Page 11

ELEVEN

Liam

“So you want to look at some dead bodies,” I say as Cole, Gabriel’s teenage neighbor, follows me into the department the next day. Abby still hasn’t woken up, but the doctors seem optimistic since the swelling in her brain is responding to their measures in a positive way.

Cole was supposed to be Gabriel’s to follow around today, but Gabriel got dragged off and I finished my work within an hour of being here, so now I get to babysit because I’m not allowed to touch Abby’s case. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been breathing down Matthew’s neck and trying to solve it while whispering threats in his ear. I’m confident that the threats help significantly.

“NO! Oh my god, no,” Cole says. “I really don’t want to look at dead bodies.”

“That’s boring. What do you want to look at?” I ask.

“I don’t know! I just had to complete this shadow day thing for school, and everyone said it was super cool that I got to go to homicide, but I’m seeing that they were very wrong! I’m going to have to lie to them and tell them we did something neat.”

“Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give Liam a child?” Matthew asks. I pretend I don’t notice that Jesse, who is walking with him, snaps his head around and gives me a look of absolute horror. Like what do these two think I’m going to do with the kid? They act like I’ve been known to resort to cannibalism. I don’t feast off the flesh of humans, I feast off their misery.

“Noooo, you poor thing,” Jesse says, cooing to him even though the “kid” is taller than him.

“Do you want me to teach you how to arrest someone?” I ask as I grab Matthew’s arm. “First you have to gain the upper hand. It’s best if you tell them something that’ll knock their spirit down a little first. Like ‘How are you still single at your age?’”

Matthew’s face scrunches up, telling me I’ve done a decent job. “Jesus Christ, you were single at this age too, like a fucking month ago!” he protests. “We’re the same age!”

“And once they’re close to tears, you pin their arms behind them. Just don’t let them cry too much or things get a bit slippery.”

“Only you could make someone cry enough that their arms are slick!” Matthew says.

I ignore him, which is best to do. “If they don’t want to go down peacefully, you go for the eyes or the nuts.”

“Leave my nuts alone!” Matthew cries.

“You can weigh his intelligence when he decides to save his nuts over his eyes,” I explain. “Are you writing this down?”

Cole’s brow furrows. “Am I supposed to?” Weirdly, he looks confused by this, but that’s probably just because he’s naive to the world.

“So now that we have him in handcuffs, we can go about our day,” I say.

“Uncuff me,” Matthew demands.

“Can you get sued for this?” Cole asks, like he wants to take notes on that part.

“Let me tell you a secret, Cole. This morning, I was handed a case that another team was working on for two weeks. I figured it out in forty-seven minutes. If you make yourself invaluable, you are allowed to do anything .”

Jesse laughs, clearly agreeing with me. “I mean… he’s kind of right. There’s no way we’d put up with any of this if he wasn’t useful. And because he is, we’re all stuck going along with his antics.”

“See? They’re all my lackeys because I am superior.”

“Now you went too far,” Jesse says as I laugh, pleased with myself.

“Next thing I will teach you is how to pick a lock.”

“Aren’t we the good guys?” Matthew asks. “Why would we be picking locks? Absolutely no one should have okayed this.”

“Ah, right. I mixed things up there. Okay, Cole. We’re going to do a fake case and see if you can figure it out. I’m going to take this pencil and stab Matthew a few times and then you’re going to learn how to identify blood splatter.”

“Does being valuable save you if you stab your coworker as well?” Cole asks.

“It depends how much the other coworkers like the one you stabbed,” I explain. “With Matthew, everyone will look the other way. Some may even clap.”

“People like me!” Matthew says, sounding a bit desperate for my taste. “I’m like the fun and nice guy!”

I sigh. “So what do I do with him if I can’t show him dead bodies, can’t show him blood splatter… do you want to see our confiscated items room? There’s some neat stuff in there. If you aren’t a narc, I’ll even let you play with some of it?—”

“Why don’t you come down with me?” Jesse breaks in as he rudely pushes me and my phenomenal ideas out of the way. “I’m a medical examiner, and I promise I won’t show you any dead bodies, but I can tell you about what I do?”

“Okay. Yeah… sure. Anything sounds better than being allowed to play with the drugs in the confiscated pile,” Cole says, so the three of us head down there. The moment we’re in the room, Cole’s eyes latch on to the drawers hiding the dead bodies, and he proceeds to pay no attention to Jesse at all.

“Are there dead people in there?” he asks, and I can’t tell whether he’s horrified or curious.

“There are,” Jesse replies as he leans against a table. “And I know it sounds a bit creepy, but it’s such a vital part of an investigation. There are so many things that can be learned from the dead. We can discover how long ago someone died, but we also have to consider other circumstances. What was the weather like? What kind of things were in their environment? Was it a closed space or was there air circulation? Did it freeze the night before? Then we’ve got rigor mortis and livor mortis, which is a huge topic itself. Oh! You want to hear something fascinating ? We can tell stages of decomposition from the stage of larvae found in the body. So at first you have the eggs, of course. Takes about a day for them to hatch, then they begin to feast on the fluids exuded from the body as they migrate into the body?—”

“I love that you thought I was being a bit much, but you’re now giving the kid the ick by talking about larvae in decomposing bodies and masses of maggots,” I say as Cole stares at Jesse with wide and horrified eyes. “He’s going to lie in bed tonight and feel the larvae you so happily talked about crawling all over him.”

Jesse freezes then gives him a sheepish look. “Sorry. I get a bit… carried away.”

“What Jesse was trying to say, before turning into a weirdo, is that examination of the body is critical to finding quick answers.”

“What if they’re just bones?” Cole asks. “Can you still tell how long ago they died?”

“You can! Some of it depends on where the body was kept or buried. You can also rely on other things like the clothes they were wearing. Some fibers break down quickly and others take a significant amount of time to break down.”

“Is it true hair and nails grow after death?”

“No. It’s not. The skin pulls away from the nails after death as the body dehydrates, giving the appearance of longer nails.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Jesse is pretty creepy, I agree,” I tell Cole. “He looks sweet and innocent because he never grew up into a big strong man like me, but that’s just hiding his creepy interior.”

“Thanks, Liam,” Jesse grumbles. “Let me show you around and then you can go up to pester the people in the lab. Literally anyone is better than pestering Liam.”

“I’m like a magical unicorn,” I say.

That makes Cole laugh, and Jesse gives me a look. I have to assume the look is there to hide the fact that Jesse also agrees.

“That was interesting… even if it was kind of creepy,” Cole comments as I lead him down the hallway.

“It is. Jesse makes it seem a whole lot less interesting than it is,” I tease.

“He made it interesting,” Cole says with a laugh. “I’m still not sure I could deal with dead bodies, though.”

Some find it easier to deal with than others.

I lead him into the lab where Penny is working at the computer. “This is Penny. She does really good work if you offer her cake or pie. If you don’t have cake or pie, it’s mediocre work.”

Penny swings around on her chair. “Excuse me?”

“This is what you call a passive-aggressive tone,” I explain.

“I’ll show you passive-aggressive,” Penny grumbles before turning to Cole with a smile. “I heard you were going to stop by, so I found some stuff you can look at. Come over here. So say, for example, we’re looking at a crime scene and we see some hair, but we need to determine where the hair came from. We can identify whether it’s human or animal. Let me show you.”

I lean against the counter and watch as she shows him the differences between hair samples and then shows him a few other things under the microscope.

“Can I see my hair under it?” he asks.

“Sure!”

“I’ll get the clippers,” I offer.

“I’d rather not be bald, thank you,” Cole says.

“He’s so picky,” I grumble. “And why are you so fascinated with this stuff? What I was teaching you was much cooler.”

“You literally just harassed your coworkers,” he says as he offers up a hair. “I’m not actually sure what you taught me.”

“That’s Liam’s love language. It’s how you know he cares,” Penny explains.

Cole seems to think that Penny is significantly cooler, which we all know is bullshit. “What’s this machine do?”

“I’ll show you!” she says as she rushes over, thrilled to take a mini break from work to show things to a kid who seems quite fascinated by everything she does. Much more fascinated than learning about the decomposition of bodies or how to stab Matthew.

After about an hour, Penny hands him back to me, and I take him to my office.

Cole turns to me. “So… your job is like… the people in the TV shows? Like you go to the crime scenes and figure it all out?”

“Yeah. I would take you to a crime scene, but I was told that I wasn’t allowed. They’re really unfair.”

“That’s okay. I think I like what Penny does best.”

“You could do that.”

He laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Why? What are your grades? Even if they’re shit, you just try hard in college. I let my grades absolutely tank one year in high school but ended up breezing through college and I didn’t even have to blackmail anyone for my grades. So why do you think you can’t do it?”

Cole shrugs and looks away.

“Relying on others for some things really fucking sucks. But Gabriel’s a good guy. You really should try relying on him.”

He just stares at me like he has absolutely no idea what I’m saying.

“And the next time someone tries to help you, don’t turn your back on them and support your monster.”

Cole looks alarmed before quickly covering it up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do we do now?”

I watch him for a moment before nodding. “Now we need to find someone else to harass.”

“I actually think that’s your job title.”

“Right? I’m good at it. And they pay me well. I’m actually a lead detective here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Right? Come. Let’s bother more people.”

I head over to Michaels’ office. “This is the sergeant. He got this position by looking pretty and smiling a lot.”

Michaels’ bald head whips around to glower at me. “What are you doing?”

“He barks at me to do things and cries a little when I do them with precision because he’s so proud of me. Sometimes I even call him Dad.”

“You’ve never called me ‘Dad’ a day in your life,” Michaels says with a growl. “Cole, right? It’s wonderful to have you here today. I apologize that Detective Hyde was busy and you had to…”

“He had to what?” I ask.

“Put up with you is what he was going to say,” Cole says as he laughs.

I grin, pleased with my ability to harass others. “Sergeant Michaels loves me, and he knows it. After the last big case, he even got me an ‘I told you so’ cake because I told him who the bad guy was and he refused to believe me. I even got shot because he wouldn’t believe me.”

“Paige, why don’t we have someone else take over and you go back to your office where hopefully no one will hear or see you until you leave.”

“See, Cole, he even loves me enough that he gave me my own office. I’m the only detective who had my own office before he allowed pests to descend upon it.”

“I’m starting to think it’s so others can get work done without you harassing them,” Cole says.

“Cole, you are very right. Your art of deduction is splendid. You might be fit for a job in homicide,” Michaels tells him.

I ignore him and take my protégé off to meet the others, but before I get too far, Gabriel comes in. “Hey, Cole! Is Liam showing you all around?”

“He threatened to stab another officer to show me how blood splatter works,” Cole says. “We have to write an essay about our day shadowing, and I feel like that’ll be a good hook for the essay.”

Gabriel’s eyes snap over to me. “Would it now? Liam ?”

I just laugh, pleased with myself until the elevator opens and an officer from downstairs steps in.

“Hey, Liam, Jesse said he spoke to you the other day about looking into the case with the woman who jumped off the bridge? The couple who found her are here and are hoping to speak to someone, and I thought maybe you’d like to hear what they have to say.”

“Oh, sure. Gabriel, you good to take over?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course.”

I turn to Cole. “I know it’s disappointing that your sensei is leaving, but duty calls. Gabriel is better than everyone in this office combined, so you’re in good hands.”

“Go!” Gabriel says. “And stop giving him more nonsense to write about in his paper!”

I just laugh, pleased with myself as I head into the elevator. Once on the first floor, I wander over to the interrogation room and see the husband and wife sitting across the desk. Because of the whole Abby thing, I never did get to listen to their statement like I promised Jesse I would, but I read over it and the transcripts, and made time to stop at the bridge where I’d seen that the decorations were pulled back where she’d been standing, so at least I have a decent handle on what’s been presented so far.

I step into the room where the couple are and sit down across from them. He’s a man in his late forties with graying hair and she looks to be of a similar age with hair dyed a bright red.

“I’m Detective Paige,” I say.

“I’m Liz and this is my husband Kenny,” the wife says. “You know about the incident the other night? About the woman who jumped? Do I need to go over it again? Sorry, I’m just not sure what to do.”

“I’ve looked into it.”

“Ever since then, I feel like someone is following me. I swear I’m not being paranoid. At first, I thought I was. I thought I was making it up, but then last night, I felt it again and someone was following me. I really think they were.”

“What did they look like?”

“They had a hat on, and their coat was zipped up. It was hard to tell because it was dark out.”

“Man? Woman? Tall? Short?”

“I don’t know,” she admits.

“Did you get a picture of them?”

“No, I just hurried into a store and called Kenny.”

Kenny leans forward. “I know, at first I thought she was just being paranoid, but that’s not right,” he says, and the words smack me so fucking hard that I feel like the breath is knocked out of me.

“What did you say?” I ask as I realize there’s a catch to my voice.

The husband hesitates, likely hearing it. “I said that at first, I thought she was being paranoid… but I know she’s not.”

It’s like his words rip right through me. They tear me back, and suddenly, I’m surrounded by the smell of blood. By death… her eyes… they’re digging right into me. I want to rush across the table. I want to grab him by the fucking throat. I want to feel my knife sink into him. I want to watch him die. I want to watch him suffer.

My hand twitches. I wish I had my fucking knife. I wish I could feel his skin part as I drive it into his fucking chest. My hand reaches out and I grab on to the table to keep myself from bashing Kenny’s face in. My fingers dig into the wood until they turn white. I have to steady myself so I don’t shout at him before I manage to choke out, “Get out.”

“W-What?” he asks, startled.

“Get. THE FUCK. OUT ,” I yell. “GET OUT. GET OUT.”

He jumps up and quickly shields his wife like he fucking cares . Like he’s not a fucking monster. He rushes from the room with her, and I can’t seem to find my breath as rage tears through me. Why the fuck did I let him leave? No… no, it’s good. I let him leave so I can hunt him. I can kill him. I can rip him apart. I can destroy him like he destroyed me.

What would he think if I went for that precious wife of his? Gave her something to actually fucking fear? I can be worse than any fucking shadow in the night that she thinks is haunting her.

I grab a chair and fling it as the door opens.

“Liam, what’s going on?” Matthew asks as he looks in. “I heard some noise. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Fucking nothing. Nothing is going on,” I hiss as I storm out, but I didn’t wait long enough.

He is still here.

His hands are flailing as he points in my direction. “That fucking detective just lost his goddamn mind! He just started screaming at me and my wife,” he says, like he has the audacity to play victim. “I want to talk to your superior!”

And then the restraint inside of me just snaps.

I rush Kenny and grab him by the collar of his shirt as I slam him against the wall. “You want my superior? You really want my fucking superior? You came into my home . You fucking watched as I was thrown down the stairs. As I was beaten and threatened. Left bleeding with my broken arm ripped behind my back. You stole my fucking money as my mother’s head was bashed into the fucking wall, and you want me to help you ? You want me to save you ? You want me to fucking care about a thing you’re involved in?” I hiss.

Color drains from his face, realization finally hitting him. Have I changed that much? Or was I never even significant enough for him to even remember ? He wore a mask that day, but I didn’t. Were thoughts of me not ingrained in his head like they were in mine? “N-No! I… I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“We were held for days . I lay there staring at my mother’s dead body, waiting for my father to come home, only for him to get shot in the fucking head while you paraded out the door with our money.”

Kenny’s shaking his head wildly. “No! I didn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he protests as his wife, who’d been prepared to help her husband, stares in confusion.

“But you could have called someone. You could have saved their lives,” I hiss.

“Liam, come on,” Matthew says as he tries to drag me off.

“Get the fuck off me,” I shout as I push him back. I want to crush this man’s throat. I want him to lie there and beg for the ones he loves to get up and then be forced to sit with their bodies, knowing that there was one person out there who could have stopped it all.