The Press Gang Theory – Chapter One
The sun was just beginning to slightly brighten the thick layer of dull gray clouds that hung over The City like a heavy wet blanket. The streetlamp glow reflecting off the puddles and glistening asphalt offered the only luster in the gloom as the large tan LTD turned off the Embarcadero into the parking lot near Pier 41. Two black-and-whites and a coroner's wagon were already there.
The doors to the sedan opened slowly. Both Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone and his partner, Inspector Steve Keller, turned up the collars of their overcoats as they emerged into the thick, cold mist that helped to mask the on-going construction that was turning the historic old fishing wharf into a tourist attraction.
Silently, as if in weary anticipation of what they were about to confront, they followed the sidewalk around Castagnola's and walked out onto the wooden pier. The entire fleet, small as it was now, was back in but no one was off-loading their catch; it seemed as if the entire fishing community was standing at the end of the pier.
"Okay, fellas," Mike said loudly as they approached the assembled throng, "everybody's gotta move back now!"
Several heads turned slowly, without expression, and enough of the grizzled captains and their younger charges stepped aside so the cops could make their way to the short wooden ladder and down onto the blue-and-white boat below. As Mike hopped off the ladder onto the Miss B, Sergeant Rod Caplan nodded a greeting. "Mike, this is Stan Joslyn, he's captain of the Miss B."
Wiping the grit from the wooden ladder off his hands, Mike smiled grimly then held his right hand out for the short grey-haired fisherman to shake. "Captain, I'm Lieutenant Stone, and this is Inspector Keller."
Steve had joined them on the prow of the small boat and he nodded his acknowledgement.
"Rod," Mike continued, looking at the uniformed sergeant, "what have you got for us?"
Caplan cocked his head and grimaced slightly. "I think you fellas should see for yourself." He turned and started towards the back of the boat. Mike glanced at his partner before they followed, both of them frowning in curiosity.
They followed Caplan around the wheelhouse. Two more uniformed officers and a thin, bespectacled young man in a black trench coat were standing over the open cargo hatch door.
As the group approached the others, Caplan glanced over his shoulder. "Captain, you want to tell the Lieutenant here what happened."
Joslyn stopped a couple of steps behind Mike, who had walked to the edge of the cargo hatch and looked down; he could see nothing in the murky depths, but the smell of fresh fish got a lot stronger. "Well, ah," the captain began, and both detectives faced him, eyebrows raised.
He glanced nervously from one to the other and then down at the deck, rubbing his hands together almost nervously.
He cleared his throat and started again. "We, ah, we was out just past the Bridge… you know we don't catch near as much as we used to…" he sighed sadly and Mike nodded in commiseration, "and it was getting hard to see so we decided to stick close to home for tonight. Anyways, we were about a mile offa Land's End when we pulled the net in and we just dumped it and headed home here."
He cleared his throat again and glanced at Mike before his hooded soft blue eyes drifted back towards the cargo hatch. "So's anyway, ah, Ricky - my boy here," he nodded towards a skinny dark-haired and dark-eyed young man standing nearby, who looked quickly at the tall detective and swallowed nervously before his eyes snapped back to the cargo hold as well. "Ricky and me, we, ah, well, we opened the hatch here and he, ah…. well, he jumped down into the hold to start tossing the keepers up to me when, ah, well…" Joslyn cleared his throat once more and closed his eyes.
"I screamed, sir," Ricky said quietly, keeping his eyes on the inky depths of the hold. "I couldn't help myself."
Mike glanced at Steve, who shrugged slightly, and they both stepped closer to the hold as the two patrolmen stepped back. The young man in the glasses and trenchcoat looked at Mike and smiled wanly with a slight nod. "Lieutenant…"
Mike nodded back. "Albert. So, what have you got for us?"
The coroner's assistant raised the large flashlight in his right hand and snapped it on. The bright beam illuminated the writhing pile of fish struggling to stay alive in the large waterless space. Both detectives frowned, trying to figure out what they were supposed to see. Then Steve caught his breath and flinched involuntarily; a split second later, Mike did the same.
Covered with grime and glistening with moisture in the stark beam from the powerful flashlight, a human hand protruded from the flailing mass.
Mike exhaled loudly, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. He glanced at the captain, who had reluctantly joined him at the edge of the hold; Ricky had turned away and was staring at the deck. "I see," the older detective said to no one in particular, then looked at Joslyn. "So you had no idea you had this in your net?"
Continuing to stare at the object in the flashlight beam, the captain shook his head. "No, sir, it felt like it does most nights, except maybe a little heavier. I just thought maybe we got a good catch tonight, ya know?" He sighed almost sadly.
Mike patted him on the shoulder. "Well, Captain, we'll take this off your hands now." He glanced at his partner then at the sergeant. "Rod, we need the body, not the fish, right? So, ah," he chuckled with a grim inevitability, "let's get a couple of the boys down there and get the body out."
The assistant coroner turned quickly towards the older detective. "Ah, Lieutenant, don't we need pictures…?"
Mike cocked his head and smiled. "You're right, Albert, we do need pictures, but not while it's still in there. We'll need pictures when we get it out here, on the deck. So right now we have to get it out of there and then you can wait for the photographer to show up before you pack it up and take it back to the office. How does that sound?"
Steve, standing behind the now flustered young coroner, swallowed a smile as he caught his partner's eye.
"Oh, ah, sure, Lieutenant, that makes sense."
Smiling and patting the young man's arm, Mike chuckled. "Good man. So, ah, so we can leave this in your hands, Albert? You'll get this all wrapped up and have Bernie get the report to us whenever he gets it done?" He stared at Albert Peretti with upraised eyebrows.
"Ah, yes, sir, of course, sir."
Mike winked. "Thanks, Albert." He turned to the sergeant. "Rod, Steve and I can leave this with you?"
"You got it, Lieutenant."
"Great, thanks. We've been pulling some late nights recently and we could use a little downtime."
"I hear ya." Caplan turned to the two uniformed officers who had backed away, gesturing them closer. "Okay, so we're gonna get Captain Joslyn and Ricky here to help us empty the hold. It's gonna get a little smelly and dirty, boys, so brace yourselves…"
Caplan's voice died away as Mike and Steve circled the wheelhouse to the prow of the boat and the ladder. Steve tapped the older man on the shoulder to get his attention. "Are we really just going to leave and let those guys do everything?"
One foot on the ladder, Mike turned back to his young partner. "I've seen many a floater in my day, Steve, and if you don't get to 'em within a day or two, unless they died with their I.D. in their pocket, there ain't a snowballs chance in hell of identifying them. And there's not going to be anything in that hold that's gonna help us identify him either or tell us what happened to him. We're gonna have to wait to see what Bernie can tell us, right? And I don't know about you, but I have no desire to ruin a perfectly good suit rooting around in that hold, do you?"
With a knowing nod and a smile, he continued up the ladder. Steve cocked his head, ruminating, then followed the older man up the ladder and onto the pier. A few curious fishermen remained but the majority had returned to their boats.
As they started off back up the pier to the parking lot, a voice floated towards them from the small pack still milling about. "So what did Stan bring back, Lieutenant?"
Mike laughed and called over his shoulder. "Ask him!" He glanced at Steve and chuckled. "Joslyn can dine out on this story for years!"
Laughing, Steve slapped the older man on the shoulder as they turned onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. He glanced up. "Doesn't look like it's gonna clear up anytime soon… gonna be a miserable day, I can feel it."
Mike smiled at him as they got closer to the car. "Say, ah, there's a good little breakfast place just up the road here, serves great bacon and eggs. All the fishermen go there when they come in in the morning. What say I treat us both to a couple of 'over easy's'?"
Steve, who had his hand on the driver's door, stepped away from the car and put both hands up. "You don't have to ask me twice!"
# # # # #
The dour-looking man in the black suit opened the glass paneled door with 450 Homicide stenciled on the glass and stepped through the small anteroom into the bullpen. A couple of heads snapped in his direction, frowning slightly, as he continued across the tile floor towards the small inner office.
As he passed Steve's desk, the young inspector, who was making notes on a legal length yellow pad, looked up and started, almost shaking his head in surprise as his eyes followed the visitor's progress to the door of his partner's office, pausing to wait for the lieutenant to finish his phone call.
Feeling a presence at his door and suspecting his partner, Mike glanced up and froze, his eyes widening. "Ah, yeah, thanks, John…. Yeah, look, ah, can I call you back? Something's come up…. Yeah, thanks, I'll call you back a little later…. Thanks." He hung the receiver up, continuing to stare at the balding man standing in the doorway. "Well, it's not often we see you up here, Bernie. What have you got?" He gestured the coroner into the room.
Holding up the file he held in his hand, Bernie took the few steps to the corner of the desk and dropped the folder. "I wanted to deliver this one in person," he said enigmatically with a tiny smile, glancing over his shoulder at Steve, who had joined them in the small office.
Mike glanced at his partner before pulling the folder closer and opening it, putting on the reading glasses that had been lying on the desk.
"This has got to be good," Steve chuckled as he glanced from Bernie to Mike.
"Well, I don't know about good, but definitely…. interesting," the coroner said inscrutably, watching the older man's eyes scan the report. "And I wanted to thank you both for the, ah, fragrance that now permeates my entire office. Poor Albert is still taking showers every few hours trying to get that smell out of his hair and off his skin."
"Decomposing body or fish?" Steve asked waggishly and Bernie shot him a peeved sideways glance.
"Both." He couldn't hide his own chuckle and smile. "I think he threw his clothes away."
Mike had finished scanning the report and he sat back, taking off his glasses. Steve watched him with a frown. "What?"
Mike looked at Bernie and nodded in his partner's direction. "Tell him."
Nodding, Bernie looked at the younger man. "Well, it wasn't a complete body, no surprise there. It was only the torso and head, and one arm and one leg – the left. It is definitely a man but there's no way to tell how long he was in the water; my guess, at least two weeks but could be longer. I'm pegging him to be in his late twenties, early thirties, but that's just an educated guess at the moment. Most of the soft flesh on the face is gone, probably eaten by fish," the two detectives shifted uncomfortably, "so getting an I.D. is going to be extremely hard if you're going by that alone.
"From what we can tell, the limbs were severed post-mortem, probably by a boat propeller but I can't be a hundred percent sure on that. There's a fracture on the back of the skull that could be from a heavy object and that could have been the deathblow, but that can't be confirmed either, at least not yet. It could have happened post-mortem as well; there's just too much decomp to be sure."
He paused to take a breath and Steve shrugged. "So, why the special delivery? We could have read all this in the report?"
Bernie glanced at the inspector then turned back to Mike, raising his eyebrows. Mike nodded at the coroner who turned back to the younger man.
"It's what I found in his tissue that sparked my curiosity," he said with a slight smile. "We're still waiting for the complete toxicology report and that's gonna take some time, but I did find something unusual."
With a curious glance at his partner, Steve asked, inclining his head, "What?"
"Laudanum."
Steve brow furrowed; he could feel his partner's eyes boring into him. "Laudanum? Who uses laudanum anymore? What, has this guy been in the water since the 1800's?"