Rogue Alliance (3 page)

             
S
he ignored them and made a bee-line toward her partner.
He was
hunched over the farthest section of the thirty-foot, rusted-out feeding trough.
As if sensing her, he stood up, turned and met her halfway.

             
He raised one
bushy
brow in question but remained silent.

             
“It’s just hair. Get over it. Where’s the body? Oh and don’t get too close to me. I haven’t brushed my teeth y
et. My mouth tastes like ass and
probably doesn’t smell much better
,
either.”

             
“I
wouldn’t know about that,” Johnson said, “but the hair I like.
I always wondered what it looked like down.
”

             
“Are we bonding now?”

             
She wat
ched his expression flatten
. Once again
,
her dour mood had squelched any chance of making friends with her partner. A small twinge of regret fluttered in her belly.

             
“
Why would we want to do that?
Forget I said anything.
”

             
He turned and walked away. She followed with her head held high but felt like a l
ouse. She had never
made sense
of why she couldn’t bring herself to be polite
to Jo
hnson
.
It was logical that if she could
, they wou
ld be a stronger team.

             
Her po
sition as detective on the Federal Agency of Narcotic Control
was everything to her
.
Other than a few minor mishaps from her tendency to bend the rules, s
he
was
building a solid and respectable career for herself. Her dedication was stalwart
and
she
expecte
d everyone else around her to perform to
the same
degree
. She knew it
was an unrealistic expectation
but couldn’t change it
. Biting sarcasm was her usual means of communication
. I
t kept pe
ople just where she wanted them -
at a distance. S
he absolutely did not want to be friends. She wanted to work. She wanted to solve cases. She wa
nted to be left the hell alone, which was why
,
even after a year, Johnson still didn’t like working with her.

             
“Quentin’s already here,”
Johnson said over his shoulder,
“I knew you’d want him specifically.”

             
Shyla had already spotted him.

             
“
I know he’s
quirky but he’s
the best forensics guy on the west co
ast.
Hey, Quentin, w
hat’s the 411?”

             
He looked up
, peeking over his thick-
rimmed glasses, which seemed to be the newest style. He’d been wearing them long before the latest fad was to look like
nerd extraordinaire, though, so
she didn’t tease him about it. His eyes lit up and
he broke into a smile.

             
“Morning, Sunshine. Glad you’re here. Come have a look.”

             
Shyla braced
herself
for grotesque and stepped forward.
It never got easier.

             
Straton
had been right. There wasn’t much left. It was a body. The only way sh
e could see that it was human were
the strands of bright pink ha
ir streaming from the skull. O
ther than that
,
it was hard to conclude much more. Nearly all the flesh had been torn away
. It wasn’t even that repulsive,
just looked like mangled up
chunks of meat dangling from
a set of bones. Shyla had seen worse. This didn’t even have a face anymore. Without a face, it was easier to look at the cadaver from a professional and disengaged perspective. When they had a face, th
ey looked at you and wanted answers.
 

             
Shyla was relieved
those eyes weren’t looking back at her that cold morning. She felt like shit.
Having a corpse stare up at you when you’re already miserable is
no
t the best of ways to start
the morning.

             
“She’s late teens- early twenties. Caucasian.
Dark-blonde hair dyed hot pink,
”
Quentin’s energetic voice piped up.

             
“Yeah, I see the hair. That’s where you get white female?”

             
Hands gloved, he tugged with a pair of small sterile forceps and pulled up a chunk of what must have been scalp
. B
y the curve of the bone, she guessed forehead
.

             
“You have to look real close, but just at the roots you can make out the color of her skin.
Nowa
days, pink hair isn’t real gender specific, but the
bone structure
,
femur length, and the pelvis,
says female- late teens, early twenties.”

             
Shyla raised a speculative eyebrow.

             
“I’ll take your word for it.
I want to see the necklace. St
raton said it’s identical to the one’s Ricardo’s gang wears.”

             
“Sure. I bagged it.
”

             
“
I already took a peek,” Johnson said. “
I
t does look the same.
”

             
Shyla nodded and kept her
e
xpression
bland.

             
“
Anything else?”
she asked.

             
Quentin
snorted and gently bagged his specimen.

             
“No. This is a mess. I’m gonna have to wait until she’s back at the lab before I can hav
e my way with her. Give me a
t least a
few days.
Probably not going to be much to
go off given her condition, but her skeleton might reveal the cause of death
. We’ll see.”

             
“Meanwhile,” Shyla said, “
we’ll stick to protocol -
keep tabs on everything tha
t the State authorities find,
run her DNA,
see if we can match her up with a missing profile.
I know that Straton thinks she’s one of Ricardo’s but I want to know if she had any association with Victor Champlain.”

             
“Champlain? I didn’t know
you were on that case.”

             
Johnson rolled his eyes.

             
“We’re not. Jesus, Shyla, let it go. I’m going to go have a talk with the farmer.”
             
He stomped off.

             
Shyla felt Quentin’s curiosity
,
as thick as the mud under her boots.

             
“Ricardo’s gang is our
main focus. But let’s face it - h
e’s small potatoes. I have a hard time believing he doesn’t answer to someone bigger. You and I both know that Champlain wouldn’t let just anyone deal in his territory.
He has a whole fleet under him and
I’m wi
lling to bet Ricardo is one of the
m.”

             
Quentin peered over the rim of his glasses.

             
“Well if you can draw that conclusion, then why hasn’t anyone else?”
he asked.

             
“They have.
Even Johnson,” Shyla said, averting her eyes,
“
But everyone has their hands full. Champlain’s reach is far. And he has a lot of people in his pockets, if you know what I mean. I’m not sure it’s a case that’s meant to be solved. But little guys, like Ricardo, they are perfect fall guys. So
they
focus on them.”

             
“But not you.
You want to n
ail Champlain and use guys like Ricardo to do it.”

             
Shyla gave a rare sideways grin.

             
“Who
,
me?”

THREE

             
Shyla’s
eyes
cro
ssed with fatigue. She
had been working up her reports for the better
half of the morning. She start
ed when there was a hard knock on her d
oor and
Johnson
peered in.

             
“Hey, Ericson. Captain
wants to see you.”

             
“Just me?”

             
“Yep
.
”

             
“
Hey, have you heard anything about the Jane Doe found in the pig trough yet?
”

             
“No, but it’s been a few days. Give it a while longer. Besides, I don’t think that’s what the Captain wants to talk to you about.”

             
“Right.”

             
Johnson’s
eyes met hers
briefly, hinting that there was a question lurking in the back of his mind
, but thought better of it.

             
“
Well, you’d better head on back,
”
he said.

             
Sighing, Shyl
a
ran a hand
over
h
er hair
impatiently.

             
“Y
eah, a
ll right, a
t least it gets me away
from this damn desk for a while,
”
s
he
said, flipping the file closed and popping
it down into the cabinet under her desk.  

*

             
“Sit do
wn, Shyla,” said
Eli Straton, the director of F.A.N.C.
, as she entered the room.
He’d been C
aptain of L
.
A
.
P
.
D
. before stepping
into
the
role of
director of the Federal agency. Everyone still called him Captain.

             
Eli was a calm, collected individual at all times. He was a g
enerous and hard-working leader -
the kind of boss everyone wanted to work fo
r. Shyla looked up to him. T
here were times
, though,
when his quiet demeanor took on a dangerous edge that could make anyone take heed. It was only a slight twitch of his lips, a sharp look in his eye. But it was enough to make even the toughest cops squirm.

             
Shyla swallowed hard.

             
“Yes, Sir.”

             
Straton sat in his chair, folded his hands on his desk and stared her down.

             
“
I wanted to talk to you about the Champlain case.”

             
Shyla sat up straight
. She’d been hoping
that’s what
he wanted
to talk about
. It was the biggest case in the state. She wasn’t on the team assigned to it, but she’d been hoping to make her way there eventually.

             
“Great. Let’s talk. Champlain is exactly why I went down there yesterday. An anonymous tip indicated that
Ricardo,
the guy I’ve been following on the Circo case was meeting up with Frank the Crank.”

             
“Frank? Why in the hell is Frank talking to someone like him? He’s small time.”