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“CIA?” Fletch pulls into a parking space and looks across at me. “FBI. DEA. EWAP?”
“What the hell is an ewap?!” Aubree demands. “He’s making that one up.”
“It’s an arm of witness protection.” Unsnapping my seatbelt, I push my car door open and step out onto cold, smooth concrete. Our footsteps echo against the ground, and the crash of our doors slamming shut bounces back at us even louder. “Let’s work on identifying this guy, so we can figure out who and what we’re dealing with. It’s possible he was in law enforcement, but maybe he was crooked and pissed off the wrong cartel.”
“Oh! So you admit thisismafia-related?” Minka explodes. “Like I said.”
“I’m saying I see the merit in your assumption. But it’s got nothing to do with the Malones, so calm the hell down.” I keep the phone to my ear, my conversation going, but I come up on Fletch’s right and start toward the underground entrance to the precinct. “If we follow this through to law enforcement, that means we’re gonna point fingers at other cops.”
Fletch digs his hands into his pockets, a defense against the trouble we’re about to throw ourselves into, and lets out a muted scoff. “It’s not like Captain Bower isn’t already gunning for us. What, with our demotions and ass-kicking.”
“We keep it clean,” I tell him. “We don’t say shit about cops until we know one way or the other. Until then, he’s just our John Doe.” I bring my attention back to Minka. “We’re heading inside now. We’re gonna set up the war room and see what we see.”
“I’ll keep working the body,” she says in return. “I’ll try my best to get you an identity on my end. You do your thing. Hopefully, we meet in the middle and come up with an answer that pleases the captain and gets the job done.”
“Yeah, no more demotions, please.” Fletch pulls open the glass door and steps back to let me through. “Single dad here, trying to raise his little girl all on his own. I kinda need my salary to keep the power on.”
“No more demotions,” Minka agrees solemnly. “I’ll talk to you later, Detectives.”
“Yep.” I don’t say I love her, though I want to. The same way I want to hold her hand and press my lips to hers when we’re working, but I know I can’t. “I’ll see you in a bit,” I say instead.At home. When we’re together again and it’s just the two of us.
Hanging up and dropping the phone into my pocket, I step onto the escalator that cuts through our building just a single beat before my partner. “You having money troubles?” I glance down at Fletch and raise a brow. “Need a hand to make ends meet?”
“No, I got it. But if we could get a pay raise soon, that’d be cool.”
I dip my hands into my pockets and chuckle. “I’m sorry shit went down the way it did. Your pay-cut is on me.”
“It’s totally on you.” His words are hard, but when our eyes meet, his are smiling. “I eat ramen sometimes because of you and your wife, Arch. I hope that knowledge keeps you awake at night.”
“I mean…” He’s playing with me, but at the same time… he’s not. “It wasn’t,” I admit, “because I didn’t know. But it will now. How much do you need to be comfortable?”
I might not be mafia anymore, and I definitely don’t benefit from the funds that wash through the rest of my family. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a nest egg set aside for a new life. Documents. A way to print money, just in case I run out.
“I could hook you up,” I offer. “No strings attached. No repayment needed. It’s yours: my thanks. Ya know…”for not tossing me to the captain when you could have.
He barks out a laugh and steps off the escalator a beat behind me. “That’s more than a few laws broken, Arch. Collusion, blackmail, conspiracy, not to mention Laramie Fentone’s murder, and the means by which you’ll create the money you give me.”
“My crimes,” I growl low on my breath, “my crosses to bear. You’re just… receiving money from a pal. It’s as simple and clean as that.”
He shakes his head and blows past our desks the second we enter the homicide division. Moving into a meeting room and dropping the window shades with asnap, he goes to a fresh whiteboard and grabs a black marker. Immediately, he writes ‘JOHN DOE’ at the top, in the middle. “I’m good. Bills are being paid, my daughter is fed and happy, and life is just…” he stops and shrugs so his shoulder holsters lift with the movement. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.”
Turning his back on me, he moves to the left of the board and writesCopeland River. And beneath that,possible cargo van: black or white. Peering over his shoulder, he meets my eyes with a smirk. “I won’t pursue the hoverboard theory just yet.”
“Save it for later,” I agree.
Taking out a chair at the table in the middle of the room, I drop into it, then unlock my phone screen and scroll back through the photographs we took while on scene.
We’ll have more on the official department camera. And Minka will have hundreds, perhaps thousands, more on hers. But I hit print on the few I want and peer across the room as the printer I’ve used a million times before fires to life.
“Mayet said he has a few hundred lacerations all over his body,” I relay. “Shallow. Painful, but not deadly.”
Getting up from my chair, I rescue the first photograph of our vic, and study his bloated face. The thinning spot of hair at the top of his forehead, and the salt and pepper graying of his well-trimmed beard.
Grabbing a magnet and stopping in front of the board, I slap the still-warm picture up beside his temporary name. “Let’s find out who he is. Who wanted him dead. And bonus points if we figure out the secret he may or may not have shared before they killed him.”
“Oh goody.”
Fletch moves to the right and quickly sketches a chair that somewhat, barely, resembles the one our investigators will bring to us once they’re done scouring the crime scene.
