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“Kids?”
She brings her eyes up, now that the color has washed from her cheeks. “Three boys. They’re fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen. Tribble’s mother is older than Thoma’s.”
“How long has Tribble been in office?”
“Fifteen years,” Archer sneers. “Why’d you give him details of an open case?”
I roll my eyes and move the computer mouse to navigate toward my email. “Because he could have all four of us on our asses if I didn’t. We’re employed by the city, Archer. And if we’re applying for unemployment, we can’t help Louisa.”
I open a report sitting amongst a dozen other emails in my inbox. “I didn’t, however, give him anything not already hitting the news. A ten-year-old was brutalized and murdered in the cold.”
I scan the attachment from the lab and frown as I read. “Aubree?”
“Yeah?” She pushes up to stand and leans across my desk as I turn my computer monitor.
“Read that and tell me what you see.”
Doing as I requested, she frowns much like I do. “The blood under her nails is type A. She’s O-neg.”
“Yeah. Now let’s go find out what Thoma is. What’s the bet he’s type A? How long will it take for the rest to come back on the samples we took from under her nails?”
“Maybe another twenty-four hours. It takes a minute around here.”
“Alright.” I look to Archer and finally clear my mind for a moment. “What do you want from this meeting?”
“I wanna know what you’ve got on the girl. She’s my primary focus right now, but I can’t solve the crime if I got nothing from the M.E.”
“I got fragments of wood from her vagina.” I say the words without pause. Without emotion. Because if I let myself feel, I doubt I’d be able to come back to the job day after day. “Splintered pieces that tore her skin.”
“A stick?” Archer’s jaw clenches and releases with anger he barely keeps concealed. With rage he can hardly bottle. “She was raped with a stick?”
“I’m thinking a broomstick,” I amend. “I can’t know the width with accuracy, but she was a baby, so a broomstick about,” I show him the circumference with my fingers, “that, would cause a lot of damage.”
“Nothing like that was found on scene,” Fletcher says. “Broomsticks, sticks from trees, nothing wooden.”
“Well, when you find it, you’ll find your murderer.” I sit back and press my fingers over my eyes. I’m working on four and a half hours of sleep and dragging. “It’s going to be covered in DNA; blood, skin, natural body secretions. Whoever took it kept it for a souvenir. They’d have been better to leave it on the scene.”
“We find it, we use it to belt our perp black and blue before sending him to prison.” Fletch nods. “Noted.”
“What do you do next?” Arch dips his hands into his pockets. “On this case, what’s next?”
“We wait.” I draw a deep breath until my lungs expand, then I release it again and sigh. “We wait for pathology to come back. Aubree says twenty-four hours. I’m giving them four before I go down and introduce myself. Tribble wants to railroad us to get this dealt with fast, but he’s gonna lose his shit when he finds out we suspect Thoma. At which point, he’ll try to have all our jobs anyway.”
“So we keep it quiet,” Aubree murmurs. “We don’t mention names until we have it all squared away. Then,” she looks to Archer, “you better run fast and get Thoma before his cousin comes after you.”
“Great way to secure a happy career,” Fletcher teases. “Lock up the mayor’s cousin and sneak around under the mayor’s nose while we investigate his family.”
“Good thing you’re not in this for the accolades, then.” I look to Aubree. “Can I get some time alone? I need to think, and you need to go clear out your other actives.”
“Clear them out?” Her brows shoot high. “Why am I clearing my slate?”
“Apart from the fact Tribble is gonna boot us all?” I exhale a soft laugh. “I’m pulling you into my detail full-time for a while. We share cases, we work them together. Clear out your loose ends, then any new bodies that come in, we take them together.”
“I knew you liked me!” Jumping up from the visitor chair, Aubree bum-dances her way across the office. “I knew our sleepover would cement our best-friendship.”
“Not my friend.” But I hold my head in my hands and look down at my desk. “And you never cooked me breakfast.”
She presses a hand to her stomach and scowls. “I forgot. Tomorrow. When we sleepover again, I’ll cook.”
