Page 4 of Whatever You Need

The abandoned warehouse reekedof mold and dead fish. The sight and smell of decaying bodies caused me to slowly approach the scene. As the medical examiner stood over the dead bodies taking detailed notes, my thoughts were distracted by the repeated camera flashes recording the details of the gruesome scene.

“This is Jonnie Romas,” Kevin Spencer, our crime scene specialist said, pointing to the first body. “He had a rap sheet that pretty much went all the way back to grade school. He started boosting stuff out of the local bodegas for fun and worked his way up the crime ladder from there. He’s been in and out of the system since he was twelve. Six months ago, he was being looked at for the rape of a sixteen-year-old girl, but the witness refused to cooperate, and the charges were dropped.”

“This guy over here.” He walked toward the second body and reviewed his note pad. “Joey Ortiz. Age twenty-nine, just got out of Attica, released early for good behavior. He didn’t make a lot of friends during the three years in the clink, but got really close to a guy named Benny Castro.” I raised my eyebrows at that name.

Two years ago, I was the one who took down Benny for murder and extortion. He was a pain in my ass and we almost had the case tossed out by a dirty judge. The guy had greased a lot of palms at City Hall and paid a ton of cash to a scumbag lawyer that was just as dirty as Benny himself.

“This young guy here,” he said, stepping over the yellow crime scene tape. “Is Alonzo Diaz. Age eighteen, been in and out of foster care his whole life. Not much of a record on him, but we did learn his sister, Juanita, was one of Benny’s girls. She’s been missing for over a month now.” He drew his pencil around in the air, as if he were connecting all the dots. Clearly, there was a link between these three victims and Benny Castro.

“Our last friend over here is the most interesting of the bunch.” He made a dramatic stop and looked down. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him? They call him the ‘babysitter.’”

“Fuckin-A.” I ran my hand along the back of my neck. The babysitter’s real name was Cruz Carillo and he was a known human trafficker. This whole shitty mess was all connected to Benny somehow. I knew it in my gut. Like many powerful and well-connected criminals, it was likely Benny Castro was controlling things from the inside. And if that were the case, we were screwed.

I looked at the blood splattered across the concrete floor and examined all points of entry into the abandoned warehouse.

“I’m going to do a second walk through and see if the CSI unit collected anymore physical evidence.” I patted him on the back and took another look around, searching for shell casings, footprints, anything important that may have been missed.

I was looking through my notes when I heard footsteps approach from behind me.

“Smells like our friends have been here for a while now,” my partner, Logan Blake, said as I reflexively pulled up my foot to avoid stepping on a dead rat on the floor. Logan and I had been working together since we met at the academy. We bonded over the fact that we were one of the few that didn’t have a military background. Which meant we had to do extra sprints and pushups to keep up. We became fast friends and hung out as much as possible outside of work.

“I think that’s an accurate assumption, Detective.” I turned and mentally noted the graffiti on the cinderblock wall and the mold along the ceiling. This place was a shithole and worked perfectly as an out-of-the-way torture chamber.

We had four dead bodies total. Each one shot execution style with a single bullet to their head. All at point-blank range and all somehow connected to Benny Castro.

I looked back to the four men, each with their hands zip-tied behind their backs and their arms and legs bound to a metal folding chair by silver duct tape. This had his name written all over it, but given the fact that he was still locked up at SCI Chester, he obviously didn’t do the wet work himself. I wish I could say that this call was as much fun as the one I was on earlier this evening, but this was a long way from a barroom hookup gone bad. After closer inspection of their hammer smashed fingers, along with the foul smell, I’d guess this little party ended a couple days ago. Good thing it was winter and not summer or we would have needed gas masks to work the scene.

I rubbed the heels of my palms over my eyes, feeling a headache coming on. It was a little after one a.m., and also my third night in a row of overtime. I barely had time to eat, shower, and sleep before I was back at it again. Given the number of victims involved, this case was going to take up a good chunk of my time. I was the lead homicide investigator here, which meant that I would spend the next week chasing dead-end leads and interviewing uncooperative witnesses. No one was interested in ratting out a guy as dangerous as Benny Castro.

Logan shook his head. “I say we got enough to start with. Let’s get out of here.”

“Lead the way.” I held my hand out, pointing to the exit. I couldn’t get out of that warehouse fast enough. As soon as we hit the sidewalk, a blast of cold air hit my face and I inhaled deeply for the first time since arriving on the scene. The ground was wet and muddy, but thankfully the rain had stopped. The flashing red lights from the cop cars lit up the dark street, reflecting off the windows of the surrounding building. There were bystanders and reporters gathered around the perimeter, whispering and watching for whatever would happen next. People loved gossip and a quadruple homicide would give the crowd a lot to chew on. Which was ironic because some of these spectators were no saints themselves and probably knew more about what went on in there than we did.

Logan handed me a bottle of hand sanitizer and we both scrubbed our hands raw. This place was disgusting. There was nothing nice about Nicetown. No matter how bad the city of Philadelphia tried to clean up the northern neighborhood, it would never be safe. Not with the drug dealers and gang bangers running the streets.

I walked over to my cruiser and started the engine to let my car warm up. I wanted to go home and take a hot shower to rid the rotten smell of death off my body.

Logan glanced at me, looking just as tired as I felt. “You wanna go grab a beer? We have about an hour before the bars close down.”

“Nah, I’m going to circle the block a few times and make sure I didn’t miss anything.” I was hungry for answers and I wasn’t going to sleep until I exhausted every lead.

“Okay. Suit yourself.”

We shook hands and I said goodbye to the cops that were camped outside. I slid into my unmarked car and drove through the streets looking for anything unusual. Working in homicide kept me on my toes. Even though the work could get dangerous at times, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

I pulled into a gas station and scrubbed my hands down my face. A group of young kids, sitting on the half wall between Dazed Donuts and the local Wawa store, caught my attention. These “kids” were too young to be hanging out at this hour, but old enough to know what was going on in the neighborhood. My eyes scanned the area, taking in my surroundings. The streets were less crowded this time of night, but they weren’t empty of the local gangs and homeless people scattered around. I got out of my car and headed in their direction. They sat up straight, their legs planted wide as they stared me down. They already had me pegged as a cop by my unmarked cruiser, and they weren’t the slightest bit intimated or afraid of my presence. They sat there with their arms crossed over their chest, like they were waiting for me to give them shit.

I put my hand in my pocket and casually walked up to them along the littered sidewalk. “How you guys doing tonight?”

They sat perfectly still. Not one fidgeted, but I could still tell who the leader was and who the weak one was. The weak link avoided eye contact while the leader leveled his icy gaze on mine.

“Mind if I ask you guys a couple questions?”

The leader rolled a toothpick around his lips. “You can ask, man, but that don’t mean we have to answer.”

“I’m investigating a homicide at the warehouse on Nineteenth Street. You know the big gray building where they used to make wooden furniture. Just making sure you boys didn’t see anything.” The building was in their direct view and this was their nightly hangout. There was zero chance that they didn’t know anything.

“Nope,” the leader said, adjusting the Eagles ball cap that was turned sideways on his head.

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