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“Says she was home all alone,” Fletch inserts.
“Gates didn’t open last night,” I continue. For us, and for the record. “Didn’t open again until the maid came in.”
“So our vic isstillalone,” he concludes.
“Netflix was running all night. Maid’s statement says she switched the television off when she came in this morning.”
“Anna might’ve turned it on,” he ponders. “Slipped into bed. Decided to watch something. Popped her pills and just…” he folds his arms, but lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “Went to sleep.”
“You’re leaning toward suicide?” I push away from the alarm panel and start toward the kitchen. “You don’t see anythingoff?”
“I see a woman who overdosed,” he concludes. “A young, beautiful, successful, fit and otherwise healthy woman who had a million things to live for, succumbing to narcotics. Maybe she did it by accident, her old injury from the car wreck was perhaps bothering her more than usual. Or, I mean… she’s tired. Maybe she took some oxy at lunchtime, to smooth out the edges. She’s been on tour, Arch. Big days, long nights. Time got away from her, and her memory is spotty from exhaustion. She took a couple more pills last night and thought she’d settle in with a TV show. Maybe she messed up, as simple as that. Didn’t even realize what she’d done.”
He follows me into the kitchen as I stroll around the massive stone counter and peek into the sink, which is messy with a single butter knife, a plate, two wine glasses smudged with lipstick and fingerprints, and a squared-off apple core, telling that the eaten pieces were sliced off instead of bitten.
“Or maybe she did it on purpose,” he concedes. “Maybe she wanted out of this world. It’s no secret that money and success don’t fix things if there’s a mental thing at play.”
I nod. “Let’s see if we can find her therapist. If she was suicidal, chances are, they would know. If she’s not, then we explore homicide.”
I leave the apple core untouched in the sink and turn to meet my partner’s gaze. “The fact her death was unattended does not rule it out. We have to check every angle on this. So let’s also figure out who she’s hanging out with these days. Who is she dating? Who is she partying with? We should talk with her security team, too, because they’ll know firsthand who her more obsessed fans were.”
“Such a waste,” he murmurs, dropping his hands to his hips and his eyes down to his boots. “Successful women, fucking around with pills like they’re candy instead of a substance that can kill them.”
“Yeah, well…” I watch as, in the hall outside the kitchen, the George Stanley medical facility’s transport driver strides in with a stretcher and a thousand camerasclick-click-clickingfrom the gate of the estate.
Long-range lenses mean they get to see inside, no matter how much we don’t want them to.
“Have you talked to Jada recently?” I bring my attention back to Fletch, but though his face is down, I don’t miss the disappointment in his expression. The frustration.
Because his ex-wife was once a successful woman, too. Young, beautiful, lively, and desired by countless others. Then she dabbled in drugs and made some bad choices. Her marriage fell apart. Her life as she knew it changed. She stopped giving a shit about anything except her next hit and, too often, flirted with the risk of an OD.
Everyone has their own path in life. Their own priorities.
But Fletch and Jada have a little girl to consider in all this. And for the last several months, Jada hasn’t given a single thought to the newly turned four-year-old at all. She hasn’t once put the child above her own selfish needs.
So while we work a case and stare down at a woman whose life resembles that of his ex-wife, even though it’s me who can claim the vic as an acquaintance, it’s Fletch who may need help accepting whatever outcome we find: accidental, on purpose… or something else entirely.
“Let’s get these wrapped up and sent to the lab.” I release him from my stare and look down at the sink instead. “Knife and plate will provide prints. Apple and wine glasses might get us DNA. CSUs will pull this house apart and find us a million other prints to sift through, and in the meantime—”
“Probably should start with the maid.” He sniffles back whatever emotion sits in his throat and straightens his shoulders, his chest broadening with the movement, and his holster tightening as the tension pulls at the leather. “She called it in. She was the last to see the vic alive, and the first to see her this morning. Uniforms have already taken a statement, but—”
“But it’s our turn. Got it.”
I turn on my heels, but instead of heading out the front door, I move upstairs and into Anna’s bedroom to find Minka and Aubree still hard at work.
There’s no blood on this scene. No violence. No defensive destruction to work through, or wounds to catalogue. There’s just a woman… sleeping forever.
“Doctors.”
Minka doesn’t look up from her study of Anna’s feet, checking between each toe, and in the creases in the arch. But her spine stiffens a little in response to my voice. “Yes, Detective?”
“Fletch and I are heading back to the station. Are you…”Okay? Safe? Hungry? Do you need me to stay? Would youlikeme to stay?“Are you good?”
Her lips curl into a small grin I see in profile. “We’re good. Transport is here, so we’re bringing Ms. Switzer back to the George Stanley and running the full autopsy.” Releasing Anna’s manicured foot, Minka sets her right hand on the bed and uses it to push up straight. Her long, brown hair dangles in her face, a lock obscuring one eye, but she doesn’t use her gloved hand to push the strands back. She merely shakes her head and lives with the momentary annoyance. “I expect we’ll be back in-house within the hour. I intend to have a preliminary report on your desk by COB today. Toxicology might take a little longer, but we’ll do our best to assist you in this case.”
She could leave our discussion there. Closed. Satisfactory. But I catch a glint in her eyes that speaks of more than frustration at loose hair and a sore shoulder.
I tilt my head, mytellto let her know I see her. That I hear what’s not being said. So she exhales a huff of air and peels her gloves away, then turns to Aubree and slips her gloves in the little plastic baggy her second in charge already knows to offer.
