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Like me, she can’t help herself. And because they’re whotheyare, Fletch and Archer’s gazes snap into sizzling arrows that say they’re not impressed.
“Tattoos?” Aubs continues fearlessly. “Scars from a previous surgery? Anything that might help us identify the man you speak of.”
“Um…” Considering, our visitor ruminates on her thoughts. “He had appendicitis a while back, so he has a scar.” Twisting, she points down at her right side. “Here. It’s not very neat, and is visible, even after all this time. But he doesn’t have tattoos.” She wrinkles her nose. “He always said they’re not very nice, and that they’ll only get worse when they age.”
Without thinking, I reach up and brush my fingertips along the tiny, heart-shaped ink hidden behind my ear. Then I study Archer’s broad back, where so much more is hidden beneath his shirt.
“Aside from that one small, messy scar,” Fletch asks, “is there anything distinguishing about him?”
Diane gasps. “His fingers!” Given the situation, it’s odd how, when she glances up to meet Fletch’s eyes, there’s something akin to hope in hers. “Kyle’s fingerprints are gone. He had an accident when he was a child that burned them off, and they never came back properly. Oh gosh,” she whispers. “That’s why you’re struggling to identify him, isn’t it?”
“Let me guess,” I murmur, drawing the woman’s attention—and Archer’s ire. “Science lab incident? Sulfuric acid.”
“Yes!” Tears burst onto her cheeks, but with them comes an optimistic smile. “That’s exactly it. How did you know?”
ARCHER
“Dude has two wives,” Fletch grits through his teeth, huddling closer to wait with me while Minka and Aubree show Diane Andrews her dead husband, since she has properly identified him. “Two wives!” he hisses. “And both come with a couple of kids each.”
“How the hell do we straighten this out?” Fifi asks—who is neither a doctor nor a cop, and therefore not part of our investigation—as she comes to a stop between us. “Two women have claimed the same man. And it can’t be coincidence! The fingerprints thing is unlikely to happen to more than a handful of people, let alone to two men who look identical and both had a crappy appendectomy. We don’t have a case of dead twins here, Detectives, but a single man, living two lives.” She leans a little closer and widens her eyes. “What the heck?”
“You’re not a cop.” Fletch places his palm on the woman’s forehead and carefully nudges her back, which sets her temper ablaze and her hands balling into dangerous fists. “And we’re already in enough trouble with the captain, so bringing in a civilian sidekick is just…” he lowers his hand and smirks. “No.”
“But I’m intrigued!”
Thirty feet away, Diane sobs over her husband’s chest and cries to the universe about unfairness.‘How will I tell the kids?’ ‘Why did this happen?’
“Do you think we should use the kids to cross-check DNA?” Fifi the Super Sleuth continues. Smart, like her friends, the always proper Seraphina Lewis sheds a little of her aloofness now that she has a puzzle to solve. “We can’t cross the wives,obviously, unless the serial hitcher also married his sister.” She pauses for a beat and sneers her disgust. “But there are kids in both marriages, right? Let’s cross them, not only with this man who is supposed to be their dad, but with each other. They’re half siblings!”
“You’re like a fuckin’ chihuahua,” I sigh. “Stuck-up and uncomfortable until you’re not. Then you dig in and become a whole other person.”
“Kinda like cage dancing,” Fletch taunts. “We haven’t told the doctors what we saw yet, Sera. But that doesn’t mean we don’t remember.”
“Idon’t remember.” I lift my hands in surrender, “I’m a married man. Which means I don’t look at women dancing in tiny skirts inside a cage unless that woman is Minka. So I’m out.”
I drop my hands again and stride toward Minka and Aubree as they stand with Mrs. Andrews. “Chief Mayet?” Coming to a stop just feet from my wife, I wait for her acknowledgment with professional detachment; although, in my heart, I want to reach out and hold her up. Take a little of her weight as we approach the end of another long day.
When she turns from the body and meets my gaze, I ask, “Can I speak with you a moment?”
“Of course.” Glancing back to the sobbing woman, Minka reaches out with her good arm and pats, awkwardly and in no waywarm, Diane’s bouncing shoulder. “I’ll be nearby, Mrs. Andrews. And Doctor Emeri will remain with you for as long as you want to be with Kyle.” Then she lowers her hand and turns to follow me.
I head out of the autopsy room, pass a quietly bickering Fletch and Fifi, and wind through the labyrinth of glass hallways. I keep going until we emerge into Minka’s office, then I stop in front of the single visitor chair.
“What’s up, Detective Malone?” Just like I knew she would, she plops down across from me, in her chair, and exhales heavily enough that I know she needed the rest. “And what the hell are you gonna do about your twice-married, lying sack of shit?”
I choke out a laugh and sit back, crossing my ankle over the opposite knee and twining my fingers together. It’s my resting position, when I don’t get to hold her. Touch her. “‘Lying sack of shit’is not very impartial of you, Chief. Do you need to reassign this John Doe before you cut his dick off and toss it into the bio-waste bucket?”
“I’ve completed my autopsy already.” She checks inside the coffee mug on her desk and shrugs when she finds dregs leftover from the last time she was in here. Picking it up, she tips the remains back like a shot. “I don’t feel the need to touch his body again, unless you have specific questions. However, Idosuggest you run DNA to make sure he is, in fact, the same person.”
“You think there could be two men who look the same, are both missing fingerprints due to a completely plausible childhood story, and whose surgeons botched their appendectomy?”
She’s in a good mood, playful in the way she smirks. “I think it’s highly unlikely, and far more probable your vic was leading a double life. However, you have children in both marriages, and they’re all going to want answers. Stranger things have happened, so a simple DNA test seems like the least obtrusive next step.”
“Leastobtrusive? You want me to ask these kids to come in and give some blood? Like,hey buddy, your dad is dead andalsoa cheating sack of shit, so those other kids are probably your siblings too. Now please keep still while I jab you with a needle.”
“You’re being dramatic,” she rolls her eyes. “We’ll take saliva from the kids, pluck hair from the vic, and send all samples down to Doctor Raquel for sequencing. She’lllooooveworking on a Sunday…” With a tired grunt, she leans forward at her desk and picks up her cell. Swiping the screen and scrolling for a moment, she settles on a number and hits dial. But she doesn’t shut me out and leave me wondering. She sets the call to speaker and places the device back on her desk.
“This is Raquel,” a woman answers shortly. “It’s Sunday, so leave a message and I’ll see you in the office at nine tomorrow.”
