“He told you this?”
“No. Her best friend did, but only after Prim’s parents dropped the first crumbs. So,” he lifts his chin toward the men screwing around in front of a car. “Dude has big balls and a small peepee. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women. He gets her alone in his room, grabs her leg, she says no, and now he’s feeling the sting of rejection.” He silences for a beat, then adds, almost regretfully, “Even if she did it gently. Even if her complete abhorrence of confrontation means she didn’t chew him out or scream in his face. She just got up and left the room. Later, she went to her bestie’s house and let it rip. Tairneyy, the best friend, said he’s always been a creep, thinks the general female population owes him, and though Iloathe to agree with Detective Banks about literallyanything, we’re both calling it: Scott hates his mother and sister purely because they’re women. They exist, and therefore, he’s angry about it.”
“Sounds like a peach,” I drawl. “Can we arrest him yet?”
He chuckles. “Not quite yet. We can’t place him at the scene, didn’t pull his prints or DNA from the car, don’t have the murder weapon, don’t have a confession, hedoeshave an alibi, even if it’s weak as fuck, and though I’d like to shove his dick in a blender and hit the button to save his future wife from a life of non-consent and shitty sex, I can’t prove he did this. Yet.”
“Hence…” I exhale a noisy sigh and go back to watching the boy. The man. The asshole. “We’re Turner and Hooch, on a super-secret spy mission to find justice for an innocent woman whose only crime was picking up a side job and meeting him.”
“Turner and Hooch was a movie…”
“Yeah.” I take another bite of my quickly cooling hot dog. “I know.”
“Hooch was a dog.”
I chew, chew, chew, and swallow. “Uh-huh.”
His eyes narrow in my peripherals. “Am I Turner, or am I Hooch?”
“You can be whoever you want, Detective. It’s not the nineteen fifties anymore.” I tilt my head back and press a snickering kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Also, the LRRTM1 gene plays a crucial role in neuronal evolution and guides brain function related to conditions like schizophrenia.”
“Uh…” He considers my words for a beat. Thinks them through. Tries so very hard to translate. But when he fails, his eyes come back down to mine. “Okay…?”
“The LRRTM1 gene is more commonly seen in ambidextrous people.”
“Are you saying Prim might be schizophrenic?” he hedges. “And if you are, do you think that’s why he killed her?”
“No.” I dip my finger into his shake and suckle the icy liquid onto my tongue. “Correlation does not imply causation. I just wanted to show you how smart I was with my fun chromosomal facts.”
“So smart.” He drops his lips to mine, chuckling and kissing so I feel each puff of his breath fill my lungs. “Never knew I’d be so turned on by a brainiac. You weren’t really my type back in high school, Chief, but I can’t say I regret the way things turned out.”
“That’s because your type was big-breasted, small-brained, lacking in spine, and if their name was Miranda London, that typically clinched the deal.”
He dives forward and captures my lips again. Not necessarily becausehe wants to kiss me, but because he wants me to stop talking. “Brainiac is the new sexy.” He pulls back only long enough to sip a little shake onto his tongue, then he returns and shares the rich, creamy dessert with me. “I wishallstakeouts were this much fun. Fletch just eats my fries, and I don’t enjoy looking at him nearly as much as I enjoy looking at you.”
ARCHER
Istep off the escalator and into a buzzing homicide division bullpen just in time to watch a brawl break out ten feet from the check-in desk. Two uniforms, still new and green around the edges, lose control of their cuffed perp as he throws his head back and shatters the first uniform’s nose. Using his momentum, he charges forward like he’s a three-hundred-pound defensive tackle, and not a hundred-and-forty-pound tweaker desperate for freedom and too stupid to realize he won’t get it. Not today, anyway.
I guess he’s waiving his right to sit down and shut the fuck up.
Noise breaks out, chairs fly, the second uniform sprawls, and two dozen homicide detectives look up from their desks.Bored, not alerted. And then I become the unlucky asshole standing in the tweaker’s way, because he wants the escalator to freedom, and I’m… in front of it.
“Mooooove!” The guy barrels toward me in a pair of tighty-whities, shin-height UGG boots, another man’s blood on his face, and a whole lotta rage. His hands are still cuffed behind his back, and his long, skinny legs sport a few-days-old scrape that reminds me of a similar scar on Minka’s knee.
Which leads me to think about the stitches she so recently took out.
The infusion shedidn’tdo last night, since she’d already taken that pill.
And then the second pill she took this morning… Since I guess we’re doing that now.
“Motherfucker, get out of my way!” The tweaker sprints with his headdown, his chest forward, his ankles rolling with every third step. And though the cop with a broken nose bounds to his feet and screams for him to stop, he doesn’t listen.
Fifteen feet away, his bloodshot eyes lock on mine.
Ten feet away, a ferocious snarl jumps from the depths of his chest.
Five feet away, he bares his teeth like he’s gonna bite me if I don’t move.
