With dread weighing down my stomach I stared at the early morning alarm I had set on my phone. After a few minutes of this numb detachment my phone rang, and I recognized the number.
“Hey, Jessica.”
“We’ve cleared a path, Sex Doll.”
My new nickname set off a chain of happy chemical reactions in my head. I checked my phone’s clock, and observed, “It’s only been 30 minutes.”
“Yeah, there’s no fuckin’ asbestos fluff or even dust lying around—this building hasn’t seen a saw or drill since opening day; the ceiling, walls, and floor are all intact and undisturbed. The people running this place were probably too cheap to remodel, which is good for them, honestly—it’s astonishingly well-preserved, and they avoided giving themselves and their guests cancer. We’ve been wasting our time on a formality. Your people are safe, go ahead, follow the red tape, Dorothy. And don’t worry, we left your crime scene pristine.”
“Alright! Thanks. I love—” ((Fuck me, how the hell do I kill this ‘I love you’ reflex?)) “—love it when things go my way. Ta-ta.” We ended the call. I didn’t care if I had any more emails, I needed to keep the air flowing over my wings, so I found (A)LCSI Dominguez. “They’ve cleared a path. Let’s get going.”
“Alright people, move out!” she ordered with confidence, no doubt savoring her newfound authority.
We followed the red tape through the hall, up the stairs, and to the room; on the way up, I told the new lead, “Dominguez, I want you on that knob.”
She snorted, then caught herself and blushed. “Of—of course, Detective.”
“Did I say something amusing?”
“No.”
“Because it sounded like you were going to laugh, but changed your mind.”
“It was nothing, Detective. I misunderstood your request.”
“Are you going to make any wisecracks?”
“No… ma’am.”
“Good. Well?”
“‘Well’ what?”
“Would you mind getting on that knob for me?”
She swallowed. “Yes, Detective, I’m on it.” She ordered one of the photographers to capture the door, and while they did so she grabbed a printing kit from the team’s toolbox before getting to work. Once she had the prints, she pushed the door open and gave the room a visual once-over. “Is that the blood ‘pool’?”
I looked where she was pointing. “I believe so.”
“It’s tiny. I’ve had peri—paper cuts that bled more than that.”
“Somebody thought it was scary.”
“Apparently.” Her team began trickling in, one at a time, sweeping for clues underfoot as they crawled in and spread out. “And I assume you want me specifically to lift the inside knob, as well.”
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
While the team scoured the room, Georgina took care of the other knob. “Detective, may I ask why you asked your lead to take care of a couple sets of prints, when she could be, y’ know, leading?”
I bent down and whispered in her ear, “(You’re the most competent person here, by a long mile…)”
I thought… that I might have heard her… of all things… gasp.
“(…and I don’t trust a single one of the others to do anything right. Those fingerprints are gonna be my most valuable evidence in this case. I didn’t want any of them to fuck them up.)”
“(Ohhhh…)” As I pulled away, she was smirking self-satisfiedly. I watched her work—dusting the knob with black magnetic fibers, peeling up the print with lift tape, sticking that to a backing card, then filling out the card—all the while puzzling over the sound that came out of her when I whispered into her ear. The silence was just beginning to grow awkward when she asked, “Do you normally watch your leads so intently while they’re at work?”
((Only the cute ones.)) As shocking as it was to me, I decided to entertain that thought. ((Maybe I should tell her precisely that. Or maybe that might be too direct. Ah, dammit… I gotta be professional.)) “I want to know how confident you are under the microscope.”
She scoffed. “As a rule, I’m always confident.”
“You seemed a little flustered when I asked you to do the outside knob.”
She sighed. “Of course, every rule has its occasional exception.”
“How often do you make exceptions?”
“When they interest me.” Her eyes grew wide. “I mean—every once in a while.”
((She’s not acting the way I expected her to act.)) “What did you mean by ‘when they interest me’?”
“Nothing, I misunderstood your question at first.”
I nodded with a touch of concern. “Are you feeling alright? You don’t seem very confident, which, based on everything I’ve heard about you, is out-of-character.”
“I’m fine, I’m just… getting used to holding the reins as lead. Haven’t you been having any growing pains as a fresh detective?”
“Yeah… I’ve had my fair share, but I think I’m past all that. Let me know if you need anything.” I was tempted to find a place to sit while they did their jobs, but I didn’t want to be the absent detective, I wanted to see each piece of evidence as it was collected. 5 busy investigators and a detective hovering over their shoulders made for a cramped workspace, even if that honeymoon suite was one of the biggest guest rooms in the hotel; I tried my hardest not to get in the way or step on anything. For better and for worse, there was little to step on. They double- and triple-checked the floor, walls, and dressers, but other than the blood stain they came up with only the shirt, the boxers and pants, the helical blue fiber, and the prints on the highball glass Judy and I found in our initial search. I watched as an investigator placed a card next to the fiber, photographed it, and placed it in a small envelope. ((Now we just need to find the bundle this came from.)) With each piece of evidence collected, my excitement grew a hundred feet in every direction.
If the fiber on the floor was worth its weight in gold, the bathroom, on the other hand, was a comparative treasure trove: on the edge of the sink, waiting for us, was that singular hair, straight, blond, about half an inch long, with root intact. I was giddy, and the team noticed.
“Detective, are you feeling alright?” It was (A)LCSI Dominguez who asked.
“Oh! I’m fine, wonderful, never been better.”
“Can I talk to you in the hallway?” We stepped out and just far enough down the hallway to have a little privacy. “How many cups of coffee have you had today, Andrea?” she asked, softly.
“Just one, when I woke up.”
“You might have a caffeine sensitivity.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re very… chipper.”
“We found plenty of blood, twelve complete prints, a piece of what looks like plastic rope, and a fresh human hair. I think that’s cause for celebration—I’m gonna have a strong case.”
“That’s useful evidence, if—if you can find a match on the blood, and respectively the fingers, rope, and scalp they each belong to.”
I wanted to point out that it couldn’t be that hard to find those…
But she spoke first. “It’s great that you’re optimistic. Assuming this wasn’t just a junky ripping a vein and shitting himself over the pain, this musta been some kinda hazing or kidnapping, and the guy they did it to deserves justice.” She gently squeezed my shoulder. “And I hope this doesn’t turn into a murder—but if it does, I don’t want a fresh detective hyping herself up after they find a body only to come crashing down when the medical examiner flips a coin and decides ‘tails, it’s a suicide’, just like the Sergeant Rene Pines ‘accidental death’ case. Don’t count your chickens, Andrea.”
She was right. My world began to desaturate. “Do you think there’s any hope for my case, Georgina?”
“Hope? Hm. Maybe. You have evidence, but that’s never enough. You still need to play politics. If a body turns up, you might have to sleep with the medical examiner to guarantee a favorable ruling.” She chuckled softly. Perhaps she was hoping I would hear her words and cheer up.
I heard her words, alright, specifically the words ‘sleep with the medical examiner’, and I did indeed cheer right up. “I actually don’t know anything about the first precinct medical examiner. Are they a man, a woman, or…?”
“A woman, why?”
“What’s her name?”
“Doctor Regina Klein. Why the interest in her?”
“Do you think it would be difficult to get into her pants?”
She puzzled over my question briefly then blurted, “What?”
“You suggested sleeping with her.”
“I was joking! Oh—!” She giggled. “You like to take jokes as far as you can carry them. You’ve got a dangerous sense of humor, Bachman.”
“Are you willing to keep a secret?”
“Always.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Oh. Oh my God, are you really going to—”
“(Shh!) Yes, assuming a body turns up. Is she interested in women?”
“Uh. Well, actually…”
“Shit, she’s straight, isn’t she?”
“Actually, there are rumors that she and…”
“She’s gay?”
“Yes, but… she might be with… Captain Somers.”
((Diane?)) I burst into laughter. ((Klein’s probably nearly as big a slut as I am.)) “If the medical examiner is Diane’s type, she should be easy,” I explained, against my better judgment. It was against even my sub-par judgment, I was off my rocker, the little voice in my head that normally whispered wisdom into my ear was drunk on serotonin.
“And what exactly is Captain Somers’s type?”
“Whores who would sell their souls for a broken piece of costume jewelry and thank her for her saintly generosity.”
Her eyes asked, [Are you insane?] as her mouth asked, “How would you know what her type is, and why are you so comfortable referring to her by her first name?”
In my insanity, hungry for more of the gratification of shocking her, I had temporarily forgotten how to keep a secret. “Because I’m her other fucktoy.”
“You—and Somers—Somers and you?” Disbelief lifted her brow and plumbed her mouth wide open.
“Yep.”
“Oh, my God. Is that how you got this job?”
“I was let go for being incompetent at emptying the coins out of the parking meters, how else could I have gotten rehired the next business day?”
“Holy shit. That’s some USDA grade-A quid pro quo.”
“Yep!” And I was proud of it.
She thought something through in an even shorter time than I had, a certain desire in her eyes glowing brighter and brighter with each second, until she was blinded by it. “(Do you think she’s willing… to take on a third lover?)”
“Are you joking, or are you asking sincerely?”
She blushed. “(Um.)” I could see conflict in her face, a pinch of shame, a splash of greed, and a flood of ambition. “How the hell do I get what she gave you?”
“First of all, are you willing to fuck her?”
“She’s handsome and stylish. Tall and butch, but not afraid to wear a little lipstick when the mood strikes her, so she has a lot of variety to offer. Hell yes, I’d fuck her.”
“Are you willing to give her your body in exchange for favors and opportunities?”
“Eh… That’s a small price to pay for career progress.”
“Then meet me at my desk when we get back to the station, and I’ll formally introduce you.” One of the investigators carried out a foot-wide square of bloody carpet inside a giant sealable bag. “Is your team done? They’ve finished collecting the carpet square for my scrapbook.”
“It’ll be a minute while they comb the bed, but we’re almost ready to go. I’m sorry there wasn’t much to prove your case.”
“I’m happy to have the hair alone. I just hope it isn’t Alex’s.”
“You know of someone who was at the crime scene? Before you’ve even gathered any witness statements?”
I froze as I suddenly remembered the concept of secrecy. “Sli—ip of the tongue, I don’t actually know if Brookvale—” A very quiet groan escaped my throat.
“Brookvale?” she hissed. “As in Alexander Brookvale? You knew without a body to identify and before we’ve had a chance to test the blood or the hair that Brookvale was here? How?”
“It was just a guess.”
“What else do you know?”
“I don’t know anything. This is my first time at the crime scene.”
Before she spoke a word, her face made it clear that she didn’t believe me; she grabbed my hand and tugged me further down the hall. “You knew about what happened here before it was reported. Which, I should not have to explain to you, is pretty fucking suspicious. You should start talking before I invite Internal Affairs into our conversation about your special arrangement with Somers.”
((Fuck, fuck, fuck.)) “Shh. Please, quiet, I don’t want people to hear.”
She brought us farther still from 410. “Tell me.”
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“You don’t have a whole lot of options right now, Bachman. What were you doing at the scene?”
“I can’t…”
“Tell me, or else.”
“(God damn it, I have a huge fucking mouth…)”
“Well?”
“You’ll be spoiling your chances with Diane.”
“Do I ever bluff?”
She was hungry for both privilege and renown, so I figured that while she would happily take a shortcut for the former… she would just as happily burn that shortcut for a greater portion of the latter—and turning me in could mean receiving a lot of positive attention for being an upstanding whistleblower. “Only if no one in their right mind would call it.” (The fact that whistleblowers are generally disliked among law enforcement had temporarily escaped me.)
She grinned. “For once, somebody understands me. Start talking.”
Reluctantly—but frantically operating under the impression that she had me by the ovaries, that I had no other choice but to spill everything to her or else have my case ripped out of my hands by the brass and my life ripped to shreds by Internal Affairs for being a party to a quid pro quo—I explained my odyssey on Adams, from my hour with Somers to the discovery of the crime scene—though I referred to the sex workers as ‘prostitutes’ to avoid muddying the waters by revealing my political leaning, and carefully edited out Judy because Georgina didn’t need the additional blackmail material that I was in a committed relationship with an unlicensed pot dealer.
“I want to know: A, did you take pictures of the scene when it was a little fresher; and B, why the fuck didn’t you call it in when you found it?”
“To answer your first question…” I showed her the crime scene photos on my phone.
“Huh. Very thorough. All you needed were some evidence markers and envelopes and you’d be a one-woman CSI team.”
“Thank you. As for your second question: I don’t trust the other detectives with this case because everyone in the department hates the vic.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I dunno why you’d go through all this trouble just for that antifa piece-of-shit.”
((Partly because I am a fellow ‘antifa piece-of-shit’… at least to the extent a cop can be an anti-fascist. But you don’t need to know that.)) “Justice is blind. The job of a detective is to save lives or avenge them, no matter how much they hate me. I care about the people I’m trying to help.”
“Okay, you’re an idealist who actually takes the oath seriously. I respect that, I can work with that, I promise I’ll give this case 110 percent. But tell me, were you getting buddy-buddy with the hookers and fucking for cash because they had information, or because you sincerely want to be friends with them?”
“I wouldn’t mind Diane calling me a ‘hooker’, but the politically correct term for us is ‘sex worker’.”
“Oh… my God. ‘Us’. You’re seriously one of them.”
((And if you sell your soul to Diane, you will be, too.)) “Yep. They call me ‘Sex Detective’.”
“And Diane finds you sexy?”
“I’m ridiculously horny and I have no sense of shame. She finds me sexy as hell.” And then I had a devilish idea. As matter-of-factly as I could, I asserted, “Sexier than she’d find you.”
Her pupils combusted spontaneously and the flames of prideful superiority charred her judgment to dust. “How about we ask her who’s sexier, instead of jumping to conclusions?”
“Fine by me. Good luck, though, she told me the sound I make when I cum is ‘the cutest ever’.”
“Is that so? All my girlfriends have told me I make the cutest sound… and my pussy tastes like strawberries.”
I scoffed. “Bullshit.”
“Don’t believe me?”
“Not unless I tasted it myself.”
She smirked and took the last few steps towards room 401. “Well? Wanna wager that I’m making shit up?”
((Shit, is she bluffing? If she’s lying, she gives me money, and it’s like I’m getting paid for turning a trick. If she’s telling the truth, on the other hand, I pay her to let me eat her out… almost like… I’ve hired her. Hm.)) I stepped towards her as imposingly as my 5′2″ frame would allow me. “Tell you what. I’ll pay you money just for the privilege of finding out what you taste like… and what you sound like when you cum.”
Her smirk morphed into another grin. “How much’re you willing to pay?”
“20 dollars.”
She held out her hand and flapped her fingers to sign, “Gimme.” ((Oh, you poor sweet neophyte, you are so much cuter than Andrew Jackson.))
I pulled a crumpled 20 out of my purse and handed it over. She accepted it as greedily as I accepted my own 50-fold compensation from Diane, and eagerly got to picking the lock. ((Right out in the open. Even less shame than I have.)) A bolt of fear struck my spinal cord as I realized what this could mean. ((Diane might end up liking her more than me.)) My jealousy flared up, but I was so intent on destroying this upstart that I was able to ignore it—never mind the revelation that I gave a damn how Diane felt about me.
The door opened. She kicked her shoes off, flopped onto the surprisingly clean and neatly made bed, and undid her pants as I walked in and shut the door behind me. Once her panties were hanging from a single ankle, I knelt between her knees and asked, “Have you ever tasted yourself?”
“I’m not that flexible.”
“Would you like to taste yourself?”
“If only it were possible.” I dove in without warning, wrapping my lips around her clit and sucking. She cried out and grabbed my hair. “Christ! Slow down!”
I picked up my head. “You mean a strong and ambitious woman like you needs her sex slow and gentle?”
“Not gentle—just—don’t be a psycho.”
((She’s right. I am a psycho.)) I buried my face again, and this time actually tasted her by thrusting my tongue up her hole.