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Kathryn powered up a Stryker saw and brought it down to Allie’s skull. Lindsay’s shock was still fresh. Whenever he’d imagined that skull over the past months, he’d always imagined it lying on a beach somewhere tropical, its owner grinning smugly as she sipped from a cocktail and leaned back on her hand. He’d seen the money in her bank account, watched as withdrawals were made over and over again. He’d genuinely believed that she was alive and sticking the middle finger to every law enforcement agency that existed as she lived on her drug cartel money with her equally corrupt partner.
Lindsay swallowed thickly, adjusting his plastic goggles as bits of skin and skull made a sheen of dust in front of Kathryn’s intensely focused face.
This part was always the worst.
He had to wait, staring at the wall, as Kathryn cut the top of Allie’s skull clean off. How somebody could do that to another human being – even a dead one – was beyond him. Lindsay could reach into a person’s past, into the darkest recesses of their mind, and figure out what they’d done. But he couldn’t reach inside their bodies and figure out how they’d met their maker.
After what seemed like an eternity, the loud whining noise stopped. Kathryn placed the saw on the bench beside her and used two hands to gently wiggle the top of Allie’s skull free. That was the moment Lindsay decided he had about three minutes in him before he needed to puke.
Lindsay made a face under his mask, pocketing the vial that held his precious bullet of evidence. He stripped his gloves off, trying not to look directly at the hideously decomposed brain Kathryn was lifting out of Allie’s open skull. Now. Got to leave, right the fuck now. The worst part of leaving this room was knowing his clothes would still smell like death long after he’d left the building. He should have thought ahead and changed into a less expensive suit.
‘Next time, don’t wear your Armani,’ Kathryn said, apparently reading his mind.
‘I’ll call you from the lab,’ Lindsay replied, swallowing back coffee and stomach acid. ‘Have fun.’
Kathryn snickered.
Lindsay was about to high-tail it when he noticed the two cups of coffee sitting on a filing cabinet in the hallway, probably stone cold by now.
‘Your coffee’s going cold out here,’ he called through the remaining crack in the door.
‘It always does,’ Kathryn replied. ‘You enjoy yours.’
He wouldn’t; he left it where it sat, a sacrificial lamb left on a filing cabinet altar. He rushed outside, taking the stairs two at a time, and just made it to the bottom and outside before he heaved his stomach up, all over a rose bush that was thriving despite the dry Los Angeles climate.
* * *
Back at the Bureau’s main office downtown, Lindsay lucked out. It was late, but a ballistics tech was still kicking around the lab, blasting some pop shit at a volume that made Lindsay want to jump out of a window, or smash the computer it was coming from, all distorted and tinny. Nobody appreciated quality these days. They didn’t even buy their music, just downloaded it from torrent websites, and they were the fucking FBI.
Nothing was the way it used to be. Lindsay was only forty, but he felt old. Worn out. Twenty years in the force kind of had that effect.
‘Hey,’ Lindsay called from the doorway of the laboratory. He didn’t want to walk in unheard and spook the lab tech – this was a room full of guns and bullets, for Christ’s sake – but the dude working at his computer was totally oblivious.
Lindsay rolled his eyes, marched in and slammed the specimen jar on the desk so hard the whole thing rattled.
The guy jumped so high, Lindsay was surprised his head didn’t hit the fucking ceiling.
Lindsay blinked, his patience fraying, as the lab tech scrambled for the mute button.
‘I need a bullet run.’
The guy started typing, barely glancing at Lindsay. ‘I’m off the clock in five,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a booking at Romera’s. Leave it with me and I’ll add it to the pile.’
Lindsay ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the faint remnants of coffee and vomit. No. He would not add it to the pile.
‘A cop was killed. She washed up in Long Beach this morning. This bullet’s the only thing we have. I guess Romera’s is gonna have to wait.’
The tech paled, his eyes meeting Lindsay’s as he held out his palm. Lindsay smiled congenially, smacking the jar into his hand.
‘Give me thirty minutes,’ the tech said.
Lindsay nodded. ‘I’ll be back in ten.’
Time enough to get coffee from the Starbucks down on Westwood and drive around in the peace that one could only enjoy in downtown LA in the quiet of the night. He drove as he sipped his Americano, all the while theorising how Alexandra Baxter had met her death. He was betting on a certain DEA agent called Christopher Murphy, who hadn’t been seen or heard from in the same time that Allie had been missing. Had he killed her? Dumped her body and fled, keeping their shared steals to himself?
Or was it just a matter of time before his body washed up, a matching bullet hole for a crab to burrow into and make a home?
* * *
