Feed the Rich

Levi sat at the counter of his favorite diner, one of the few still left, and also one of the few restaurants left in general. He breathed in the scent of cooking meat and the salty vegetal tang of kelp. He was waiting for his meal, a burger with a side of fried bull kelp, when the TV turned onto a recent update on the global hunger crisis.

“Things are more under control every day. With the new protein source discovered by the Global Government and the sea vegetable farms doing well, it seems like we are on the road to recovery,” the reporter said excitedly. “Every grocery store and restaurant in the first world countries, now have access to the new meat, and most stores in third world countries have access to it now. The next step the G.G. is taking will be to increase production, so they say.”

The sound of a plate being set in front of him caused Levi to switch his attention. A glistening burger sat right before him with various types of sea vegetables decorating the plate. Even the bun was made from milled seaweed flour now. But thankfully the chefs at this place were good enough that they could find different ways to flavor things, so it didn’t all taste the same. It still wasn’t as good as the stuff that had been available right before the soil had become completely unusable, but Levi didn’t hate it.

Terrance used to complain about everything tasting like salt even before they were forced to switch over to ocean vegetation, Levi wondered what he thought about food now. Once Terrance had gone into retirement they hadn’t even communicated. Levi could say it was because he was busy, that he hadn’t contacted him because of his recent back-to-back cases. But Levi still found time for at least five smoke breaks a day, time to go to bed early, and he found time to check the news in the morning.

Therefore he could find a moment to shoot the man a text, an email, hell even call him for a few minutes. But he didn’t. Levi couldn’t exactly say why. There were likely several reasons, but the biggest was probably that because Terrance was out of sight, it made him out of mind.

Levi was busy, always busy, and when he was, he stopped paying attention to anything but work or the possibility of future work. Damn, why did the old man have to go into retirement, they had a good thing going together. They could have stayed partners; they were great at covering each other’s backs and the best thing was, Levi wouldn’t be having this stupid crisis while he ate a hamburger. Maybe he could actually enjoy his dinner then.

“Alright Davis, time to suck it up and visit the ol’ fucker,” he muttered to himself, tapping his fingers against the aged and warped Formica countertop as he ached for a cigarette.

He wouldn’t leave to get one until he finished his food though. No matter how much his habits hounded him halfway through a meal. They were a constant anyway, he was used to ignoring them even if addiction was a bitch. Levi bit into the awkward texture of his hamburger. There was a strange thing about going through almost five or more years struggling to know when your next meal would be, let alone what it might be, it had made Levi a lot less picky. And from the way this diner was always relatively busy, he assumed it was the same for most people.

A soft vibration came from the front of his fleece-lined jean jacket. His hand naturally went to the front pocket that held his cigarettes, he shook his head, and moved to the other side where he fished out his phone.

“Davis here,” he answered.

“Levi,” the chief said on the other line. “Got a crime scene I need you to go out to. Need a senior detective on it.”

“Sure thing, how soon?” Levi asked through a mouthful of meat.

“ASAP,” his boss ordered with an irritated clip to his voice.

“Fuck,” he sighed as he hung up the phone without even answering and ran his free hand through his already mess of dirty blonde hair.

Levi could be viewed as fairly attractive; he got enough interested looks until he actually spoke. However, though he slicked back his hair for a more ‘professional’ appearance, he couldn’t keep his hands out of it whenever something went wrong. And something was always going wrong. His best feature and the thing that got commented on the most was his eyes, they were a dark green, almost that color that crayons called forest green. Yeah, that stupidly dark matte color that eyes shouldn’t be able to recreate. Mostly he just wondered if the government had somehow filled his irises with plastic. Then he had to remember there would be no point behind that, stopping himself before he went down a very twisty and crazy rabbit hole.

Levi didn’t care about his looks, if he wanted sex or affection, he’d pay someone for it. He didn’t have time for relationships, and to be honest, women or men or whatever, were usually just a distraction.

He flipped his phone closed and waved at the waiter.

“Check!” he called, trying to shovel in as much as his food as he could while the person printed up his receipt.

He was already riding in the car when he realized that eating that fast was never a good idea and now, he had heartburn. Ah, the wonders of being older than twenty-five.

Levi weaved quickly through the evening traffic, faster than Terrance would ever dream of and definitely would never approve of. So fast that he would have gotten a ticket if it had not been for the pretty little siren on his beater of a car. If only he could use it whenever he needed to, getting across town would be a hell of a lot quicker, especially with all the useless construction they’d been doing lately. The world was going to hell, why humanity keep slapping band aids on it hoping to keep it going until the next generation could figure out the answer to the problems, Levi couldn’t understand.

He pulled up on a scene that was unusual to say the least. Crime was common, more common now than ever. But it rarely was bloody anymore, not unless something went wrong. Levi usually was involved with robberies now, and the occasional gun misfire, or the ‘he ran into the knife’ incident during such robbing episodes.

He fished out a cigarette to take a couple hits off of before he stubbed out the cherry just enough so he could save it for later. Then he pulled out his badge before making his way to the yellow tape.

“Hey you! Stop!” someone yelled from behind the tape, right as Levi was ducking under it.

“What’s wrong, Richie, don’t recognize me?” he asked, flashing his badge and running his hand through his hair again, messing it up even more.

“Ah! Detective Davis, sir, I couldn’t see your face,” Richie said with an apologetic smile.

Levi shook his head. Richie was a young officer, someone who should still be running scut except for the fact that they were always short of hands. So, the officer or detective- since he had yet been saddled with a partner- in charge of his training that night likely positioned him to watch the lines, just so he would stay out of trouble. Richie, however, did everything with gusto.

“S’alright kid, and stop calling me ‘sir’,” Levi turned away from the fresh-faced officer and looked at the mess of blood in front of him. “What the fuck happened here?”

Richie shook his head, “No idea, si- I mean- Detective. It looks as if whoever that was… was beaten on purpose?”

Levi squatted on the balls of his feet, right above the body that was merely a mash of splintered bones and pulverized flesh. Entrails were strewn everywhere; the air smelled like iron and yet had the acrid tang of bile hanging in it too. Whatever… whoever?... had done this had very much done it with sheer rage and likely with the intent of beating the shit out of this poor victim. This was no accident, this was no crime of passion, this was done with every desire to kill and mangle.

“Their wallet on them?” Levi asked.

“The cleaner team said they’d take care of that since this is such a mess. They want to make sure forensics gets everything,” Richie said brightly.

“Figures,” Levi sighed.

His green gaze traveled to the white clad people slowly marking over every missing piece and collecting them after a picture was taken.

“Shit, I’ve never seen anything like this. Even if this was done to rob someone… there’re so many easier ways to kill someone,” Levi said.

His eyes raked over the majority of the corpse again, pausing on what he thought was the torso. In the concaved ribs and stomach, he could see where something had ripped open the stomach cavity, making it easier for the guts to be pulled out. Was that done pre or postmortem?

“Shit,” Levi said again, standing. “We need to tell the chief; this isn’t something that should just be sitting in the archives in case it happens again.”

“Right away, D-detective,” Richie said, still stumbling over his new title for Levi.

Levi turned back to the car and stared at it, the way his cigarette sat just a few feet away taunted him, but it would be several hours of casing the scene before he would taste that sweet burn of nicotine again. He should have just stayed at the diner, shouldn’t have answered the damned phone. He deserved a night off once in a while after all.