Page 58 of Lust
“Yes, you dick. Seventh grade. Pudding. Valentine’s Day.” She widened her eyes with an attempt at intimidation. “I remember everything, Luciano.”
He scratched his head. The pudding incident had been the year after they’d started hanging out. The summer they’d met was well and truly over, and Parker had just left for his first year “studying abroad” but his warning to stay away from his sister had been fresh in Joe’s mind, and Wyatt’s ever-looming presence had seemed to grow darker without his level-headed, older brother to keep him in check.
“I don’t remember it being Valentine's Day,” he muttered.
“The point is, you tend to avoid tough conversations. Even the ones about your…” Her voice trailed off, but then she rallied and looked him in the eyes. “About your parents. We never talked. We just sat there and shared the silence.”
“I was a kid back then, Liza. I’m not now.”
Her gaze sharpened as she took him in with feminine appreciation. “I know.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how I fit into this.”
Liza stood and pulled something out of her back pocket before putting it on the table. It was a folded picture of the two of them grinning at each other on their first day in the police academy, dorky T-shirts, dull haircuts, and bright cheeks. He remembered it vividly. They’d both been so surprised to have enlisted in the same class but were giddy with excitement at having someone to share the experience with. Well, Joe had been giddy with plenty of other feelings too. Liza had grown from a fifteen-year-old budding beauty to a hard-as-nails hidden rose. Anyone else who tried to talk to her got a browbeating, but not him. All the male rookies had been jealous of him. He’d been so smug.
She pointed at the picture.
“You think you had no choice in this, but neither did I.” Her eyes glistened. She swallowed with barely restrained emotion, and when she spoke, her voice had turned tight. “But from what I’m seeing there, we couldn’t have been happier to know our partner was someone already proven to be trustworthy. I know when I left to train, we drifted apart. But somehow, we found each other again. And now, for the third time, the stars have aligned and we’re here.” She tapped his chest, and then hers. “That’s not a consolation prize, Joe. That’s destiny.”
“Liza Lazarus talking about destiny?” he asked sardonically, then winced at his attempt of disrupting the intensity of their conversation.
“I have to believe it,” she insisted. “Because without it, then all I have to go on is that life is shitty. I was born in a lab. I put my life on the line when there is corruption and sin around every corner. And loving someone only brings me pain. I don’t want that life for myself. I don’t.” She choked up and turned away, stiff.
He didn’t know what to say, so picked up the picture. They did look happy. Innocent. Hopeful. Naive. He complained about not having a choice, but neither did she. No one did in life. You’re born into your circumstances, but you can build your way out of them. Hard work was his version of destiny. And if he wanted to make his own, then he had to lay the first brick himself.
A knock came at the door a moment before a hurried shout. “We got a body!”
Liza wiped her eyes as his phone pinged with an incoming text.
“There’s been a homicide,” Liza murmured, eyes grave.
He nodded and pulled out his cell. When the message hit his brain, a sinking feeling leveled his gut.
“Same MO as our guy,” he said.
Shit.
* * *
The dead bodybelonged to a fifteen-year-old girl. At least, that’s what the medical examiner was currently telling Joe. She was unrecognizable from all the blood, viscera, and gore. Naked from the waist down, her body had been dumped on the muddy banks under the Vermillion Bridge near the South-Side industrial area.
A bearded homeless man pushing an overflowing cart cursed when he was stopped from getting to his shanty tent, right next to the crime scene. Another homeless man threw an empty bottle of beer with a shout to not touch his things as an officer finished cordoning off the area.
Liza’s subdued murmur floated in and out of the occasional angry shout as she took witness statements. He’d never known Liza to avoid a body like this, but the minute they’d arrived, her face had paled, and she turned away without another word.
Joe used his pen to lift wet hair from the girl’s face. A plastic pink clip fell from her hair. It was the kind you bought at a dime store or won in those little coin machines you found at the mall. She was so young. Innocent. Probably a first-time runaway.
At the thought, a cold stone dropped in his stomach. Hadn’t Liza said she’d come across a runaway? He glanced at her, and then back to the girl. If this was who they were meant to see at the shelter yesterday, it would explain her reluctance.
Joe straightened. The examiner’s bald head shone with sweat. His long fingers plucked a hanky from his pocket and blew his nose.
Scenes like this could get to even the most seasoned.
“What else have you found?” Joe asked.
“Just like the other ones,” the examiner said. “She’s been brutalized, cut open with surgical precision, and has organs missing. I’ll know more at the morgue, but at first glance, it seems like a liver, a kidney, and her uterus. Lack of blood on the ground suggests this happened elsewhere.”
“Christ.”
