Page 13 of Sinful Sorrow

“Naomi’s mother is still in observation down at the hospital,” Fletch murmurs, closing the door and yanking out a chair to drop into. “She’s not leaving until the morning, but she has officers on the door. Naomi’s dad is in the fucking bullpen, Arch.”

“He doesn’t wanna leave until we have answers.”

“Makes it easy for us to pull him in for an interview. But sitting with his back against the wall and hoping his daughter’s killer walks by will put him on a fast track to insanity.”

“Connor’s in a cage.” I look at the picture of the seventeen-year-old boy, innocent, and yet, not, and know he has a whole support network here ready to help. Parents. Lawyers. Even his employers, the owners of the haunted house. “We can’t release him yet. It’s impossible. But I really fuckin’ hope the prosecutor goes easy on him.”

“Mason’s parents are lawyering up, too. Which is expected, I suppose.” Fletch exhales a deep sigh and taps the table. “Dad’s a lawyer. Mom’s a socialite. They threw Ms. Hanes at Mason so fast, his head spun.”

“They seem like they want him to cooperate, though. They could’ve blocked us out entirely. But they’re not. But they let him speak. They just wanted to ensure Hanes was there to supervise.”

“Could imply innocence, I suppose.”

“Personally…?” I bring my hand up and tap Mason’s photograph. “I don’t think he did this. He seems legitimately destroyed over her death. And if he truly loved her the way he says he does, there’s no way he would have murdered her.”

“Even if a baby fucked up his chances of going pro?”

“But he already acknowledges that she’s the one who would carry the load. He doesn’t like admitting it, but self-awareness matters. That’s gotta count for something. They were being realistic about how hard the next few years were gonna be. Besides, she could still abort. If he truly felt a certain way about all this, abortion was still on the table. Or breaking up with her. He had options that didn’t include putting a knife in a teenager’s hand inside a creepy haunted house neither of them wanted to be in.”

He sits back in his chair, the creak of the wooden structure drawing my focus around. Then he runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “We have to find motive. Why’d they want her dead? Why in such a showy way? Why risk the teen realizing the knife wasn’t a prop? Why stabbing, when she could have so easily survived if the circumstances were different?”

“There’s a lot of room on this one for things to go wrong. Maybe they weren’t fully committed. Like a, ‘If it works out, it works out, and if it doesn’t, then it’s meant to be,’ kind of way. Whoever wanted her dead was flighty about it. Immature, even. Not all the way in, but not all the way out.”

“Had to have had access to the haunted house,” he murmurs. “To swap the prop and not be seen. Unless, of course, one would expect to see that person there.”

“So that brings us to Connor,” I muse. “The owners of the house. Prior paying customers. Perhaps a cleaning crew. Were the Halloween decorations put up by the owners or a decorating company?”

“All good questions.” He drops his hand and checks his watch, despite the clock on the wall. “You opposed to stopping for now and catching some shut eye? Mia’s at home with the babysitter, and I already missed bedtime routine. With Jada the way she is right now, I can’t…” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to risk anything.”

“It’s fine.” We’ve spent a decade running cases from start to finish, sleeping at the station, and working ourselves into exhaustion. But like Naomi and Mason, life changes and the direction we thought things were going changes, too.

With Fletch’s divorce, and his wife subsequently giving in to addiction, means having a four-year-old at home makes it impossible to work around the clock. And likewise for me, marriage means my priorities have changed.

We still give our all to our cases. But outside of standard hours, we have families to consider.

I don’t need to relieve a babysitter or have someone at home to watch over Minka. But if she goes unchecked, she’ll work herself to collapse, sleeping at the morgue and killing herself over whoever is on her table on any given day.

Add in the fact that Naomi was a kid herself… and then the inclusion of an unborn fetus, and Chief Medical Examiner Minka Mayet is certain to make herself sick unless I step in and ensure she rests.

“Let’s pack it up.” I dig a hand into my pocket and take out my phone, but I don’t unlock the screen just yet. I don’t read the messages. The emails. The reports flooding my device. Or, equally as time consuming, my brothers demanding attention from the other side of the country. “This case is personal as hell, Fletch.” I step around the table and pause only long enough for him to drag himself out of the chair. “Whoever wanted Naomi dead, that was about Naomi specifically. So taking a night to rest won’t mean we have more bodies to deal with tomorrow.”

“Thank fuck,” he grumbles, following me into the bullpen and keeping his head down as Mr. Wallace’s fiery gaze swings our way. “I could go the rest of my life never looking into a grieving father’s eyes, knowing his daughter was murdered today. This one fucking blows.”

I lower my gaze, and together, we make a beeline for the escalators that’ll take us to the ground floor. “I feel bad that he’s gonna sit here all night.”

“He was told to go home to his family.” Fletch steps onto the steel tread a single beat ahead of me. “We interviewed him. We moved on to Mason. We’ll talk to Connor tomorrow, once he’s had time to calm down. Wallace knows we’re not gonna update him on the sly, so I don’t know what he thinks he’ll achieve being here. Though I gotta admit,” he looks back at me, a small, somewhat relieved smile gently curling his lips. “At least he’s not at the George Stanley harassing Dr. Delicious.”

“That would be way worse.” I draw a deep breath and watch as cops come and go. As some head up, with perps in cuffs. Some without. Uniforms and plain clothes. Male and female. “It’s nighttime,” I acknowledge. “Which means the morgue is locked, anyway. Maybe he considered going there but couldn’t get in.”

“Which is why having the place secured after hours is a genius move.” He steps off the bottom and heads toward the heavy glass and wood doors at the front of the precinct. “Six a.m. alarms?”

We could.

We could get back to this as soon as the sun comes up. But really, there’s not a great deal of reason to do so. Most folks aren’t taking visitors that early anyway, not unless we have a warrant, and the only professional I wanna talk to about my case sleeps in my bed.

“Let’s do nine,” I decide. “Mia deserves to be taken to school by her daddy, especially after you had to leave last night. And I can get the skinny on the autopsy when I wake up anyway.”

His lips quirk into a goofy grin. “You think she’s sleeping on the couch at the morgue?”

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