Page 8 of Sinful Seduction
“Someone waiting for you at home? Or a guy,” he adds sheepishly. “Whatever keeps you happy and all that.”
“Girls,” Clay chokes out, his eyes horrified and wide. “I had a girlfriend for a bit. But she…” He shrugs. “It ended.”
“Shame.” He claps Clay’s arm. “Might be toxic as hell, and fuck knows I’m no poster boy for healthy coping mechanisms, but having someone waiting in my bed always made the job easier for me.” He drops his hand and smiles. “Worst-case scenario, get yourself a cat. Working the shitty cases and going home to an empty apartment is enough to send a good man insane.” And with that, he turns and starts away.
I spin and fast-step to catch up. “The fuck?”
“What?” He digs his hands into his pockets, feeling around, then he pulls them out again and reveals a pack of gum. He selects a stick, unwraps and tosses it into his mouth, then he offers the pack my way. “Sex is better than drugs. The last thing we want is for the kid who still has baby fat in his cheeks to go down the wrong path when he’s struggling to cope.”
I push his hand away, declining his offer. “Some would argue that asking about his sex life is inappropriate. He’s an adult, even if he looks younger than Cato. His choices are his to make. What are you gonna do, buy him a hooker for his birthday?”
“Of course not.” He chews and peeks across playfully. “I can’t afford that kind of extravagance. But ifyoubuy him a hooker, maybe put my name on the card so I don’t feel like a bum.”
I roll my eyes and follow him all the way back to our dead body, back to Minka crouching over the boy with a notebook resting on her knee and a pen perched in her right hand.
Fletch tilts his chin toward Aubree. “We still on the record, doctors?”
“Mmhm.” Minka draws a small diagram, marking gunshot wounds on the stark white page and jotting down notes in fast, sprawling shorthand only she could read. “Always on the record.”
“Too bad. I was gonna explain a certain transaction on your upcoming bank statement. But that’s not gonna happen now.”
She pauses, tilts her head to the side, and looks up at us. But she won’t besmirch her recording, so she only drops her gaze and continues. “Okay. Officer Clay alright?”
“He’s coping.” I shift fractionally to the left to shield her from a bright spotlight shooting this way from a certain news van. “I’m gonna talk to Lieutenant Fabian tomorrow and see what we can do about that. Do you have any information for us before we begin?”
“I can confirm he’s dead.” So cold. So factual. She peeks up and uses her shoulder to brush her hair off her face. “Single bullet wound to the chest. Possible contact with the superior vena cava, which I’ll investigate once we have him back at the George Stanley. Secondary bullet wound to his stomach. I suspect the autopsy will prove the chest wound is your COD. Patient appears otherwise healthy. Not malnourished. Partially dehydrated, but the fact that Copeland City is in the grips of a vicious heatwave right now makes dehydration reasonable. Nails and skin are clear. Eyes show no immediate signs of poor health. He still has particles of his last meal in his teeth.”
“Slight yellowing on his fingertips,” Aubree adds. “Means he was probably a smoker.”
“Heavy with it,” Fletch counters. “We’ve all snuck a cigarette here and there. It takes dedication to change the color of your fingers, especially at his age.”
Minka drops her chin in agreement. “I concur. Patient shows two entry wounds, one exit wound.”
Which means one bullet is still rattling around inside him somewhere. The other needs to be found before we can go home tonight.
Noted.
“Ultimately, the mystery won’t behowhe died, detectives. It’ll bewhy. And more importantly,whodid it?” She looks at Aubree. “Let’s call transport and move him off the street. By the time they arrive, I’ll be done here.”
“Yes, Chief.” She hangs the camera from a strap around her neck. “I’ll text Doctor Patten and tell her to fire up the coffee machine while I’m going.” She snags her phone and swipes it unlocked, then she taps the screen, before bringing it to her ear and walking away to get space.
It’s just a coincidence that she walks in Tim’s direction.
“He’s pretty young,” Minka sighs, setting a hand on her knee and standing up with a groan.
I grab her arm and elicit a scowl from the studious Chief Mayet, who would rather do things on her own than see us in this very moment, tomorrow, on the news.
Too bad for her, I long ago stopped caring about that shit. So, I meet her fiery glare and flatten my smirk before it gets me in trouble.
“Initial assessment shows no tattoos.” She slips out of my grip and fixes her shirt, straightening the fabric and smoothing her pants. “No apparent gang affiliation. Not even a particular haircut that could point us toward a certain subset of people.”
“So, he was just a regular kid.” Grunting, Fletch shifts subconsciously and places himself between the news cameras and our favorite chief medical examiner. “Living a regular life. But then he happened across someone orsomeoneswith a gun.”
“Him and his girlfriend, maybe.” Minka strides to her murder bag and tosses her notebook and pen inside. “There was a second vic, right? Female.”
“A couple of teen lovers out for a stroll,” I grumble. “Now one is dead, and the other’s probably in surgery with an unknown prognosis.”
“We’re gonna have to call their parents,” Fletch sighs. “Shit.”
