Page 39 of The Lies We Believe

“All right, read me in.”

Montoya hummed before answering. “The initial call came in just after six a.m. Jenkins was first on the scene, secured it, and referred it over to us. Vic is a white male, late twenties, early thirties. Dark hair, dark eyes.” Her gaze slid to me for a beat. “He was DOA, but from what Jenkins said, it’s not pretty.”

“Just what you want on a Monday morning. What made him pass it to us?”

“The vic has a tattoo…” Her voice trailed off. I didn’t need to ask what tattoo. The one the twins had, the one that resembled the name of the ring we were investigating. It seemed all roads led back to Black Dahlia. We just had to hope the warrants came through so we could find out if Christine Hamilton really was the Dahlia we were looking for.

By the time we reached the docks, the sky had turned to pale shades of gray, and a heavy mist clung to the ground. The air was bitingly cold and filled me with a sense of foreboding. Every exhale formed a cloud that hung in the air as we left the car behind and donned our waterproofs. Gravel crunched under our boots, and containers rose out of the low level mist around us like mountains. The smell of fish and rot saturated the stagnant air until I could taste it on my tongue.

“Why do they need to stack the damn things so high?” Montoya groaned, craning her neck to take them in.

“They wouldn’t seem so big if you were taller than a child.” She whacked my vest with the back of her hand and glared at me. “Land is a premium commodity here?—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved me off just as rain started to fall, turning the damp ground slick under our boots. Gravel gave way to broken tarmac, where fishing debris formed a perversegraveyard. Discarded nets and broken crates slowed us down as we picked our way toward the cornered off scene where I could just about make Daniel out through the mist. His blond hair was plastered to his face, drenched strands sticking to his glasses as he blinked up at us.

“Hey, guys.” Daniel carded his hand through his hair, lifting it off his face before pulling his glasses off and drying them on his sweater. After slipping them back on, he held the tape up for us. “Follow me.”

“Thanks, man.”

“He’s a bit tricky to get to. I can’t confirm exactly how he died. You’ll see why—” I caught his eye as he glanced over his shoulder, his face grim. “The site is too clean for it to have been where he was murdered. Judging by the number of injuries inflicted on the body, it’s clear he was tortured before being dumped.”

“Great,” Montoya muttered as we weaved through an alley of stacked containers. The weak light barely penetrated their peaks as we walked through the shadows. Her eyes scoped for movement around us as her fingers tightened around her gun. It wasn’t often she showed how much a crime scene affected her, but I could tell by the set of her shoulders and her whitening knuckles that today was getting to her. And we hadn’t even laid eyes on the vic yet.

Clearing his throat, Daniel motioned us forward, pointing to where a container door was propped open. “I won’t be able to identify the vic until I get him back to the morgue and run dentals.”

“That bad?” I asked, unease coiling around me.

“Yeah, um, you’ll see.” Daniel chewed his lip as Montoya stepped into the container and drew her flashlight.

“Ho-lee shit.” The halting tone of her voice froze my feet to the ground.

I glanced at Daniel, and he grimaced. “They were thorough…”

“I thought you said this wasn’t where he was killed?” Montoya said as she stepped out of the container, hand covering her mouth, golden skin gray.

“It wasn’t.” Daniel shook his head, toeing the mud where we stood a few feet back. He motioned to the ground in front of the container, flashing his light to highlight two grooves in the mud. “They dumped his body here before dragging it inside. It matches the mud on his heels and lower back. But the blood splatter patterns don’t match the injuries on the body. He wasn’t tortured here.”

“You good?” I rested a hand on Montoya’s shoulder as she drew closer to me.

“I-it’s…one of…” She shook her head and drew in a deep inhale, holding it for a second before slowly releasing it.

“One of who?”

“One of the guys that was brought in with River,” she said in a broken whisper. I swallowed down a surge of anger at her words.

“That’s impossible. They were seen?—”

“A few days ago,” she finished.

I spun on my heel and looked at Daniel. “How long do you estimate he’s been here?”

“A couple of days? Three at most.” He shrugged. “Once I get him—” I waved him off, knowing what he was going to say.

“Here.” Montoya handed me her flashlight with a nod, then squeezed my bicep and headed over to speak to Daniel. The low murmur of their voices accompanied me as I stepped over the drag marks into the container and flicked on my light.

The putrid stench of aged blood assaulted me as soon as I entered the contained space. My eyes watered from the intensity as my stomach churned. There, dumped unceremoniously, was our vic. Extensive contusions and deep lacerations covered everyounce of exposed skin. There were multiple wounds that could have been fatal on their own. To my untrained eye, it seemed like some were administered post mortem, as the residual bleeding wasn’t what you’d expect from such a wound.

I took a moment to lock my humanity down so I could process the scene. The vic’s dark brown hair was a matted mess of dried blood, but what chilled me to the bone was his vacant stare through lidless eyes. Those were eyes that had stared back at me through the mug shot Montoya had pulled up when River had demanded to know how his friends were when he was chained to an interview table. I couldn’t help but feel like we were being played. It seemed like only yesterday that we’d checked up on the guys who were brought in with River, and we had tracked them through the CCTV in town on a night out. Naively, I’d taken it all at face value, because all my concern had been on River.

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