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Someone’s dead, and we’re all being called off the bench.
Exhaling a deep sigh, Aubree nods toward the couch as she leans to one side to pluck her phone out of her pocket. “Shoes are over there.” Then answering, she slides off the counter and takes her call by the door.
So I bring my own phone to my ear, though I already know who is on the other end. “Archer Malone.”
“Detective Malone, this is dispatch. You’re required to report to one-three-one-four Mays Lane, Copeland City. Suspected homicide. Uniforms are on site, scene is secure. Please confirm.”
“Yep. Confirmed.” I grab my coffee and prepare to chug the remains. “Please also contact Detective Charlie Fletcher. My ETA is,” I look toward the clock on the wall. “Fifteen minutes.”
Hanging up, I slip the device into my pocket and look across to find Morning Minka gone, and in her place, Chief Medical Examiner Minka Mayet. “Suspected homicide,” I tell her. “Fletch and I are primary.”
“Mays Lane?” Aubree ends her call and joins our conversation. “They’re requesting a medical examiner, Chief. Do you want to assign Torres, or—?”
“We’ll take it.” Minka finishes buckling her shoes and pushes up to stand, then she makes her way to the kitchen,knowinga coffee will be here waiting for her. “We have no active cases, but Torres is full-up. So we’ll run this one with Detectives Malone and Fletcher.”
She picks up her mug and looks into my eyes with thanks in hers. “We’ll take our car and meet you there. Give us twenty.”
“Yep.” I set my empty cup in the sink and lean in to press a kiss to her cheek. “See you soon.”
I’m on the clock, and my crime scene is cooling off. So I grab my keys, flicking Aubree’s hair as I pass, then I’m out the door and heading toward the station to get a car.
Ten minutes after walking out of my apartment, I pull up to find a half dozen police cruisers barricading the street, tape keeping my scene somewhat secure, and Tiffany Hewitt’s van parked across the front of it all.
What the fuck is she doing here?
I push out of my car and slam the door shut, and before a uniform can even think to stop me, I take out my badge and let myself through.
Making my way up the front porch of a nineteen-sixties Victorian-style home, I stop at the top in front of a familiar junior officer I know as Clay. “What’ve we got?”
“A damn massacre.”
Embarrassed, his face warms when my brows shoot high. Then he clears his throat. “Sir. Detective Fletcher is already inside. Uniforms are canvassing.”
“UNSUB?”
“No clue. But it’s a clear murder, Detective. This was no accident. Which means you have a killer loose on the streets. You’re gonna want to get on that quick.”
“Yeah.”
I step through the doorway and instantly smell the tang of blood in the air. The pungency of the metallic stench says this is more than a stubbed toe or a bleeding nose. So I keep my movements slow while my eyes scour the house.
It’s the kind of home where a struggling family lives. They’re still making their bills each month, scraping by, but they don’t have money left over for extras. The couch is tattered and old, and the TV is ancient. The curtains are outdated and heavy with dust, and when I look down, I find the carpet worn through in some spots.
I don’t hear theclick-click-clickof a photographer yet—that’ll be a job for me and Fletch soon, and for Aubs when she arrives—so for now, all is quiet inside the house as I wander through.
I search the kitchen and find a bloody handprint on the door. A trail of crimson blotched on the laminate floor. I follow it to the stairs and head up.
The scene unfolds in my mind: the initial attack downstairs, then the victim fleeing in panic, through the door and up to the second floor to their death.
Why they didn’t turn right out of the kitchen and head outside is beyond me, but I follow their doomed path and stop on the top landing to find the wall cracked around a hole punched through the plaster.
Did the victim slam into the wall in their terror? Or did the perp hit it in a rage?
“Fletch?” Turning my head left, I glance down the hall leading toward the bedrooms. Finding it empty, I look to the right… and find the same on the other side. “Detective Fletcher? Report.”
He steps through a door on my left and pins me with a look that says another night of rest hasn’t cooled his anger. “This way.”
I don’t grab my gun, though my fingers itch to touch. I don’t arm myself, though I’m inside a fresh murder scene with a man whose anger burns. Instead, I follow my—former?—best friend into the main bedroom and stop just past the threshold to find blood spatter sprayed across the ceiling. The long lines declare it came from a major artery at high pressure.
