Chapter 5 - The Crime Scene in the Alley
At 2:30 AM, while the storm raged at its peak, Miller drove his unmarked police cruiser down the deserted length of 12th Street. The streetlamps were dead, killed by fallen power lines, leaving the industrial district drowned in pitch-black shadow and rain.
He pulled up behind the rusted iron gates of the abandoned Blackwood Lumber Yard.
Miller stepped out into the mud, holding a heavy tactical flashlight in one hand and his service weapon unholstered at his hip. The beam of light sliced through the driving rain, illuminating towering stacks of rotting timber, broken pallets, and overturned machinery.
In the far corner of the alley, wedged between two rusted sixty-gallon oil drums, sat a massive green commercial dumpster.
Miller approached cautiously, his boots sinking three inches into the slick mud. He shone the bright halogen beam into the open lid of the dumpster.
Inside, resting atop a mountain of water-logged drywall, broken glass, and rotting food scraps, was a bright yellow plastic trash bag. It had been ripped open from the inside—Leo's work.
Miller leaned over the edge, carefully using a pair of gloved fingers to inspect the interior of the bag.
Beside a clump of blood-soaked towels lay a discarded surgical scalpel, a pair of heavy latex gloves stained with dried fluid, and a small, gold-embossed silk necktie bearing the initials J.V.
Miller took three photographs with his digital camera, the flash illuminating the grim scene in brilliant, artificial flashes.
As he moved his flashlight across the muddy alley floor, he noticed something else—tire tracks. Deep, wide treads left by a heavy luxury SUV, spinning out in the mud as the vehicle fled the scene in a hurry.
May you like
Miller knelt in the mud, taking a casting mold of the tread pattern.
"You left your signature, Julian," Miller muttered into the cold wind. "You thought the storm would wash it all away. But you forgot about the boy."
