SIX

Liam

When I wake up to find the ugly cat smothering me, I realize that this is his plan to suffocate me. We’d brought him home from the cat café yesterday and decided that since I’d be moving things from my old house into the new house shortly, he’d stay at Gabriel’s until I was moved in.

My hope is that when the cat moves in, so will Gabriel. I had this grand plan that Lucy Fur would become so attached to the cat that she would mourn his loss when he moved in with me, Gabriel would rush right over the second he realized, and we would live happily ever after.

Instead, she pranced right over, screamed in the cat’s face and then whapped him over the side of the head while the cat sat like a loaf, not a care in the world. I think she could have whapped him for five minutes and I’m not sure he’d have even noticed.

He is now trying his paw at the art of suffocation, like I wanted to be breathing in cat hair as I slept and had any intention of sharing my pillow with this monstrosity.

“You disgust me,” I decide as the cat gives off his rattly purrs that the vet said were normal for him before giving him the cleanest bill of health and assuring me that I would have a long life with him.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s like one of my sleep demons has come to life.”

He doesn’t care.

I pat around for Gabriel, but my sleepy mind kind of remembers that he’d gotten up about fifteen minutes ago.

Pushing out of bed, I pull on some underwear and grab a shirt before wandering out of the bedroom. It’s cool in the house, but I want to get some coffee going before I get ready for a day packed full of harassing my coworkers. On my way to the kitchen, I see that Gabriel’s outside on the driveway, talking to the teenager from his neighbor’s house. I crack open the door so I can listen.

“You’re walking to school?” Gabriel asks.

The teenager nods. “Yeah, because we live within two miles of the school, the bus doesn’t come out here.”

“But it’s misty and freezing out. Let me drive you,” Gabriel says.

Cole waves him off. “Oh… no, I’m fine.”

“You don’t even have an umbrella. Please? I just have to grab a few things and will have you to school much sooner than if you walked,” Gabriel says, which means my leisurely pace of getting ready is chucked right out the window.

The kid seems a bit nervous. “Oh, uh… thanks… but… I’m not allowed.”

I push the door open a fraction more. “You can tell your dad you can’t catch ‘the gay.’”

Cole looks horrified and embarrassed. “NO! No… that’s not… That’s not it. I’m just… you know… I… okay… yeah, if you can drive me, that’d be amazing. Thank you.”

Feeling much more refreshed after bullying the teenager so that my Gabriel would be happy, I head back to get dressed and ready. Then I decide that I’ll just make Robinson get me a coffee. I mean… he owes me his life, after all.

When I come out, I find that Gabriel isn’t just volunteering to take the kid to school, he’s over here trying to drown him in cookies and candy and anything he could ever desire. He might as well offer up the house while he’s at it so he has to move in with me.

“Liam, you ready? Oh! I never introduced you two. Liam, this is Cole. Cole, this is Liam.”

“You might as well take everything he offers you or he’ll start ugly crying,” I say.

Cole, who’d been trying to assure Gabriel that he didn’t need more, hesitates and takes it all. God, I love people who are easy to manipulate.

“T-Thank you,” he says.

Gabriel gives me a look, then tells Cole, “I wouldn’t have cried. Liam’s main enjoyment in life is harassing people.” I really see no issue with this as we head out to the car.

I get into the driver’s seat as the other two climb in before I start toward the local high school.

“What grade are you in now?” Gabriel asks.

“I’m a senior.”

“Ooh, nice. Almost done with school. You have a college in mind?”

“I don’t know… my dad thinks that going to college is a waste of time.”

“Did you tell him that talking to him is the real waste of time?” I ask.

Cole hesitates. “Um… I don’t?—”

“Ignore Liam, he thinks he’s funny even when he’s not,” Gabriel says.

I raise an eyebrow. “I am minorly offended by that. I’m hilarious, thank you very much.”

“You two are cops, right?”

“Specifically homicide,” Gabriel responds.

“That’s neat… I have to do a career day thing… can I come and follow you around for a couple of hours?”

“Of course! We’d love to have you, wouldn’t we, Liam?”

“Love is a strong word,” I say before Gabriel gives me a look. “Absolutely delighted is more like it.”

Cole laughs. “I think you’re funny.”

“Hear that, Gabriel? He thinks I’m funny.”

“It’s because he doesn’t know you well enough yet,” Gabriel teases.

“I have to do it sometime in the next week… I’ve put off doing it because I couldn’t think of what to do,” Cole says.

“Yeah, let me give you my number and we’ll get a time figured out.”

When I glance into the rearview mirror, Cole looks pretty happy about that. Gabriel is well on his way to gaining his trust, so maybe the next time the dad does something stupid, Cole will trust Gabriel instead of his father like Gabriel is really hoping.

I step out of the bathroom at work with water dripping off my hands. “Michaels, we’re out of paper towels.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Michaels asks, like it could possibly be someone else’s job and not the sergeant’s.

“Robinson! Here, boy,” I say as Robinson walks by. He stops and looks at me as I head over and dry my hands off on his shirt. “Thank you.”

Robinson stares at his damp shirt but doesn’t say a thing about it as I walk away, quite pleased with myself.

“Liam,” Gabriel says, of course catching me at that very moment.

“Yes, my sweets?”

“Don’t use Robinson as a hand towel.”

“He likes it, don’t you, Robinson? Do you like being a hand towel?”

“I sure do,” he says.

“I would fucking love to know the dirt you have on Robinson,” Matthew says. “Like did you help him bury a body or something?”

“The only person I’d bury a body for is Gabriel,” I assure him.

Sgt. Michaels glances over at me. “Paige, when you’re done harassing your coworkers, we have permission to search the house that was broken into. We didn’t even need a warrant; the owners gave us permission. It was searched the other day, but you mentioned you wanted to go through it more thoroughly.”

“Awesome. I’ll head there after talking to Jesse,” I say as I head for the elevator. Gabriel and Matthew slip inside with me.

“Repeat after me,” Gabriel instructs.

“Maybe I don’t wanna.”

“I will not use my coworkers as hand towels.”

“Gabriel, why do you clip my wings like this?” I ask.

“Gabriel is doing selfless work here,” Matthew says.

“Who invited the wheel to join us?”

“Wheel? Were you two going on a date with the bodies?” he asks.

“That’s how our first date kicked off,” I retort as Gabriel fixes me with a look. The look means that I’m not as funny as I thought I was. It’s not like I straight up told him that it was Jon Davies’ body and definitely wasn’t a date.

“Let’s get back on track here,” Gabriel says.

“I don’t even remember what the track was. Something about seeing Matthew gives me a headache, like my entire body rejects him… was that the track?”

“No, that you shouldn’t use people as hand towels!”

“So picky, but fine.”

We walk over to the medical examiner’s office and find Jesse slumped in his chair as he stares at the computer.

“Oh joy, Liam’s here. Another thing to ruin my day,” he says as he turns in the chair to face me. Really, he shouldn’t pretend he hates me and then act like he only has eyes for me.

“Jesse, I would like to introduce you to Matthew, another man as irritating as you are.”

“I’ve worked here for years. I know who Jesse is. You’re the only one present who forgets who people are,” Matthew says as he pushes me out of the way. “Let’s see what you have.”

“Of course.” Jesse leads us over to the body we’d found at the crime scene. “Still waiting on identification. He seems to be in his late thirties and was dead about half an hour before he was found.”

“So the person sets up the scene, kills the guy, removes his eyes… then someone shoots off a gun and we arrive,” I say. “Eyes removed postmortem, correct?”

“Definitely,” Jesse agrees. “Multiple stab wounds in the chest are the cause of death. Looks like they were trying for the heart but took a few attempts to get there.”

“Any other wounds we didn’t notice?” Gabriel asks.

“No. No other wounds, no tattoos, nothing of interest. No broken bones… the rope burns on his wrists show that he wasn’t tied too long or didn’t fight too hard before his death,” Jesse says. “The removal of his eyes makes me hesitate. It wasn’t done with much precision. Kind of makes me think it was the person’s first time…”

“You have to have a stomach of steel for eye removal,” Gabriel comments. “Even if a person is fine with stabbing someone, there are some things that just put you over the edge, and plucking the eyes out is one of them.”

“I’m convinced there’s a reason for it,” I say.

“Like… he saw something he shouldn’t have?” Gabriel asks.

“Maybe…”

Jesse goes over to a tray and points at the evidence on it. “I found this ticket stub in his pocket. Looks like it’s for a band.”

“I think I know the club that it took place in,” Matthew says as he examines it.

“You might get something out of the club employees while we’re waiting to ID him. With the blood stains on it, I can’t tell the date stamped on it, but I’ll send it upstairs to see if someone else can.”

“We’ll work on it,” Gabriel says. “Thank you.”

“Yeah…” Jesse trails off, and I notice he’s staring at me. Usually when people stare at me, they want me to harass them some more.

“Sorry, I’m taken,” I say as I nod at Gabriel.

His face scrunches up. “I was over here wondering, ‘Should I ask Liam for help at the expense of my sanity?’ and the words that came out of your mouth just confirmed that the answer is no. Very much a no.”

I grin, proud of my ability to get out of having to do the work of others. “You’re welcome,” I say as I head toward the door, but the look on Gabriel’s face makes me turn right back around and walk over to Jesse. “There is actually nothing I would rather do than help you. I’ve never wanted to help you so much in my life .”

Jesse looks impressed. “So… this is what dating Gabriel does to him.”

“There’s hope for him to become a semi-decent human being yet,” Matthew says as they bond over bullying me. They should be careful because the second Gabriel looks away, I will remind them just why I bully them.

“Come here,” Jesse instructs as he pulls open a drawer and draws the tray out. “So this is a Jane Doe, early twenties, found after jumping off High Street Bridge. The couple who called her in said they’d been walking home from having drinks and saw her leap off the railing. While the wife called the police, the husband ran down the slope and dove into the water to retrieve her. By then, she was dead. Assumed to be suicide.”

“If it was a suicide, you wouldn’t have me looking at her,” I say as I grab some gloves and start examining her. “Cause of death?”

“Drowning.”

“But you find it weird because the fall isn’t that far and water levels are low but not low enough she’d hit something. More like low enough she could stand on her tiptoes if she chose to. She would have been completely coherent when she hit and would have been forced to dive under and purposely drown herself. The body passes out from lack of oxygen but in that time, the man could have pulled her out … how quick was he?”

“His wife said she’d never seen anyone move so fast. She repeated how he was a swimmer in college and grabbed her immediately.”

“I mean, it’s not impossible for her to have drowned in that time. She could have hit just right so it stunned her… but my gut is with you on this. I’m assuming you’ll be waiting on toxicology for a while.”

“Yes. I see no physical evidence of her either doing drugs herself or someone drugging her. No track marks.”

I flip her hand over and follow the bruises. “These don’t look like they’re from the fall.”

“No, likely a few days old.”

“Trauma anywhere else?” Gabriel asks.

“Nothing I’ve noticed.”

I walk around the dead woman and stare at her for a long moment. “Whose case is this? I want to hear what the husband and wife said.”

“You think they’re lying?”

“I don’t know. Can you get it sent to me? I’ll look into it. High Street Bridge has posts that they decorate with holiday shit this time of year, right?”

Gabriel nods. “Yeah, I was commenting that the minute Halloween was over, they already had it decorated.”

“Were the decorations ripped down where she fell?” I ask.

Jesse shakes his head. “I really don’t know. I’ve just seen the body, not the scene.”

“You think someone tied her up there?” Gabriel asks.

“Maybe not tied, but if they fished her arm through the decorations, it could keep her stable long enough for them to leave, but not long enough to catch herself.”

Gabriel looks up at me. “So you think she might have been drugged or dazed?”

“Possibly.”

Jesse examines her arm carefully. “Something like that wouldn’t have caused bruising if her arm was hooked, and it’s not rough enough to scrape her. I’m just surprised no one has reported her missing.”

I flip her hand over. “Right. Her nails seem to have been professionally done, lightly grown out but no chips. She clearly didn’t work a manual job. Her hair was dyed recently; you can see the start of darker roots. She was obviously taking care of herself.”

Gabriel nods. “I agree. Not always, but often when people are depressed, they let their appearances slip. It becomes hard to brush your hair, do your nails, present yourself…”

“She was wearing a nice skirt and heels,” Jesse informs us.

“I’ll take a look at the case,” I tell him.

“Thank you,” he says. “I know they want to write it off as suicide, but I’m not convinced.”

Gabriel and I decide to head to the club from the ticket stub while Matthew and Donna check out the house that Abby had hidden inside.

“I really feel like we should have searched the house instead of the club,” Gabriel says as we walk up to the door.

“Why? I used to be a big clubber back in my day. You should’ve seen my moves. Would have made you rock hard with just a flicker of my eyes.”

“All of that just reconfirms why I really believe that we should have gone to the house with no humans instead of in here with humans,” he says with a grin before looking down at his phone that’d just beeped. “Oh, my parents want to know if we can do dinner tonight. This time with my sister included.”

“Is she the chosen child?”

“No, I am.”

“Makes sense. Sure. I’ll suffer again for you. I really didn’t think I’d have to suffer again so soon, but I must keep my darling happy.”

“Definitely,” he says, holding the door open for me as we head inside. Since it’s three in the afternoon, it technically isn’t open yet, but they know we’re coming and agreed to let us in while they’re setting up.

A man looks up from where he’d been fiddling with something in one of the booths and heads over. “You must be who I talked to on the phone.”

Gabriel smiles. “Yes, I’m Detective Hyde and this is Detective Paige.”

“Johnny Stuart.”

“We were wondering if a man who looks like this was here recently,” Gabriel says as he shows Johnny a picture of the man. As we didn’t have any photos with his eyes intact, we relied on the team to reconstruct one since asking people to identify an eyeless man could cause enough distress that they might focus primarily on what’s missing and not what’s in front of them. I thought it was ridiculous and was prepared to show them whatever I had if it got me some answers. People really shouldn’t be so squeamish. When I suggested to Michaels that we put his daughter’s sick Mickey Mouse glasses on the eyeless man before his photoshoot, he weirdly slammed the door to his office in my face.

“I generally don’t work out front. Give me a moment,” he says, and he heads into the back before waving a few others over. About seven people head over and take a look at the image we’re showing them.

“Do you know the exact night?” a woman asks.

“It was a night the band was here, he had a ticket stub, so it had to have been Thursday, Friday, or Saturday,” Johnny says.

The woman gets closer to examine the picture. “I was working every one of those nights.”

“What is your name?” Gabriel asks.

“Sorry, it’s Minny.”

“Like the mouse?” I ask.

She looks over at me. “With a Y.”

“Hmm…” Why would anyone name their child something like that? It’s almost as bad as Gabriel’s names.

Minny raises an eyebrow but continues. “I remember him. He was a little pushy. He told me that ‘My tits definitely weren’t Minny .’ He was very much giving me ick vibes and then even had the balls to ask for my phone number.”

“Sounds like a fun time. I can’t fathom why you’d turn that down,” I say.

She snorts. “Right? I asked our bouncer to make him leave but when the bouncer came, he was already gone. That was… Friday night, I believe?”

“About what time did he harass you?”

“Uh… eight, maybe? It wasn’t very late. I remember thinking that we definitely hadn’t been open long enough for him to be drunk enough to ask about anything of mine.”

“Had you seen him before?” Gabriel asks.

Minny shrugs. “No idea. We get so many faces in and out of here… especially with the shows and the college nearby. I don’t remember him if he was a repeat customer.”

“Any way we could get a name on him?” Gabriel asks. “Credit card information, anything?”

“We have so many people coming through here a night, I’m not sure, but I’ll see what I can do. Let me call my bartender and see if he has any ideas,” Johnny says.

Minny holds up a hand. “Wait! I remember that Samson said the guy wrote his name and number down on the receipt and said the tip was for me.”

“Let me go look,” Johnny says, and Minny follows us into Johnny’s office. While he sets to work going through receipts, I turn to her.

“Was he here with anyone?”

“Oh… hmm… I want to say one man? I remember him laughing when this asshole was being rude to me.”

“Here we go,” Johnny says as he hands it over, and I look down at the name of Steven and a phone number. “Anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask.”