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“Fuck. I have to go.” I skitter out of the war room and sprint across the bullpen, skimming past desks and avoiding a collision with an officer carrying a pile of boxes, four boxes tall. “Minka! I have to go. But I’ll call you later.” I don’t wait for her response before tearing the phone from my ear and dropping my head so I can run faster. I catch up with Fletch on the escalators. “What?”
“Cop,” he growls. “One of ours. But uniforms on scene say it’s a few hours old. The flies have already started on his eyes.”
“Fuck!”
AUBREE
The detectives don’t havethisbody moved without the medical examiner on scene, unlike the last one. Maybe because the last one was easy: they knew what happened, they knew when it happened, and they knew why it happened.
But as I duck under the yellow tape police officers put up to keep people out, I understand immediately why things are different this time around.
My nose twitches as that familiar scent of decomp makes itself known.
“This one’s not fresh, is it?” Fletch stops on my right, hands on his hips and his eyes fixed on the body laid out beside a skip bin. Not inside it. Not hidden behind it. Just…beside it. “That means it’s been a minute.”
“Several of them, I’d think.” Carefully setting my murder bag on the ground, I take out a pair of gloves first, and then the camera second. Typically, I would follow Minka around, documenting everything she does. Every angle. Every word she says. Crime scene photography isn’t exactly what I went to college for, but to be Chief Medical Examiner Minka Mayet’s second…worth it.
“Postmortem lividity has already happened.” Then I lean closer and rest the tips of my fingers on our victim’s palm. I attempt to open his fingers, but the stiffness remains. “Rigor has set in. Not yet complete.”
“Time of death?” Archer stops beside his partner, his feet set wide apart and his hands resting on his hips. “Can youtell already?”
“More than three hours ago, but not more than thirty-six. Postmortem hypostasis indicates the same.” I bring my hand back and the camera up to photograph the brown liquid leaking from the vic’s nose and mouth. Tragically, I recognize his face from one of the dozen who bombarded Minka at the George Stanley earlier this week. “Decomp has begun, although it hasn’t advanced to theskin-melting-off-the-musclestage yet.” I glance back to the detectives and take a small sliver of pride in the way Archer’s lips pale.
He doesn’t like the details of decomposition.
“I’ll grab his temperature in a moment and get you a more accurate time, but if I was guessing, I’m putting your guy in the eighteen-ish hour bracket.”
“Which brings us to…” Fletch counts back the hours. “Eight? This morning?”
“Last night,” Archer clarifies. “Which explains why he hasn’t reported to duty today. Fuck. Why’d it take so long for him to turn up? The others were so much faster.”
“No witnesses?” I turn back to my decedent and carefully peel his blood-soaked button-up shirt away to reveal two puncture wounds. One through the heart, by my estimation. The other, through his belly. “You ready to formally I.D. him? He’s not wearing a vest; I can’t decide if that’s a mistake on his part, or if he figured out the armor piercing element of this case and knew it would be useless anyway.”
“He didn’t figure it out,” Archer rumbles. “Only a handful of people know about those: us and our killer. Issac Haightman,” he releases a heavy sigh and studies the body. “Another narc squad badge has been hit. We need to collect the rounds before word spreads about the tungsten tips. They went straight through the body this time, and stopped in the steel. You won’t recover any during your autopsy, Doctor Emeri.”
“Two shells on the ground.” Agitated, Fletch kicks the toe of his boot against the concrete. “Cops already made a mess of our crime scene before we came out.”
“This makes three from the same squad now.”
“Yikes.” I crouch so I’m practically sitting on my knees, but when my phone rings with a ringtone familiar to all three of us, I peel one glove off and answer my boss before she tears me apart. “This is Doctor Emeri. I’m currently on a crime scene right now, Chief. Perhaps I could call you back in an hour?”
“Another cop?” she demands instead. “Same M.O.? Same bullets?”
“Haven’t seen them personally. But yeah… that’s what I’m seeing.”
“Archer there with you?”
“Mm-hmm. About two feet away. Vic is from the same squad as the two who came before him. So I’m thinking that whole team went and pissed someone off, huh?”
“Give me that damn phone.” Archer snatches the device, startling me until I almost topple off balance, then I twist my neck and half-turn to watch him bring the phone to his ear. “You’re in New York, Mayet. Focus on that.” He listens to whatever she has to say, then growls, “I don’t care that you’re in the car. Aubree’s running the case, Fletch and I are safe. We’re gonna—” He stops to listen, his hand growing tighter and his chest puffing with adrenaline. Perhaps frustration. “Yes. I’ve considered that, too. Fletch and I will deal with it. You wanna let me run my own case, Chief?”
“What have you considered?” I whisper, leaning closer in Fletch’s direction. “What thing has she thought up that you guys have already thought of?”
He shrugs, folding his arms and watching Archer with an upturn of his lips. “We’ve got a bunch of theories. So…”
“I’m gonna hold a press conference soon. That’s when we’ll lay our cards on the table. Until then?—”
“Oh… She wants us to smoke him out on the news.” Extending his hand, Fletch pulls me up and grins when my knees protest the move. Immediately, my mind fills with pictures ofmemaking a statement.Myeyes burning under the glare of the camera lights, andmyheart pounding, because mine will be the face on everyone’s television screens tonight.
