Brutality – Chapter One

NOT EDITED

Chapter One

1998

The call had come in around eleven PM. Dispatch hadn’t offered many details. The few they had given relayed that the scene was a homicide. The responding officer needed help now, not later, and Arthur Mason was the detective on call. So Arthur had changed out of his pajamas and into his suit, left his eldest boy in charge of the household, and headed for the scene.

Across town, the patrol cop’s lights were still on, painting most of the houses on the street with red, white, and blue flashes. The officer sat on the curb, head between his knees. Arthur’s brow furrowed as he parked alongside the officer’s cruiser. He stepped out of his car and pulled open the cruiser’s door, leaning inside to flip off the lights. He made his way over to the officer, hands shoved into his pockets. “What’s goin’ on in there, Hennegan?”

Ronan Hennegan didn’t lift his head from his knees. “Murdered woman. There’s blood… everywhere.”

Arthur patted Ronan’s shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze before making his way up to the house. He’d seen his fair share of homicides—far more than Ronan had, if nothing else. Rookies were pretty likely to be bothered by even ‘mild’ murder scenes. The first few times you saw one, it was hard not to be. He didn’t blame the officer for his need to sit this one out.

Arthur pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. The front door was open, but the lock wasn’t busted. The killer had either come in elsewhere, had been let inside, or the dead woman hadn’t been one to lock her doors. Arthur’s gaze fell to the floor before he even stepped inside. The drops of blood started outside, visible on the little concrete step just before the door. Careful not to step on the trail, Arthur followed it into the house and to the living room. The larger the drops grew, the stronger the smell of iron got. By the time the elongated drops fully converged with a pool of blood, the unmistakable smell of blood became borderline unbearable.

Slowly, Arthur dragged his gaze from the crimson-soaked carpet to the body that lay in it. His hand came up to his mouth, his palm now the only barrier between the floor and the contents of his churning stomach.

She was unrecognizable. Her face had been beaten in, the skull obviously caved in even without an up-close investigation of it. Brain matter spattered the floor, the front of the couch, and the nearest wall. Her throat was deeply slit, what was left of her head nearly decapitated from her spine. The slashes in her shirt indicated she’d been stabbed over and over and over again.

Arthur clenched a fist in front of his lips and hurried out of the house. He barely made it back to the street before he fell to his hands and knees and vomited. His stomach long empty, he dry-heaved until his throat burned. He mustered up some saliva to spit out after and wiped a hand across the cold sweat on his now-clammy forehead.

“Told you,” Ronan mumbled, head still tucked between his knees.

“Here, Art.”

Still on his hands and knees, Arthur lifted his head. Christian Barletta, the station’s lead forensic investigator, stood a few inches in front of him, a water bottle extended to Arthur. “Thanks,” Arthur whispered. He forced himself to his knees and grabbed the bottle before sitting back down on the road. “It’s bad in there, Christian. Real damn bad.”

Christian waved a hand between Arthur and Ronan. “I had kind of gotten that impression.” He cleared his throat. “You two hang out here. Breathe in the fresh air. Drink some water. I’ll go take a look, see what I can manage.”

***

“Hey.” A hand grabbed Jacob Mason’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Wake up.”

Jacob cracked open an eye, blurred gaze settling on his older brother’s face. “What?”

“Dad’s at a scene and I want the house to myself. Scram.”

“Why?”

“Girls. The hell you think? Scram.”

Jacob rolled his eyes and rolled onto his side. His brother, Ryan, grabbed his blankets and tossed them to the end of the bed. “All right. Geez.” Jacob grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and sat up. “You suck.”

“I’m gettin’ laid, so I could not care less.”

“Ugh.” Jacob shoved his feet into his slippers and shuffled away from the bed. “Where am I supposed to go?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Jacob muttered under his breath. He yanked open his closet door and grabbed a jacket. Pulling the jacket on over his arms, Jacob made his way past his brother and headed for his dad’s room. There, he sat down on the edge of the bed and turned on the police scanner on the nightstand. The in-between ten-codes meant very little to him, but he knew the address of the scene, and he knew what 10-89 meant. Homicide.

He couldn’t remember the last time Dad worked a homicide. Of course, Dad didn’t really talk much about the actual cases he worked, just the people he worked with. He could’ve been working murders all day every day for all Jake knew.

“Dude. I said scram.”

“God,” Jacob whined. “I’m working on it. I wanted to see where Dad was.”

“You tattle to Dad, and I’ll—”

“Make my life a living hell. Yeah, yeah. I got it. I’m going.” Jacob flipped off the switch for the scanner and jumped down from the bed. At the front door, he switched his slippers out for tennis shoes, grabbed a flashlight from the closet, and headed outside. Ryan closed the door behind him, and a second later, he heard the lock click. Jacob couldn’t help but roll his eyes. As if he had planned on turning around and going right back inside to hang out with the asshole. He loved his brother, most of the time, but things had been different since Mom died. Though Jacob was arguably the one who had needed the most therapy for what he’d seen, Ryan had changed the most, turning from your standard big brother to an undeniable asshole. Before Mom’s death, Ryan had been a standard asshole, with typical moments of peace and kindness for his little brother. That peace and kindness had gone out the door within days of Mom’s death, and although Dad and the therapist had assured things would eventually settle with some more work, they never had. Jacob was pretty certain now that they never would.

Across town, Jacob sneaked up as close as he could to the crime scene without being spotted. He hid behind a tree and waited there a moment before slowly leaning around it. Dad sat on the curb, his face pale. His head was bowed, and he held a water bottle against his cheek. Jacob’s gaze drifted up toward the house, his heart stuttering in his chest. He came out from behind the tree, feet moving him toward the scene almost against his will.

The officer next to Dad spotted Jacob first. “Umm, Art?”

Dad lifted his head, his face growing even paler as he met Jacob’s eyes. Dad stood up, grabbing Jacob’s shoulder before he could even step foot on the lawn. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Is he alive?”

“Is who alive?”

“Wyatt! That’s his mom’s house. Is he alive?” Jacob asked.

Dad searched Jacob’s eyes for a moment before forcing him to sit on the curb. He handed over the water bottle. “Stay here.”

Jacob turned to watch Dad walk up to the house. He paused at the doorway for a moment before stepping inside. Jacob stared at the open doorway for as long as he could stand it. When Dad still hadn’t come back out of the house, he turned his gaze to the road instead, waiting. The water bottle was cold in his hands. The dampness of the curb slowly seeped through the seat of his pajama pants. He did his best to focus on how annoying that felt rather than how crushing everything else suddenly felt.

He had known Wyatt since preschool. He was pretty much the only thing in Jacob’s young life that had stayed consistently the same. Even after Mom died and after they moved houses. Even while Jacob was in therapy. Even after Jacob had been committed to psychiatric hold for seventy-two hours. Wyatt had been the first person to visit him the very second they allowed in people who weren’t family. The thought of him lying inside that house, dead, was…

Jacob did his best to focus on the dampness of the curb instead.

Dad’s hand was a little cold when it touched his shoulder. “Come on. This is… no place for a thirteen-year-old.”

“Is he dead?”

“I… He’s not in there,” Dad said.

“W-well, who is? His mom?” Dad closed his eyes rather than answering. “His mom? Oh my god.”

“I know,” Dad whispered. “I know. Let’s get outta here, talk somewhere that isn’t… here. Okay?”

Jacob forced himself to nod and accepted Dad’s help back to his feet. The numbness in his bones was reminiscent of how he’d felt when Mom died. He had hoped he’d never have to feel it again, that painfully cold feeling eating through every bone in his body. But there it was, back again with a vengeance.

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It was Jake’s birthday on the eighteenth, so I started writing this young Jake book that alternates between his and his dad’s POV. I’m not 100% certain where it’ll go, but if you enjoyed this and would like to see more, let me know! I want to make sure I’m in the right headspace before I go back to The Surgeon so that I don’t have to do the rewrite edit a second time, so I’m meandering between other projects at the moment. If you guys want to see more of it, this may be one of my meandering between books

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