Page 9 of Hey, Daddy

“So I cut through that, too. When I did, the first thing I saw is a woman’s shoulder and some hair. That’s when I backed away and called in for backup.”

“Good.” My partner asked, “What else did you touch?”

When the crime scene tech had arrived on the scene, they’d checked the box and found a dismembered body in it.

The plates had come back as being registered to a shell organization out of Thailand, and since no one had come back toget their SUV in the four hours that I’d been at the crime scene, the next step was to look at the tapes and see what we could find.

“Let’s go take a look closer,” I said. “Then go to the Costco and see if they have any footage of the parking lot. The Amazon Lockers will take longer to get information out of.”

My gaze took in the expensive Audi, then the box in the back of the car.

It was a nugget ice maker.

A big one.

One that said “commercial use” on it.

Not big enough, though, that it didn’t fit into the back of the SUV.

The box was flipped over onto the top, and the officer had cut through the bottom of the box and the plastic.

I imagined had it been left upright, it probably wouldn’t have leaked.

The car was parked closer to mid-way in the lot, which had me questioning why, if they were going to pick up something and they knew they wouldn’t have any help, why’d they park so far back?

“What are the odds that this takes place in a goddamn box store parking lot and not a single person sees?” I asked.

“It was dark,” my best friend and partner, John Ramey, pointed out. “And people are expecting big things to be shoved into cars at big box stores. I saw some old lady shoving a rug into her car just last week. It’s normal here.”

He had a point, but still.

A box, I could see.

A massive television, also yes.

But a body?

No, I couldn’t see that.

“Let’s go ask for the camera footage,” I grumbled.

John and I fell into step beside each other, heading toward the crowd of Costco employees.

After letting her know what we needed, the manager disappeared, leaving us outside standing there with a bunch of employees.

John and I stepped away from them so we were far enough away that we could talk without being overheard.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m thinking that this doesn’t make any sense,” I pointed out.

“Same,” he said. “Had to be multiple people to get that box from those lockers to the car.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We need to get in touch with the manager of the lockers.”

That would be the first step anyway.

“I’ll call in and find out where we need to go,” he muttered and stepped away.

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