One
LAKEMORE, WA
Mackenzie picked up the crime scene photograph and stared at it for the billionth time. The prostitute was lying on the bed. Her hair was soaked in blood. She was a blonde, but now she looked like a brunette.
She had been stabbed forty-seven times. There were puncture wounds all over her body. Her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her arms, and her buttocks.
She had cheated on her lover forty-seven times.
“Here you go!” A hand blocked her view and placed a bottle of champagne on her desk. She squinted at it then looked up. “What is this?”
Sergeant Jeff Sully leaned his bulk against her desk. “It is Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs. Famous Californian champagne.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Mackenzie mumbled.
“It’s sparkling chardonnay.” He rolled his eyes, his thick unibrow tracking the movement. “Your knowledge of wine is disgraceful.”
“Your knowledge of wine is surprising. You clearly look like a beer person.” She pointed at his large drum of a belly.
Sully ignored the jibe and crossed his arms, his thumb reaching up to scratch at his graying mustache. “How do you even look at that without flinching? One of the worst ones I’ve seen in my career.”
She clipped the picture back into the case file. “I’ve seen worse.”
Detective Troy Clayton pushed his chair back from the cubicle next to hers and came into view with a Cheshire cat smile on his face. He reminded her of a carrot—tall, lean, and stiff, with a mop of light brown hair that looked orange under sunlight. “Guess you saw a lot of dead bodies in New York?”
She froze. She imagined what Troy would look like if his eyelid were swollen to the size of a golf ball. She wondered about the amount of force required to fracture a skull with a frying pan. It needed a staggering amount of rage.
What Mackenzie did twenty years ago needed astounding cowardice.
The phone trilled.
Papers shuffled.
The toilet flushed.
Sully’s stomach growled as he stood up.
The little sounds snapped her out of her spiraling thoughts and kept her grounded. A little trick she learned from the internet. She smiled. “Nah, I just have bigger balls than all of you combined.”
Sully laughed behind her. Troy reddened, but his lips resisted a smile. He tapped a pen against his chin before wheeling back to his cubicle.
The Investigations Division in Lakemore PD consisted of a Special Investigations and a Detectives Unit.
Special Investigations looked into robberies, fraud, and drug and gang-related crimes.
Sully was in charge of the Detectives Unit, leading six senior detectives and three junior detectives, investigating homicide, missing persons, felony assaults, and cold cases.
Located on the same floor, the detectives had cubicles close to each other, with the sergeant’s office right down the hall.
It was like being in a fishbowl. There was no privacy.
Mackenzie placed the blue binder back on the shared shelf. She looked at the unoccupied cubicle behind hers. Files were stacked in a corner. Pictures were pinned to the bulletin board on the wall. An empty coffee cup sat on the desk.
Her nostrils flared; her chest pinched. She looked away. “I think I’m going to go home.”
“What? No way!” Sully said incredulously. “The DA charged your guy, Mack. You solved the case. You celebrate here.”
Troy stood up and looked over the screen separating their cubicles. “Care to share some of that booze, Detective?”
“It’s been a long week––” Mackenzie started, but Troy interrupted.
“I’ll finish that entire thing then. We can celebrate for Mad Mack without her here.”
Mad Mack.
It was her nickname in the department. They called her that mostly behind her back and sometimes to her face. She didn’t appreciate the name, but she knew where it came from.
Her desk was always organized. Her notes were always color-coded.
Everything in her life was ordered and categorized.
She finished first in the academy. She could run one and a half miles in ten minutes.
She worked on Christmas and Thanksgiving.
She never relied on coffee or fast food, unlike her coworkers.
Her red hair was always straight as an arrow.
Her pantsuit showed no sign of crinkles.
Her eyebrows were perfectly threaded. There wasn’t even a shadow on her upper lip.
She never slumped. She never cried. She never lost her cool.
She must be mad.
“Actually, why not? No one wants to see you drunk, Troy,” she teased him.
Troy smirked. “I’ll find the others.”
Ten minutes later, Detectives Finn, Ned, and Dennis were gathered around Mackenzie’s desk. Becky Sullivan, who led the Medical Examiner’s office, joined them. Having worked with Mackenzie and the other detectives on several cases, she had become good friends with the unit.
Sully stood, facing them, and raised his glass. “We all must be a little mad too for working till midnight. To Mad Mack!”
“To another bastard in prison,” Mackenzie corrected.
“To complaining wives at home!” Dennis raised his glass.
“And complaining husbands.” Becky cocked an eyebrow.
They clinked their glasses. Finn went to his cubicle behind Troy’s and connected his iPod. The song “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts blasted from his speaker.
Mackenzie sighed, defeated, while they laughed at her expense.
“Mack,” Ned said. “Sterling did a good job with Thatcher. Nailed him. You know how badly I wanted this guy gone.”
Mackenzie’s eyes skimmed over Ned’s aged face. Even though Ned was in his late forties, he looked at least a decade older. His breath was stale with the smell of cigarettes and coffee. The last twenty years of dealing with battered homemakers had left him scruffy.
Did Mackenzie’s scars show? Could someone look at her and guess what she had done? She hoped not. She put a lot of effort and time into looking immaculate. It wasn’t vanity; it was her armor.
“Sterling is good at his job,” she shrugged. “But this was all you, Ned. You’d been building a case against him for months. Don’t let my husband take any credit for your hard work.”
Ned smiled and gave her a pat on the back.
The champagne felt bubbly against her tongue. It wasn’t strong or heady. She sipped it slowly while Troy and Dennis watched the highlights of the football game on the internet, and Ned and Becky discussed their kids, who were in the same grade.
She spotted a water ring on her desk and furiously cleaned it with a cloth.
“Mack, I don’t think you realize how impressed the brass has been with you,” Sully said, taking away the cloth. “Relax tonight.”
“The Lieutenant, you mean?”
“Peck is a hard man to impress. I don’t think he likes me, but I don’t really give a damn about politics.
You’re good at your job. I just want you to know that people are watching you.
Maybe in the next few years, you’ll have my job.
And of course, it helps to be married to an assistant district attorney. ” He winked.
She dug her palm into the edge of the table and forced a smile. Being married to ADA Sterling Brooks had several perks—but one day, happiness had stopped being one of them.
Sully looked over his shoulder to the empty cubicle opposite Mackenzie’s and the picture pinned to the bulletin board. “Bruce retired at a bad time. Nick has been under a lot of pressure since he took over the case.”
“I wonder when we’ll find that girl.”