Gospel by Sydney Bauer

the two detectives to calm her, she was also still unable, or unwilling, to answer any of their questions.
    She did manage however, in between her hysterical screams, to explain she had ‘
no fucking family, no fucking friends, basically fucking nobody’
she would like them to contact, except for her teenage son Chase who was currently on a school excursion to some confectionery factory, an excursion which turned out to be Chase ditching school to line up for Limp Bizkit tickets.
    It was then that Detective Sanchez made an executive decision that there were two very important phone calls to be made. One to Mrs Walker’s GP and the other to Father Roy McNally, the local Catholic priest, for the woman had progressed to yelling a series of religious profanities and the detectives, in their desperation, thought a man of the cloth might be able to help.
    â€˜Fuck Matthew, fuck Mark, fuck John, they all fucked Luke
,’ screamed Rita Walker.
    â€˜Jesus,’ said Sanchez.
    â€˜Not yet,’ said Croker. ‘But I sure as hell hope Father McNally gets his holy ass here soon, because my guess is, she is working her way on up.’

13
    â€˜T here’s something missing,’ said Joe Mannix, accepting another cup of black tar from Detective Susan Leigh.
    Mannix was perched on the front edge of his metal-legged, birch laminate desk in the new Boston Police headquarters in downtown Roxbury. His office was a ten by ten box with three glass walls and one solid divider which backed onto the main corridor running down to the elevator bay on HQ’s level two. As usual, the venetians, which covered the bulk of the glass-partitioned box, were set on the horizontal plane of ‘open’, his door jammed so far back against the side wall that the new grey carpet appeared to have grown up around it, defying anyone attempting to close it on the hard-working Homicide crew beyond.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ said Leigh. ‘Chief, I think this is a major breakthrough. They have sent us everything. I have cross-checked it with our request list. Interview transcripts, crime scene photographs, even the video material, it’s all here. Whatever you said to Special Agent King, and whatever King said to ADIC Ramirez it worked.
We’re in
.’
    Mannix could tell Susan Leigh was finding it hard to contain herself. He knew the girl was keen – hell, keen was putting it mildly – more like fanatical when it came to attacking an investigation and carving another notch on her crime fighting belt. But he also knew those who thoughtshe was driven by pure ambition were probably a little off base. Susan had lofty aspirations, no doubt about it, but she also did this because she
loved
it. She enjoyed the chase, got great satisfaction from nailing the perp, and in many ways liked the idea she was some sort of crusader against the evil doers in our society.
    â€˜That’s not what I meant,’ said Mannix. ‘It’s a detail – something in these photographs.’
    â€˜Gimme a look,’ said Detective Frank McKay, chewing on a smelly concoction of tuna and rice salad that he had brought to work in a very old Tupperware dish. ‘You two have been staring at this evidence since sun up. You need a pair of fresh eyes.’
    It was true. Mannix had asked the guys on the late shift to call him the minute the packages from the FBI arrived. And they had – at 5.30am.
    Mannix had arrived at 6.30 to find Susan Leigh already at her cubicle, over an hour before her official shift began. She had asked the late guys to tip her off too. When Joe arrived he found her practically salivating over the five brown paper satchels which she had placed on her desk so they didn’t go astray.
    Frank McKay went to his boss’ desk and pulled out the photographs of the crime scene. He began by laying them in what at first appeared to be some random order on Mannix’s office floor. He started with