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There's a madman loose on the California coast leaving a trail or bodies on our beaches. John Brodis, lead detective is faced with a nightmarish case on his hands, putting his upcoming retirement on hold.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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The Sunshine Murders
There's a madman lose and John Brodis is in for an unexpected nightmare
BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 MunichThe Sunshine Murders
The Sunshine Murders
By Dave Donahue
© 2012 Dave Donahue
All Rights Reserved. This e-book cannot be sold or reproduced
without written consent by the author/publisher.
Part One
Chapter One
The Finding
John Brodis locked the door behind him. It was a nice day outside yet there was a stillness in the air. A deadly calm that made him nervous. He couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but he knew something was bound to happen.
Reports from L.A. news had stated there had been a body found up north close to San Luis Obispo, toward the beach area. It had been bound and gagged with a towel, much like the ones at gas stations.
John was the lead detective on the case and had been with the local precinct going on eighteen years. His counterpart, Bill Vendola, was a fifteen-year veteran himself. Bill first received the message and called John to come down. This was a unique case, no doubt, paralleling a previous murder they had investigated.
As John drove to the scene in his ‘71 Charger, the pride and joy his father had helped him build before he passed away from cancer, he noticed an eerie gray cloud off to the left over the Pacific Ocean.The saga and drama of life. It never ended.
He parked the car and saw his partner Bill walking towards him with a scowl on his face.
“Hey ya, John, not good here, not at all.”
John glanced over. “Is it ever, buddy?”
The body, a male, was covered with seaweed and looked a bit blue and bloated. Upon further investigation, John noticed two marks on the individual’s right shoulder resembling bite marks or puncture wounds. The body was nude, and the man was probably in his early fifties.
John moved the seaweed off the body and examined it more closely.
The nature of the wound on the shoulder puzzled him. This did not look like something he had ever seen. The marks looked life-threatening, but there was no blood, no underlying proof that this man was murdered. The injuries sustained were probably the cause of his death but there would have to be more investigation. His backside looked surprisingly normal. The skin color was still relatively healthy looking and no marks or abrasions were on the back at all. Upon the coroner’s arrival, the two finished up the initial report, left the scene and walked back to their own vehicles.
“Looks weird,” Bill said with a hint of skepticism and that same wry tone of a man who had probably seen everything in his fifteen years as a detective.
Many of these investigations were interesting, to say the least, but this one overshadowed them all. The bluish tint of the body and the unusual puncture wounds were just something he and his partner had never come across.
There had been some strange cases like the one where a lady in her thirties had been bound with handcuffs, left to die in the desert atop a hill of army ants. She was found weeks after her death, her body ravaged by vultures who had taken all the good parts and left nothing but skin and bones. Her eyes were even missing. It turned out the perpetrator was her loving husband of twenty years, a fifteen-year Army veteran. It was particularly disturbing because this man had been an upstanding citizen and employee. The pressures of home life had made him snap. His wife had a brief affair, and that had caused him to go over the edge. In his trial, he claimed temporary insanity, but the judge threw it out and sentenced him to twenty years to life for first-degree murder. Looks can be deceiving, and in this case no one won. Only losers the whole way around.
“I’ll see you back at the precinct, buddy,” John said as he opened his car door. “We got work to do.”
He backed out the Charger, peeled off the dirt lot and headed back onto Pacific Coast Highway, south. The quiet drive back to his office gave him time to ask questions of this case. How was this guy murdered? Who was he? He obviously didn’t look like a transient. He had a nice watch, a cropped hairstyle and a shaved face. However, not a stitch of clothing. Something just didn’t fit. If this was a robbery or murder, the watch would have been a goner. Alternatively, maybe it was a robbery, and the wallet and clothes were taken leaving the watch so no one would expect robbery. The marks on the shoulder also looked bizarre but there was nothing they could do now but wait for the toxicology report and a final cause of death from the coroner.
Shaking his head, John continued driving down the freeway to his precinct.
Chapter Two
Reports
Back at the office, John parked the ’71 Charger, checked his watch and went inside to wait for his partner. It would be a few hours before they could get the initial reports from the coroner’s office. This case was so damn unusual, it would probably take a while.
He sat down at his desk and mulled things over. No clothes, weird marks on the body with a bluish tint and some really strange clues to what might have happened. He opened up some recently solved cases of men who had been killed in the L.A area. Most were victims of robberies, the body was always clothed and there was nothing out of the ordinary except their pockets were turned out. Maybe a bludgeoning or a hate crime or a domestic homicide. There were also a lot of impulse murders—someone goes off and kills in a fit of desperation and rage. He saw it day in and day out. Knifings, shootings and the guy was dead, nothing more. However, he almost never saw a person killed who had no clothes, and at the beach. There had been on occasion the accidental drowning of a fisherman or swimmer, but nothing like this.
Bill opened the office door and sat down in his favorite old chair. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“I know,” John replied.
“This one is weird. I would think possible drowning, but it doesn’t fit. Looks like he was a business type. I’m really puzzled by this one.”
“Yep, something fishy on this.”
John opened up some files of recent unsolved murders and robberies, and studied a few of them. A transient, killed on some train tracks by Trestles, a known surf spot. Another stabbing of a young man who was a student down in San Diego, but nothing out of the ordinary. There was usually motive or some type of clue that helped piece everything together. In today’s case, there were no facts that put everything in perspective. He knew something didn’t quite fit, but he wasn’t in position to make any assessments just yet.
Bill spoke up. “You remember the case where the guy was found down by the water years ago and had his throat slit?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, he was located in almost the exact same spot as this guy. There was never anyone apprehended on the case either. If I remember correctly, he was a local business guy who worked in insurance. He also had some strange marks on his body, I think on his back. It looked like he may have been bludgeoned or stabbed with an ice pick, something like that. Not sure if you remember that one.”
“Yeah, Jim or Joe Mercer, correct?” John asked.
“Yep, he was found back what, three years ago? His body was also covered with kelp. Kind of made it look like he was hidden. I never did figure out what happened to him ’cept he was killed. It looks familiar. Serial killer, maybe?”
“Don’t know, but it sure does fit the same murder profile. Let’s look into the toxicology reports and see what’s up.” John looked up when someone knocked on the door. He bounced a pencil on his desk, and said, “Yeah?”
The door opened, and a lady walked in, dressed in a grey suit and carrying a small yellow folder.
“Hey, John, got some news.” She spoke matter of fact. “Not exactly sure how to tell you this, but this man is a clear case victim of arsenic poisoning. Not sure about the marks on the neck yet, I think this needs to be looked at as a murder investigation from here on out.”
“Well, there you go,” he said to Bill. “I guess we can rule out accidental drowning or anything natural.”
Bill nodded.
It seemed like wacked-out murders were becoming more and more the norm in his neck of L.A. County. This one looked suspicious. He wondered if it was possibly connected to the other one a few years back. This could go on for a while.
The woman spoke again. “I’ll notify the media, barring any gruesome details, until we get this under way.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
The woman of the newfound info walked out of the office, leaving the yellow folder on John’s desk.
