Page 54 of Dozer

Kenzi watches me finish. "You're going to check under the examination table, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"There's a skeleton under there, isn't there?"

"Wouldn't surprise me."

"Good. At least someone here is committed to the theme." She never fails to surprise me.

I crouch anyway. Nothing. When I straighten, she's smiling, not the big grin she uses when she's trying to annoy me, something smaller, softer. It catches me off guard. So does the fact that I want to keep it there.

She sets the field kit on a counter and starts laying out what she needs. Gloves. Evidence bags. Tools. Labels. I lean against the wall opposite her.

"You're really not bothered by this."

She looks up. "By what?"

"The building."

"Not particularly."

"Nothing about this bothers you? Death? The decay? Empty rooms that used to hold people who didn't make it…" I glance around the room. "Most people flinch from places like this."

She's quiet for a moment, her fingers resting on the edge of the kit. I've learned that silence means she's deciding whether to give me a joke or the truth. She gives me the truth.

"I don't flinch from it because somebody has to be the one who doesn't." Her voice is quieter now. "Everybody I've ever worked on used to be somebody's whole world. Somebody's kid. Somebody's mother. Somebody's—" She stops, just for a second. "Somebody's brother."

I don't miss it, the look of sadness in her eyes or the way her voice catches.

"If I flinch," she continues, "if I treat them like they're just a thing that used to be a person, then nobody's left in the room who remembers they mattered. I want to be that person for them. The person who remembers how much value they brought into this world."

Something settles in my chest. I'd thought her ease around the dead came from being able to separate herself from them. Perhaps with an emotional distance or maybe professional compartmentalization. That’s the same armor most of us put on if we stay in this business long enough. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to compartmentalize to stay alive. But, with Kenzi, I was wrong. She doesn't feel less, she’s not setting it aside for later or detaching herself from it all together. She feels everything and puts it somewhere useful, in giving the dead a voice.

“I guess it’s morbid,” she says.

"That's not morbid," I say.

She gives me a small shrug. "Most people don't see it that way."

"I'm not most people."

Her eyes meet mine. "No," she says softly. "You're really not."

The room changes. Not dramatically, nothing moves, no music starts playing in the background, nobody suddenly decides we're in a different story. It's just her looking at me, and me looking back, and the knowledge sitting between us that neither of us is talking about what happened in that motel room last night.

Her hand shifts on the counter. Mine is resting on the edge of the examination table. There's maybe six inches between them. I don't move. Neither does she. For a second, I wonder if she notices the distance the same way I do.

Then she reaches for a flashlight, and the moment breaks.

Good. Probably. We don’t have time to see this through. Not right now. But damn it. There better be a time. If this tension between us keeps building, it is going to explode.

I clear my throat. "You mentioned your brother before, said after he died everyone wanted to manage you."

Her hand stops. I immediately know I've pushed farther than I meant to.

"I did."

I nod once. "You don't have to tell me about it, if you don’t want to. Just know I’m willing to listen if you want to."