“Hey, thanks for w—Woah!” He catches a whiff of the stench in here and skitters back through the doorway, stomping on Officer Clay’s feet in his haste. “Jaysus, Chief!” He drags his shirt up and covers his mouth and nose, exposing a portion of his stomach, and the busted leather belt barely intact after years of abuse and use. “Excuse my French, but what the actual fuck is that smell? And why,” hesitantly tiptoeing back in, his eyes land squarely on my wife’s chest, “is there blood on your shirt?”
“Decomp,” Aubree chirps. “The smell, not the blood. Doctor Mayet went dumpster diving today and picked through human remains and week-old food scraps.”
“And I had a bleeding nose,” Minka adds. “Just a standard, every day, non-emergent bleeding nose made worse by the heat.” She lifts her chin in summons. “Come on in, Officer Clay. You stop noticing the smell after a while.”
“O-o-okay.” The poor kid darts across the office and comes to a stop by his daddy, Banks.
“Dumpster diving?” Fletch stalks past me and stares hard at Minka’s face. Maybe his first panicked thought was‘who the fuck punched her in the face?’ like mine was. And if it was, maybe his second thought was‘are they dead yet, or will I take care of it?’ Grunting in the back of his throat, he tightens his jaw and meets my eyes.
We’ll discuss this later.
Yep. We sure will.
“Don’t you have underlings to climb into the trash for you, Chief?” He circles away from the desk and heads across to the single leather sofa. Dropping his weight until the cushion releases a noisy hiss, he sits forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “We all start at the bottom ofthe food chain. We get the shitty jobs, the smelly jobs, the not-so-fun jobs. But by the time you earn your detective's shield or,” he gestures her way with a roll of his wrist, “that shiny badge of yours that says chief medical examiner in big, bold letters, that’s when we’ve elevated ourselves to a point of sending the newbs in instead.”
“Summers keep my team busy. The heat wipes folks out faster than we can keep up, and Doctor Kirk is my most junior member of staff.” Her cheeks glow a beautiful pink that would normally make me happy. But the pink is pooling blood,and is her pooling blood gonna kill her today? “He’s already been in a dumpster this month. I would’ve felt bad making him do it again.”
“What do we know about Josey Ryan?” Detective Banks, always the fuckin’ annoyance, turns from the window and stands with his shoulders broad. His head high. His jaw tight. “Do you have an update for us, Chief Mayet?”
“Not particularly. Your case has been finalized, pending tox. Though I don’t expect her samples to tell us anything we didn’t already know.” Sitting forward, she jiggles her computer mouse and stares at the screen for a beat, tapping a key, selecting something with a click. Then she settles back again and exhales a happy sigh. “I’ve taken a lot of measurements and come up with a list of blades I think could’ve been used to end Josey’s life. Check your emails.”
All at once, phones ding, emails arrive, and Officer Clay is the only one of us who panics and digs for his device.
I turn my phone over and check my inbox.
“I believe your perp used a three-and-a-half-inch blade and sliced from right to left. No serrated edge, and though we can all assume it had a handle, the handle never touched our DB. I pulled microscopic samples of powdered-metallurgy steel from her wound. However, my research tells me these are run-of-the-mill, twenty-to-fifty-dollar knives from your everywhere hunting and fishing stores.”
“Which’ll make it near impossible to track,” Fletch grunts. “Awesome.”
I lift my phone and turn it so she can see my screen. “None of the photos you sent come with wooden handles.”
“No.”
“How can you know, since you stated the hilt never touched our vic?”
Her lips quiver with a playful smile. “I can’t becompletelysure, but I certainly wouldn’t take a porous-handled knife onto a crime scene if I was hoping not to get caught.”
“We also found something that appears to be a dirt-oil mix in Josey’sneck.” Aubree comes around and perches on the edge of Minka’s desk. “Transferred from the knife’s blade, since not much else seems to have touched our vic.” She swings arctic-blue eyes across to Clay. “What do you think that means, Officer?”
“Uh…” He snaps his spine impossibly straight. “W-well, a brand-new knife would not have those things on it yet. That implies our murder weapon probably spent a little time inside a garage.”
In my peripherals, Drake nods his approval.
He got himself a pup he never wanted, but if hemustbe stuck with the kid, he’ll make damn sure to teach him.
“Very good, Officer.” Unfolding her legs, Minka pushes to her feet and drops her hands into her coat pockets.
My entire body locks up as I wait, wait, wait, ready to dive forward and catch her if she falls.
“Relax, Detective Malone.” Her lips curl into a smirk that sets my heart at ease… and on fire, both at the same fucking time. “We’ve sent samples to the lab for formal analysis, but the evidence suggests your murder weapon was not purchased recently. Possibly not even this year. Additionally, I maintain that your perp was probably left-handed. Slicing any other way would’ve felt awkward.”
Clay shoots a hand high in the air. “Chief? Sorry.”
She wanders around my chair and settles against the back so my head rests between her shoulder blades. It’s a fuckin’ hug, but without being so obvious about it.
“Yes, Officer Clay?”
“How can you know what the perp was feeling when they made the cut?”
