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“Yes, please!” Quincy chirped from across the room, although her eyes were still really wide, and she kept glancing nervously down at the mug on the floor. “Here.” She passed her camera to me to give to Doc, he took a handful of photos, then we handed the camera back before Doc passed me the jump drive.
I put it into an evidence envelope, had Quincy write down the number, but kept it. “I’m going to pull whatever’s on this,” I told her. “Then I’ll drop it in evidence.”
“Sure thing, detective.”
Doc and I made our way back out of the office, and I stopped to squeeze Ward’s shoulder, letting him know that I didn’t hold my now-aching face against him. Against the dead woman? Absolutely. She was totally on my shit list.
We made our way back to the front door just in time to encounter a panicked-looking Mays and a man who looked like he’d had a good heavy dose of Botox at some point. Unlike Mays and the uniforms, he wasn’t wearing a mask, and his cheeks were blotchy and red.
“Youwilllet me into my own house!” he shrieked.
“Sir—” Mays was clearly trying to do his best, flanked by two terrified looking uniform cops who were about to get their asses handed to them for making a CSI tech handle the perimeter at a crime scene.
“Get it out!” the man howled, pointing at Doc.
Part of me really,reallywanted to watch Doc lose his shit at this guy. Because you can’t get too much more offensive than pointing at someone and calling them an ‘it.’ But that would be bad. Fun, but bad.
I stepped forward, firmly tamping down my rapidly-rising temper.
“Sir, Dr. Manning is a police consultant doing his job and has every right to be present at this crime scene.”
And then the fuckhead spat in my face.
Taavi started barking, interspersed with growls that were only emphasized by the low rumble that resonated in Doc’s chest.
I watched impassively as horror flooded Mays’s face and the two uniforms stared at me in shock. Then one of them realized that spitting on the lead detective of a homicide investigation wasn’t really acceptable behavior, even if said lead detective was an elf, and moved.
“Sir, you’re under arrest,” he pronounced.
“Let me go! You haveno right!”
I got my brain cells back in order. “You’ve just assaulted a police officer,” I told the screaming man. “Now I don’t happen to still be susceptible to Arcanavirus—” like he wasn’t aware of that “—but spitting on another person has been considered assault with a potentially deadly weapon for about twenty years.”
“You can’tarrestme!”
“Officer Gillies here is doing an admirable job of that all on his own,” I replied with forced cheerfulness. “Mays, if you wouldn’t mind getting this… DNA sample as evidence, please?”
Mays winced, but pulled a baggie out of his pocket, then took a tissue from the pack Doc held out and wiped the spittle off my cheek. At least it wasn’t the same side that Faith Oldham had shit-chucked a mug at.
“This ismy house!” the man yowled as Gillies escorted him to the back of one of the squad cars.
“That’s… Mr. Oldham?” I asked no one in particular. The charming other half of the MFM media power-couple.
“Jeremiah,” Doc filled in.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered pinching the bridge of my nose again, trying not to lose my shit. I’d fucking had it up to here—where here was somewhere north of my eyeballs—with the MFM and all its attendant fuckery.
I heard the rustle of fabric as Doc stepped up right beside me. “You know,” he said in his soothing bass, “If you ever want to leave this shit-show and become a PI, we’ll take you in a heartbeat.”
I snorted. “Appreciated, but that doesn’t help me with this particular fucking mess.”
“True enough,” Doc agreed. “But the offer stands.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I told him.
Right now, real talk, it sounded pretty fucking good.
14
