by Erin Hayes
She caught sight of her watch. It was a few minutes before nine. Looking up, she saw the other detectives moving toward the end of the room, where she’d set up the pock-marked corkboard for a briefing. Grabbing her notebook, and the file of CSI photos, she stood up. The cup on her desk held the dregs of her most recent cup of coffee. It was cold, but she drank it anyway, grimacing. The butterflies and bats in her stomach had long ago succumbed to the acidic coffee, leaving her with a leaden lump in her throat. Derek stopped by her desk, his ever-present notebook in his hand. It was reassuring, somehow, and she gave him a smile.
“You ready for your first briefing, Sharpe? It’s not that hard. Just lay it out, what we have, what you want done. Delegate.” He punched her in the shoulder, a little harder than she thought necessary, knocking her back half a step. She rubbed her arm.
“I could have you arrested for assaulting an officer, you know?”
“You wouldn’t dare.” His smile widened. “I’m your friend, remember?”
She pushed past him. “Yeah. I remember. Come on. Can’t be late to my first briefing.”
Derek followed her parking himself on the edge of a nearby desk. The rest of the detectives stopped chatting and arranged themselves on chairs and other desks. For a minute, the group of men went silent. The only sounds in the room were a ringing telephone and the muffled sounds of people in the hallway. Off in the distance someone, most likely someone in an interrogation room, yelled for his lawyer.
With her back to the group, Jessica began tacking photos from the crime scene to the corkboard. The silence behind her was broken by a few murmurs among the guys, a couple of soft curse words. She knew these guys had seen some pretty gruesome stuff in their days, but even she was shocked by the photos. There was something so cold and clinical about crime scene photos, with the little evidence markers rising around the body. The blood looked flat and cold, darker somehow, even though the photos were in relentless color. She shuffled through the photos of the outside, the backyard. She lingered on an image of a dog track in the wet dirt for a few seconds, before she moved on to the next photo, shoving the rest into the file.
“Okay.” She turned around. For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the group, all staring at her expectantly. She took a breath and her gaze found Derek in the mix. He smiled and gave her a thumb’s up. She blinked; his movement was almost subliminal. When she looked again, he had his head down, already scribbling in his notebook.
“Jason Lansing, forty-seven, recently elected Mayor,” she read from the sheet she’d typed up. “You’re all aware of how heated the election was. There were death threats, both before and after the election.”
“And more cans of spray paint sold than at any time in the city’s history.” That was from Derek. The guys laughed, and some of the tension in the room lessened. Part of her was grateful for Derek’s intervention, but a little pool of resentment was starting to form in her mind. At some point, she was going to have to learn how to do this on her own, without him always trying to make things easier for her.
“Yes, vandalism. Lots of incidents. That’s why Mayor Lansing had hired a private security firm to watch his property and keep an eye on things.” She pointed to the photo of the guard’s footprint. “In fact, the guard was the first one on the scene, adding his footprints, and DNA to the list. We’ve got samples from him, and his shoes, for elimination purposes.”
“We got any suspects?” Leyland Fisher, one of the older detectives, obviously wasn’t going to let her stick to her script. “What about the guard? Seems he’d be at the top of the list.”
“Not yet. The guard is only a person of interest at this point. He claims to have fallen asleep in the backyard during the time the murder took place. I’m waiting on the security tapes to check his story.”
Fisher made a gesture of dismissal. “Seems like he’s more than just a person of interest.”
Jessica frowned at the balding detective, waiting for him to get done talking.
“Right now, there’s nothing tying him to the murder. His hands weren’t bloody and he was distraught, but we have the security tapes, and they’re being reviewed.” Fisher opened his mouth, but Jessica just kept talking.
“But yes, he’s being detained until we get the tapes from the security camera. If it collaborates his story, then he’s free to go.”
Fisher frowned, folded his arms over his chest, but he didn’t say anything else. She looked at each of the detectives either sitting on desks, or in chairs, or standing with arms crossed, but they all gave back impassive looks. She took a breath, and went on.
“So, we have a list a mile long of people that need to be interviewed.” She pulled a set of sheets out of the folder. “You can each take a sheet and start calling. Standard questions, where they were, what they were doing on the night of the murder…you know the drill. Patrol is canvassing the neighborhood, asking if anyone saw, or heard anything.”
That got an eye roll from Fisher, but she ignored him. He took the sheets from her, glanced down, took one, then passed them on to the guy next to him. That made six guys with lists, checking the names, making comments.
“Any questions, I’ll be here until I give the press statement. After that, I’m going to head down for the autopsy, as soon as Dr. Greene calls.”
“I’m coming with you.”
She caught Derek’s eye, and nodded. “Yeah. Sounds good.” He gave her a half-hearted smile. Autopsies weren’t his thing. As she looked at the rest of the guys, she tried to remember what she was supposed to say. She felt like she was missing something crucial, but the only other thing that came to mind was the unsettling feeling she’d had at the crime scene, the hair standing up on the back of her neck, the tingle on her skin. But that wasn’t something she thought Fisher should hear.
“Other than eliminating suspects, we’re still waiting for forensics to come back with a list of prints, DNA, all that stuff.” She realized she was bending the edge of the manila folder. With an effort, she relaxed her grip.
“That’s not much of a plan…” Fisher looked up from his list of calls. “When I…”
“When you’re lead, you can do as you like. This is my case. And right now, we don’t have very much to go on. The post is going to give us an idea of what kind of weapon was used in the murder. Dr. Greene suspects blood loss as the cause of death, severed aorta. We’ll get the toxicology reports back later today, so we’ll know if Lansing was drugged before he was…” She turned back to the photos. The brutal reality of the crime scene was there, in color, and it suddenly hit her how easily this case could spiral out of what little control she had over it.
“Let’s start on those calls.”
She walked away from the photos and past the guys who were slowly getting to their feet. Fisher gave her a look she didn’t want to decipher, then lumbered away, the paper held between his thick fingers. She heard him mutter something about grunt work. For a minute, she thought about saying something to him, but Derek's words from this morning came back to her. Had it only been this morning? It felt like she'd been awake for a week. Derek followed her as she went back to her desk.
“What time’s the press conference?”
She glanced at her watch. “Oh, shit. Like in twenty minutes. Thanks for the reminder.”
“You finished it, right?”
“More, or less.” She pushed past Derek, pulled out her chair and sat down. “I guess less. Give me a minute, and then I’ll call Dr. Greene.” She rummaged through the papers on her desk for the endless list of things to do.
“Can you…go make sure there’s a transcription of the guard’s interview? I want to have a hard copy. Tell them it’s a rush.”
“You got it.”
Her phone rang, and as Derek walked away, she pulled the receiver to her ear. “Detective Sharpe.”
“We got your tapes.”
Tech. Great. “And?”
“The guard’s story checks out. He walks around, wanders
into the backyard, and then sits down under a tree, and it looks like he falls asleep.”
Dammit. She’d have liked it much better if the guard came running in the back door, wielding a knife. “Any feeds from inside the house?”
“Yeah, about that. The outside cameras were all working fine, but the inside cameras went off about the time the guard seemed to fall asleep. Seems kind of strange.”
“Yeah, we’ll need to look into that.”
“You coming down to get a copy?”
“Yeah, for sure. There’s a press conference, after that, maybe before the post.”
“Well, we’re here when you need us.” The tech guy clicked off. She added that to her growing list of things to follow up on. The necessity of having a notebook was becoming clear; Derek wasn’t being overly cautious. This wasn’t the time to rely on her memory alone.
“Sharpe.”
She glanced up from her notebook, the pencil in her hand skittering across her desk. Reflexively, she grabbed for it. Michael Ross was standing at the corner of her desk. With absolute ease, he grabbed the pencil, as it rolled off the edge of the desk. He looked down at it for a minute, then set it back into the pencil cup.
“Sir…thanks.”
The hint of a smile hovered briefly around his lips, then resolved into something with a little less warmth.
“How’s the press statement coming along?”
She pushed her notebook aside, and pulled out the single piece of white paper she’d been fiddling with since the interview with the guard, and pushed it across the desk toward Ross.
“Here…” More than anything, she wanted to pull the paper back, ask for more time. “Here’s what I have so far.”
Ross picked up the paper, reading the few sentences she’d jotted down with an unreadable expression. It took him only a few moments, but it seemed like a small eternity.
“Fine. I’ll just…” He lowered the sheet of paper, and gave her one of those looks she hated, the one that said there was more to that sentence, and that she probably didn’t want to hear what came after just.
“I’ll just make some changes to this. And then I’ll give the statement. I think it’s probably better if this comes from me, rather than you. This is a high-profile case. You understand, I’m sure.”
She didn’t understand, really, but he walked away from her desk, taking her press release with him before she could speak up. As she watched, he crumpled the paper into a ball, and tossed it into a garbage can. Her heart sank lower than she’d thought possible.
The rest of her time in the office was spent tracking down interview reports from the other detectives and following up with the officers who’d canvassed the neighborhood. Little surprise there: no one heard or saw anything out of the ordinary. Almost everyone had been asleep.
She’d let the guard go home—with the caveat that he had to remain available for further questioning. Then she called to get confirmation from Dr. Greene that no, Mrs. Lansing couldn’t claim the body until he’d finished the post.
“I was just going to call you, Detective. If you’re interested in observing, I’ll be starting in about half an hour.”
She certainly was interested. Grabbing her jacket and keys, she stood up, looking for her partner. He was at his desk, head down, as ever, writing something.
He should be a novelist.
“Derek, come on. Dr. Greene’s going to start the Lansing post.” She started toward the precinct door.
He looked up, frowned, and then, not surprisingly, grabbed his notebook and stuffed it into his pocket.
“I hate those, you know, really hate them.” Derek made his way across the room, meeting her at the door. “The smell. My girlfriend complains about it, says that my clothes smell like death.”
Derek held the door open for her, and Jessica walked through it and into the hall. The noise level rose, which did nothing for the headache that even a double dose of ibuprofen hadn’t touched. Ross hadn’t helped, and even though she disliked autopsies as much as Derek, she was looking forward to getting out of the chaos of the detectives’ room. She was starting to feel paranoid, feeling that every move she made and everything she did, was under scrutiny by every other detective.
“You paying attention?”
“What? Yeah. I mean…what?” They walked down the stairs single file, bumping shoulders with the crowd coming up.
“I said did you get anything else back from forensics?”
“Yeah. Too much. Lots of prints, lots of DNA, most of it from the security guards. Their prints were all on file with their company. And apparently, they touched a lot of stuff.” She threw Derek a look. “Prints were on almost every surface, including the decanters in the den.”
Derek laughed. “Someone drinking on the job?”
“Either that, or Lansing was very friendly with his security staff.”
They made their way to the street, and Jessica led them to her car. It had warmed up outside, but the air still had a chill to it.
The drive to the city morgue went quickly. They’d missed rush hour traffic thankfully, and it didn’t take long before they were pulling up to the large gray building to meet Dr. Greene.
The lobby of the crime lab was non-descript. She’d never liked it, but then again, she wasn’t sure it was designed to engender a feeling of warmth. The woman at the front desk looked up as they crossed. Jessica flashed her badge, Derek mimicked her gesture.
“I’m Detective Sharpe. Dr. Greene’s doing a post. I’m to observe.”
The woman pushed a form across the desk, and nodded. Jessica quickly filled in the blanks, then scrawled her name at the bottom, and pushed the paper back to the woman. In return, the woman handed them two visitor badges.
“Do you know where you’re going?” The woman reached for a printed map, but Derek leaned over on the counter.
“Yeah, I’ve been here before.”
The map disappeared, and so did the form that Jessica had filled out. Derek took off down the hall, and Jessica followed.
“What was your first autopsy like, Jessica? Did you pass out, or get sick?” Derek looked a little too interested in her answer.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but this is my first.”
“You’re kidding? Didn’t you go to the post on…” He snapped his fingers. “That case a couple months back?”
She shook her head. “No. Fisher elbowed me aside.”
“Well, then this is your lucky day. You’ll no longer be an autopsy virgin.”
They’d reached the gray metal door that led to the autopsy suites. Derek reached for the handle, then stopped. “Seriously, you ready for this?”
She looked up at him, an eyebrow cocked. “You do realize how often you ask me that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that.”
She released him from her gaze, and nodded to let him know, that she was ready.
Derek opened the door, and they stepped inside. The hall was long, with doors widely spaced down its length. She’d never gotten past the first door, didn’t even want to know what was behind the doors further down the hall.
Even here, the air held the scent of strong disinfectants, chemical smells, and what she knew, but tried to ignore—the smell of death. It hung in the air like a greasy film. Her stomach, which hadn’t been on speaking terms with her anyway, made a threatening gurgle. At this rate, between drinking stale coffee with too much sugar, and her stomach on strike, she’d probably drop another five pounds before she solved this case.
“No floaters today.”
“What?”
Derek grimaced, or smiled, she couldn’t tell. “When they find a body in the lake, the whole place smells like rotten fish.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.” She walked away from him, and his fountain of knowledge about the morgue. “Let’s just get through this, okay?”
“Okay.”
She hit the buzzer beside the metal door marked Autopsy. The harsh sound grated on h
er nerves. A few moments later, the door buzzed, and she pushed inside. A woman, dressed head to foot in protective gear, waved. Jessica noticed her glove was covered in blood.
“You can dress over there. Gowns, gloves, shoe covers. Masks, if you feel the need. We’re in Room B.”
“Thanks.”
Derek was already pulling on a yellow paper gown over his clothes, muttering to himself. “Like this is supposed to do any good.”
She left him to his complaining, and pulled a gown off the shelf. Lockers ran across one side of the room, and she opened one, hanging up her jacket. As an afterthought, she pulled her cell phone and keys out of the pockets, stuffing them into her jeans. With a bit of a struggle, she managed to get the gown tied, got her boots covered with paper booties, and gloves on her hands. Because they were there, and she didn’t know what to expect, she grabbed a mask, feeling slightly ridiculous, as she tugged the elastic over her head. Derek hadn’t bothered.
“Ready?”
He nodded, and they pushed through the swinging doors into autopsy suite B. Dr. Greene was there, and from the looks of the body, he’d already started. As the doors closed behind her, he looked up.
“Ah, Detectives. Sorry to start without you, but the room was available sooner than I anticipated. If you could identify yourselves for the recording, I would appreciate it.”
“Detective Derek Carter.” Derek’s voice sounded strained.
“Detective Jessica Sharpe.” Hers didn’t sound any less so.
Mayor Lansing was laid out on the stainless-steel table, under the harsh overhead lights. Dr. Greene stepped away, murmuring something to his assistant. Jessica stood, transfixed by the sight of Lansing on the table. Dr. Greene had already washed the body. Against the pale, slightly gray flesh, the wounds on his chest stood out in sharp relief. It was surreal, and for a moment, a wave of vertigo took hold of her. She wanted to take a deep breath, but the smell in the room was overpowering. Instead, she closed her eyes and counted to ten.