Page 5 of White Wolf

Oh, Lanny, she thought. She shrugged and said, “No. Couldn’t sleep. What’s the story?” She tilted her head toward the body.

Lanny looked at her a moment, a beat too long, dark eyes missing nothing.

She looked back. Two could play the you’re-not-taking-care-of-yourself game.

He glanced away, finally, nodding. Blue light from the club skated down the humped profile of his twice-broken nose. “Mid-twenties. Dressed to party.” Black skinny jeans and Vans, skin-tight shirt, smudge of eyeliner. “Won’t know for sure until the techs get a look at him, but check this out.” Lanny crouched and aimed his flashlight at the side of the dead boy’s throat.

The raw, bloody wound was roughly the size of a fist, a sequence of deep bruises in an oval with two distinct punctures.

“What does that look like?” Lanny asked, a trace of amusement in his voice.

Trina swallowed, a little nauseas suddenly. Sheknewwhat it looked like. “Makeout session got too rough,” she said, because that was the only possible explanation.

Lanny twisted to glance at her over his shoulder, smirking. “I like it a little rough, but I ain’t ever met anybody who liked itthatrough.”

Blood had run down the kid’s neck and stained his shirt; it was drying black, gummy under a coating of rainwater.

“You know,” Officer Thompkins said, thoughtful. “I’ve seen these people on TV who wanna…you know…dress up and stuff. Fake…” He gestured to his own mouth as Trina and Lanny stared at him. “Faketeeth? Like they wanna be vampires or something.”

“Hmm,” Lanny said, fighting and failing to hold back a smile. “You might be on to something, Thompkins.”

Trina kicked him lightly in the hip.

“I’m here, I’m here,” their ME, Dr. Harvey, said as she bustled through, snapping her gloves into place. She wore a white lab coat over sweats, hair pulled back in a sloppy bun. Like Trina, she’d been at home. A lab assistant rushed after her, carrying her bag and holding an umbrella over her head. “What’ve we got?” Harvey asked, crouching down beside Lanny.

“You tell us,” Lanny said, amicably. “We haven’t touched the body yet.”

“Smart man.” She surveyed the corpse, lips pursed, muttering under her breath. Something that sounded like “what a waste.” Young bodies were always the ugliest because they presented a portrait not just of death, but of lost potential. “Get out of my light, would you?” To her assistant: “Andy, hand me the…”

Lanny stood and took Trina’s elbow, walked her past the club door and out of the way as techs swarmed the scene. “Thompkins, go inside and start canvassing patrons. See who we need to interview.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the uniform was gone, and they were relatively alone, Lanny breathed out a deep breath and slumped back against the brick of the neighboring building. “Jesus.” He turned and spat his gum into the alley’s detritus and dug a pack of smokes from his pocket. The shuffling around lifted the scent of smoke, and liquor, and perfume off his jacket and straight to Trina’s nose.

It had stopped raining and she snapped her umbrella shut, the white glow from a security light falling unforgivingly across her partner. The bristle on the strong line of his jaw, the dark circles under his eyes. The shadow of a lipstick smudge beside his mouth.

“Here,” she said, reaching for his face.

“What?” He lifted his head, unlit cigarette dangling from his lip.

Trina wiped at the lipstick with her thumb, two quick swipes and it was gone. “You missed a spot.” She inspected the pad of her thumb when she pulled it back and found an electric shade of pink. “Ah, I see she was a real Upper East Side type.”

He shrugged and ducked his head so he could cup the flame of his lighter in one hand. “Didn’t bother to ask.”

Trina sighed. There were a dozen things she wanted to tell him, most of them some variation of “you should take better care of yourself.” She chose to ignore the strange twist in the pit of her stomach that felt almost like jealousy and settled for, “What happened to not drinking while you were on rotation?”

He took a deep drag on the cig and turned his head to exhale down the alley, avoiding her gaze. “One drink. And I didn’t know I would get called in.”

“You smell like a lot more than one drink.” Like anonymous bathroom sex, too. “And that’s the whole point of being on rotation – you don’t know when you’ll get called in.”

“You gonna turn me in?” he asked, brows quirking, tone deceptively light. Like he didn’t care. Like it wouldn’t crush him to lose his badge.

“You know I won’t.” But she couldn’t leave it at that. “How much did you have before you got behind the wheel?”

He turned toward her then, eyes flashing under the light, jaw going tight.Drop it, his look said. “I’m fine.”

“Except you’re not.”

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