The Death of Anyone

225 Pages·2014·0.9 MB·English

by  Swykert D.J

The Death of Anyone
D. J. Swykert
Published by
Melange Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
www.melange-books.com

The Death of Anyone,
Copyright 2013 by D.J. Swykert
ISBN: 978-1-61235-620-4

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the
publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Art by Caroline Andrus
The Death of Anyone DJ Swykert
Detroit homicide Detective Bonnie Benham has been transferred from
narcotics for using more than arresting and is working the case of a killer of
adolescent girls. CSI collects DNA evidence from the scene of the latest victim,
which had not been detected on the other victims. But no suspect turns up in the
FBI database. Due to the notoriety of the crimes a task force is put together with
Bonnie as the lead detective, and she implores the D.A. to use an as yet
unapproved type of a DNA Search in an effort to identify the killer. Homicide
Detective Neil Jensen, with his own history of drug and alcohol problems,
understands Bonnie’s frailty and the two detectives become inseparable as they
track this killer of children.
Table of Contents

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One

About the Author
Previews
Chapter One
The death of anyone lessens us. The death of a child devastates us. Bonnie
Benham, ex-narcotics officer, ex-narcotics user, now in homicide, forced herself
to look at the body of the small girl. Why am I looking at this? I could be
arresting dopers, living beings, okay; somewhat living beings. Instead, I’m
looking at this child. Instead, I’m here in an alley looking at death, a miserable
death, an unnecessary death, the handiwork of the most miserable excuse for a
human being on the planet.
Bonnie leaned over and looked closer. The little girl’s skirt was lifted up, her
panties torn off and lying next to her body. She was bruised and torn, bloodied in
the vaginal area. Her throat was crushed, the deep imprint of thumbs indented in
the tissue, the hyoid bone broken, Bonnie guessed. I hope she was dead before
the assault, Bonnie found herself thinking.
“What a way to start the weekend,” Detective Lagrow, Bonnie’s young
partner, said. His shoulder touched Bonnie’s as he took a closer look.
“Won’t be any weekend,” Bonnie answered. “I’m gonna get this asshole. I’m
gonna get him and I’m gonna do it before he kills another one.”
With his pen Lagrow lifted the hair up off of the dead girl’s forehead, pushed
it to one side, looking for bruises, or any further evidence of physical battery,
where DNA, or a fingerprint might have been left. “I was just joking about the
weekend. I’ll be right with you. We’re gonna get him.”
Bonnie nodded. “I’m not gonna let this happen again.”
Two medical techs arrived; Bill Jameson, a well-fed veteran, and Pierangeli,
a good-looking younger woman, smart, with lots of energy. “What have we
got?” Pierangeli asked.
“Female, nine or ten maybe,” Bonnie answered. “Strangled, I think,
molested. We’ll need a rape kit.”
Bill looked at the young girl and shook his head. “Sick, huh?”
“It makes me fucking sick inside.” Bonnie said. “Makes me think I could kill
someone. I could kill the man that did this.”
Bill didn’t reply to Benham’s outburst. He looked away, at Pierangeli who
was kneeling over the girl, examining her neck, moving her head slightly to
expose the side. “Yeah, she was strangled. That’s what the autopsy will show.
Look at the indentions,” Pierangeli said, pointing with a finger. “They’re still
visible. He had to have choked her for quite a while, wasn’t strong enough to
really cut off her air, she was able to breathe a little, suck some wind. He wasn’t
strong enough to just crush her neck. This took some time. That’s what I see
anyway.”
None of this made Bonnie feel any better. Worse, the idea the child suffered,
struggled, the idea of her wheezing, fighting for a breath, didn’t help. “I’ll talk to
you later,” Bonnie said. “I need to find out who she is.”
“She’s a Jane Doe? We have no ID?” Pierangeli asked.
Bonnie shook her head. “No ID. Some kids found her, went home and told
their mother and she called us. But they didn’t know her. And nobody’s come
forth. Got lots of lookers,” Bonnie said, pointing to the uniform and the crowd
behind the yellow tape. “Nobody says she belongs to them, or seems to know
who she is.”
“I’ve got the 911 center going over complaints for any missing kids,”
Lagrow interjected.
“No, Be on the Lookout, issued for missing kids?” Bonnie asked.
“Nope, no BOL put on the air. And nobody’s called in. Not from this area,
anyway. They’re checking other centers. Maybe she hasn’t been missed.”
Pierangeli stood up. “She hasn’t been dead long. My guess is a couple of
hours. She was probably taken just a short while ago. There’s no rigor. She’s
hardly cold.”
“This is Friday, she should be in school,” Lagrow said, thinking out loud.
“Maybe she got snatched on the way to school and the school just marked her
absent, and the parents don’t know she’s missing. And won’t until she doesn’t
come home.”
Bonnie dialed her cell and got Lieutenant McCants on the phone. “I’m gonna
need some more help here. We’re gonna need to canvas.”
“Do you have anything on her right now?” McCants asked.
“No, we have no ID. No witnesses to anything, just the kids who found her.
I’m gonna go talk to them right now. Lagrow’s got the center going over their
calls for any missing kids. We need to canvas here. Someone has to know who
she is.”
“Right, okay, I’ll get a team together. This kind of shit always stirs up a lot
of publicity, we’re gonna be answering a lot of questions.”
“I don’t give a fuck about questions,” Bonnie shot back, and then thought
better about popping off. “I just want to get on this while it’s still warm, fresh in
everyone’s mind. You know how it is after a case gets cold. People tend to
forget about it, and don’t want to get involved, and then you gotta work twice as
hard to get anything out of anyone.”
“Right, I know. I’ll get a couple of men down there and start to canvas. Call
me after you talk to the kids. Keep me on top of this.”
Bonnie turned to Lagrow. “You got the names and the address for the kids
who found her?”
“Yeah, right here,” Lagrow answered, tearing the page out of his notebook
and handing it to Bonnie. “I’ll start the canvassing with the people right here.”
Bonnie nodded. “Good, I’ll catch up with you after I talk to the kids.”
Two young brothers, seven and nine, on their way to school had found the
girl. As they passed the alley they saw her lying there. Curious, they walked over
to her. When she didn’t get up they knew something was wrong and went back
home and told their mother who called 911. Bonnie showed Mrs. Abel her ID
and introduced herself. “Bonnie Benham, Detroit Homicide,” she said. “I’m here
about the girl in the alley you reported.
Mrs. Abel, a short, compact woman wearing a cotton dress, seemed
apprehensive, not welcoming. “My boys said they saw her lying in the alley.
They asked her to get up and she didn’t. So they came and told me. That’s all
there is. I don’t know who she is, why she’s in the alley, or what’s wrong with
her. I don’t know anything.”
Bonnie smiled at her. “I need to make out a report. I just want to hear from
the boys, in their own words, what they saw. I don’t want anything else from
them. It’s just for my paperwork. Can I talk to them?” Bonnie asked, very polite,
more polite than she felt at the moment. But she knew this neighborhood. She
had worked the lower midtown area in narcotics, people living here don’t see
much; they don’t want to see much. She smiled again at Mrs. Abel, as warmly as
she could.
“I’ll get the boys and you can talk to them,” she answered, but didn’t offer to
let Bonnie in. “Just wait here, I’ll be right back.”
Bonnie stood in the hall, and peeked inside the door. The house looked neat,
but sparse, little in the way of furnishings, an old couch, a chair, an ancient
television in one corner. Mrs. Abel reappeared from back down a hall with the
two boys in front of her. “This is officer Benham. She wants to talk to you about
the girl you saw in the alley. You tell her what you know. And you tell the truth,
no lies, no stories,” she said to the tallest one.
Bonnie looked at the two boys. They were scrubbed clean, but the clothing
was old, hand-me-downs. The pants on the taller boy were too short, and the
ones on the smaller boy were too long. But the boys looked well cared for, clean,
and both a bit shy. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I know you didn’t do
anything. I just want to ask you a couple of questions. I need to take your
statements for my report. You’re gonna both be in a police report. That okay?”
Being in the report seemed to loosen both of the boys up, especially the taller
one. “Is she dead?”
“She’s dead. What’s your name?”
“Marcus, he’s Donte,” Marcus said, tilting his head towards his younger
brother. “What happened to her? She didn’t look dead. She looked like she was
sleeping.”
“I don’t know exactly how she died. I need to find that out. I’m going to find
out. Do you know the girl?”
Marcus shook his head. “No, she don’t live around here.”
“You’re sure. She couldn’t just be in a different grade, or go to a different
school?”
“No, she doesn’t live around here. I’d have seen her before if she had. I’ve
lived here a long time.”
“A long time, huh,” Bonnie said with a chuckle.
“My whole life. And I know every kid that lives around here.”
“Marcus is very friendly. He’d know her if she was from the neighborhood,”
Mrs. Abel said, backing him up.
“The call to 911 came in at 9:40 am. Isn’t that a little late for you to be going
to school?” Bonnie asked, direct at Marcus.
Again Mrs. Abel interjected. “They got up late. It was my fault. I overslept. I
worked late last night at the hospital.”
Bonnie smiled. “It’s okay. I’m not a truant officer. I’m just trying to build a
timeline, and it’s important I have the right time they found her, gives me some
idea when she was killed.”
“We was late,” Marcus answered, before his mother could interrupt.
“I called the school and reported they’d be late, but would be coming in for
the rest of their classes. You can check with the school,” Mrs. Abel said.
“They’re good boys. They like school.”
At this Donte kind of scrunched up his nose and looked away. He’d have
whistled if he could, but didn’t know how.
“They do very well in school. I’m very proud of them,” Mrs. Abel said.