Page 3 of Sinful Chaos


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“So it’s a rough place.” I reach out and accept the pair of gloves Aubree offers. Pulling one on, I glance toward the belly of the alley and try to see into the shadows. “Not somewhere that regular office types or women would go alone?”

“Only the coke-snorting office types,” Archer scoffs. “And women who are into non-consent.”

“And he doesn’t mean the sex club,tie me up, pat me down, pretend my no is a real nokind of non-consent,” Fletch clarifies. “This is the type of place women have no business being unless they truly expect to be victimized in the worst way.”

“Charming,” Aubree growls. “Is our victim male or female?”

Arrogant, Fletch glances across. “Well, seeing as how I’m not the medical examiner, I’m not sure I’m qualified to make such a call. It would be a gross mishandling of city resources, no? To have the cop do the doctor’s job.”

“You’re such a tool.” Finally cracking a smile, Aubree continues forward and leaves him in her dust. Taking out the recorder and sticking to my side, she follows me all the way to the body that absolutely died more than a day or two ago.

“The smell,” she hisses as we stop just two feet away. “The body is ripe, Doctor Mayet.”

“Mm.” I look down at her hand. “Recorder on. Let’s document the scene.”

Nodding, she flicks the button to get us started. “Recording.”

“Chief Medical Examiner Doctor Minka Mayet, reporting to a suspected homicide in the alleyway beside a club named Sarge’s. Detectives Malone and Fletcher are primary, Doctors Mayet and Emeri have been requested as official medical examiners. The date is…” I look to Aubree, since I actually don’t know.

“March fifteenth, twenty-twenty-two,” she fills in. “The time is zero-four-zero-nine.”

“Thank you, Doctor Emeri.” Crouching closer, I carefully peel back the thick plastic that covers the body. “Who discovered the victim?” I ask my police. “Who reported them? And who put this tarp over top?”

“A couple stepped out of Sarge’s at approximately oh-two-hundred hours,” Fletch recites, presumably from scribbles in the notebook in his hand. “They were coming out here for a little privacy, if you get what I mean. The couple are on ice right now, sitting in separate cruisers. Detective Malone and I will collect their statements in a moment, but surface-level information we have right now says they were coming out to bang, discovered the body, and ran back into Sarge’s screaming bloody murder. A whole bunch of customers came out to peek after that.”

“Contaminating our crime scene,” I grumble. “Body’s discovered at two in the morning, but dispatch doesn’t call in homicide until closer to four. That’s quite a gap.”

“Management of the club wasted a lot of time,” Archer nods. “Folks came out to look. Then the higher-ups would’ve cleaned the place out, knowing cops would be crawling all over by morning.”

“So they left the dead guy out here, all so they could remove drugs from the premises before you came looking?”

“That’s about the gist of it.” Lifting his chin, Archer nods toward the body. “Guy?”

“Male,” I conclude.

Turning back to the victim, I study his face. His skin. His death.

“Approximately thirty-five to forty-five years old. Reasonably fit. Not an athlete, but no slouch, either.” Taking a pen when Aubree knows to offer, I place it under his fingers and move them. “Rigor has been and gone. Hypostasis has all his blood pooling in his back and thighs.”

“He has his shoes,” Aubree observes. “Belt. No wedding band, but he has a watch.” She leans around and looks closer, but doesn’t touch. It’s not time for that yet. “Appears to have a wallet in his back pocket.”

“So it wasn’t a robbery gone bad,” Fletch concludes. “How long’s he been out here?”

I push his shirt up a few inches and make a small slice in his abdomen so I can take internal temperature. “Rigor, and decomp tell me he’s been lying out here approximately thirty-six hours.”

I wait for the thermometer to give its official reading, while beside me, Aubree documents the scene with a thousand photographs.Click, click, click.

When the thermometer beeps, I check the result and do the math in my head. “What’s the weather been like on this side of the city the last two days?”

Over my shoulder, Archer shrugs. “Warm in the sun, cool in the shade. No rain, no snow, no crazy heat. The wind was up two days ago. Not so much yesterday.”

“Plus, we’re between these massive brick walls,” Aubree volunteers. “Not exposed to much except the shade.”

Nodding, I set my thermometer aside and add for the record, “Internal temperature in the field confirms time of death to be approximately thirty-six to forty-eight hours ago.” Then I look to the police. “He’s well-off. Not crazy rich, but he’s doing alright. Perhaps search your missing persons register. I feel like someone will be looking for him.”

“Cause of death?” Fletch writes something in his little notepad before looking up at me. “I didn’t see anything obvious when I first checked. But I didn’t move the plastic sheet, either.” He stops and grins. “Figured you’d get a little cranky about me moving things.”

“You figured right.” Pushing to my feet and leaning to set one hand on the brick wall at our victim’s head, I use the other hand to carefully peel the tarp away. “Sandy brown hair. Overlarge ears.” Then I look back at Fletch and poke at him, since he so enjoys poking back. “Almost as large as yours.”

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