Erotica Harem

MY COMMENTS WILL BE ** RED:
MY SUGGESTIONS WILL BE BLUE
REPEATING WORDS WILL BE underlined and bolded

Title: "Invalid Item"  (Pretty Boy Dead)

Chapter: (Chapter 5)

Author: Jon Michaelsen...

Plot: Well, we had the murder, now the murder victim, and along comes Srg. Parker, the cop who is going investigate. How all these characters get involved, I’m dying to find out.

Style & Voice: I have nothing to add here. For each character you’ve introduced me to, they have been unique, distinct, strong and wonderfully described. I can’t touch this!

Referencing: All good here. We’re at Chapter Five, and I’ve found no inconsistencies, and I doubt I will.

Scene/Setting: This is an area you excel in, Jon. Everything was easy to visualize and I felt I was there. There is one thing…and I wonder because of the three S’s of scenery. A bloated body does smell (and you did mention this) but it’s a sweet, putrid smell.

Characters: Yes, I LOVE Parker. I envision this grizzled, middle-age cop, an ex-linebacker, wrinkled clothes, bloodshot eyes (from drinking the night before). You don’t make mention of his lifestyle, but that’s because you told me.

Grammar: See below. Again, minor line edits. They are suggestions, so use what you feel is right for you.

Just My Personal Opinion: Another outstanding chapter, Jon. I really want to finish this, but I need to write myself. You have to finish this. I’m loving every chapter you take me into. If this novel was in a bookstore, I’d purchase it hands down, I guarantee it.

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Please remember that these are only my opinions.
Please use whatever you feel is right for you.


The homicide call squawked through the sergeant’s portable during Parker’s regular morning coffee run to the Dunk ‘n Dine. Moments later, his unmarked silver-blue cruiser sped through the Morningside neighborhood, an overpriced in-town section at the northern fringes of the city, heading from Cheshire Bridge to Piedmont Road with lightening speed, a magnetic blue bubble light signaling urgency. The early morning traffic proved thicker than usual, forcing him to maneuver guardedly Is this adverb needed? You have “zigzagging” along Piedmont Avenue to what amounted to zigzagging through southbound lanes. The early morning call directed him toward Piedmont Park, a popular one-hundred and sixty-eight acre triangle of impregnable land located in the heart of Midtown, named for its milieu connecting downtown and the tawny Buckhead community lying just north of the city. A body lay in a runoff ditch at the park’s southernmost corner; no identification and no apparent cause of death. The corpse, believed abandoned for several days, washed downstream as the result of recent early spring rains.

Heading east on Monroe, he spotted a pair of blue and whites angled on 10th Street, a block from the ancient granite facade of the old Mill restaurant, which angled the corner adjacent to the fenced in Grady High School football and track field. Early rising joggers sprinkled the gravel running track circling the perimeter of the field, several stopping to gawk at the flashing lights that invaded invading the area.

Generally, when a suspected death occurs in the city, at least three investigators from the Criminal Investigations Unit are dispatched to the scene, two from Homicide and another from either Sex Crimes or Robbery unit. C.I.D. personnel take their orders from the homicide detective on-call even though the homicide sergeant ultimately runs the investigation. The sergeant plowing through the intersection at 10th and Monroe is was Kendall Parker. Simply called “Parker” by most; most know him as a… (?) he is known as a major crimes investigator for the Atlanta Police Department, Criminal Investigations Division. His rank is Master Sergeant. He’ He’d s been with the APD for about ten years now, the last six with the Homicide Squad.

Sgt. Parker parked his vehicle two wheels over the curb, extricated his linebacker frame from the vehicle and strode across the slick grassy plane toward the dark blue uniform standing near the perimeter of a paved walking trail. He flashed his badge to a cop standing guard at the scene, who dutifully pointed in the direction of the body without the slightest introduction.

Head down to protect his face from assault, he trudged through a thicket of overgrowth and underbrush, the thorny branches snatching his trousers and poking through the fabric, scoring his flesh. Without flinching, he emerged at the crest of a wide drainage ditch ankle deep in muddy water and decaying debris. The storm basin sliced through the southeastern edge of the park before disappearing into a giant steel cylinder beneath 10th Street and beyond. Undaunted, he forged ahead and came upon a second cop sitting on the angled concrete some thirty yards away.

“Anyone touched the body,” he called out, revealing his badge again.

“No sir,” the cop sang, shielding his eyes from the blinding sunlight with an upraised arm. He stood at recognizing the sergeant’s rank. “Ain’t let nobody down there, sir”, he offered jutting out his chin toward… (?) firmly, pointing toward the lifeless body below. “Just waitin’ for the MPO.” His eyes widened. “You can’t go down there, sir!”

The sergeant glanced into the gully. He noticed the body tangled in a web of broken branches and litter, face up in a steady shallow stream of water. It appeared wrapped in some type of overcoat, perhaps a raincoat or dark canvass outerwear. A fowl odor drifted past in the light breeze. He squatted and angled his solid, six-foot-four inch frame to make the steep trek into the concrete-lined ditch, before sloshing through the refuge in ankle-deep water to reach the cadaver.

“Don’t worry about me, I won’t touch anything,” he called back, cursing the cop under his breath. Damn Rookie! missing quotation marks

The red-faced patrol officer bounded off in a fit, (comma) and perched himself in a spot just above the basin to monitor the area and await his supervisor, no doubt catching hell later by his commanding officer for not stopping the ballsy detective.

The towering sergeant pushed dark shades over his thick head of dark curls (?) and dark curls and withdrew a pocket notepad as much a part of him as the badge he carried. He noted the time; 7:15a.m, location and weather conditions; clear and sunny, brisk at forty-eight degrees. After surveying the area, he drew a rough sketch of the scene before concluding a complete spiral search, working his way around to where the body lay.

“Got the call about 6:42 a.m.,” Timothy Blake, an overzealous rookie detective recently assigned to the Squad called out from behind the sergeant.

[new line – this is Parker, right?] He scowled and glanced over his shoulder.

[new line – new character] Blake clambered into the gully, slipping and sliding on his backside until his large wingtips caught hold at the bottom of the ditch with a splash. [keep together – still Blake, right?] “Homeless man found the body at first light,” he said without missing a beat. He waded through the water, careful not to splash more water on his neatly pressed khakis. “Perelli’s taking his statement up near the toilet-house. 911 traced the call to a phone booth over there when it first came in.”

Blake sported a wide, Cheshire-cat grin as he approached his new boss, tucking both hands assertively in the flat-front pockets of his trousers. The cop resting on the embankment suddenly felt it necessary to venture forward.

Parker shook his head and waved his arms at both of them. “Get back! You’re disturbing the fucking scene!”

Blake obliged, retracing his steps double-time and shuffling the objecting officer up the embankment. The young cop shouted indecipherable expletives as the sergeant turned his attention back to the body at hand. Blake learned soon after joining the homicide department of the sergeant’s his kooky preference for spending a few minutes alone at a fresh crime scene. Parker viewed the precious time alone a ritual of sorts, a rite of passage earned from the many long hours spent investigating the often tragic death of others; chastising by the commanding officer of the unit for his heedless actions no doubt to follow later in the day. (I didn’t understand this sentence, Jon. (sorry) We have a pov shift here to Blake (Blake learned). With the word, “his” the pov remains with Parker.

At the heart of every homicide lies a body. The Sergeant’s badge requires required him to confront that body, despite circumstance or condition. Years of experience taught him that emotional detachment is the key to every successful homicide investigation, and while on the surface this theory may work for most, deep down, Parker knows knew better. That soon, he’ll Soon, he’d relinquish a piece of his soul to the abandoned corpse as with every other that follows ahead. The truth Truth be told (?), told he dies died a little death at the beginning of every homicide investigation, with considerable decorum yet to be successful in crushing such inevitability. There seems to be “tense” issues here.

The cool breeze drifting through the ditch eased the queasiness in his gut. He popped a couple Rolaids in his mouth and slipped on a pair of clear latex gloves before kneeling over the sun-baked corpse. Clicking on a handheld recorder he carried in his pocket, he described the body in detail; male, Caucasian; perhaps early twenties, about 5’10” and a hundred-seventy pounds, with close cropped brown hair. This portion, I think, should be in quotations. My thinking is that if he’s talking into his dictaphone, he’s speaking, right? The clothes appeared too slick and expensive, unworn and sturdy. Not the marks of a vagrant or a possible street kid he surmised.

Avoiding looking directly at the blanched face - the glazed, cloudy blue eyes, the bloated skin of the corpse – he brandished a pen and probed the collar of the girding overcoat, lifting the soaked fabric of the collared repeating shirt beneath. A thick gold chain surrounded the ballooned neck, herringbone links sparkling in the bright sunlight. “Not a mugging,” he thought. Italics denote inner thoughts. To his left in the murky water, he noted a large chrome-banded watch clinging to the outstretched wrist. The awkward angle of the arm revealed the broken crystal of the timepiece, the likely time of death forever frozen at a quarter past one. “A.m. or p.m.,” he mumbled to himself. The other hand of the corpse clung to a black leather glove.

Leaning over the body for closer inspection, the sergeant speculated how the kid might have ended up this way, a technique he often used to get inside the victim’s head, sifting through small bits and pieces to resolve the puzzle. Yet nothing in his line of work appeared simple and straightforward (one word) as one might think. It would be days, perhaps weeks, if ever, before he would ferret out the reason behind the young man’s death. An alarming number of unexplained deaths go unsolved in this country every year, an astonishing number of victims never found or even reported missing.

The putrid smell tickled the dark hairs in his nostrils as he studied the victim’s bloated corpse. Unlike written in the scripts coming out of Hollywood, cops never get used to seeing such gore, the sickening smell of rotting flesh, the death of another human being. The sight served only to harden the heart further (comma) and perhaps question the existence of faith, a blatant attempt at forcing the sole into tolerance or acceptance. Parker displayed impenetrable tolerance. Came with the territory, he surmised. Inner thought? Is so, italics?

He stared blindly at the corpse, and yet, not seeing the young man lying before him but the lasting image of another. A deeply personal, haunting obsession with him day and night, for many months now, forever in his thoughts; You have given three descriptions here—haunting obsession day and night, many months, and forever. I might suggest using only two…or even one, strongly worded. the image of an older, much taller and leaner young man than the one before him now, its reflection sinking to depths of a far deeper body of water that no amount of scotch could erase the seared image. (?), and no amount of scotch able to erase the seared image. The sudden urge to reach out and grasp the phantasm passed through him as a prickly chill nipped the back of his neck to remind him that he had a job to do.

He called out for Blake to join him.

The rookie bounded down the slope on queue. “Sir?”

“Have you called the ME yet?”

Blake nodded enthusiastically. Can you *show* this?

“Then where the fuck is he?”

Parker stood after checking the body for identification. A reflective light caught the corner of his left eye as he turned to walk away. Moving around the cadaver, careful not to invade the zone, he bent over a mound of raw debris to retrieve a waterlogged cover of a matchbook. He recognized the scripted name embellished across the silvery cardboard. It belonged to a small neighborhood bar just up the street and directly across from the park, earning itself a scheduled stop in the very near future.

“Get some men to search the grounds for evidence,” Parker ordered, replacing the evidence where he found it. “See if you can locate the missing glove.” He glanced back at the dead man; (comma) a moment of antipathy passing through his core before turning away, the lasting image taking its place among countless others extolled in his memory forever. “And put in another call for the ME.” He ripped off the latex gloves and stuffed them in the pocket of his pocket.

***

Within the hour, the bustle of more essential officials, flashing lights and obligatory county vehicles attracted a curious set of onlookers who gathered to view Atlanta’s finest at work. The public’s reaction was always the same; (comma) anticipation spiked with callous regard and perhaps a hint of the macabre. The same sordid interest that caused voyeuristic impulse urging driver’s to slowly pass by an accident or ignore an inclination to glance across the median at the mangled vehicle. Might they catch a glimpse of the unfortunate victim or witness the removal of the black body bag? Whatever the case, their curiosity remained peeked, piqued (?) understanding little, if any, (commas) of the frenzied activity happening around them. Cops erected a three-inch wide strip of brilliant yellow Bannerguard around the entire scene to keep the curious at bay as rumors spread throughout the crowd, each passing embellished grander than its predecessor.

Sweating from the early morning heat trapped within the basin or perhaps more likely due to last night’s dance with the bottle, Parker clambered up the angled wall and through the thicket of underbrush. In the clearing, he instructed the newly arrived GBI criminalist team where to find the body and offered suggestions where to search for evidence.

“Don’t touch the body until the ME arrives,” he barked, walking away from them.

Morning joggers of all shapes and sizes miraculously appeared, (comma)_ and were running along the narrow pathway that looped the edge of the wondrous park, most oblivious to the goings-on, some uncaring as long as the fuss didn’t interfere with their motion. The jogging trail disappeared another hundred yards beyond a patch of giant oak trees. The sergeant began walking in the general direction when a Channel 2 Action News van slammed against the curb with a jolt. He turned and scowled at the scum before picking up his pace, heading to meet up with his partner of the last three years.

Blake caught up with him on the asphalt track that circled the murky lake. “Likely to be awhile, Sergeant,” he explained with mild frustration. “Popular morning for the morgue, sir. Full moon, you know,” he added, matter-of-fact.

He waved him off; clearly (period) He was (?) in no mood for the rookie’s hilarity today, especially with the overtime he’d been pulling lately to make up for his time away.

It takes a certain breed willing to work long, grueling hours in a career that offers few rewards.

The stoic homicide sergeant pondered this thought in snapshot detail, scrutinizing his long career as a cop while traversing around the lake. He had He’d (?) been thinking a lot lately about the choices he made over the years, good and bad; four years in the military, motive for joining the force, his rush to marriage and subsequent divorce, all for no good reason, (comma?) or one he concluded. Flashes of this latest discovery united with a hundred others and swamped (comma) swamping (?) his mind as he walked over to interview the unlucky bum who found his latest victim.

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