Archer
“T he fuck you mean you slept with my girl?” I swoop in and slam my hands to Fletch’s chest. He’s my best friend, my partner on the force, my brother, even if not by blood. But I shove him against a brick wall in the belly of an alleyway known to be where less-than-desirables hang out.
Today, we’re just like them.
I fist the lapel of his shirt and yank him away from the wall, then I ram him back again until the oxygen in his lungs explosively whistles free. “We’ve been friends a long fucking time. But you repay that friendship by fucking my girl?”
“Dude! No, it’s not like?—”
“I saw you with her!” I swing out with the rage of a man sick to death of others thinking they can have a taste of what’s mine, and, slamming my fist to his chin, I feel bad—a teeny, tiny little bit—as his head jerks around and his jaw clicks.
“No one touches my girl and lives to talk about it after!”
“Hey, now.” I catch movement in my peripherals. A dark shadow and raised hands—not to fight, but to surrender. Or de-escalate, really. “Is there a problem here, fellas?”
I press one hand to Fletch’s throat to hold him to the wall, and with the other, I snag a blade from my back pocket and bring it around to show our newcomer what he’ll taste if he doesn’t back away. “That’s close enough.”
“Woah!” He stops on a dime, smiling around the cigarette that hangs from his lips. “Cool down, bro. I’m just trying to see that everyone is fine.” Wary, slow, he drags his gaze from my knife to Fletch. “You okay, Trev? You got a handle on this, or…?”
“I’m—”
“Don’t talk to him!” I squeeze Fletch’s throat tighter. “Talk to me! You think I’m a fucking cuck? That I’m gonna let you take what’s mine, and there wouldn’t be a price to pay?”
“Or…” Again, the guy inserts himself, coming another step closer and pinching the cigarette between his fingers.
He takes a long draw, filling his lungs and smiling about it, then he pulls the cigarette away and makes a show of tossing the butt to the alleyway floor.
He exhales, the stench of smoke hitting my lungs.
“So Trev is a buddy of mine. He’s a decent dude.
Solid. So maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. ”
“A misunderstanding?” I massage the side of my blade. Caressing it the way I caress Minka Mayet’s thighs at night. Stroking it the way I stroke her skin every time she’s near. “Was seeing them in bed together a misunderstanding?”
“Go,” Fletch croaks under the pressure of my hand. He waves his friend off. “Go before you get caught up in this shit.”
“I can’t go till I know what’s up.” He slides muddy brown eyes back to me. “Can I help you come to a resolution?”
“No. You fuckin’ can’t.” Fast as a viper, I swing my blade around and drive it into Fletch’s stomach.
He gasps in stunned surprise, slapping his hands to his wound as betrayal shines from honeycomb-colored eyes. Then he buckles, slamming to his knees and falling to the ground.
So I turn to the other dude and show him a blade gleaming red. “You still here?”
“Nope.” He turns on his heels and bolts, skidding in a wet patch that steals his balance and sends him sprawling.
He scrambles on his hands and knees, grunting and fighting to get vertical again, and then he slams a bleeding palm against the alleyway wall, deserting the friend he swore to defend only a moment ago.
At my feet, Fletch groans and curls in on himself, holding his stomach and smacking the back of my knee because he’s a petty motherfucker who likes to get that last jab in. “You didn’t have to hit me so fucking hard, asshole.”
I leave him writhing on the dirty ground and walk all the way to the mouth of the alley. The stench of piss and homelessness is violent in the throes of a sweltering June day. The smell becomes a wave in the air, pulsing and growing. Alive and bleeding, making bad worse.
Confirming we’re alone, I turn and walk back the way I came, snagging an evidence baggie from my pocket and bending to scoop up Elton Kerner’s cigarette butt as I pass.
Moving past my partner with a crooked smile, I dig the toe of my boot into his ankle as payback for the fist to my knee, and since Kerner decided to give us a little extra, I walk all the way to the wall where his bloody-handprint stains the brick, and taking out another baggie and a collection tube, I grab samples— twice .
One for the state lab since IA likes to make sure we’re doing everything according to the book. And one for my own curiosity. Since I have access to a different, faster, better lab that the brass doesn’t know about.
“You’re a dick,” Fletch moans. “We agreed you’d be gentle.”
“You sleep with my wife… you’re lucky I only punched you in the face.” I spin the tip of a collection swab in Kerner’s blood, collecting as much as I can from the porous brick exterior. “Men would die for less.”
“While I admit to thinking your wife is a total cutie-patootie—” He climbs to his knees in my peripherals, then to his feet, only to sway since I did, in fact, hit him kinda hard.
“I have never, and will never, bed your bride, asshole.” He limps closer and shoulder-checks me for the fun of it.
“We came for the cigarette. Why are you cleaning the wall?”
“Because while you were lying down on the job, Kerner slipped and grazed his hand. This is called double and double insuring our case.” I drop the swab into the tube and then the tube into the bag.
Finally, I turn and meet his eyes. And I definitely don’t look at the bruise already forming on his jaw.
“We needed DNA for comparison. Now we got some.”
“He called me his friend.” He presses his palm to the underside of his jaw and tilts his head— pushing, pushing, pushing —until a loud pop reverberates along the alleyway. “Fuck. You didn’t have to hit me like that. Prick.”
“Stabbed you, too.” I tap his unharmed belly and slide my prop knife into another baggie. “Just another day at the office, Trev . Sounds like you made a new best friend while working undercover this month.”
“At least my other best friend has never knocked stars into my fucking eyes.” He rubs his jaw again, more focused on his pain than he is on our case. Pussy . “Elton’s a nice dude. Ya know, if we ignore the old lady he robbed and stabbed to death.”
“Robbery in broad daylight,” I whistle. “On a packed street. With witnesses. And the DA still wouldn’t accept our case without a fucking confession chipped in stone and a DNA sample connecting him to the scene.”
“So needy.” He spits blood onto the alleyway floor like a total newb.
“I could sweep that sample up and send it to the lab too, dumbass.” I nudge him back and slide each bag into one larger bag to send off to the lab.
But then I slip the final tube into my pocket for safe keepsies.
“Welcome back to being Charlie Fletcher.” I clap his shoulder and step around him to take out my phone. Gotta call in CSIs and photographers. “How’d it feel being Trevor Hastings?”
“Gross.” He pulls his shirt up, scowling at the mess of fake blood smeared on his belly. “I need to take a shower. And not just because you stabbed me.”
“Leave it, and we’ll head over to the George Stanley.” I scroll my contacts and find my go-to for crime-scene techs. Hitting dial, I bring the phone to my ear and meet Fletch’s stare. “I wanna see them freak out at all the blood.”
“They won’t freak out. They’ll just toss me in a fucking freezer and add me to their to-do list. And since it’s nearly the weekend, I probably won’t be assigned till Monday.”
“Lonely couple of days for you, then. You’ll have loads of time to meditate and think of Fifi.
” When my call connects, I switch mental tracks with smooth efficiency.
“This is Detective Archer Malone. Downtown P.D. Badge number seven-four-three-six-two-two. We need CSIs at my location to process a scene.”
“Sure thing, Detective. You need medical examiners, too?”
They act like there’s a dead person everywhere I go! “No M.E. required.” I brush my hand over my mouth to cover my smile, and rattling off our location, I file our newest piece of case evidence in a way IA won’t be able to pick apart.
Well, except for that extra sample we won’t tell anyone about.
Hanging up, then calling for a couple of uniforms to stand by and protect our scene, I check my text messages and find only one from my wife. Just one lonely, teeny tiny, itty-bitty text that could have been a rock, but isn’t .
“Chief Mayet is cranky today.” Snickering, I meander to the mouth of the alley and allow—this time—Fletch to lean across and check my screen. “An angry face and a gun pointed at its temple.”
“Sounds like you’re in for a fun evening.
” It’s so fucking hot out here today, the sticky, gooey moisture on his shirt turns hard within minutes.
What was sticking to his stomach is now a stiff, board-like section that looks an awful lot like he was fatally shot, but it’s dried to the same consistency as a pair of socks beneath a teen boy’s bed.
“She’s been a little itchy the last couple of months, huh? Ever since the New York case.”
“Unsettled, I think.” Just as soon as a pair of uniforms arrive on scene, I nod in acknowledgment and start along the street, up one block, and around the corner until we reach our car.
Sliding in, I jam a key into the ignition and have us moving just as Fletch fastens his seatbelt.
“Janiesa’s case was a big deal. For Mayet’s psyche, ya know?
” I glance over and find splatters of blood on his neck, too.
And a little on his cheek. “She spent most of her life carrying that burden. The guilt. The trauma. The worry that another girl would be picked up soon. She wore that shit like it was a weight society demanded of her. And now he’s dead, and all her feminine rage is just… ”
“Wasted?” he teases. “She’s got all this energy and nowhere to use it.”