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We have a list of ‘To Talk To’, that includes her security team, her maid, her therapist, her publicist, and her best friend. We have dozens of interviews to trudge through in hopes of getting a clearer picture of who this woman was when she’s not showing off for a crowd. And at the top of that list is Mayor Justin Lawrence.
And he’s not taking my fucking calls.
“Let’s start with the maid,” Fletch repeats from earlier. He’s the calm in our storm, when I truly expected him to be a mess because of his experiences with Jada. “It’s getting on four o’clock. Mayet’s report will be close to done by now, and we’ve spent the whole day chasing a man who doesn’t wanna talk to us. So let’s skip him and go to the next.”
“The fact he’s running kinda implies guilt, Charlie!” I spin on my heels and crush my phone in my palm. “Lawrence is jerking us around, and I have a feeling we’re gonna find out some nasty shit that’ll lead to an arrest. Which will lead to an upset wife,” I shake my head and yank out a chair on the opposite side of the table.
Our station pulses outside our war room door, the bullpen buzzing with hundreds of other cops running their own cases, and Captain Bower overseeing them all. But we have our own mess in here.
Aggravated, I drop into my chair and huff out a cleansing breath that empties my chest. Then I bring my free hand up and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Why would he call us in and make damn sure we know he’s invested, then throw up walls and not cooperate?”
“Because he has a relationship with the vic. And whatever that relationship is, it’s a secret he doesn’t want you to delve into.”
“So why call Minka in the first place?” I drop my hand and pin my partner with a glare. “Why voluntarily put the spotlight on himself? He could’ve shut his mouth and said nothing at all, and different cops would have run the case.”
“Guthrie just admitted that Lawrence called the vic yesterday and the day before. No matter which cop runs this case, they’re gonna pull phone records, and his connection was gonna pop. He couldn’t hide from this by keeping his mouth shut. But hecouldget control of it by assigning investigators.”
“And this prick assignedus.” I scratch my stubbled jaw and think, think, think for a beat. Then I drop my hand again and unlock my phone screen. “You call the maid,” I tell Fletch. “Get her moving this way so we can have a chat.”
“Sure.” He dials the number we have on the whiteboard, but he watches me. “Who are you calling?”
Instead of answering him, I press her name and bring the device to my ear.
“Detective Malone?”
“Minka Mayet, you’d better call your damn mayor and figure out what the fuck is going on, because he’s stonewalling me and making himself look pretty fucking guilty of a crime that’ll end with him in an orange jumpsuit for the rest of his life. Something tells me pretty boy Lawrence won’t be fond of his new wardrobe.”
MINKA
“Can you put her away?” Slipping my cell into my pocket, I step away from the cold steel slab inside Autopsy Room One, but stop near the door and glance back at Aubree as she works in an apron, glasses, and gloves. “I need to make a call,” I tell her quietly. Then louder, since we’re on the record, “Chief Medical Examiner, Minka Mayet, is stepping out of the autopsy room at four-oh-three p.m. June fifteen, two thousand and twenty-two.”
I peel my protective glasses away, then remove my plastic apron that keeps my coat relatively clean. “I’ll be in my office,” I tell Aubs, “writing up the report after I make my call.” And because I know she’ll want to follow, I add, “Give me twenty minutes.”
Turning on my heels and swinging the heavy glass door wide open, I break the seal on the room, and stride into the hallway of a building that is essentially all glass.
Walls, windows, offices. All of it.
“Doctor Mayet?” Seraphina Lewis is prim, proper, highly strung, and entirely too uptight to work with people as sarcastic as my team. But she stalks out of the elevator now, wielding a clipboard the way others might a sword. “Minka,” she presses,clip-clip-clipping her way toward me in heels.
But I’m heading her direction anyway, so the second I pass her, she’s forced to spin around and catch up again.
“Anna Switzer!” she huffs impatiently at my back.
“Is a high-profile case.” I state the obvious to our media relations…person—I may not know her title, but I know that my reasoning for our discretion on this matter should be clear—and after tugging my office door open, I stride around my heavy wooden desk and drop down with athwumpof exhaustion. “I do not now, and never will, have a statement on that. If you need something for the media, I suggest you contact the investigating officers.”
“The phones are ringing off the hook, Minka.”
We’re friends outside this building; pretty decent friends, if I were being entirely honest about the situation I’m not entirely comfortable with. So the fact she calls me ‘Minka’ doesn’t come as a total surprise.
Though, it’s not a name she typically uses inside this building. Normally, she saves it for when we’re at a bar, and our sarcasm is grating on her nerves.
“The world knows Anna Switzer is dead,” she says, softening her tone. “I don’t know who leaked the news, but it’s gone international. And since our transport bus was spotted at the house, they know where she is.”
“Doesn’t mean they get information.” I tap my computer mouse to bring the old machine to life. “Doesn’t mean I’ll speak to the media about a body I was entrusted to take care of. I don’t know if Chant got off on giving interviews and speeches, but I’m not gonna follow in her bullshit, corrupt footsteps, Fifi. I’m not speaking to the press, so my answer will always be ‘refer to the investigating officers’.”
Seraphina—Fifi, when she annoys us—lowers into my single visitor chair and drops her files on to her pencil-skirted lap. “She wasn’t just a singer, Minka. She was a famous dancer too. Anna was one of the most graceful performers I ever saw. Add in her amazing voice, and you end up with record deals and fame. Merchandise. Acting roles. Advertising campaigns. She began as a kid whose parents tossed her into dancing school and beauty pageants as often as they could, and eventually, something stuck.” She stops and shrugs. “One day, she was just a nobody, ya know? And the next, she was everywhere, and everyone wanted a piece of her.”
I study my computer screen instead of the beautiful brunette who long ago caught Detective Fletcher’s perverted and charming eye. “Why are you telling me this? I don’t do pop culture, Fifi. I don’t know who the vic is. In fact, I don’tneedto know who she is to do my job. I just know she’s dead, and now I have to find out how. Hmm…” I stop on the report the toxicology lab sent up, and frown as I scan each line. “She didn’t only have oxy in her system.”
