Minka
MINKA
“ D octor Kirk.” I point my steel ruler his way, like a teacher who… points steel rulers, I guess. I don’t know. “You’re starting rounds today. Go.”
“Uh…” The poor, sweet, too-shy kid swallows his tongue and blushes furiously as he looks from a smirking Aubree on his left to an equally smug Raquel on his right. He’s surrounded by arrogant estrogen, and neither of his colleagues are inclined to save him from himself. “Chief…” He gulps so the action becomes audible. “I’m currently working a homicide with a detective from Midtown. Female, mid-thirties, died of acute myocardial infarction.”
Curious, I raise a single brow and hold the poor guy prisoner. “She had a heart attack… but it’s homicide? You sure you don’t have your cases— and college education,” I add for emphasis, “mixed up?”
Like we’re all in grade school, Aubree lowers her head and snorts at the boy’s expense. “Burn.”
“It-it appears as though the woman was placed in a high-stress situation,” he stammers. “She was led to her heart attack.”
“A high-stress situation?” Good one, Chief. Keep repeating what he says . You sound intelligent . “I find it doubtful that a detective, or even a skilled attorney, could prove homicide in this case.”
“He dropped her into the ape enclosure at the zoo,” he counters. More confident now. “Husband considered it a joke.”
“A cruel one at that.” Aubree’s taunting mood flips to fire in an instant. “What the hell was he thinking?”
“History of abuse. He put her in the enclosure and locked her in, which obviously ended with the resident ape going nuts. Years of emotional and physical abuse led to an autoimmune systems crash and, ultimately, to a weak heart, which concluded with a heart attack. The ape pounded on her so badly she would have died from injuries anyway, but I’m seeing signs of MI that predate their visit to the zoo. So now the detective wants me to nail down the timeline and get the guy.”
“Good.” Anger explodes in my blood, but I turn my attention to Flynn. “And you?”
“I don’t have an ape causing heart attacks. In fact, I have a SIDs case. It’s as standard as SIDs can be. Home life appears normal. No co-sleeping, no alcohol or drugs evident within the family. This seems to just be a horrible tragedy. I’m tying it up this morning and moving on to the next.”
“Good.” I look at Raquel, our tox lab genius. “And you?”
“Overworked,” she sighs. “Underpaid. No appreciation. Life is difficult, ya know?”
“Sure is. But your workload?”
Her fire-engine red lips curl higher with a taunting smile. “Besides crushing me? It’s coming along. Doctor Campbell and I are getting through things faster now that we’re on our ‘ never eat, never sleep, too much caffeine ’ diets. It’s a short-term win.”
“And a long-term heart attack,” Aubree snipes with a side grin. “I’ll be sure to bring flowers to your funeral.”
Raquel wrinkles her nose, but she holds my gaze. “Things are fine. Xavier is working on a cold case right now. The lead detectives have reopened the inquiry after ten years of quiet. We have new tech these days, so they’re hoping we can pull something useful with the DNA left behind.”
“Good.” My phone rings on my desk. Not the office phone, but my cell, so I turn and snatch it up, spying Archer’s name. But I spin back to my team and release them with a nod. “I’ll come around in a little bit if anyone needs an assist.”
“Doubtful,” Aubree teases, mocking Raquel with a snide expression as she files by. Then, when everyone is gone, she swings back around and sneaks a look at my phone. “That’s Archer, which means you have a man looking to flirt or a dead body looking for an M.E. If it’s the second, then you won’t be assisting anyone anytime soon.”
“You need to stop that.” I swipe to answer just a beat before the call would have gone to voicemail. Then, bringing the device to my ear, I narrow my eyes and look at Aubree again. She knows so much… about everything… and yet, it mostly remains unspoken. “Detective Malone?”
“Didn’t think you were gonna answer.” He’s not at the precinct, proven by the lack of chatter and ringing phones on his end of the line. But the shutter sound of crime scene techs photographing a scene becomes my second clue. “Everything okay?”
“Mmhm. We were just finishing up our morning briefing.”
“You ready to come off the bench?”
“Yeah, coach.” I firm my lips when Aubree dances her way toward the door and out to collect her things from her desk. “She’s too happy about being right. It’s bordering on obnoxious now.”
Archer only chuckles. “Yours and Aubree’s relationship is almost as weird as Fletch and Fifi’s. But I’m not allowed to talk about that, so… female vic, mid-forties. There was no cruise ship and no bachelorette party, unfortunately.”
I wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear, making my way to the rack by the door. I switch my white lab coat for the one I always wear when I go out. It’s too thin. Kinda ratty and old. But it’s functional, and my birthday and Christmas already passed, which means I missed my opportunity for a new one this winter.
Unless, of course, I acted like a mature adult and simply bought my own.
“What about a cruise ship? We don’t get those here, right?”
“There was no cruise ship. The scene isn’t wildly violent, and the vic has a husband who, according to his boss, didn’t come to work today. So once my M.E. gets here, I reckon I know where I’m looking next.”
“Sounds like you can do the job without me.” I slip my arms into the sleeves and catch my phone when I release it from my shoulder, but I head through the door and bring the device back up. “Since it sounds easy, do you want me to send one of my junior techs instead?”
“I accept only the best. Even if it costs more for the city. Are you too busy to come out?”
“Not particularly.” I follow Aubree to the elevator and in when the neutral-cube-of-truth-telling-and-something-something opens up to reveal an empty interior. “And I’m never too busy for you, Detective. We’re getting into the elevator now.”
“Sucks for you,” he laughs. “I’ll text you the address and see you in ten minutes.”
“Yeah.” I side-eye Aubree and tense up at the excitement bubbling in her stance. The clenched fists and giddy grin. Her eyes dance and her cheeks flush warm. Knowing what’s coming for me, I sigh and finish my call. “I’ll see you in ten.”
Pulling the phone from my ear, I stare straight ahead as the elevator doors close and, like clockwork, Aubree bursts out. “Do you have anyone in your sights right now? Ya know, for like, the V stuff.”
“No. And if I did, you’d know it, wouldn’t you?”
“Not necessarily; you’re a pretty closed-up person and rarely volunteer anything more than your lips offer. I get my information mostly from Archer because he’s a big old textbook laid open for anyone to read. It just so happens I speak Malone particularly well. Also, it’s going on the anniversary of the Diane Philips case again. How are you feeling about that?”
“Why don’t you smack my ass and find out for yourself?” I flash her a smile as we arrive and the doors open, then I step out and revel in the knowledge that she won’t ask questions except in the elevator. That’s her place for prying. Everywhere else, she locks it down. “Archer mentioned something about a cruise ship and a bachelorette party…?” I come to a stop at the passenger side of a car and stare across the roof until Aubree jingles a set of keys. She always knows to grab them on the way out, because I sure as hell never remember to. “I don’t know what the cruise thing is about.” I slide in when she unlocks the doors and wrap myself tight in my jacket as the January cold bites at my skin. Even underground. Even in a structure of two-foot-thick concrete walls and a roof so low, I could almost stretch out and touch it with the tips of my fingers. “I guess we’ll see once we get there, but from what he’s said so far, this one is a slam dunk. Straightforward case, thankfully. January is never a month I want additional mental and emotional loads.”
“Because of the Diane Philips stuff.” She backs us out of the parking spot and pushes the car into drive. But before broaching the garage’s exit, she glances over and studies my expression. “You brought her up outside of the elevator, not me. So you’re not allowed to get cranky. Diane was taken in the winter of ‘98, right? And dumped in the winter of ‘99. Her killer was never found.”
“Mmhm.” I look down at my hands and flick my thumbnail, purely so I don’t unlock my phone and Google Diane and her case. Again. “That was a long time ago, though, and I figure he’s dead now.”
“Why?”
Confused, I look up again. “Why what?”
“You, of all people, are an extremely literal thinker. You see a dead body, you confirm it’s dead, and only then do you sign a death certificate. So why apply a death status to a man you’ve never seen in a body bag?”
“Because people who do that sort of thing don’t stop unless they’re stopped. So either he’s dead or in prison. And if he’s in prison, it’s for an unrelated crime, since Diane’s case has never been closed. Nor the others who came after her. Sick men like that don’t wake up someday and think, ‘ Well, I think I’m done violating little girls now. What time is Jeopardy on? ’”
“So you sleep better with the assumption he’s dead?”
“If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t sleep at all.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and try, as hard as I can, to exhale the thoughts of a faceless man I never got to see. A criminal I never got to punish. A psychopath who has, hopefully, paid the ultimate price and left this earth. Then I look down and note the date on my phone.
So close to the eleventh.
So near the night I won’t sleep, and the day I won’t take a decent breath. But once it’s done and we move on to the twelfth, I’ll know another year has passed and that man’s reign of horror has ended. “I don’t want to talk about it. How’s your sex life?”
She bursts out laughing—a tinkling, snorting, unladylike cacophony—the perfect way to dissipate tension bubbling over in a car with its windows up and doors closed.
“It wouldn’t be proper for me to tell you that he blows my mind and makes me beg for more.”
“No.” I chuckle, relaxing again as we exit the garage and head into Copeland City traffic. “That wouldn’t be proper. Does he hurt you?”
She melts into her chair, sighing and smiling. “In all the best ways. He’s still looking for a house to buy. He’s sending me nuts with all the listings he keeps texting.”
“He can have the Waterfalls. Tim is the oldest Malone, after all, and I don’t want to live where Tim II once did.”
“Neither does Tim III. I doubt he’ll ever step foot inside that house if he can help it. But don’t worry,” she teases, glancing across with a side eye, “I can sage it for you. Get the nasties out before you do the nasty in the main bedroom.”
“The things Archer and I do are not nasty.”
“Then you’re missing out.” She snickers. “It’s my new favorite thing to do. And Tim isn’t working the bar as much anymore, so I don’t go to bed alone.”
“His new hobby is working.” I stare through the windshield as we move away from the city and further into suburbia, taking mental notes of the cop cars lining the street. The yellow tape surrounding our scene. The runway, almost, they create to lead us where we need to go. “ Your new hobby is sex. That’s how people get itchy hoo-haas.”
“A side effect I’m safe from, thus far.” Pulling up at the edge of our crime scene, she puts the gear into park and turns the engine off. “I like my new hobby. I’ve been without it for a very long time, confident the payout, eventually, would be worth it.”
“Mmhm. And that payout seems to include the shiny necklace around your throat.” I reach across and gently flick the priceless jewel. “Worth an entire year’s salary, don’t you think?”
“It was a gift.” She covers the gold chain and sparkling emeralds with her hand. “It’s the Malone tradition.”
“Sure. But Tim didn’t buy yours for fifty bucks from a homeless man.” I turn and push out of the car. “I’m not criticizing. Merely observing. Looks like a necklace. Feels like a collar.”
“Mind your own damn business.” She slams her door and stomps around to open the trunk. Whipping out our murder bag, she closes it again so the echo rolls all along the street and draws eyes. “And don’t call it a collar.”
“Am I wrong?” I approach the uniform on duty and smile for the sweet Officer Clay, placed at this checkpoint intentionally, I’d bet, by the very detective who steps into view an easy fifty feet away. I duck under the tape he lifts and turn back to wait for Aubree to do the same. Then, we start toward our D.B. “It can be whatever you and Tim want it to be. But I’m just saying… take it off in front of him and see what happens.”
“You feel oddly entitled to an opinion on my private life, Chief Mayet. Seems to be an overreach.”
“Wait… I thought I was your best friend? Remind me, Doctor Emeri, where does friend and sister end, and boss begin? Because if I mentioned the necklace while we’re sitting at the bar, and thus, off duty, I imagine I’d receive the same brusque response.”
“You’re being an ass.” Shoulders back and spine rod-straight, she stares ahead at my husband. “It’s not my fault your sex life is dull and you’re jealous of mine.”
I choke out a laugh so loud, Archer’s eyes sear into mine as we approach.
“What?” He stops in front of us and tilts his head to the side, looking from me to Aubree. “Wanna invite me in on the joke?”
“She’s swiping because she can. We’ll discuss the joke later. In bed . Doctor Emeri,” I gesture toward the scene, another twenty feet behind Archer. “Would you like to lead today?”
“Really?” Like the flip of a switch, her moodiness makes way for glee. “Yes, please!” She presses the murder bag to my belly and releases it so I’m forced to hold it or let it fall to the ground. Then she extends her hand, palm side up, and waits. “Gloves please, Doctor Mayet. And prepare to photograph my scene.”
I roll my eyes. But I hand her the things she asks for and shake my head when she takes off for her D.B. I’ll join her in a moment. But I look at Archer first and allow myself a chance to breathe in the scent of his cologne. “Detective Malone.”
He takes another step closer, forcing me to fold my neck to meet his eyes. “You look pretty. Good meeting this morning?”
“As good as can be expected, considering we have a killer ape roaming our city.” I lean around him and nod toward a beaming Aubree. “I think we’ve released a beast since she jumped into bed with your brother. Doctor Emeri used to be sweet and submissive to my every uttered need. Now, she wants my job and her rightful place at the head of the Malone table. Her ego is getting a little too large to fit into one car.”
“Her rightful place?” Following my lead, he peeks over his shoulder and watches her for a beat. She’s the perfect professional on a crime scene. Observing a body and preparing to declare they are, in fact, dead. She orders techs around and ensures the scene remains uncontaminated. Then he brings his focus back to me. “She’s Tim’s problem now. There is no seat for her at the table, Minnnka. There’s only his knee. However they handle that, is between them.”
“And my job? Are you not concerned that I may be unemployed soon?”
“I could do with a compliant housewife, anyway. I was never interested in one of those independent, free-thinking women of the twenty-first century. The idiot who gave you a medical degree was selling you hope, when we all know, your rightful place is in the kitch?—”
“Finish that sentence, and I’ll strangle you in your sleep.” I step around him and start toward Aubree and a watchful Fletch. “Did you ever consider how confusing the word kitchen is?”
“Did I…” He hurries to keep up with me, his shoulder brushing mine. “What?”
“Well, we have a bed room, and we have a bath room. Dining room. Laundry room, for those who have them. But we call the room we cook in a kitchen. Why not a cooking room?”
“The word kitchen is actually derived from the French,” Aubree inserts, listening in as we approach. “It’s literally the French translation of cooking room. So really,” she glances across and meets my eyes, “we’re all bilingual already. Initial impressions of our victim, Chief Mayet?”
I drop my gaze and study the woman laid out just three feet in front of us. Approximately forty years old, just like Archer said. Five, six. Maybe five, seven. She’s not as thin as Aubree, but she’s not large, either. She’s just… comfortable. She wears black slacks and a neat white blouse with faux pearls for buttons. “My initial impressions are that this woman was probably heading to work. She’s got her heels on, though one sits askew, as though she fell or was running. Her clothes are neat and smart-casual, which makes me think she works in the corporate sector. She has shoulder-length hair, with the beginnings of gray slipping through. Some strands are an inch or so long, which means she’s had time to deal with them, but hasn’t. That tells me she likes to look nice, but she’s not vain. She’s still wearing her jewelry—wedding bands, a gold bangle on her left wrist, and a gold chain, also on her left wrist. She’s wearing a necklace, also gold. These appear to be genuine pieces. But not gaudy. This was not a robbery gone wrong. I expect her to land within the middle-income bracket. Married, two working adults in the home, means they’re meeting their bills and have some left over at the end. She’s wearing a little color on her lips, but it’s understated, and though her brows are shaped professionally, she’s not wearing lashes or mascara. She’s just a regular woman who goes to work and likes to look nice, but she’s not obsessive about it.”
Aubree grins her approval, like she’s the teacher and I’m the student. “What else do you see?”
“An autopsy tech who is getting a little big for her britches,” I tease, eliciting a blush from the woman who would never dare usurp me. It’s not about loyalty or superiority. It’s about love. And because I love her, too, I look down again and continue. “She’s still dressed, and her clothes are not torn or disheveled. So in addition to ruling out robbery, I would also strike out this being a sexually driven crime.”
“There’s no immediate evidence of a bullet wound,” she murmurs. “Ditto, blades. I see no injury at all. No bruising. No bleeding. Without looking deeper, one could almost assume she’s having a nap on the grass.”
“You should probably rule her dead before we proceed,” Fletch jokes. “Ya know, just in case.”
“Have you searched for a pulse, Detective?” I take a step to the right, because Archer’s finger is coming dangerously close to the loop of my pants, and the media vans are beginning to fill the street outside our yellow tape. He would grab me if he thought it necessary, and of course, that image would be plastered on every news station from now until the next time they have reason to show something else. “Detective Malone?” I prompt. “Did you check for a pulse?”
He playfully scrunches his nose so I see, but no one outside of us does. “Yes, Chief. Detective Fletcher and I both checked. As did the EMTs who arrived before us. In our professional opinion, we would feel comfortable declaring death at this point.”
“So…” More curious now, I move closer and kneel over the woman’s lifeless body. She hasn’t been shot, stabbed, run over by a car, beaten, or in any noticeable way, harmed. “Could be natural causes,” I ponder. And then I think of Doctor Kirk and his case. “If she died of something naturally, why is the homicide division here?”
“Because it’s an unattended death.” Archer inches closer, placing himself at my back and casting a shadow over my shoulder. “Until we rule otherwise, homicide must attend.”
“Any witnesses?” Aubree asks. “The way I see it, she came out of her house and ran across the lawn. Running toward, or away from, something. Surely, one of the neighbors saw.”
“Uniforms are already canvassing.” Fletch hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Most everyone around here works a standard nine to five, and it’s currently,” he makes a show of checking his watch, “a little after eleven. We estimate TOD to be around ten, though we’ll defer to you good doctors to confirm. Most of the residents will have left for work between eight and nine, so our vic was here relatively alone.”
“Except the husband didn’t go to work. Right?” Aubree looks from one detective to the other. “That’s what you said.”
“Right,” Fletch answers. “He’s AWOL. Which makes him our number one person of interest, and since we’re such clever cops, we’ve already put out a BOLO on his car and face. If he’s seen anywhere, runs a red light, buys gas before fleeing town, or tries for a train station or the airport instead, uniforms will pick him up and bring him back. We can’t assume it was the husband. But we can lean that way until the evidence points us somewhere else.”
“It’s always the husband,” Aubree taunts. “Always.”
“Statistically probable,” he agrees. “But the assumption makes you a poor investigator. Your bias colors your analysis, and bias leads to a bad case and outcome.”
“Good thing I went to medical school, then, and not Donut King.”
“Jesus.” Archer coughs out a laugh and covers his mouth before the cameras catch something they really shouldn’t. “She’s aiming for everyone’s throat these days. Sharing a bed with Timothy Malone becomes you, Doctor Emeri.”
“It just keeps happening.” Giggling, she lowers to kneel across from me. “Not the bed thing,” she clarifies. “Well, that too. But the sass. It’s like I’ve suppressed pockets of it my whole life, and now it’s just spilling over. I can’t even stop the words before they’re out.”
“Because you were suppressing things,” I rumble. “Big, huge, loaded secrets your friends could have benefited from had you been truthful.” I nod toward the vic. “Touch her and solve this. Save us all the trouble.”
She purses her lips, unimpressed. But that doesn’t stop her from placing her fingers on the woman’s neck as though to check for a pulse. “It’s not something that comes easily, Chief Mayet. And it’s not something everyone is open to. Nor is it a valid way to build a case and present proof to a jury. I can’t touch a body and know all of its secrets, no matter how much you wish I could. And even if it was possible, a judge is unlikely to accept my word on the stand just because .” She looks up at Archer, since she’d have to turn to see Fletch. “Her marriage was dangerous, and I think you’d be well within your rights to investigate the husband.” Then to me. “I’d like to get her to the George Stanley and open on our table. She has a story to tell.”
Satisfied, I rise again and say nothing of Archer’s chest caressing my back as I straighten out. “Let’s document and bag her. We’re not getting anything out here when we have no visible signs of harm. Whatever this is, it’s inside. I’ll call transport.” But not before I lean over the murder bag and retrieve a scalpel and thermometer. “Will you get TOD, Doctor Emeri?” I take out my phone and carefully step around Archer and the body, so I trip on neither. “I’ll call for the van.”