Page 31 of The Writer

“Sanitation sent another team out to pick it up and finish the route.”

Declan nods and looks into the dumpster. “I see a purse, but I can’t reach it. I’m going in.” Using a plastic milk crate as a step, he climbs up, swings his legs over the side, and comes down as far from the body as possible. The suit has a respirator built into the hood, but Declan isn’t using it; it muffles his voice and make the recording difficult to transcribe. As the scent of decay and week-old garbage assaults him, he deeply regrets that decision. His eyes begin to water as he kneels down and carefully opens the purse. “No cash or credit cards, but they left her ID.” He pulls out her driver’s license and says, “Cordova? You there?”

“Yeah.”

“See what you can find on a Mia Gomez.” Declan stands up and watches Cordova key something into his phone.

A few seconds later, Cordova holds up the phone. “Is she one of these?”

Although the lighting in the driver’s license photo is terrible, he has no trouble matching her to one of the pictures; she has the same highlights in her hair. “Third one from the left,” he says softly. It’s a professional headshot, most likely something for work. Brown hair rolling over her shoulders in loose waves, a mischievous look in her eyes, the slight turn of a smile at the corner of her full lips as if the photographer just told her a joke and she was trying to keep from laughing before he snapped the shot. Beautiful woman.

Cordova clicks on the picture. “Mia Gomez. Twenty-eight years old. She’s a senior account exec at a company called GTS. Office is one block over on Eighty-First.” He clicks through additional links. “Looks like she’s active on a few social media platforms, but she hasn’t posted anything in about a week. Consistent with what Hernandez said about TOD.”

“I don’t see her phone or the murder weapon.”

“Assailant probably took both.”

Declan slips the driver’s license in the Tyvek suit’s breast pocket and looks back down. He’s standing in at least three feet of trash. “We’ll need to empty this out.”

“Not it,” Cordova says softly.

“Detectives? We’ve got a lot of blood over here!” That comes from a uniformed officer standing about two-thirds of the way down the alley.

Declan climbs back over the side, and they quickly walkover. The patrol officer is kneeling by a dark stain on the blacktop. He points at some old wood pallets. “Someone stacked those on top,” he tells them. “Tried to hide it.”

Cordova bends to get a better look, then switches on his phone’s flashlight, and the extra light brings the blood right out. He studies the nearby pavement, then slowly walks away at a crouch and stops about ten feet from where he started. “Looks like she was stabbed here, maybe tried to get away, maybe stumbled, managed to make it to where you are, then fell and bled out.”

Declan looks around his feet, spots a thinner trail heading back toward the dumpster. He takes the driver’s license from his pocket. “She weighed a hundred and sixteen pounds. One person could have carried her from here, but I wouldn’t rule out two.”

Cordova straightens up and goes oddly quiet.

“What?”

His face is slack. “Hoffman’s gonna use this. You know that, right? We’re only a handful of blocks from the Beresford. Morrow goes to trial, he’ll say the same assailant who broke in and killed David killed this woman too.”

Declan snickers. “A judge will never let him tie the two together.”

“Might. Two stabbings within days. This close.” He gestures at the dumpster. “Her money’s gone. They’re saying a burglar broke into that apartment and David surprised him… fits their narrative. I could see a judge letting that in. A judge like Berman? He would.” He nods slowly. “Knowing Hoffman, he’ll probably connect the two cases in the press the moment this leaks out.”

Declan hates that Cordova is right. It doesn’t really matter if the cases are connected; Hoffman only needs to create doubt to save his client’s skin. Declan starts back to the dumpster, muttering defiantly, “I guess we better solve it, then.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

DECLAN STANDS UNDER the scalding-hot water of the shower for nearly thirty minutes, scrubbing first with a washcloth, then a thick-bristled brush he keeps under the sink. When he finally gets out, his skin is bright pink and raw, but at least the smell is gone. After helping the medical examiner retrieve the body of Mia Gomez, he personally supervised the CSU’s removal of every item from that dumpster. As he’d suspected, there was no sign of Mia’s phone or the murder weapon. The press arrived about two hours in, and they were still there when he left.

Declan crosses his small apartment and turns on thetelevision just in time to catch a glimpse of himself, covered in grime, on the news. He shuts it off and drops down on his couch with his laptop and a cold beer in front of him. He plucks the USB drive from the corner of his cluttered coffee table and loads up Morrow’s book. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

One hour and two beers later, he mutters “Fuck me” for the third time.

Hell, she knows more about the case than he does.

It’s probably seventy degrees in his apartment, and Declan is sweating.

She opens with the final day of Ruben Lucero’s trial. The guilty verdict and the sentencing: life with no chance of parole. Declan’s not much of a reader, but it seems like this is a smart move on Morrow’s part because all the major players in the case are there—Maggie Marshall’s parents, Declan, Cordova, Lucero’s coworkers from the park, a handful of techs from CSU, a couple of whom worked the case on their own personal time to ensure it was tight. Even Oscar Martinez from the medical examiner’s office was there that final day. His testimony comparing the shape of Lucero’s hand to the bruising on Maggie’s neck helped push the jury over the top. Denise Morrow worked her way around the room as the judge talked and, like a voice-over in a movie, introduced the reader to everyone. She provided casual descriptions that included just enough for the reader to get a feel for each person but not enough to be overbearing, not enough to color the image in the reader’s mind. When she got to Declan, it was like she was in his head. Honest to God, it was like she read his mind, particularly right beforethe jury gave the verdict. She captured his inner turmoil, the pressure, the feeling of every eye in that place staring at the back of his head, but the final lines of that chapter really grab Declan by the throat.

There was something else there. Ruben Lucero’s gaze was firmly fixed on Detective Shaw, rather than the judge or even the jury, as the verdict was read. I watched Detective Declan Shaw, and it wasn’t anxiety I saw behind his eyes, it wasn’t fear of a potential innocent verdict—by that point, we all knew the jury had been swayed. What I saw eating away at him from the inside could only have been guilt. I’d soon learn Detective Declan Shaw had a very good reason for feeling guilty. That, too, as much as everything else, was fact.

Declan picks up his phone and starts to dial Cordova, then drops the phone and takes another sip of beer instead. Then he does what he should have done when he first opened the file—he runs a keyword search foranatomy.

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