Page 73 of Tested
The second cop, a slighter version of the first one, shines a high-beam flashlight at the victim. “Should we check her pulse?” he asks without any enthusiasm. His light shows a pool of blood and the ugly wound where her throat used to be.
“Wait,” the lead cop barks.
“Did someone call Detective Smith?” I ask.
“He’s on his way,” the second cop says. “He called us to check things out first.”
“Will you shut up? He could be the murderer.” The first cop elbows his partner.
“He’s not,” a third voice says. Smith strides up, stopping when he reaches the uniforms. “You want to tell me what happened?”
I stand, the fire in my eyes down to an unpleasant burn. “We were in the living room when someone threw a teargas canister through the window.” I point to the broken pane of glass. “David and Trajan are around the other side of the house, and I came out here to see if I could catch who did this. The body was here when I got here.”
Smith nods like he’s composing a list of questions to ask me later. Instead, he turns to the policemen. “I want one of you to call homicide and the other to secure the scene. No one has touched the body, have they?”
“Nah.” I squeeze my eyes closed. “I stopped here when I saw it and these two haven’t come any closer.”
“Good.” Smith reels off a stream of instructions. When both uniforms are occupied, he tips his head in my direction. “Any thoughts?”
“Tear gas fucking hurts.”
Smith snorts. “Go back inside. As soon as the incident team gets here, I’ll find you.”
I don’t really want to go back inside, but the clouds of white gas are dissipating. It’s still hard to breathe, so I head directly downstairs where Trajan and David are waiting by the pool. This whole thing is spiraling out of control in a way I don’t like. I might have attributed the teargas to Jacques – after all, Trajan blamed him for the bullet to the heart – but the old vampire would have no reason to leave a dead body on our doorstep.
David’s leaning over the pool squirting water from a plastic bottle into his eyes. He’s taken his jacket off so he’s bare chested, and his hair and the cross are wet. Trajan’s stretched out in a chaise, his eyes closed.
“You guys okay?” I ask.
Trajan tips his head in what I take to be an affirmative. I perch on the edge of a chair. One knee starts to bounce, bleeding off the tension that’s twisting me up inside. “There’s a body on our front walkway.”
David wipes his face with a towel, eyes ringed with smudged kohl. “What kind of body?”
“Elf, or half-elven.” Smith comes around the corner of the house. His eyes are red enough that I guess he must have gone inside at one point. “Her name was Janet Edmonds.”
“Fucking fuck,” David says. “We talked with her.”
Trajan sits up and scoots to the end of the chaise. “She’s the one who told us the murder victims were high school friends.”
Smith swipes the screen of the iPad he’s holding, mouth tight. “Yeah, I have the notes from your interview here.”
“You’re positive about the ID?” I ask.
“She had her wallet on her.”
David’s gone pale except for the bright red skin around his eyes. “I…got a text from her.”
My knee stops vibrating, the tension in my gut ratcheting up even higher. “When? That didn’t seem like something you’d keep secret.”
“About an hour ago, while I was getting dressed.” He grimaces, clearly beating himself up harder than any of us could.
“What’d she say, puppy?”
Trajan’s concern only makes David scowl harder. “Said she’d heard a rumor about who might have killed the women. She wanted to tell me in person, so I made a tentative plan to go by her apartment later tonight.”
“Instead, she came here and someone killed her.” I spring up from my seat and pace along the pool deck. It’s either that or I’m going to start hitting something.
“She didn’t get killed here,” Smith says. “There’s not enough blood. Also, there was a note on the body.”
