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"Yeah it is," he countered with a smile before he pushed up to a sitting position, one arm going around my hips, the other going to my jaw. "With me," he started, his eyes soft, "you can be a girl."
"Fine. But you're not allowed to tell anyone," I countered, moving off of him and throwing myself backward onto the bed. "Or I'll drug your morning coffee and while you're passed out, shave off your beard. Got it?"
He was still chuckling, moving over me to plant a hard kiss on my lips. "Got it," he agreed, moving off toward the bathroom.
"I mean it. Snip snip! Bye bye mountain man!"
"Heard ya," he said, coming out of the bathroom still gloriously naked and moving to stretch out beside me, one arm cocked under his head, the other reaching for my hand and entwining his fingers with mine.
"You don't think I'll do it."
His head turned to look at my profile. "You like my beard."
Yeah, well, he had a point there.SEVENTEENDetective Collings"Got a body at the morgue," the young blood said. Without looking up, Detective Collings could see he was practically pissing himself in excitement. Oh, to be young again.
"What else is new?"
"Doc Fenton just called. Said it wasn't just any body."
"The suspense is killing me," he dead-panned. He didn't want to take an unnecessary trip to the fucking morgue. He wanted to finish his mountain of paperwork sometime before nine at night and get home already. Not that he had anything to get home to, but that was beside the point.
"Lex Keith."
If there was one name Marco could have said to actually pique Collings' interest, that was the one. His head snapped up. "He's sure?"
"Positive. He wants us to come down though."
"Why?"
"Didn't say, but come on, it's Lex Keith. Curious to see how someone finally did him in."
Yeah, well, so was Collings.
He sighed, tucked his paperwork away, grabbed his gun and badge, then followed his new blood out to the cruiser.
Collings hated the morgue. He imagined it was not really the kind of place anyone actually liked except maybe those crime freaks who were always trying to sneak in. He told 'em once, they wanted to see some dead bodies, become a cop. Sometimes he felt like he saw more dead ones than lives ones: crushed against a steering wheel, through the windshield of a car, splattered on the ground after jumping, overdosed in an alley, shivved for stepping over an invisible turf line. Man, if he had a dollar for every body he'd seen he could... fuck... get the fuck out of this godforsaken town.
The young blood was a ball of energy as they moved through the office and got onto the elevator, hitting the button for the basement.
The walls were all sterile white with scratches around hip level from where the gurneys sometimes scraped the paint. It was a marked twenty degrees cooler down there, half because it was underground, and half because they kept it cold for the stiffs. Collings followed his new blood through the door into the crypt, expecting to see Doc Fenton, but almost running into a short curvy blond instead.
She let out a muted screech, her hand flying to her chest over her mint green scrubs. "Shit. Sorry. I'm, ah, not used to anyone living down here," she fumbled, giving him a wobbly smile. "Can I help you?"
"Detective Collings," I said, gesturing toward the badge on my belt.
"Is Dr. Fenton expecting you?"
"Got a call."
"Right, I'll just go get him for..." He didn't know if she was nervous for some reason or just clumsy, but she ran right into the stainless steel cart covered in medical instruments and sent everything, including herself, flying.
"Jesus Christ. Again?" A voice mumbled from his side and Collings looked over to see Doc Fenton standing beside him, shaking his head at the girl in a way that suggested she was wearing on his every last nerve.
Doc Fenton wasn't what you expected from a medical examiner. First, he was relatively young, somewhere in his mid-thirties. He was also a good-looking man- tall and fit with dark hair and dark blue eyes. Under his lab coat, he had on black slacks, a fitted dark gray dress shirt, and shiny black shoes. Collings thought he preferred Doc Green, the man Fenton replaced two years back, with his thin graying hair, fat face, drab, bleach-faded blue scrubs, and sensible orthotic shoes.
"Ali relax," Fenton said, his tone at once frustrated and resigned. "You're going to cut yourself again," he reminded her as the blade to a scalpel narrowly missed getting grabbed.
"Sorry, detectives," Ali said, piling everything onto the tray and lifting it off the cart. She gave them a wobbly, insecure smile. "Didn't mean to paint this place in a bad light. I promise I'm the only incompetent," she spat the word, looking at Doc Fenton like maybe that was a word he used to describe her, "one here. I'll just go get these sterilized again and get out of your hair."
Collings gave Fenton a smile, gesturing toward his own new blood, showing he understood what it was like. "She talks to the bodies," Fenton shared, shaking his head, but Collings was sure he saw a bit of a smile before the doc turned away. "Alright so Lex Keith," he said, sounding all-business again as he walked over to one of the fridges, pulling the handle, then dragging out the tray. "He's not going to vomit is he?" he asked Collings, jerking his head to Marco.
"We'll see," Collings said on a shrug.
"It's not pretty."
"They never are," Collings said as Doc Fenton pulled the sheet. "Christ," Collings hissed, shaking his head.
Fenton was right; it wasn't pretty.
It was the absolute definition of 'overkill'. Someone didn't just want to take out Keith, they wanted to make him suffer. His chest was hacked open, marks covered almost every inch of him, looking like he had been clawed. The heart that should have been connected with tubes and shit was completely separated from the rest of his chest... like it had been torn out.
