“He’s persistent, but he doesn’t interfere with us doing our jobs.”
“He’s persistent with you, but he’s always worse with me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She shook her head hard enough to make her ponytail bounce. “It doesn’t matter right now; what does matter is you getting to see the evidence before Adam pillages it.” She crossed her arms, her face far more unhappy than I expected from dealing with any coworker. I felt like I was missing something but didn’t know what question to ask. For a second it felt like being back with Reggie, trying to figure out what women want, or what one woman in particular wants, or means. I closed my eyes and took a few deep, even breaths, trying to find my balance, trying to find me after therapy had ripped me open. Okay, after dealing with Reggie had made me deliriously happy, miserable, and confused.
“Sorry, Havoc, was therapy rough?”
I opened my eyes and shook my head. “The parking lot conversation was hard. She accused me of trying to follow her around to see if she was dating anyone else.”
Lila sighed and closed her eyes as if I’d said a lot more than that. “Annie accused me of that, too.”
“I know I haven’t done it, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” I said.
“I followed her after she accused me of doing it.”
I must have looked surprised, because she added, “I know my wife, my ex-wife, she’s crazy, but there’s a logic to it. I was pretty sure if she accused me of it, she was worried I would follow her, so I did.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I wanted to know, and she’d brought it up. “You don’t have to answer, but was she?”
“Cheating on me, oh yeah. She’d found this cute brunette working as a barista at one of the coffee shops near her work. If I’d wanted proof, I could have taken plenty of pictures, she wasn’t being careful.”
“Did she want you to find out?” I asked.
Lila shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t think she cheated while we were together, but Annie isn’t a woman who likes to be alone. Once we weren’t living together, I wasn’t surprised she went looking for someone else to sleep over with.”
“Reggie is okay alone; her independence was one of the things that I liked about her.”
“Annie is not independent; she likes someone to take care of her, but then if you take care of her too much she feels smothered.”
“Sounds like a no-win situation,” I said.
Lila just nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And I’m sorry your marriage is going to shit, too.”
I smiled before I could stop it and told her about Reggie wanting to clear the air tomorrow before our dinner date. By the time I was finished Lila was grinning at me.
“That’s awesome, Havoc, really awesome.”
“Thanks, remind me to talk to Charleston about the time off tomorrow.”
“Will do, now let’s see if we can sneak past Adam and let you see what we found.”
“Come on, Lila, give me a hint, what’s got you so excited?”
“I guess I could say standing next to a stud like you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
I laughed. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“You’ll see it in a few minutes. Charleston told me not to tell you ahead of time in case it’s not what we think it is; he doesn’t want me to contaminate your expectations or something like that.”
“He’s the lieutenant,” I said.
She reached for the door handle, then said, “Don’t talk until we’re in the room with the stuff; if Thornton hears your voice, he won’t let us see it without him hovering.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
She frowned at me. “You use some of the oldest, fuddy-duddy expressions sometimes, Havoc. You’d think you were old enough to be someone’s grandpa.”
“Where I was raised that’s just the way everyone talks,” I said.
“Oh, Havoc, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget you were raised in a monastery.”
“I was raised at the College of Angels,” I said.
“From what I hear, same diff, except it’s co-ed.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and she must have realized it, so she saved us both from an awkward moment by opening the door, peering through, and then waving me inside. Apparently, the coast was clear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Adam Thornton appeared from around the corner near the break room. He had on latex gloves and was carrying a large, empty paper bag. His gray eyes were very serious behind the round, black frames of his glasses. He was short and slender, and politically incorrect words like effeminate came to mind every time I saw him, which was probably why he always kept his brown hair cut short and very traditionally male-presenting.
“Give it up, Havoc,” he said, his voice sharp, and if you didn’t know him, you’d think he was angry, but he always sounded like that. If he hadn’t been brilliant in the lab and at seeing things that everyone else missed, he’d have been fired, but instead he kept getting promoted. The ME just tried to keep him away from people, living people; the dead didn’t mind that he had the social skills of a cranky rhinoceros.
“Hey, Adam, it’s nice to see you, too.”
He scowled at me. “You know I don’t do social pleasantries, so we don’t have to pretend, just give me my evidence and I’ll leave.”
“I told you that you can have the evidence after Havoc has seen it,” Lila said, peeking out from behind me. I didn’t realize that she’d been hidden from Adam’s sight line until he jumped like she’d yelled boo.
“I-I don’t mean the evidence you collected from the house, Li-Lila. I mean the evidence from the hospital.”
Him stuttering when he talked to Lila was interesting; maybe there was more than one reason he bugged her more than the rest of us. “You should have all the evidence from the hospital,” I told him. If he had a crush on Lila, I wasn’t going to mention it.
His scowl deepened until I wanted to use my thumbs to rub his forehead smooth. I knew he was over thirty, older than me, actually, but he looked like he was still in his early twenties, except when he frowned hard enough and then he almost looked his age.
“Don’t play games with me, Havoc.”
“I’m not playing, Adam, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“First, stop calling me by my first name, and second, your shirt. Your shirt became evidence once you were attacked. You should never have left the crime scene with it.”
I looked down at my shirt as if it had just appeared on me and realized two things. First, there was no blood on my shirt, but there were claw marks in the cloth—that made no sense; second, that made it even more evidence. “Okay, Thornton, you’re right, I should have had it entered into evidence at the hospital.”
The frown softened and he looked puzzled. “So, you’re just admitting you were wrong?”
“Yes.”
He frowned, stopped frowning, and looked at me with those big eyes behind the glasses like he didn’t know what to do next. Not for the first time I wondered if he was on the autism spectrum somewhere, but I could never figure out a way to ask, and as long as he did his job it didn’t matter anyway.
“Most people get angry when you tell them they’re wrong,” he said, frowning again.
“I don’t get angry when I’m in the wrong. I’ve got an extra shirt in the locker room; let me change and you can have this one.”
He shook the paper bag at me hard enough for it to rattle. “No, you’ve compromised its value as evidence enough as is, just take it off and put it in the bag.”
“Adam,” Lila said, “you’re being unreasonable again.”
“I haven’t forgotten that you’ve kept me from a vital piece of evidence either, Li-Li . . . Detective Bridges. I will be waiting until the rest of the evidence from the home is ready to be transported.”
“I thought you were in a hurry to get Havoc’s shirt back to the lab,” she
said, her voice far too sweet for the circumstances. Lila is at her most underhanded when she sounds like that.
The other officers were beginning to stop what they were doing to look at us side-eyed. The buzz of the room was growing quieter as they started trying to listen in on us. Cops are some of the nosiest busybodies on the planet, or we can be.
“You can follow me into the locker room and watch me take it off,” I offered.
He shook the bag at me again. “Just give me the shirt and I can get back to processing evidence, I’ve wasted enough time hunting the shirt down.”
Not hunting me down but hunting the shirt down. Adam often talked about objects instead of people. “Just let me change and you can have it.”
“Just take it off and give it to me.”
“I am not going to strip off here when we can just go back into the locker rooms.”
“Oh, come on, Havoc, give us a little show,” Detective Athena Ravensong called out from her desk. She was one of the most senior members of the squad, same age as Charleston, but where he hit the gym and watched his nutrition, Ravensong ate cheerfully. She did everything with joyous gusto, so she looked more like someone’s slightly overweight grandmother than one of the most powerful witches in the western half of the country.
“Athena, you’re being sexist and objectifying Havoc; we had a mandatory class on that,” Detective Raymond Stiltskin said as he walked through the squad room with a cup of coffee almost bigger than he was. He looked fat in the boxy suit and jacket, but he wasn’t. In fact, he was one of the most serious weight lifters in the department. He was also one of the shortest; combined with the serious weight lifting, getting a suit that fit his shoulders meant that he looked like he was wearing his dad’s suits. He had the sleeves and pants hemmed because he had to, but other than that like most cops he couldn’t afford professional tailoring, or better yet a tailored designer suit, maybe something from Italy. Nothing short of that was going to make Stiltskin look good in suits.
“He doesn’t mind an old lady admiring the view, do you, Havoc?” She waggled her eyebrows behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
I chuckled, because Athena had the ability to say almost anything and make it funny instead of offensive.
“If you take the shirt off here, she can admire the view and I can get back to work,” Adam said, holding the bag out to me like a kid at trick-or-treat.
“Athena isn’t the only one here; for the consideration of others we need to do this in the locker room,” I said.
“As long as I finish this report before I leave today, I don’t care who takes off what,” Detective MacGregor said. He peered at his computer screen over the half glasses he’d picked up at the nearest Walgreens. They were cheater glasses, but the way MacGregor kept leaning into the screen they weren’t helping much. He was MacGregor number one, or Old MacGregor until we found a nickname for the new guy.
“You need new glasses, Mac,” Stiltskin said as he went back to his desk with the coffee.
“I’m fine,” MacGregor said, moving closer to the screen and then away from it, as if trying to find the perfect distance.
“Come on, Adam, let’s hit the locker room, so we can both get back to work,” I said. I even started to move that direction, but he moved in front of me, blocking the way.
“Everyone’s fine with us doing it here.”
I looked down at the smaller man and searched his face, but he truly had taken everyone at face value. They said they were fine with me stripping off in front of them, so as far as Adam was concerned it was okay.
I looked at the larger room to the unit members who hadn’t spoken up and said, “Can someone help me explain this to him?”
Athena chimed in with, “Havoc is shy, it would make him uncomfortable to change in public.”
“Why?” Adam asked, looking from her to me.
Stiltskin left his coffee at his desk and came to stand near us. He was short enough that he had to look up at Adam; I wondered if he got a crick in his neck when he gave me eye contact. He lowered his voice, so that he wasn’t talking to the entire squad room.
“Wouldn’t it embarrass you to strip out of your shirt in front of everyone?”
Adam seemed to actually have to give that some thought before he said, “It might, but other people have been making fun of me for being a man of slight build for most of my life. Havoc doesn’t have that issue.”
“Just because Havoc and I both have more muscles than you do doesn’t mean we’d be comfortable taking our shirts off here in the squad room,” Stiltskin said.
“But why, if you both look fit and muscular with your shirts off?”
Officer Odette Minis said, “It’s not professional to take off your clothes at work.” She had her uniform hat under one arm, so her tight cornrows showed in the bun at the back of her neck. Her hair was almost the same pale honey brown as her skin. If she’d had brown eyes, she’d have been monochrome, but her gray eyes looked almost bluish in the dark blue uniform. She was one of the uniforms who had scored so high on the psychic and magical assessment that she was ours as a test run. If her week of being with us in uniform went well, she’d be temporary plainclothes like Officer Goliath MacGregor, but she already had one thing he didn’t seem to have. We had plenty of psychics and witches, but common sense, that was rare everywhere.
Adam nodded. “Okay, I understand that.” He stepped aside so I could lead the way to the locker room.
I mouthed a thank you to Officer Minis as we passed. She nodded and smiled.
“I guess I’ll have to actually go to the gym if I’m ever going to see Havoc’s six-pack,” Athena called after us.
Officer Minis’s smile went up a notch. I watched her gray-blue eyes give me the up-and-down look. I fought not to return the look, because I’d noticed the first week that her uniform fit her well. I had done my best not to think too much beyond that. I was happy that I’d gone to couples counseling before I came back in to work, because now I had a dinner date with my wife, and we’d actually kissed. Those facts helped me not to flirt with yet another woman today.
I walked resolutely toward the locker room with Adam and his paper bag trailing behind me. I swore I could feel Minis staring at me. I did not look back to see if she was staring at my ass, because that was on her; if I looked back and smiled at her, then it was on me. I made the locker room without looking back. Point for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The locker room was empty except for us. Adam watched me solemnly, not looking away, so I used my body to hide my combination as I spun the lock. It wasn’t that I thought he would steal from me, but I’d worked too long as a police officer to trust much of anyone.
It meant my back was to Adam as I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook in the locker. The holes in the jacket were from Kate’s nails, not the demon. I undid my belt so I wouldn’t have to pull the dress shirt over the stomach wounds. It meant that everything on it slid around a little, but I figured I was safe enough in the locker room. Then Adam started to crowd me.
“I need your jacket, too,” Adam said.
“If you’re looking for claw marks so you can identify the type of demon, you only need the shirt.”
“You’ve got bandages on your right arm, Havoc, that means I need the jacket to help us line up the cuts in the shirt.”
“The arm isn’t from the demon,” I said.
“Did you have an altercation with something else today?”
I hesitated, because the truth was, yes. I just hated to out Kate. She wanted to be human like everyone else; if I told the truth to Adam, he had no filters. He wouldn’t talk about an ongoing case, but he might talk about Kate to the wrong person. If it had been almost anyone else in the ME’s office, I’d have told them the truth, and of course they would have just called me to bring my clothes down to them. No one but Adam would have chased me down like this.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said, and knew it was the wrong thing to have said a
s soon as I saw his jaw clench.
“I am good at my job, Detective Havelock,” he said; his eyes darkened like gray clouds filling up with rain.
“I know you are, Adam, I mean Assistant to the Medical Examiner Thornton.” Something on the bandages had caught on the shirtsleeve so I couldn’t get it over them.
“I am not stupid, Detective.”
“I never said you were.” I tried to force the sleeve over, but it actually hurt to press on it. Scratches always hurt worse than deep wounds at first, more nerve endings exposed to the air.
“Then why is it hard to explain to me? Are you afraid I won’t understand the attack, the demon, or the magic involved?”
“No, that’s not what I meant at all,” I said, and tried to think of a way to save the conversation without hurting Kate. She’d been hurt enough for one day.
“I know more magic than you do.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I said, and finally gave up getting the sleeve over the bandages, which meant I turned to the other man with the shirt hanging off my arms like I couldn’t dress myself.
“Then why are you insinuating that I won’t understand a simple demon attack?” he asked, his gray eyes the color of storm clouds. Apparently, he was one of those people whose eyes just got darker the more pissed they were; if they reached black, I wondered what would happen.
“First, there was nothing simple about the attack,” I said, but he wasn’t looking at me, or he wasn’t looking at my face. He was staring at my stomach.
He reached out to touch my stomach. I jerked back out of reach and that hurt, but I didn’t want him touching my bare stomach. Maybe I’d been too fast to say he wasn’t bisexual, because he tried to touch my stomach again.
“Stop it, Thornton. We don’t know each other that well.”
He frowned up at me. “I’m not trying to touch your abs, I’m trying to get a sense of the demon marks. Did anyone get pictures of your wounds or take measurements?”
“Pictures, yes, but no measurements,” I said.
“That was careless,” he said.
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