A Lonesome Blood-Red Sun, page 1
David Putnam
A LONESOME BLOOD-RED SUN
The Bone Detective, A Dave Beckett Novel
First published by Level Best Books 2023
Copyright © 2023 by David Putnam
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
David Putnam asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Author Photo Credit: Heather Putnam
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-68512-294-2
Cover art by Christian Storm
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Praise for The Bone Detective Series
A Fearsome Moonlight Black
“A cop’s life, whether a rookie or a seasoned detective, is jammed with encounters that are often routine, sometimes disturbing, and all too often life-threateningly dangerous, a grind that takes its toll on personal relationships. A Fearsome Moonlight Black pulls back the curtain and takes the reader into that world with in-your-face clarity.”—DP Lyle, awardwinning author of the Jake Longly and Cain/Harper thriller series
“In this lean, fast-moving cop-novel, you’re riding shotgun as Dave Beckett goes from a raw, idealistic young newbie deputy to a cynical, world-weary veteran homicide detective…in a compelling case that spans a decade. You can’t fake the realism that underscores every word and scene in this book. Want to know what it’s like to be a trainee deputy on patrol in 1979? Then read this book. You will live it…right alongside Dave Beckett, who discovers what it truly means to wear, and embody, the badge. He craves high adventure but discovers the grit, heart-ache and horror of the streets instead. Joseph Wambaugh said you don’t work the job, the job works you…and Beckett makes the hard discovery himself, and you’re there with him…every grueling step of the way. You may not have graduated from the sheriff’s academy, or patrolled a beat in a squad car, but you’ll believe you have after riding the mean streets of San Bernardino County with Dave Beckett.”—Lee Goldberg, bestselling author of the Eve Ronin series
“Nobody writes cop stories like David Putnam! He lived the job. Read A Fearsome Moonlight Black and so will you.”—Matt Coyle, author of the bestselling Rick Cahill Crime stories
I
Book 1
Chapter One
Southern California, 1984
The wind muffled the sirens’ sorrowful call. In the rearview, back a couple miles, red and blue rotating lights caught my attention. I’d just left the sheriff’s station at the end of my shift, headed home. The conga line of cops came from the direction of the station. I pulled to the curb and waited. I was off duty, wearing a sweaty white tee shirt and a pair of hundred-percent-wool uniform pants. My off-duty weapon, a .38 S&W Chief, was stuck in my waistband.
Ahead the dying sun, normally a faded orange egg yolk, now sat on the horizon, blood-red from the season’s constant dirt and sand blown up by the wind. The low-level light and forlorn sound made the desert a lonesome place.
On either side of the street clear to the freeway the mixed-use zoning had houses converted into businesses; attorneys, real estate, and construction offices. The result of a town that grew too fast and out-paced the zoning planners. Between the buildings, the open fields were filled with sage and Joshua trees.
The unidentified cop cars grew larger in the rearview and came on at low speed. I rolled down the window to my uninspired Toyota Tercel. I’d bought it used with a hundred and twenty-six thousand miles on the clock. The blue paint pitted in some places, and in others, bare metal gleamed from the blow-sand.
The sirens drew closer.
In another mile the low-speed pursuit came into focus, a dark blue classic Ford Mustang being pursued by three black and white California Highway patrol cars. The driver of the Tang, obviously drunk, couldn’t stay in the two westbound lanes. He suddenly drifted over to the far right, rode up on the small dirt berm, and knocked over two mailboxes on wooden posts.
I sat in his path with nowhere to go. He rear-ends me. I’d at least get a nice insurance settlement. A nicer car. Along with a broken neck.
The Tang grew larger in the rearview. I turned back in the seat, put my head firmly against the headrest, and held on to the steering wheel.
With only a microsecond to spare, the driver yanked on the wheel and pulled out of a direct hit. He banged off the side, a solid sideswipe. Screeching from the tearing metal filled the air. In the brief moment when both cars joined, the driver looked over and caught my eye.
“Ah, shit.”
The moment of impact expanded. Ben Siderites, another off-duty deputy who worked at the same station. He’d worked the shift before mine. He couldn’t hold his head upright, his eyelids at half-mast. His smile, cool, calm, a little crooked. He didn’t recognize me. No way did Ben know CHP was on his ass. Alcohol had him so anesthetized he wouldn’t have cared in any case.
“Ah, man, Ben.”
Time caught up to speed. His car continued on. The three CHP cars passed, all the drivers visually checking to see the dumbass sitting in the Tercel. A dumbass who wasn’t smart enough to get out of harm’s way.
I half-knew one of the cops—sort of—Ken Miller, the others were too new to the highway patrol desert district.
I pulled my car into gear and fell in behind the last CHP. My left front fender rattled and dragged on the tire. I wouldn’t make it far.
Ben was headed in the opposite direction to his home. He’d gotten off graveyard shift and sat in The Desert Fox for eight hours nursing double Jacks, neat.
When he crashed into the Tercel, he snapped out of his alcohol-fogged state and made a quick left down an abandoned street. Made the turn in front of an eastbound car on Main that skidded to avoid him. The cops followed with me right on their tail.
He drove another fifty yards and started to make a Y turn to head back the way he came. The highway patrol cut him off front and back, blocking him in. Since he had failed to yield to their red lights, he qualified for a felony car stop. The cops had their doors open, guns drawn, pointed at poor Ben.
The alpha male in the group, a sandy-haired thirty-year-old with green aviator sunglasses, called out the commands. “Turn your car off and toss the keys out the window.” Wind buffeted all of us. Sand speckled our skin and stung our faces. Clawed at our eyes.
“Huh?” Ben said, “Hey, Dave, is that you, Dave?”
He didn’t care that cops pointed guns at him. He lived in that world where guns were merely tools, like a hammer to a carpenter.
He’d seen me. I had gotten out and moved up behind the CHP officer, making the tactical calls. “I’m a deputy with the SO. He’s also a deputy. Come on, ease off him. He’s harmless.”
“Doesn’t matter now. We have to do this by the book.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Deputy, take a step back and stay out of this, or you’ll find your ass in the can cooling your heels.”
Ben got out, staggered, used the car for support. He carried his off-duty pistol in his front waistband in plain view.
Two CHP officers at the same time yelled. “Gun!”
“Hold it. Hold it.” I yelled.
I stepped around the officer behind his car door and into the line of fire. I held up my hands. “No one shoot. Sweet Jesus, no one shoot. He’s a cop. He’s just a drunk cop. Put your guns away.”
“Is that you, Dave?” He staggered the rest of the way over, almost falling down. I grabbed the gun in his front waistband.
Once I had the gun, the CHP officers swarmed us. Two grabbed Ben, threw him to the ground, and cuffed him. I tried to intervene, and the guy with “Williams” on his nameplate threw a wristlock on me, cranked it up until pain roiled up my shoulder into my neck.
Ben wore expensive ostrich skin cowboy boots, an older pair he’d worked hard to keep nice. Now, they were scratched and marred from the takedown. Ruined. He wouldn’t notice until tomorrow or even the next day. Then he’d wonder how it happened. His face and arms were nut-brown from working in the intense desert sun too long. He’d converted fully to a desert rat, never planning to leave. The desert sun had aged him beyond his thirty-two years. He looked forty or forty-five.
He was a great street cop, fearless. He’d just seen too much his mind couldn’t comprehend. Most recently, an ugly murder-suicide that involved three dead cops. A love triangle gone wrong. Ben took the call and was first on scene. I couldn’t imagine what that must’ve looked like. What he thought when he walked in on that ugly blood-filled room. Dead friends on the floor.
The department hadn’t done Ben any favors. His mental injury should’ve been treated the same as a physical one. This was 1984, after all. Law enforcement had progressed from the primitive, one-two-buckle-my-shoe era. Instead, the department pretended like nothing happened. The department had enough problems navigating the bad press with three of their cops killed. A huge public relations black eye.
The two CHP officers dragged Ben over to the lead patrol ca
I got up into William’s face. “You don’t wanna do this?”
“It’s done.”
“You let him go right now, or I swear you’ll regret it.” I tried to tamp down the anger that continued to rise.
“You interfere anymore, deputy, and I’ll take you in for PC 148. It’ll end your career.”
I pointed over to the cop car. “Let him out, now.”
“Or what? What do you think you’re gonna do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. Your station is situated in the middle of our city. I’ll set up in front of your office. I’ll ticket every one of you. You want a war, you got it.”
“No way would you do that. You’d find yourself in a big jackpot with your brass.”
Ken Miller walked over to back down the both of us. He suddenly recognized me. “Ah, shit.”
“What?” Williams said.
“It’s Dave Beckett.”
Williams, his face bloated with red, caught Miller’s tone, turned, and looked at him. “I don’t care who it is.”
Miller folded his arms across his chest. “I would strongly recommend you rethink this. He’ll do exactly what he promises to do, and be damned. He doesn’t give a shit about what the brass think.”
Not true. I cared about my career. It just took a backseat to doing what was right. All I wanted out of my career, what I’d always wanted, was to get to homicide and put the real bad guys in prison. I needed to break out of the patrol rut I was stuck in and get promoted to a station detective job. Then work my way into homicide. A jurisdictional battle would put all that on hold.
I took a deep breath and stepped back. “Hey, Miller, how’s it going? Sorry. I didn’t mean to make an ass of myself.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Hey, come on, Siderites needs a break. He was first in on that murder-suicide.”
Williams’s head whipped around to look at me.
I nodded, “Yeah, no shit.”
“God damnit. Get that asshole out of the car. Take the cuffs off him.” He turned back to me. “You gotta handle the crash involving your car and the mailboxes. I don’t want any blowback on any of this.”
“I understand, I’ll take full responsibility.” I stuck out my hand. “You just made a friend. If you ever need anything, and I mean anything, you call me.”
Chapter Two
Two days later, after the new shift rotation started, I sat window to window in our sheriff’s patrol cars with Ben Siderites. We’d parked in an unnatural dirt turnout at the far edge of the station patrol area. The night’s blackness, along with the desert’s stillness, had a smothering effect and allowed every little sound to travel a greater distance. The patrol car engines ticked as they cooled. Siderites smoked a Marlboro, one from a two-box-a-day habit. You dressed him right, he could easily be the Marlboro Man. White smoke hung in the cool desert air.
Except during the summer monsoons, it rarely rained in the desert. But a storm had gone through and dumped buckets of moisture. The desert, as dry as it was, still couldn’t absorb that much water. Not all at once. In a flash, the arroyos would fill to the brim and rage in a muddy roil. Then, go dry just as quickly as if nothing had happened. The air smelled wonderful, one of the few selling points of working in the high desert. Every rock, Joshua Tree, and sage scrubbed clean and ready for a fresh start.
Neither of us had said a thing since we turned off the cars. Sometimes it wasn’t necessary. Brother officers could draw solace just from close proximity. Brothers and sisters in a fraternal order few civilians understood.
Siderites looked almost normal. Sober anyway. The sorrow and emotional pain of what he’d walked into last month, the three dead deputies, hung on him like a silent partner. One that would never leave. He’d take those images to his grave. No job paid enough to deal with that kind of horror, that kind of grief that claimed a chunk of your soul and could leave you an emotional cripple.
Since swing shift started, the radio that dispatched calls non-stop had finally turned quiet. In the vast patrol area, travel to a call sometimes took forty minutes or more. Houses perched in the middle of nowhere on dirt roads that were more trails than thoroughfares made travel difficult with ruts, rocks, and obscured tracks. No street signs or streetlights to guide you. Just your headlights and razor-sharp nerve to keep driving deeper into the dark, hoping you don’t get stuck in a drift of blow sand that hadn’t been there the last time.
Along with the call, dispatch sometimes gave out unique directions: “Drive six miles and exactly four tenths, turn right, or north. It doesn’t look like a road, but turn anyway. Then drive to the tall Joshua Tree that looks like Moses holding up the Ten Commandments, and make a left turn. Then drive to the big rock….”
Many times, halfway through the shift, I’d have to run back to the station and refuel. Then refuel again at EOW, end of watch, so the on-coming deputy had a full tank to start his shift.
The Ford Crown Victoria patrol cars rode like buckboards from the 1800s, the suspension shot. The cars ran twenty-four hours a day under brutal conditions and should have been traded out at eighty thousand miles. Instead, the department has squeezed out every budgetary dollar they could and took the cars to a hundred and fifty thousand, usually more. They kept them until the repair bills surpassed the price of a new car. The decision has nothing to do with deputy safety. Or, God forbid, their comfort. In the end, the broken-down wrecks are not worth the cost to junk them.
The department also still held firm on the antiquated doctrine, “One riot, one deputy.” A deputy fights his steering wheel and the elements to get to a call. When he or she gets there, they’re alone to deal with the problem. If it turns to shit, backup can be an hour away. All of these factors make a single dispatched call a true adventure. Hot summer nights when the temperature hovers at a hundred at midnight and the constituents have imbibed all day, the excitement ramps up even more.
Siderites finally spoke. “How do you keep up with all the reports? You hand write everything, right? Never understood that with you. I dictate all of mine and I have a hard time keeping the sergeant off my ass for late paper.”
“I take them home and turn them in the next day. I hand-write ‘em because I’m a control freak. I need to know every word that goes into the report is mine.”
“You really don’t have a life, do you?”
We sat just off Ranchero Road east of Mariposa at a higher elevation. Down in the valley, the lights from Victorville and Hesperia glittered, a blanket of diamonds in the brisk air purified by the rain.
He said. “I can’t take my paper home. I work on my house after shift and on days off.” He tossed a cigarette butt out the window and lit another.
“And you say I don’t have a life?”
I’d been over to his house. He was over-building for the area in Hesperia. He’d never get comps to support the mansion he was erecting. Doing it all on his own, stick by stick, tile by tile. In decades past, people built sailboats in their backyards, took years doing it, with a recreational retirement in mind. Siderites worked on his house, a fully upgraded mansion, more a hobby to keep his hands busy than a house to flip for a profit. Every bit of his paycheck and overtime went for building supplies. He took his time. It looked beautiful. But at the rate he built, it would be another four years to finish it.
“Hey?” He said. “I…ah…I wanna thank you for what you did for me. I’m gonna pay for the damage to your car.”
“Forget it. Those dents give my little Toyota character it didn’t have. Like a black eye, a badge of courage.”
Headlights came blasting south on Mariposa and took the corner wide, sliding on the black asphalt still wet from the rain. The car almost hit us before the driver got it under control. He shot eastbound on Ranchero Road.
I only caught a glimpse, a blur. The car had unbelievable acceleration, a candy apple red Nissan 300ZX.
Siderites tossed out his freshly lit cigarette, started up his patrol car, and yelled as he stuck it in gear. “I took paper on that car. It was carjacked at gunpoint in front of The Desert Fox.” His patrol car slewed sideways. His rear end banged into my rear end.
