Page 4 of Innocent Intent

They made their way down the hall, pausing just outside the room where they noticed the ME leaning over the body. The bed blocked their view from the doorway, so it wasn’t until Greg completely entered the room and Cassidy followed that she had a clear visual of the body. Once she did, her world tumbled.

“Oh God. Oh God . . .” Cassidy threw a hand over her mouth, feeling a wave of nausea rushing through her system. She had worked enough crime scenes where the rancid smell and bloated features of a body settling into rigor mortis shouldn’t have been so overwhelming. However, this current body brought out a very different reaction. She buckled over, slamming her eyes shut, and began gasping erratically. After a moment, she attempted to blink away the visual of the body she had just caught a glimpse of. Male, on his back. One arm bent across the chest, hand resting on the blood-soaked jacket that covered his upper body. The same jacket he’d worn the night before.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” someone asked. The voice sounded muffled, and Cassidy couldn’t tell which direction it came from. Her mind had gone hazy, but she managed to pull herself together long enough to take one last look at the body. She had to be sure.

Is it really him?

The minute her eyes landed on the body splayed on the floor between the bed and floor-to-ceiling windows, resting in a pool of blood, something in Cassidy snapped, and she stumbled backward before jetting out of the room and the apartment. Once she reached the hallway, her hand pressed flat against the wall, and she buckled over again, gasping for air.

He’s dead.

Someone shot him.

He’s dead.

“Oh God,” she whispered just before she felt a hand on her back, which caused her to jerk away from whoever it belonged to.

“Cass, what’s going on? You okay?”

“Name,” she rushed out, lifting her eyes to Greg to find him staring at her with concern and confusion. She threw an arm across her stomach and asked again when he didn’t respond. “Name. What’s the name of the victim?”

Gregory took a step forward, lowering his voice after glancing over his shoulder and realizing they had an audience. “Cass, what the hell is going on? You’re pale as shit and acting crazy. You’ve seen more than enough bodies in far worse condition than that one in there to be able to handle a simple gunshot.” It took a minute for him to make sense of what was happening. “Shit, do you know him? You know the victim, don’t you?”

“Name,” she whispered again, ignoring Greg’s accusations.

“Cass . . .”

“Name?” she barked with a little more force. “What’s his fucking name?”

“Whose name? The victim?” Greg’s brows were pinched in frustration. Cassidy nodded, so he quickly handed over the requested information. “Jerrod Williams.”

She shook her head slowly, throwing her hand over her mouth once more before she managed to swallow down another wave of nausea. “That can’t be right. Can’t be. They’re mistaken.”

“I’ve seen his identification. Picture matched the victim. What do you mean it can’t be right? Do you know him?”

Her eyes navigated past Greg to the apartment door before they found his once more. She swallowed thickly, not believing what she was about to admit. “That can’t be right because that man in there is my husband, and his name is Niles Anderson, not Jerrod Williams.”

2.

First Forty-Eight

“What were you thinking?”

Detective Harper’s jaw clenched as he stood in Allen Jones’s office, his captain, being berated for simple missteps. One that anyone could have made, but after fifteen years in homicide as a decorated detective, he shouldn’t have those types of missteps.

“You know who she is—”

“Of course, I know who she is. I’ve worked side-by-side with her plenty of times, just like you. She’s good at her job, the best, actually. But today, she was a fucking civilian and had no business being on your crime scene. Do you know how bad this looks for the department?”

“I do.” There wasn’t much Harper could say to defend his actions, so he didn’t bother. It was a rookie mistake one couldn’t have foreseen. And there was no going back.

“Damn it, Harper,” Captain Jones growled, shaking his head.

Detective Nathanial Davis kept quiet while his new captain and his colleague went back and forth about the details that led to the three of them ending up in an office together. He was already processing how he would approach the case he would be taking over but needed to wait until the official announcement. He was impatient and wished the two of them would move this along.

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

Davis’s eyes moved slowly between Detective Harper and their captain.

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