Excerpt: The Academy

“Step carefully boys,” Captain Baldwin said by way of a greeting when Julian and his partner arrived at the crime scene. “There’s a lot of blood here.”

Julian and James stopped to put white booties on their feet before entering the hotel room.

“What’s it looking like?” Julian asked, setting down his crime scene kit in the doorway.

“What does a crime scene containing two dead bodies always look like, Detective?”

“Right. Of course.”

Just another day on the job. He sighed. Why did people always have to do this stuff to each other? Why? He would never understand.

“There’s one woman here, in the middle of the floor.” Baldwin pointed to the woman.

Though she was only wearing a pair of jeans and a plain sage green t-shirt without makeup, she was still pretty. Julian might not bat for their team, but he could still appreciate beauty when he saw it. And he saw it in her. He saw compassion in her features too. She’d been protecting someone, he guessed, by the position of her dead body.

“Between the bed and that wall, there’s another body. I’d guesstimate they’ve been dead awhile. At least a few hours anyway.”

“Male? Female?”

Maybe she’d been protecting her child.

“Can’t tell.”

“What’s that mean?” James spoke up, eyes roving around the room, not missing a single detail. “How can you not be sure?”

“Go take a look see for yourselves.”

The body was crouched into the tight space, hiding, knees drawn up to the chest, arms crossed between them. Definitely not a child by the size and shape of the body. There was dried blood dripping from the nose and mouth. A bruise half formed on one cheek. The face wasn’t facing forward. This person had had their neck snapped.

Julian stopped when he took a good look at that face. Old. The face was old. Wrinkled. But also not. Was it all wrinkled?

“Are those... Is that a growth?” James asked.

“Scars, probably,” Julian surmised.

“They’re green. They look like vines. That’s how the call came in when they were found. A beautiful woman and someone... something, covered in vines.”

Her hands looked the same. Narrow, long fingers, wrinkled, with green vines. Those same vines reached up into her hair, what little there was left. Now, it was wispy, as if she’d lost most of it after many years battling cancer with chemotherapy. Did she have cancer?

“When the ME gets here we’ll see if he can check her for cancer or some other disease.” Captain Baldwin had read his mind.

“Should we be worried about catching something?” James asked. “What if it’s airborne?”

“Look at that beautiful woman over there. Looks like she was protecting this one. If it was airborne, I doubt she’d be that good looking.”

Both detectives nodded.

“Worry about her when the ME comes. Until then, we’ve got a crime scene to process.”

The police Captain left the room, taking his booties off to talk to the press gathering outside the hotel while the others two got to work.

“I don’t mean to disrespect the dead,” Julian said as he snapped a picture of a displaced chair leaning against the desk from an obvious struggle. “But she reminds me of a monster I saw in a movie once who looked almost like that.”

“Tell me the title so I can know not to go see it.”

“I don’t remember.”

+

It was nearly dusk on the target practice range as Noah stood several feet behind his trainee. He watched closely as Morgan raised the small handgun, aimed it at the target yards in front of him, and fired a shot.

The bullet pinged the edge of the human shaped cardboard’s shoulder before flying off into the grass beyond.

Out of the corner of his eye Noah caught a disapproving glance from another handler nearby who’d seen the missed shot.

Not too far away he heard someone berating a soldier and turned to see a girl with long blonde hair sopping wet treading water in the pool. Her handler held a stop watch in his hands.

“Don’t make me chain your ankles down there. You only held your breath for two minutes. You know that’s not good enough. Do it again.”

The girl nodded her head, took a deep breath and ducked under the surface of the water.

“I’m sorry, Noah.” The sound of his own trainee had him spinning back toward the shooting range.

Morgan was now facing him, his long curly hair blowing in the wind, covering his beautiful golden brown eyes. And they were worried. Noah never missed anything that was out of place with Morgan. He was being paid not to, but even so... He followed Morgan’s gaze and found Laurence Morvant standing off to the side watching them, his eyes squinting, taking in every detail of the soldier.

“I’m sorry,” Morgan repeated. “I keep screwing up.” His voice was soft. Always soft. Even for such a tough and trained soldier like him.

“Don’t worry about it. I know you can do it, Morgan. I’ve seen you do it.”

“But...”

“You just need to ignore Laurence.” Noah reached out and took Morgan’s chin in his hands, turning him so they faced each other. “Ignore him. Got that? Don’t listen to him. Listen to me. Don’t let him intimidate you.”

“Ok.” Morgan nodded. “I won’t.”

“Good.”

Morgan’s eyes fell to the gun in his hands. “I need another clip.”

Noah reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a brand new clip. “One more round. Once this is empty, we’ll head in.”

The soldier turned and headed for the white line painted into the grass, all the while his eyes had found Laurence again. Another soldier, female, was walking towards an empty spot on the lawn, a sniper riffle in her hands, but Laurence didn’t seem to have eyes for her. Only for Morgan.

Noah had to admit it made him uncomfortable to have Laurence always so interested in his soldier. It made him wonder if Laurence had special plans for him, though the man had never said as much. An even creepier thought was that Mrs. Morvant, Rosalyn, also seemed to have a thing for Morgan. While she didn’t leave their mansion much, whenever she did, he caught her staring after Morgan like a starving lion looking at a piece of meat. He’d never told this to Morgan however. The poor man had enough worries on his mind as it was with his nervousness getting in the way of his practicing.

“One at a time, Morgan,” he coached. “No rapid firing.”

Morgan did as he was told, waiting several seconds between each shot. This time, though he could still see Morgan’s attention was divided between the target and Laurence, he at least managed to hit it a little closer to the center. None of the bullets flew off into the grass. No innocent bystanders would be shot on this day, had it been a real live situation. Noah was relieved a little.

“Tomorrow, we’ll try climbing the ice wall again, minus equipment,” the handler by the pool said.

His trainee was shivering in the cool breeze blowing in the late October evening. The soldier ran to grab her towel before catching up to her handler who’d already started to leave the area.

“Come on, Morgan, time to pack it in. Let’s grab some dinner, shall we?”

“I would like that, very much,” Morgan said. He would have added ‘Sir’ to that, only Noah had squashed that urge a long time ago. At least, he hoped he had. Where Morgan had learned to call him that, or why he even wanted to in the first place was beyond him. Someone must have fed him some cock and bull story when he was still in the hospital before his release to Noah as his handler. Morgan didn’t seem to remember.