”

Lennon took a moment to glance around at what she could see of the motel room through the open door. Stained, dusty curtains, peeling striped wallpaper, and a myriad of brownish-yellow water stains on the ceiling.

A few furniture items remained: one bedside table, mostly blocked by the bodies; a writing desk; a black, unplugged minifridge with its door wide open; and the headboard and stripped mattresses, now featuring a large dark bloodstain on the side facing her.

She removed a pair of booties from her pocket that she’d taken from the kit in her trunk and started pulling them over her shoes, stalling as she mentally prepared herself to enter the room. “Just you here so far, huh?” she asked Sullivan.

“Yup. Except for them.” He nodded his head back toward the room.

Them.The dead.

Damn.She snapped the bootie over her loafer and set her foot on the ground. She would never purposely drag her feet when a call came in for a triple homicide, but she didn’t particularly like being the only one in the room with the recently deceased victims of a brutal killing. It was the very worst part of her job.

“Sucky wake-up call, huh?” Sullivan asked.

“It’s not my favorite way to start the day,” she said as she took out a pair of gloves from her pocket. “But I was already up and on a jog.” She’d been running the path along the beach when the call had come in. She’d gone home, taken a quick shower, changed, and driven there. All that, and the sun was barely up. And no one else had arrived, other than the officers she’d passed on her way through the parking lot, who were stretching crime scene tape across a second set of stairs.

“It’s not safe for a woman to be jogging alone in this city. Not anymore,” Sullivan offered.

“I’m painfully aware of the crime rate, Sullivan. I’m good, I promise.”

He gave a short grunt. “I hope so, because we can’t afford to lose any more inspectors.”

She glanced at him and then away as she stretched one glove over her hand. Sullivan was a good guy. He’d already been an officer for over a decade when she’d started at the SFPD, and while she’d worked to move up the ranks to homicide inspector, Sullivan was content to remain a beat officer. She respected that, and in his position, experience mattered a great deal. So did numbers, and he was right: they couldn’t afford to lose any more staff of any rank.

“Who was it that called this in?”

“An anonymous call. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a homeless person looking for a place to sleep who came upon this. I’d bet anything it’ll come back to a temporary burner phone someone stole from Walgreens.”

She snapped on the second glove and then glanced down at the doorknob. It was hanging partway off the door, but whether that was because someone had kicked at it or just because this whole place was old and rickety and falling apart at the seams, she couldn’t tell. Lennon leaned inside a little more. There was a door near the back that she assumed was the bathroom. “You clear it?”

“Yeah. All clear.”

“This one looks similar to the others?” she asked.

“At first glance? Yeah.”

“How far out are the criminalists?”

Sullivan glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes, give or take. I heard on the radio that there was a mass shooting in Bayview right before this was called in, so a few probably headed there first.”

Lennon gave a succinct nod and stepped inside the room. During normal hours, it was more common that she arrived after the forensic team was already working on the scene, stepping into the hustle and bustle of coworkers collecting evidence and tagging items. As if murder kept to “normal hours.”

She walked past the open closet near the door, one lone wire hanger dangling on the broken rod, and approached the bed. The scent of death and bodily fluids was far stronger inside the room. A minor wave of nausea came over her, and she took a moment to breathe through it. Beyond the unpleasant sensory experience, and even with the door open, the room felt stuffy, and eerily—unnaturally—still. It made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up.

The skirt of the woman on the floor at the end of the bed had ridden up and was showing half her backside. It almost felt like Lennon’s presence here was inappropriate, that she should look away and give these people the dignity they hadn’t received in their final moments.

But her job was not to deliver dignity to the dead. Her job was to deliver justice. And to do so, she had to look and to probe and to consider these bodies from every angle. She had to try her best toignore that they’d once been people with their own busy lives and consider them as simply victims.Part of the scene.At least initially, on first sighting.

She squatted down and leaned to the side to better see the woman on the floor. Her light-brown hair was matted with blood, and Lennon used one gloved finger to lift some of it off her face and hold it aside. Lennon drew back slightly when she saw the expression on the woman’s face—eyes wide and mouth open as if frozen in a never-ending scream. There were tear tracks through the heavy makeup on her pale skin.God.Sadness dropped over Lennon like an invisible net, and she did her best not to get tangled in it. It helped no one.What living nightmare would cause an expression like that?She looked away for a moment. She hated this. She really did. Nine years on the force, and she was still so damn affected.

Breathe out. Assess. Do your damn job.She looked back at the dead woman.Young.Late teens or early twenties.

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