Page 5 of In Another Lifetime

My two favorite flowers.

I’m so screwed.

“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet,” I hedged. “I’m, um, making cookies right now. Can I bring some over to you and your family?”

“Sure. I love cookies.”

“Great! Which house is yours?”

He was silent for a long moment. “I think you know.”

I stared at him, no argument making it to my lips before he pivoted away.

Four

Dayton

Every murder investigation took me back to that day.

Every. Single. One.

My partner and I had just met up to question a shop owner about the suspected drug activity in the back alley behind his store when we’d gotten the call. Whoever had dispatched us, because we were closest to the Tindale Brokerage, didn’t know the victim’s identity, just that it was a young woman with GSW—gunshot wounds.

Foolishly, naïvely, I’d thought I’d do my bit there then steal a moment with Melonie, who’d no doubt need some comfort after what had happened. We’d argued that morning—mostly my fault—so I’d resolved to apologize.

Everything after that… Horror.

That sort of thing never went away, no matter how distant you got from it. Weeks, months then years rolled by and the image of it was as fresh as when I’d walked in on the EMTs trying to stabilize the victim. My wife. Still alive but barely.

She’d been gone before I could make it to her side at the hospital, my partner, Dutch Pritchard, seeming to almost purposely hit every light until I’d demanded he use the fucking siren—which he should have done anyway. Afterward, I couldn’t forgive him for that, which meant I had a new partner now. Due to the tension between us, Dutch had transferred to another precinct.

“You okay?” Anderson asked me, her no-nonsense tone at odds with the question. As my new partner, she knew how murder investigations hit me harder than any of our other work. But I was a dog with a bone, and probably had the highest solve rate in the department. But that one investigation still ate at me, one I wasn’t allowed to touch. The team in charge of it hated me, too, because I was a thorn in all their asses. Did I fucking care? No.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Detectives,” the uniform in charge greeted us as we strode down the brightly lit apartment building hallway, toward where he stood in the doorway to the scene. So far, the place seemed like the typical apartment farm, one of many that had popped up around this part of the city. Clean but utilitarian. Gawkers stood in the entrances of their units, taking it all in.

Anderson and I stepped inside number 305, away from all the prying eyes and eager ears. The scene looked well-kept and clean aside from bodies and dried blood. We took the booties and gloves he offered, so we wouldn’t get bitched at by forensics.

“Give us the details,” I said, while covering my shoes, in no mood for anything even remotely related to niceties.

He rolled his eyes at me a focused on Anderson, a response I was used to. Nonplused, I yanked on my gloves.

“Don’t mind him,” she said, finishing with her own gloves before she looked up. “Got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“For five years,” the guy muttered, and my fingers flinched into a fist.

“Uncalled for, Officer Evans,” Anderson warned. “Details, please.”

“Neighbors called it in an hour ago. Appears to be a woman, early twenties, and a man of the same age. Execution style. Close-range shots to the head. Though both bodies sustained subsequent shots postmortem. Vics are unidentifiable on scene. Coroner’s there, now.” With a nod over his shoulder, he indicated to Anderson’s boyfriend, Felix, who was leaned over one of the corpses.

“He got here fast. Gang related? Drugs?” I asked. The drug cartel I’d been investigating five years ago had recently resurged as strongly as the memories that continued to haunt me.

“Unknown. No signs of it.”

“Neighbors only called an hour ago? They all have colds? That smell’s hard to miss,” my partner complained, breathing into her upper arm.

“Give it a minute and your senses will get accustomed to it,” Felix said, coming toward us.

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