yestess

The walk back to my office was only six blocks, more than I needed to notice I had picked up a tail.

Jesus, the guy was bad.

Every time I stopped walking, or checked both ways before crossing a street, the shmuck would try to hide. Or worse, he would lean up against a lamppost, and try to look like he belonged there. In truth, it took me longer to figure out who he was than it had taken to notice his efforts. He was the goth freak hanging around the crime scene.

I’ve seen gawkers at any number of crime scenes. Usually, they’re neighbors. Sometimes they’re local reporters looking for a scoop, but this one, this one just screamed weirdo. Maybe it was the chipped, black nail polish, or maybe it was the long, stringy hair that looked several weeks unwashed, or just maybe it was the fact that he was dressed head to toe in black – in the ninety-degree heat of early September – that tipped me off. Yeah, that could have been it. Either way, he wasn’t a professional. I was sure of that. Didn’t recognize him from any of my recent cases, but he could have been violent all the same. He was in his early twenties if he was lucky, and guys that age tend to reach for violence as the first solution instead of the last. Just hormones, I guess. I can’t remember my own youth, but I can guess it probably sucked.

I figured I’d let him follow me for a bit. If there was going to be any kind of confrontation, I wanted to keep it off the street. I hate creating a public spectacle.

Short, Dark, and Stupid’s technique was so ham-handed that it would have tested even the most patient of men. I am not the most patient of men. In fact, I don’t even rate in the top fifty. All the same, I kept my cool and let him pretend to follow me back to the office. My hangover was quickly receding, leaving in its place a mild brain fog. Some potential violence would be just the thing to clear that up.

I rounded the corner onto my block and was visited with another surprise. Standing next to the squat, concrete steps of my building was a guy in a suit.

It could have been his posture or the blond crew cut that just screamed ex-military, or it could have been the briefcase, cuffed to his wrist, but I knew that this guy was, in fact, a professional; probably the courier. He let me come within ten feet of him before he took official notice of me, although I’m sure he saw me coming long before that. It was just a sense I got about him.

“Mr. Carson?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s me,” I replied, attempting to make eye contact with the suit and remain aware of my new stalker, “A package for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I need to show I.D. or something?”

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” he said, “Do you require assistance entering your office?”

I could have sworn he winked when he said it. It was quick and subtle, but enough to tell me he was aware of the situation.

“Nah,” I said, probably sounding a bit more bored than I actually was, “Got a bug-zapper in the front hall. It gets most of the pests.”

“Of course,” the suit said, “Shall we go inside, then?”

“Let’s.”

We trundled up the stairs and into the building. Well, I trundled, the suit’s steps were crisp and purposeful. I hoped for a moment that Short, Dark, and Stupid would bug out at the sight of this new player, but I had the feeling my stalker was too hot for the game to back off now. It would have made the day easier if he had left. Then again, the closest I had come to a good fight in the last month was nearly assaulting my newest client earlier that day.

Most times I truly don’t want the hassle of a dust-up, but after running into Barb I had a serious desire to feel my knuckles crunch against someone’s ribs.

Yeah, I have issues. Sue me.

The suit and I were all the way down the hall and nearly up the first short flight of stairs before I got around to proper introductions. I hate it when someone knows my name, but I don’t know his. Said his name was John McDaniels. I’d have made a whiskey joke, but I don’t know any that won’t start a bar fight. John was halfway up the steps when Short, Dark, and Stupid made his play. I had just put my foot on the bottom stair.

I heard his ratty combat boots clunking down the hall as he sped up to charge me from behind. I stopped to check one of my pockets, give him a chance to close the gap before I ran my play. He got up a good head of steam and was reasonably close before I spun on him.

Why is it they never expect you to have noticed them coming?

His eyes went wide, which gave him a more compelling view of my tightly clenched fist rocketing toward his sternum. Given the surprise, I expected him to hesitate. He didn’t. Just as my fist contacted his solar plexus, I saw the knife the little fucker had been palming. It wasn’t a big blade, he had small hands, but as anyone who has been stabbed knows, a small blade will kill you just as dead as a large one. I didn’t have time to think. My reaction flinched me to one side. Still spinning off to the side, I hoped I got far enough out of the way to avoid any serious damage. A flash of pain seared through me as the blade sliced through my jacket and bit into my right shoulder. It hurt too much to be a deep wound. So, I shifted my focus to inflicting as much damage as possible on my young assailant. Grabbing his pants and his scrawny neck I shoved my weight against him to slam him and his knife hand into the wall. That was the plan, anyway. He had already begun his next attack. A handful of shiny pain arced towards me as we struck the wall together. The impact didn’t jar the weapon loose, but it was hard enough to make it a miss. The blade shot past my throat instead of into it. I used the rebound off the wall to spin the son of a bitch across the hall and out of arm’s reach. In the breath distance afforded, I pulled a folding knife from my pocket and flipped it open. Allison hadn’t taught me a great deal about knife fighting yet, but I figured I knew enough to be dangerous.

Apparently, Short, Dark, and Stupid had a similar suspicion about me, because he got seriously cautious in very short order. We squared off, sizing each other up, looking for openings, and both noticed we were no longer alone.

John the Suit was standing on the bottom step, pointing a frighteningly large pistol at the kid.

“Would you like me to shoot him?” John said, as placid as a lake on a windless day.

I had been clenching my jaw, or else it would have hit the floor in amazement. Short, Dark and Stupid had a similar reaction to the statement. I could see shadows of doubt whirl in the kid’s face. Then John cocked back the slide on the pistol. The doubt on the kid’s face evaporated.

He broke and ran.

“I can still shoot him if you like,” John said from over my shoulder, still calm as cloudless skies.

“No,” I said, still shocked, “Thanks anyway.”

He eased down the hammer and slid the pistol into a nicely concealed holster in his jacket.

“Glock forty?” I asked, grasping at something to move on with.

“Yep,” he said, “Gets the job done. You don’t carry?”

“1911A myself,” I said, “I just didn’t figure on needing it for this.”

“You were going to slice it out with him?” he said, the note of incredulity ringing clearly in his tone.

“Didn’t think I’d be fighting just yet today,” I said, motioning up the stairs, “I just went out for a walk.”

“Some walk.”

“Sure was.”

And then my shoulder started to throb. Nothing like adrenalin to make a guy forget he’s been cut open. I moved up the steps as quickly as I could while still keeping my heart rate fairly low. No use in decorating the halls with arterial spray. John followed me up to the office.

My office was on the second floor of a badly renovated brownstone, in a neighborhood tucked into the University of Tennessee’s campus: affectionately known as The Fort. The tile in the halls always needed repair, and the air conditioner stayed broken through most of the summer, but, with a bleeding knife wound, I was grateful for the warmth.

I made it to my office without losing too much blood. John slipped in behind me and bolted the door. I would have given him a look if I could have managed anything other than a constant grimace of pain. Instead, I pulled a first aid tackle box out of a drawer and set to stripping off my shirt.

“That shirt is ruined,” he said.

“And I had just got the damn thing back from the cleaners,” I managed to say before the pain of cleaning out the laceration with betadine reduced my main method of communication to grunting.

John stooped and examined my shoulder.

“Fairly superficial, I think. You could probably get away with butterfly strips instead of stitches. But I’d go easy on it or it will open up more,” he said.

“Yeah, well, it’s not a month around here if I don’t end up in the emergency room.”

“Must be hell on the doctor’s bills,” he said.

“Yeah, some days,” I said with a short, snicker.

I bandaged my shoulder with the butterfly strips and a four by four square of gauze. Then I poured myself a drink. Too early for more ibuprofen, so I settled for Southern Comfort. I slipped into a clean shirt and, with a sense of remorse, chucked my old, bloody shirt into the trash. Someone better at sewing than I might be able to save the jacket, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

John the suit waited until I was comfortably seated in my chair before he uncuffed the briefcase. He drew out a videocassette and handed it to me.

“I was told to place this directly in your hands,” he said.

I nodded. Far be it from me to interfere with anyone’s sense of professional duty.

After I took possession of the tape, he closed the briefcase and re-engaged the cuff. He turned to leave and seemed to think better of it. Swiveling back, he handed me his business card.

“I don’t think I can afford your services,” I said.

“No. You probably couldn’t,” he said, “Keep it all the same. Maybe we’ll get together and have a drink sometime.”

“Not to be impolite,” I said, “but you’re really not my type.”

“Nor are you mine,” he said, “but if this is what passes for normal in your life, it must be damned interesting when you cut loose.”

“Never a dull moment,” I said.

“Of that, I am fairly certain,” he said, “By the way, did you know you have menthol cream under your nose?”

I had forgotten about it.

“Now that you mention it, the air does smell unusually fresh and minty,” I said.

He chuckled, mostly under his breath. And then he walked out, just as businesslike as he had walked in.

Everybody’s certain about me today.

I checked the clock and wiped my nose. My usual time to meet Allison down at The Dry Glass ticked nearer with every mechanical sweep of the minute hand. I would definitely go, but maybe she wouldn’t mind if I slipped away to watch the tape. I could use the VCR in the joint’s back room. I don’t own a TV, and Allison wouldn’t mind, would she?

With that set in my head, I let my mind wander. As usual, it wandered face first into a brick wall’s worth of questions.

For one: what the hell was going on with that punk kid? There wasn’t any reason, at least none I could remember, for anyone to come after me, much less with a knife. So, why had Short, Dark, and Stupid gone all stalker-happy with the blade? Moreover, what had he been doing loitering around the house where a woman had just mysteriously burned to death? I should have been upset that someone attacked me, but the pain and booze were dulling everything except the confusion. Could the kid have been waiting at the scene for me?

I had no idea. So, I filed it away for further thought at some other time. But something formless about the whole thing kept floating around in my head. It was doing an Olympic-level backstroke as I dialed Allison’s number.

When I hung up the phone, I knew only two things; that our appointment was still on and that I needed to use some of my newfound cash to buy another suit jacket. The knife slash, too jagged to sew without leaving an obvious repair seam, had killed my jacket. I mourned its violent passing and dug my spare out of the closet. I usually didn’t wear my gun to these weekly appointments but seeing as how the kid was still out there, somewhere, it seemed like a good idea to bring it along.

Too many things I didn’t know. That’s not unusual for the start of a case, so I let the thought drift into the shadows of my subconscious. Something would turn up. But that’s the problem with being a detective; I can’t do any detecting without clues. And, at that point, I had no clue whatsoever.

I walked slowly to the address. It was only six blocks, but I needed to think. I had just met my new client, and the puzzles were already starting to stack up.

For one, how did he know so much about me? Was he having me followed? No, I would have noticed that. And exactly what had he meant when he said I was gifted? Also, if his sources were so thorough, why did he need a detective in the first place?

None of it was adding up. I was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that I was being used to take care of someone’s dirty laundry. I was still scratching my head when I arrived at the address.

The house was one of the less dilapidated Victorians in the neighborhood. It had been kept up by its owner, but just enough to rent. Detective Justin Hagen waited for me outside when I walked up. His nose was firmly buried in a notepad, and his glasses had slid almost completely off his face. Shrugging the hunch out of his shoulders, I could see his muscles shifting under the fabric of his suit. Justin’s built like a sprinter; probably ran track in high school or college. He must have slimmed down some in the time since, but he was still in much better shape than I was.

Justin was one of those people who wouldn’t have made it past beat cop in this town just twenty years ago. His skin, hair, and eyes were all a deep caramel, a trait I find fascinating, but that would have sunk him in an instant as a cop in a Southern city like Knoxville. Thankfully he was born in the right generation. He’s a hell of a detective. I’d thought about offering him a partnership, but I was barely making enough money to get by as it was. He’d have been a good partner, too. Everything about him screamed attention to detail, from his perfectly pressed slacks to his immaculately kept hair to his perpetually polished wingtips that gleamed like volcanic glass in the afternoon sun. The only piece of his ensemble that was out of place was his tie. It didn’t hang down or loose, no. It was a loud, blue and red number that looked like paisley, if paisley been painted by Salvador Dali, during an acid trip. I had to suspect the same attention to detail went into the choosing of his ties. Probably some kind of statement against authority.

“I thought you said fifteen minutes,” he said while pushing his spectacles back up his nose when I approached.

“Yeah, well, not all of us set our watches by atomic, naval standard. You have to allow for a few minutes in either direction,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“What ‘ya got?” I asked.

“Inside. Front room. You can’t miss it,” he said with a minuscule grimace.

I had worked with Justin a few times since he was handed the dubious honor of heading up the Special Crimes department, but I had never really seen him show any kind of emotion at a crime scene before. At the bar, after a case, with a drink in hand, sure. But never at a crime scene. He’s too professional.

Something must’ve spooked him.

A feeling like cold quicksilver wormed around in my guts as I climbed the porch steps and ducked under the police tape. I wrote it off as the hangover.

The front hall of the house was awash in the aroma of barbeque. It made me hungry and sick at the same time. My second reaction was sheer surprise that someone had been allowed to grill out at a crime scene. Then my brain kicked in and the cold chills trickled down my spine like ice water.

No one was cooking. Someone was cooked.

I made my way into the parlor and nearly retched.

Human flesh gives off a less-than-distinct odor when it burns. If you don’t know it’s a human being, charring, I’m told it can smell a lot like barbequed pork. I did not have the luxury of not knowing. In the middle of the parlor, on a small, oval throw rug, were the scorched remains of a person.

I felt the coffee come up in the back of my throat and knock its acidic fist on the back of my tongue. I choked for breath, caught it and forced myself to swallow. Puking at a crime scene is ok, for rookies. Puking on a crime scene is strictly taboo.

The body had been reduced to a cinder. There was no way of telling if it was male or female. It just lay there, curled into the fetal position, like some charcoal caricature of a person, its arms and legs folded up as if it had been trying to stay warm. My stomach threatened to crawl back up my throat for a second time. I jerked my eyes away from the corpse.

I tried to take in the details of the room; anything to take my mind off the lifeless cinder at the center of everything.

It was the type of parlor I expected to find. They run pretty standard in the renovated Victorians in this section of town; high ceilings, plaster coated walls, and smooth, hardwood floors. It was neatly kept. Nothing looked out of position. A small couch and a few end tables sat, minuscule, in the expanse of the room. Pictures hung, straight, on the walls, and fresh flowers filled a vase on a low coffee table. No television. There also weren’t any knocked-over lamps or gouges in the walls or floor. No signs of a struggle at all.

I suddenly found it hard to believe that someone could have burned to death in a room that well kept.

I stifled a nervous laugh and coughed into my hand instead. The boys in the crime scene unit looked up, for just a moment, before returning to the investigation. I spun on my heel and strode back out into the sun. Justin was waiting for me, sitting on the stairs, smoking a cigarette.

“How can you smoke those things?” I asked, settling down on the step next to him, “Especially with the smell coming from in there.”

“Smoke hides the smell,” he said, “A little. Want one?”

“I don’t think I’m up to it just yet.”

“Yeah,” he said, “You look a little green around the gills.”

We both snickered, then we both sat and stared off into the distance. I can’t say that I was doing much thinking. I don’t think he was either. I forced my eyes to move around, to come back to the moment.

There were a few people, civilians, milling about. Deaths and crime scenes are like any other spectacle: people tend to rubberneck. Hell, even one of the local goth-punks made an appearance to see the show.

Just another freak, trying to see what death looks like.

“What do you think?” Justin asked.

“About the rubberneckers?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, that,” I said, “I’m having a hard time with the whole thinking thing at the moment. I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Took a couple of minutes for me, too,” he said, exhaling a long stream of smoke.

“It’s definitely a she,” I said, “No man keeps his home in that kind of order.”

“I know a few fastidious souls who do,” he said with a smirk, “but what makes you so sure this is a woman?”

“Fresh cut flowers,” I said, “It speaks of someone who wants to bring beauty into her house.”

“Could be gay,” he countered.

“Nope,” I said, “Too subtle with the decorations.”

We looked at each other for a second, the barest traces of smiles daring to form at the corners of our mouths.

“Yeah,” he said, “I figured it for a woman too. No pictures of her or of family in the house. Think she was renting. We’re trying to nail down the landlord now.”

“Who called it in?” I asked.

“Anonymous,” he said, taking another drag on his smoke.

“That’s weird,” I said, “I kind of figured you’d have all of this wrapped up. Why’d the captain want me in on this one?”

“Not sure. It could have something to do with the circumstances,” he said blowing smoke through his nose like an amused dragon, “or it could be because I told him you might have some insight.”

“Maybe,” I said, going over the image of the parlor in my head, “It’s definitely strange. Nothing out of place. No scorch marks around the body. Spontaneous Human Combustion maybe.”

“Don’t know much about the phenomenon myself,” he said, “And that answer won’t earn your rate.”

“Figured as much,” I said, “If some kind of accelerant was used, there’d be signs of burning on something other than the body.”

“You’d think,” he said.

The coroner’s van pulled up and parked at the curb. The man in the passenger seat stuck his head out the window.

“The CSU guys done in there yet?” the passenger asked.

“Just about,” Justin said, “Should only be a few more minutes, I think.”

I walked over to the van and shoved my head through the open window.

“You got any of that menthol stuff to put under your nose?” I asked.

“Don’t really need it,” the driver said, “but we keep some on hand for you guys, just in case.”

He handed me the jar. I took some and smeared it under each nostril. I tossed it back and trudged up the steps to the house.

“What’s up?” Justin asked.

“I want to take another look around,” I said, “Care to join me?”

“Why not?” he said with a shrug.

He followed me back into the house.

The menthol didn’t exactly hide the smell of burnt flesh, but it lent it enough of a strange counterpoint that I could sense it as an abstract, instead of a more concrete, there’s-a-charred-body-on-the-floor smell. It kept me from wanting to vomit every couple of seconds.

I didn’t go back to the parlor, not at first. I headed upstairs to look around the second floor.

A neatly kept bathroom and office faced each other at the top of the flight. I poked my head into both. Nothing to see. So, I went for the bedroom at the end of the hall. It, too, was extremely neat and tidy. I was beginning to wonder if the woman who lived here was a woman at all. Maybe she was a nun, or a robot, or a robot nun. I was pondering her strange metal habits when the buzzing started.

Just an itching at my brain stem, at first, but the sensation grew more intense as I moved deeper into the room. It was positively jarring as I stood in front of the woman’s closet. The electric bees were awake.

I looked at Justin. He nodded, and I opened the sliding doors. The inside was out of place.

Thank god. I couldn’t have tolerated any more neatness.

Clothes hung at the sides, and a small altar stood in a cleared space in the middle. It was about three feet tall. Gold and green cloth lay draped over its surface. Several small statues, some of which I recognized, many of which I didn’t, stood arrayed around a small, silver bowl. Lying across the rim of the bowl was a slender, golden, ceremonial dagger. Whoever she was, she was a practitioner of some sort.

“Wiccan?” Justin asked.

“I can talk to some of the people I know. See if they knew her,” I said.

“But you don’t think so?”

“Not really,” I said, “The bowl and dagger fit, but the statue of Ganesh and some of the other figures, not so much.”

I took a step back and scanned the room again.

“What are you looking for?” Justin asked.

“This,” I said, lifting up an innocuous-looking throw rug.

Underneath, painted in white on the floor, was a circle, three feet in diameter.

“Don’t see that every day,” Justin said.

“Not on hardwood floors, no,” I said, “Not unless you’re hanging out with Aleister Crowley.”

“Isn’t he dead?”

“That’s what they say.”

Justin shot me a quizzical look. I just smiled.

“How long on the ID do you think?” I asked.

“We should have something later today.”

I dropped the rug back in place and headed for the door.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now we take another look at the body,” I said over my shoulder.

We hustled down the stairs and into the parlor. The CSU guys were just packing up. Justin told them to give us a few more minutes before they told the coroners to come get the corpse. I walked circles around the body. On the second turn, I saw a glint of metal out of the corner of my eye.

I knelt down by the body, motioning for Justin to join me. When he got to my level, I pointed out the glint.

Somehow, a necklace had survived the flames. The crime scene guys must’ve missed it under the layer of char.

Justin called one of them back into the room. The investigator slipped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and set to releasing the necklace from the burnt flesh. He snapped a few pictures, then pried it off the corpse, placed it in an evidence bag. He handed the bag to Justin and walked out.

“What do you make of this?” Justin asked, tilting the bag to catch the light.

“The chain might have been silver,” I said, “but whatever was on it looks like copper. Some kind of symbol or talisman, I think.”

The heat had melted the copper thing at the end of the chain. It was deformed beyond recognition. If it had been a talisman, there was no way to tell what kind.

“A copper talisman?” Justin asked, “What would someone use that for?”

“Don’t know,” I said with a shrug, “but if it was for protection, I’d really look into getting my money back.”

“Somehow,” Justin said, “I don’t think she’ll be redeeming her warranty.”

Gallows humor, sometimes it’s the only thing that lets you keep doing the job. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps you from crying. I hear it a lot at crime scenes.

Justin and I walked back to the front door. He signaled the coroners to come in and collect the corpse. We stood on the porch as they went about their duty. Justin lit another cigarette. He offered the pack to me. I waved him off.

I have no way of knowing if I smoked in my previous life, but I saw no use in starting up now.

“Oh, shit,” Justin said, almost choking on a puff of smoke.

There was only one thing that I knew of that could elicit cuss words from Justin while he was on the job. And she was slithering up the sidewalk directly towards us.

Barbara Hicks.

Barb, as we all called her, was as sharp and dangerous as her nickname implied. Barb was the star reporter for a local rag of a tabloid that specialized in strange happenings. She always dressed in classy blouses, skirts, and sensible pumps – nothing over three-inch heels. The professional manner of her wardrobe belied the creature that writhed underneath. She was lean and hungry in the way Shakespeare wrote. She had the look of someone who burned lean tissue into the night, thinking up ways to get a story or to get ahead.

And I hated her.

“You better get out of here Caleb,” Justin said.

“Yeah, before I punch her fucking lights out,” I breathed, already dangling one leg over the railing at the side of the house. She got up to the porch just as I managed a safe straddle.

“Caleb, Justin, how nice to see you here,” she said in that typically Southern, insincere, and saccharine-drenched drawl.

“That’s detective Hagen, Miss Hicks,” Justin said with only a minor scowl, “Try to remember it.”

“Oh, I’m sure I won’t forget,” she said, her intonation giving me a toothache, “and where are you going, Caleb?”

“Away,” I said, smiling as wide as I could, “and that’s Mr. Carson to you.”

I tried to make my voice as insincerely sweet as hers. I managed, just barely.

“Why, I haven’t seen you two together since the Delilah Simmons case,” she said.

I had to fight the urge to jump back over the rail and stomp on her empty, bleach-blond head. I could see Justin fighting a similar if more subdued urge.

“Yes,” Justin said coolly, “And, as I recall, you were warned against ever interfering with an active case, again.”

“And what are you gentlemen investigating now?” she asked, unphased by Justin’s threat.

“You know the police do not comment on active cases, Miss Hicks,” Justin said, ever the professional.

“What about you, Mr. Carson?” she asked.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said, my smile growing so wide it felt like it would crack my face.

“Charming as always,” she said, “but the both of you know that the press cannot be kept out forever.”

“Is that what you’re calling that rag of a tabloid you scribble for?” I asked, dripping sweetness.

“Knoxville Uncovered is a respectable journal of reporting, I’ll have you know,” she said, her fake sweetness slipping.

“I’m sure it makes a perfectly respectable liner for birdcages,” I said, my smile becoming somewhat more genuine.

“Why, I have never….”

“Sure you have. That’s why you walk like that,” I slipped in before she could finish her sentence, the sweetness never leaving my voice, and the smile never leaving my face, “Now, get the fuck out of here before you get someone else damn near tortured to death, you fucking leech.”

That’s what it took.

She stiffened, spun on her expensive heels, and strode away, muttering something about not forgetting.

Yeah, I hope she doesn’t because I couldn’t forget – not ever.

Justin stared at me for a moment, arched his eyebrow in mock reproach, and continued puffing on his cigarette.

“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to say that to her,” he said in between puffs.

“About as much as me, I’m figuring, but you have the grace and position to restrain yourself,” I said, “I have no such hindrances in my profession.”

“Sometimes I envy you,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, “And sometimes I get the bills paid on time.”

“Well, maybe not that part.”

“Definitely not that part,” I said.

“You better get going before she comes back with a lawyer or something,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, “Call me when you get a name.”

“Sure,” he said, “Call me when you get anything.”

“Sure,” I said and slid off the porch.

I slipped behind the house and down a couple of blocks for good measure. The long way home would keep me far enough away from Barb Hicks to avoid being tossed in the tank on an assault charge.

I could not afford bail just yet.

More images of Delilah Simmons’ face welled up in my mind. The picturesque school photo her parents had shown us at the beginning of the case clashed with the bloodied and battered image of when we found her. The blood won. It burned into my brain, the dark, dried streaks of blood in her dirty, blond hair; the jagged hole where her left eye had been. The anger bubbled up from my guts and made my hands tremble. I shook it off – pushed the images from my mind and attempted to concentrate on the case at hand.

I stalked back to my office in my own little world of rage and confusion.