by Kim Pritekel
“Thank you,” she murmured with a kiss of gratitude as she took the proffered coffee. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re my waitress, too,” she said with a grin. “You know how I like everything.”
Ally gave her a sexy little grin as she ran a single fingernail across one of Catania’s nipples, sending a shudder down Catania’s spine. “I’m definitely learning how you like everything.”
Catania paused, mug of coffee halfway up to her mouth. She wanted so badly to forget about the coffee and spend the morning making love to Ally, but knew it wasn’t possible. Instead, she initiated a deeply passionate, almost possessive kiss that left them both breathless.
“You’re bad.”
Ally laughed, giving her one last peck before pushing up from the bed. “I know, and I’m sorry. I have to get back upstairs. If you want to grab a shower here, feel free.” She gave her a sweet little smile. “Then you can smell like me all day.” With that, she was gone.
****
Fifteen minutes later, Catania headed home after taking Ally’s invitation to shower at her apartment. She needed to get to the office, so planned to quickly change clothes and brush her teeth, then back out she’d go.
Pulling down the side street that would take her to the back of the building, she slowed her Jeep, noting the mess that met her. It looked as though either a bear had gotten to the trash can, or a whole army of raccoons.
“Good lord.”
Pulling into her spot, she was careful to not hit Mr. Horvat, who was out there with his snow shovel trying to clean up the mess.
“Good morning, Detective,” he said, giving her a warm smile as he tipped his flat cap to her. “I think we had some hoodlums out here last night,” he said, indicating the mess.
“Good morning, I guess,” Catania said, eyeing everything as she climbed out of the Jeep. “Give me five minutes to change my clothes and I’ll be back out here to help you with some trash bags,” she said, literally running to then bounding up the steps to the metal door that was her back door.
Once inside, she did her usual striptease through the apartment, her hair still damp from her shower. She had, indeed, spritzed herself with some of Ally’s perfume, and every time she got a whiff of it, she smiled and felt a little tingle in places she couldn’t afford to tingle in with her job.
Quickly brushing her teeth and running a comb through her hair, she was off again, nearly running out the door before she remembered the trash bags she promised. Hurrying back to the kitchen, she pulled open the cabinet under the sink and yanked four from the roll, then headed out again.
****
“You ever gonna wipe that grin off your face?” Oscar murmured, tugging on the latex gloves they’d been given. “You’re starting to look like that guy in that commercial for Viagra.”
Catania elbowed him in the gut. “I do not!” she insisted. “Now, be a big boy and put your professional face on.”
“Okay, sorry about that,” Gwen said, hurrying back into the room. “Been waiting for that call all morning.” The deputy medical examiner pulled the sheet back, eliciting a bit of a gasp from the detectives. “I know. It’s not pretty, especially with all the blood and gore washed away.”
Catania took several shallow breaths as she readied herself to deal with Kevin Tanner. No matter how many times she was there in the morgue, no matter how bad or how mild it was, it never got easier.
“Now, first of all, we found very little gunpowder on his left hand,” Gwen explained, lifting the dead man’s left hand and twisting the wrist to present the back of the hand to them. There was a small red circle drawn in a marker that could be washed off by the funeral home. “Right here.” She pointed with a latex-clad finger as she eyed the duo. “Likely once the trigger was pulled, the gunpowder was in the air, so…”
Catania listened to what she was saying, forming a picture in her mind. She wanted to hear more.
“Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Come over here.”
Catania did all she could to close her mind, turn off her thoughts as she moved up around Kevin’s head, which was cradled in a simple rounded metal stirrup.
“This is the entrance wound,” Gwen said, indicating the area that was left of his skull behind his right ear. “There was substantial skull blow off, however I do have some good news.” She looked at each in turn. “The muzzle of your weapon was pressed point blank here,” she explained putting her finger behind her own ear. “You feel that part of your skull that is a bit of a bump behind your ear there?” When Catania and Oscar both followed her lead and felt what she was referring to, the pathologist continued. “The good news is that’s one of the thickest areas of the skull, and we were able to get striations for your lab to test against the weapon. You turned in the weapon, right?”
“Yeah, Dr. Sweeney,” Oscar said, leaning in a bit to get a better look. “Uh, it was a Colt 38 Super, found at the scene.”
Gwen’s brows drew. “This man didn’t die from a thirty-eight, Detectives.”
Catania glanced at Oscar, who was already looking at her. “What?”
“He was killed by a weapon that fires a nine-millimeter bullet.”
****
The sedan was parked in an open field. Each held their burger grabbed from a fast-food joint, the paper bag with two large cups of fries dumped in sitting between them. Oscar had suggested the diner, but Catania couldn’t allow herself to get distracted by seeing Ally.
“I’m stunned, Nia,” he said, staring out the windshield at the cold yet sunny day. “I did not expect Dr. Sweeney to say that.”
Catania said nothing for a moment as she chewed the bite she’d just taken from her burger. She mulled over in her mind not only what her partner had just said, but what Gwen had told them and shown them a couple hours before.
“I have a thought, Big O,” she said after she’d washed her food down with a sip of her drink. She wrapped her unfinished burger back in its paper and set it up on the dashboard. “Get out of the car.”
“What?”
“Get out of the car. Come on.”
“What?” Oscar asked again, jumping out of the car with his napkin-bib still tucked into the collar of his shirt, the end blowing in the breeze.
Catania laughed, walking over to him and snagging the napkin free, handing it to him. “Okay, now.” She turned her back to Oscar and raised her hands to the back of her head, spreading her fingers, elbows sticking out to the side. “Oscar, use your finger as a gun and put it where Gwen said Kevin was shot.”
Oscar moved up to her and did as she asked, the tip of his fingers resting against the spot they’d been shown. “Okay. Bang.”
“Alright. So, from your point of view, would gunpowder be where we need it to be?”
“Eh, maybe. The way your hands are right now, the left hand is fairly protected by your head. I mean, could it float through the air, sure. But, your right hand is far more likely to have residue.”
“Okay. Move my hands to where it would make sense,” she said, willing to play Gumby.
Oscar moved her hands this way and that, muttering to himself as he did. “So, in keeping with the theme I think you’re going for here, which is Kevin was forced to walk to where he died, I think this makes the most sense.”
Catania’s hands had been placed at the crown of her head, left crossed over right. “This is awkward as hell,” she said.
“I know, but it’s the only position where the left hand is exposed, but there is also enough space for whomever to get the gun where it needs to go.” To prove his point, Oscar against placed his finger at the spot behind her ear. “Bang.”
Catania allowed her body to go limp, trying to see if she could land how Kevin Tanner had. It wasn’t hard, not forcing her body into any position during the fall but allowing gravity to do the work. Looking up at a surprised Oscar, she nodded.
“I think we got it.”
Raising a hand toward him, he grabbed it and helped her to her feet. “I agr
ee with Lisa Tanner, Oscar,” Catania said, wiping dust, weeds, and a bit of mud off the back of her coat as they headed back to the car. “And not only that, we already knew there were no prints found on the thirty-eight at the scene.” She grabbed her sandwich off the dash and unwrapped it to finish it. “I mean, would it have been some crazy, weird bacteria from Mars that got on his hands which ate away his fingerprints? Sure, why not. But, could that same crazy, weird bacteria from Mars changed the bullet from a thirty-eight to a nine millimeter, too?”
“Yeah, no,” Oscar said, dipping his hand into their joint bag of French fries. “Are we still headed to the lab after lunch?”
“As far as I know.” As if on cue, her phone began to ring. Looking at the contact, she chuckled. “She must be psychic.” Connecting the call, she put the phone to her ear. “D’Giovanni…Hey, what’s going on? We still on for—… Okay, no worries. Yeah, go ahead and tell me.”
Catania listened, snapping her fingers to get Oscar’s attention then pantomiming like she was writing. He quickly grabbed his own notebook and clicked the pen to life before handing both to her. She jotted down a few things as she was told them.
“Wow. Okay, I definitely appreciate the information. And by the way, Oscar and I were just with Dr. Sweeney over at the morgue. That thirty-eight you’ve got isn’t even the weapon that killed him…I’m not shitting you. A nine-millimeter slug was found in his head.” She laughed. “I know, crazy. Anyway, thanks for the info Andy, and have a good meeting. See ya.”
Ending the call, she tossed her phone to the dashboard where her sandwich had been and jotted down a few last things the lab tech had told her.
“What happened?” Oscar asked. “Are we not going?”
“No, there was some sort of spill earlier today so they all have to go for a safety meeting of some kind,” Catania said absently, finishing up her notes. Finally, she turned to him. “So,” she said, handing the pen back to her partner before she ripped the page out of the notebook, tucking it into her own to add to her report later. “Absolutely no DNA with the empty beer bottle, however, partial good news.”
“Partial good news?”
“Yup. They got a partial palm print on the bottle itself.”
Oscar’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t say.”
“I do. No hits in the system, as there isn’t quite enough to really get a good readout, but it’s a start. He was pretty shocked by this gun issue, but they’re sending the Colt to ballistics anyway. If this is in fact a murder, our shooter had to have brought that gun since Kevin Tanner didn’t own any.”
“To his wife’s knowledge, that is.”
Catania nodded, conceding. “To her knowledge.”
****
Catania chewed her bottom lip, horribly undecided. She volleyed between the adorable orange kitten batting at a floating ball of string, and the rainbow that seemed to be pushing through the glass globe to end in a puffy cloud off to the side.
“Okay, I found this one,” the sales clerk said, walking up to her with a smaller snow globe in his hands. Catania recognized him immediately as a gay man, so it made it easier to explain to him that she was looking for a gift for her “friend.” “We just got this one in on Tuesday.”
Catania took the piece in her hand and was immediately amused, yet felt a connection to it. It was a young maiden with flowing blond hair, her face raised to the sky with a look of wonder on her lovely face. What made it special, however, and particularly for how Catania saw Ally, was that the young maiden held a sword in one of her hands, the blade raised to the heavens, and a colorful red butterfly sitting atop the tip.
“This is it,” she said, the other two options forgotten. She looked up and met his gaze. “This is it.”
“Excellent.” He gave her a huge smile. “Want me to wrap it up for you? Make it special?”
Catania rubbed the back of her neck and nodded. “Uh, yeah.”
“Give me just a minute.”
Left alone, she walked around the gift store, looking at this and that. There were beautiful music boxes, crystal figurines, the snow globes, of course, and a few other items. Standing at a locked cabinet filled with beautifully sculpted chess pieces, she suddenly had the strong need to look out the wall of windows that fronted the store.
Now that the icy rain was over, the crowds were out in full for last-minute Christmas gifts. All of that seemed to recede as she slowly walked over to the window as if in a daze. She stood next to a rack filled with porcelain animals.
On the sidewalk across the street something moved, and it wasn’t a shopper. Her gaze became focused on a shimmering patch of…nothing? She couldn’t wrap her mind around what she was seeing. It was a humanoid shape, perhaps the height of a woman—a small woman or a tall child. She saw a man who was talking on his cell phone carrying several bags bearing store logos hurry behind it, his image easily seen, though suddenly it looked as though he were walking underwater, the lines of his body fluid for that split second before he became solid again. The shimmering figure remained.
Catania reached her hand out absently for the door handle, just touching the metal when she started at a touch to her shoulder.
“Miss?”
Turning, she took in a calming breath at the clerk standing there. “Yeah,” she said, trying to catch her breath.
He looked past her out the window before returning his eyes to her. “Uh, we’re all ready,” he said, a confused smile on his lips.
“Great. Yeah. Okay.”
A handful of minutes later, Catania held the black paper bag with the gift store’s name stamped on the side, the beautifully wrapped gift inside as she hurried out into the cold night. She’d promised Ally she’d meet her for her dinner break at Randy’s. With the holiday around the corner, the diner was busting at the seams with shoppers, so Ally was working doubles. Karen had agreed to help her out and serve breakfast and dinner at the Aberdeen House, meals Ally had already prepared and just needed to be heated and served.
So, they figured a break to eat and get Ally off her feet would be good. Also, Catania was dying to spend some time with her. They’d both been so busy in the last twenty-four hours that they hadn’t seen each other since Catania had left the apartment the morning after they’d made love.
She looked both ways, waiting for a small blue sport coupe to pass before she stepped off the curb and began to make her way across the street to where her Jeep was parked halfway down the block. She lightly swung the bag with the weighted gift in it back and forth, excited to see Ally’s reaction to it. She hoped she liked it.
The night was suddenly alive with the sound of a roaring engine and someone screaming, “Look out!”
She turned to see a blur of white barreling for her. She had just enough time to realize she had to get out of the way. With a grunt of exertion, Catania threw herself toward the sidewalk as she felt the heat of a squealing tire pass within centimeters of her foot. She landed hard on her left shoulder, the bag she’d carried flung off toward the building.
Pain exploded through her entire body, centering in her wrist and arm, the very same wrist that she’d sprained so badly a week before. She heard the snap as her head bounced off the asphalt. It took a moment to realize she was lying directly behind a parked SUV. She blinked up at the license plate for a moment before the roar of reality hit her.
People were screaming, some yelling to get the license plate number of the car while others gathered around where Catania lay partially on her back and partially on her twisted left arm.
“Jesus! Are you okay?” a man asked, kneeling next to her. His bright blue eyes were wide and frantic.
Catania couldn’t speak, shock and adrenaline making her tongue feel as though it were about three sizes too big for her mouth.
“Somebody call an ambulance,” a familiar voice yelled.
Catania looked to her left, recognizing the store clerk who was up by her left shoulder. She mumbled something to him that her brain couldn’t
quite make out, but apparently he was able to.
“We’ll get you another one, honey,” he said kindly, his hand coming up to brush some bangs out of her eyes. “Don’t you worry about that snow globe.”
Catania heard muffled sirens in the distance. Her vision swam as much as everything sounded like it was underwater. She felt incredibly nauseous and a loud, annoying ringing began in her ears. She tried to voice these things, but nothing would make sense in her head, the words rearranging themselves at will.
As the warbling sirens got closer, she felt herself getting further and further away. Finally, her world went black.
Chapter Eighteen
“I think she may be coming to,” a female voice said.
“Miss? Can you hear me?” a male asked, followed the sound of finger snapping.
Catania groaned, her head pounding and the need to vomit becoming a critical issue.
“Uh oh, I think she’s going again. Let’s get her turned onto her side.”
She was manhandled quickly before her stomach gave in. Once finished, the pain kicked in full force and she cried out, white-hot pain slicing through her left arm and up her shoulder.
“I know, hon,” the female voice said softly, a tender touch to Catania’s forehead. “Hang in there. The orthopedic surgeon is on his way down to look at your arm.”
“Where am I?” Catania slurred, her eyes slowly blinking open only to tightly close at the bright light that streamed in.
“You’re in the emergency room. Can you tell us your name?” the male voice asked.
“Uh,” Catania said, distracted for a moment as she felt her boots being removed before her feet were moved around a bit, ankles next, followed by both legs bent and straightened. “My name, uh, my name is Nia. Catania.”
“And, your last name, hon?”