by Noir, Roxie
“Shit,” he said when he saw the victim.
“You know this kid?” asked Ramirez.
“Yeah,” said Dane reluctantly. “Not well. But I know him.”
Ramirez just let out a long, low whistle, shaking his head.
“Sorry about that, man,” he said.
“It’s Nicky Grant,” Dane said, still staring at the kid’s face. It was true what they said about dead people: they really did look like they were just sleeping. “You know my fuck-up little brother?”
“Zeke?” said Ramirez.
“Yeah,” said Dane.
Zeke was across the state, closer to the coast, doing a couple of years in the state prison outside Eureka for setting someone’s car on fire. The moron hadn’t even run.
“Nicky sort of hung around with Zeke and his friends, though he was a couple of years younger,” Dane said. “I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like he was always getting into trouble, pissing people off. He thought he was a big-time gangster, but I don’t think he ever did more than smoke pot and talk a big game.”
“Looks like he pissed off the wrong person,” Ramirez said. “Six stab wounds.”
“You said three on the phone.”
“I got a better look,” said Ramirez.
“Well, I called the coroner,” said Dane. “Sounds like we know cause of death, but it wouldn’t hurt to do things by the book. We got the weapon?”
Ramirez shook his head.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ll have some of the guys go through the dumpster here and I bet we’ll find it.”
Dane eyed the overflowing dumpster, glad he’d gotten a promotion. Once upon a time, he’d been the guy whose job it was to go through the dumpster.
“Signs of a struggle, anything? Witnesses?”
They both crouched down by the body, and Ramirez lifted the sheet the rest of the way off. In the background, Dane could hear cameras clicking away.
Disgusting, he thought. This man is dead.
Nicky’s hands had two long gashes in them, like he’d grabbed a knife blade.
“Looks like he didn’t get much of a chance,” Dane said. “Might have grabbed the blade when it was already too late.”
“Something like that,” said Ramirez. “Hard to say.”
“Nobody heard anything?”
Ramirez just shook his head.
“No residences this end of the street,” he said. “The boutique out front closes at six, the other storefront is empty right now, and the Chinese takeout place is closed Mondays.”
Damn, thought Dane.
“I wonder if that’s by design or coincidence,” he said out loud.
Ramirez shrugged.
“Who found him?” Dane asked. “I should talk to them.”
Ramirez pointed to a girl standing at the edge of the crime scene, arms crossed in front of her, frowning at the body, and Dane looked up at her.
Then he sucked in his breath. For a split second, he felt like he was upside down in a wind tunnel, the world around him howling as he got nearly blown away, and then everything was normal again.
She was gorgeous. Even though she wore a cardigan over her sundress, it couldn’t hide the swell of her bosom or the luscious curve of her hips, or where the dress nipped in perfectly at her waist. Her shoulder-length blond hair fell over her eyes, and she kept jerking her head to move it away, her arms folded in front of her, like she was uncertain or nervous or cold or all three.
Dane wanted to do things to her, filthy, dirty things, like push her up against the brick wall in the alley and watch her lips move as she whispered his name—
You cannot get a boner in front of this dead body, he reprimanded himself.
Absolutely. Not.
He tore his eyes away and stood, staring down. That fixed his problem pretty quickly.
“Well, seems like there’s not much else to do here,” he said. “I can give her a ride down to the station and get her statement.”
Ramirez frowned, just a little.
“That’s probably not necessary,” he said, glancing at the girl. “She just found him, screamed, and ran to that liquor store next to the Chinese take-out place. Just get her statement here.”
But then I’d only talk to her for a few minutes, Dane thought to himself. I need more than that.
I need her.
“We should really do this by the book,” he said. “I ought to get her recorded and all that, since it’s a murder investigation.”
Ramirez nodded.
“Good point,” the other man said, then clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll get the EMTs to take the body to the morgue.”
Dane swallowed and took a deep breath. He walked around Nicky’s body toward the girl.
She stood still, just watching him walk over with big, deep blue eyes.
“Hi,” she said when he reached her. She had a soft, musical voice, and she raised one hand to tug at her hair.
“I’m Detective Sorenson,” Dane said. His heart beat so hard he was nervous that it might break a rib, but he kept going.
“I’m Grey,” she said.
Be professional, he thought. You talk to witnesses all the time. Just act professional.
“You found the body?”
The girl just nodded. She seemed jumpy and nervous — standard for someone who’d found a body in an alleyway.
“He was just right there,” she said. “I was walking home from, uh, from my friend’s house — the alley’s a shortcut — and I thought he was asleep at first, but then a car turned out in the street and I saw that there was this huge puddle of blood around him, so I screamed,” she said.
“Listen,” Dane said. “Do you mind coming down to the station so I can take your statement there?”
“Am I in trouble?” she asked, her eyes going even wider. She wove her blond hair through her fingers, tugging on it.
“No, not at all,” Dane said, quickly. He had to fight the urge to take her shoulder in his hand and comfort her. “It’s just a little crazy here, and if we go back, we can record you properly, all that. Besides, you look cold.”
As if just remembering the temperature, the girl pulled her cardigan around her a little more.
“Sure,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind sitting down and not being near a dead body.”
Dane led her to his car.
“Do I get in the back?” she asked.
He grinned.
“I’m not arresting you,” he said. “Sit in the front.”
In the car, she was mostly quiet, not that Dane could blame her. Even as a cop, he’d only seen a few dead bodies. In Rustvale, most of the deaths that he saw were elderly people who died in their own homes. After a day or two, a friend or neighbor would start to worry, and he’d get called in to break down the door.
Sad, but not a crime.
“You ever get into a high-speed chase?” she asked, her voice still soft.
“Nah,” said Dane. “To be honest, this is probably the biggest case I’ve ever had.”
“Sleepy town?” she asked.
He shrugged, his mouth hitching up into half of a smile.
Don’t smile, you weirdo, he told himself. She just found a dead body. Now is not the time.
“Not quite sleepy, but not much happens here,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot of the police station.
As they walked inside, Grey still half folded into herself, Dane found himself rushing to open doors for her, even pulling out her chair in the interview room. He’d started sweating just a little, the thought of being alone with her so alluring that it made him nervous.
You’re asking her about finding a dead body, he kept reminding himself. Not romantic. Not sexy. Probably the least sexy thing that’s ever happened to her.
“All right. First, I need you to state your name for the record.”
Dane hit a button behind him, and the room’s recording equipment clicked to life.
“Grace Patience Joy Macauley,” s
he said, enunciating each name clearly.
Dane couldn’t help himself. He raised his eyebrows.
“My parents were optimists,” she said. “Call me Grey.”
A hint of a smile played around her lips, the first one that Dane had seen.
He felt just a little bit melty inside.
“All right, Miss Macauley,” he said. “Could you just tell me what happened tonight, in your own words?”
She nodded, then swallowed and looked down at the scarred tabletop in front of her, taking a moment to collect herself.
“I was walking home from a friend’s house. We’d had dinner and a drink or two, and that alley is a shortcut I’ve used sometimes,” she said, her perfect, melodious voice soft. “I mean, Rustvale is pretty safe, and even at night I never really thought twice about it, though maybe I should have.”
Dane nodded.
“I turned the corner there, and I saw a guy right next to the dumpster,” she went on. “I kind of jumped, because I’d gone a couple of steps without realizing that he was there, and, I mean, that’s not good, when you’re alone in a dark alley and you don’t realize there’s someone that close.”
She swallowed, her eyes distant as she remembered.
“But there was something really strange about him,” she said slowly, her brow furrowed. “Even though I jumped, he didn’t react, and he was just still. So still, it was weird, so I took a step toward him and asked if he was okay, and obviously he didn’t answer, but I still thought he was asleep, or... on drugs, I guess, or something,” she said with a little shrug. “I was actually just about to leave him alone, when a car turned into a driveway across the street and for a second, I could see this puddle of blood around him.”
She shuddered, hugging her arms more tightly around herself.
“So I screamed, and then I ran into the Chinese restaurant and called 911.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
She shook her head.
Dane nodded. From where he sat, he could smell her. She smelled like roses, just faintly, though there was something else, another scent that he could barely detect. It was something less pleasant than roses.
Maybe her friend’s house smells weird, he thought.
His eyes flicked up to hers and held them for just a moment, and then Grey looked away quickly.
Dane’s stomach plummeted.
She’s hiding something, he realized. He wasn’t sure — he didn’t know — but his gut was rarely wrong. There was something that Grey wasn’t telling him, and he didn’t know why.
Did she do it? He wondered, just for a moment.
He looked her over again.
No way, he thought.
Am I telling myself that because I want to push up her dress and see what her thighs feel like on my face? he thought, blushing despite himself.
“You said that you use the alley as a shortcut?” he asked.
Grey nodded.
“It’s probably stupid,” she said. “Well, it’s obviously stupid,” she muttered. “I found a dead body.”
“Is it actually shorter than taking the street?” he asked.
She sighed, blowing a strand of blond hair from her face.
“Probably not,” she said. “It might just feel shorter.”
“Where does your friend live?”
“You know that big apartment building that’s over near First and Sierra?” she asked. “The Regent, I think it’s called?”
Dane nodded.
“She lives there,” she said.
Dane tapped his pencil in frustration. There was still something, but having her here was clouding his judgement, making it hard for him to focus on whatever was wrong.
Then she looked up at him, and he felt like he was drowning in the blue pools of her eyes.
Fuck it, he thought. Try again later. Whatever it is, it’s not coming right now.
“Well, that should do it for now,” he said, clicking off the recording equipment and standing.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“It’s a start,” he admitted. “I’m not sure how much closer we are to catching whoever did this. It sounds like you just got unlucky.”
“I could’ve gotten unluckier,” she pointed out.
True, thought Dane.
“Can I drive you home?” Dane asked.
He could have sworn he saw her turn slightly pink.
Stop it, he thought. You’re seeing what you want to see, and you absolutely cannot so much as look at her funny until this investigation is over. You haven’t even proved that she didn’t do it.
“I’m not a suspect?” she asked.
Dane did smile, that time.
“Should you be?” he teased. “Anything you didn’t tell me?”
For a moment, her face faltered, and then she smiled again. Dane felt that single tick of suspicion one more time, then banished it.
“Come on,” he said, opening another door for her. “You must be exhausted.”
She nodded, her blond hair bouncing in front of Dane.
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About Roxie
I love writing sexy, take-charge alphas with a softer side. In fact, I love it so much that I always have two in my stories! Two's always better than one, isn't it?
In real life, I live in California with one husband (who might be a bear shifter) and two cats (who would be much too lazy to shift, even if they could).
I’m on the internet at RoxieNoir.com. You can also follow @RoxieNoir on Twitter, like my Facebook page, or just email me: [email protected].