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“Will do.”
When Aubree dashes through the gap I make, I step out of the office and turn toward the elevators.
“Doctor Mayet,” Aubree starts immediately. “Homicide on Fifth and Forty-Third. It’s a sex crime involving a minor. Detectives out of Midtown request a medical examiner on scene. Who do you wanna send?”
“We’ll go.”
I come to a stop just a few feet from Minka’s door and hear her sigh. I feel her exhaustion in my blood as she steps around her chair and pushes it back under the desk.
“Flynn’s busy with Sorenzo,” she recaps for her second in command, “and Torres and Kirk are working the double outta Midtown.”
“Hey!” Fletch calls to me from his place by the elevator.
The silver doors have slid open, and I’m still twenty-five feet away.
He places his foot on the threshold so they don’t close and leave us behind. “We gotta run, Arch. Leave Delicious alone so she can get on with her day.”
“Yeah.”
My heart nags at me to stay close, to keep her within my sight. But my brain says,Get back to work, dickhead. And, as it so often does, since I’m a homicide detective, my brain wins, and my heart has to take a seat and wait.
Breaking away from my place and moving toward the elevator, I step inside and turn as Fletch follows me in. “To the hospital?”
“Yup.” He selects the button for the ground level and moves back to lean against the handrail on my right. “This one tastes like vigilante justice, huh?”
“What?” I wrench my neck and look his way as nerves slam my stomach and stop in my throat. “What do you mean?”
“This doctor who kills one to save another.” Nonchalant, he rolls his shoulders and has no clue heknowsthe vigilante. “The recipient could’ve been a kid in need, and maybe the victim is a piece of shit who had it coming.”
“First of all,” I growl, “That’s not for anyone to decide. Not you, not me, and not the fucking killer. Second, this isn’t vigilante. We haven’t heard from them in months. In fact, it sounds to me like the vigilante has moved on with their life and isn’t a problem for us anymore.”
“So you’re…” He looks across at me as the doors open on the ground floor. “The vigilante just walks free? You’re bored with that case?”
“Can we stop calling themthe vigilante? It’s a label the media sensationalized for ratings. It adds more importance than needed. Besides, Justin Dowel raped and killed little girls, Fletch. No matter my feelings on all this, his killer, right or wrong, put an end to his reign. I was willing to hunt the guy down and put him behind bars, but the trail went cold a long time ago.”No, it didn’t! Minka killed Dowel. “It’s been months since we last heard about that case, and call me crazy, but we’ve had other, more important things to do.”
More important things like keeping Minka out of prison.
While my best friend merely stares, I take off through the elevator doors. “Just let it go already.”
Fletch has to practically jog to keep up as I cross the lobby. “Just so we’re clear, we’renotthinking the steal-from-the-metaphorically-rich-and-give-to-the-organless-poor killer is the wholesome defeater-of-bad-guys vigilante?”
“Correct.” I take the keys from my pocket and beat my partner through the lobby doors and to our cruiser parked out front. “I don’t think it’s the same person. In fact, I don’t think that person exists anymore. I thinkthe vigilantehad a bone to pick with Dowel. They took care of it and eliminated a rapist from our streets. Now they’ve moved on to live a nice, normal, non-threatening life somewhere else.”
Shoving the key into the ignition and turning over the engine, I check my blind spots and pull the car away from the medical examiner’s building. “I think Dowel’s case will forever be one we don’t solve. Now drop the fucking topic and focus on the case at hand.”
“You’re sensitive, you know that?” Fixing his seatbelt while I cross the driveway and enter Copeland City traffic, Fletch lets his legs drop wide and his eyes come across to me. “Why are you sensitive about that case?”
“Because it’s a shitty case.”
“Because we never solved it, and you’re pissy because your ego doesn’t like being bested?”
“Sure.”
It takes only a minute and a straight line to go from the George Stanley to Copeland Memorial Hospital. Pulling into a parking space out front, I kill the engine and snag the keys, then I slide out of the car. “Let’s talk to Nicki and see if she has anything to add.”
“Nicki?” Again, Fletch is forced to run to keep up. “As in, Nicola Cleary? Your former flame and bed buddy?”
“Formerdate,” I grit out. “Friendship. No flames, no beds.”
