Page 8 of Murder Road

The warm-up suit man was obviously in charge, because he spoke first. “Officer Syed, we appreciate your help,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”

Officer Syed looked startled, but he stayed in his chair. “Excuse me?”

“State police,” the one in the rumpled suit said to Eddie and me. He pulled a badge from his pocket and showed it to us, then turned to the officer. “We’ve been called in to take this over. You’re no longer needed.”

“I’ll have to talk to my supervisor,” Officer Syed said, still planted in his seat. “I’m not authorized to leave this scene.”

They argued back and forth, but the man in the warm-up suit ignored them. He looked at Eddie as the other two talked past his shoulder. And then he looked at me.

He was fiftyish, maybe. It was hard to tell. His face was unlined but his hair was salt and pepper, cut short to his scalp. His eyes were dark blue. His gaze fixed on me, taking in my bloody clothes, my flip-flops, my messy blond hair. His stare wasn’t sexual, but I felt exposed anyway, and my gut gave a familiar squeeze as I felt spiky sweat on the back of my neck.

Fight or flight, they called it. An old, dark human instinct. Mine was particularly honed.

Beware of this one. Get away if you can.

Officer Syed had risen from his chair and was reluctantly moving toward the door. His presence hadn’t been particularly comforting, but compared to these two men, I realized he’d been relatively harmless. I risked a glance at Eddie and saw that he was staring at the man in the warm-up suit while the man stared at me. Eddie’s eyes were hard.

Finally, Officer Syed was gone, the door closing behind him. The room went quiet. I wondered if I should take Eddie’s hand, next to me on the sofa. I wondered if that would be a good move or a bad one.

Neither man had yet given us his name, I realized.

“Is there a problem?” Eddie finally asked, his voice calm.

“Sure, there’s a problem,” the man in the warm-up suit said. “That girl in the ER just died. She had stab wounds on her chest and stomach. As of now, we have a murder case.”

CHAPTER FOUR

My name,” the man in the warm-up suit said as he sat in Officer Syed’s vacated chair, “is Detective Quentin. This is Detective Beam.”

I was making quick calculations. Two detectives had appeared in the backwoods of Michigan at three o’clock in the morning. And fast, too. Rhonda Jean must have died only minutes ago.

“I didn’t see your badge, sir,” I said to Quentin, my tone polite.

“True, you didn’t,” Quentin said as Beam, chairless, faded into the background and leaned against the wall. Beam, at least, looked like a man who had been roused from bed in the middle of the night and had put on whatever had been folded over the back of the nearest chair in the dark. Quentin didn’t even look tired.

“Do state police have detectives?” I asked, polite again.

Quentin didn’t blink. “What would you know, young woman, about the structural and hierarchical nature of the state police?”

I narrowed my eyes, squinting at him. “Nothing, I guess.”

“I see. And if I ran your name in my files, miss, what might I find?”

“Stop interrogating my wife,” Eddie broke in.

“Nothing,” I said, replying to Detective Quentin. It was true—he’d find nothing. My mother had made sure of it, and so had I.

“Hey,” Eddie said, leaning forward. He was getting angry. He angled himself so his army bulk was perfectly clear. “If you have a question, Detective, just ask it.”

Quentin turned his dark blue eyes to my husband, as if noticing him for the first time. He took in every detail about Eddie in silence, and then he said, “You’re obviously military. Which branch?”

“Army,” Eddie said.

“You served in Iraq?”

“Yes. Is that your question?”

“No, it is not. There is no knife in your car. Where is it? Did you throw it out the window?”

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