Page 5

Dinah

Freddie smells like a vanilla-and-coconut bath scrub I used in my twenties.

The scent keeps floating over to me whenever he moves, and it clashes with the putrid and slightly fruity smell of a dead body.

I use both hands to pull the elastic bands of a face mask behind my ears, covering my nose and mouth.

There. Let his distracting scent try to permeate that.

I check the lock on the wide kitchen window and do the same for the back door.

Neither look disturbed, and I verbalize the observation, then crouch beside a scuffed-up round dining table and stare at Reese Bishop’s slack expression, a small pool of dried vomit beneath her chin.

“What made you suspect foul play?” I glance at the medical examiner, who chugs a bottle of water by the back door.

I know this woman, and of all the MEs, I’m glad it’s Monica.

We’ve worked at least a dozen scenes together, and she’s a good mix of attentive and adaptive.

“There’s an empty pentobarbital bottle in the trash. I’ll verify it with the autopsy and blood work, but the most likely cause of death is overdose. I’ll leave it up to you if it’s self-inflicted or foul play. That’s why you get the big bucks.”

I chuckle, well aware that Monica probably outearns me by a factor of four. “Okay. I’ll be quick so you can take the body.”

“No problem.” She crumples the water bottle and I glance at Freddie, who has his little notepad out, pen at the ready, a page of notes already down.

I focus on the scene in front of me. No reason I wouldn’t be able to knock out this report in a couple of hours and make it back to my part of town for lunch.

I clear my throat and begin. “Female seated at a round table just off the kitchen. Looks like she was eating breakfast and passed out. She looks to be late forties. Dark shoulder-length hair with gray roots. No wedding ring. Pale complexion.” I tilt my head, spotting something under the stretched-out collar of the T-shirt she’s wearing.

The edge of something fabric. A Band-Aid or .

.. I use the tip of my pen to pull the neckline to one side, revealing the curve of a collarbone and .

.. there. “A port.” I look up at Freddie, who is standing beside me, his crotch at eye level.

“I’ll pull her medical history, find out if this is for cancer or something else. ”

“I’m a step ahead of you,” Monica says. “Advanced heart disease, was denied a transplant because she’s a smoker. It was terminal, according to her doc. I ordered her full history, which I’ll put in the file as soon as I get it.”

“Okay, so likely suicide.” I straighten to standing.

Freddie frowns; of course he doesn’t like the suicide angle. Newbies love dramatic, complicated murders, but he’s going to be disappointed. I’m three minutes into this scene and already know the evidence won’t point to murder. No forced entry, no sign of a struggle. Easy peasy.

I do a slow visual sweep of the cramped room.

Faded-blue wallpaper with a pattern of chickens.

The milk in the cereal bowl is congealed, the sour smell adding to the scent cocktail of Freddie’s cologne and the decomposing body.

A cup of black coffee. A newspaper, open to a word search game, half-completed.

I’m not sure if that’s a clue toward suicide or murder.

If I planned to die, would I want to spend my last hour staring at a puzzle?

It’s a question for Joe—not that I’ll discuss this with him. Separation of church and state, and all that. I handle my business, he handles his.

“So, no note,” Freddie pipes in.

“Doesn’t look like it.” I turn slowly, double-checking every surface. Freddie writes something down, and I envision how tonight’s dinner conversation with Joe will go.

“Did he flirt with you?” No.

“Not even a little?” No.

He won’t believe me, will want to meet Freddie, to do that male dance of handshakes and eye contact and dick-measuring; then there will be a whole new round of questions for me, at a time when it should be over.

Joe has a lot of strengths, but trust isn’t one of them. His suspicion is a two-way highway between us, paved in love and fortified with rebars of verification, which is why I probably won’t tell him about Freddie at all.

I turn from the body. “Let’s tour the house.”

The crime scene techs move away, like opposing magnets, wherever we go.

It’s funny, even though this is a different crew from the one we use in Beverly Hills, there is that familiar hostility present, which I never understand.

It feels like a competition of who can find out what without the other team knowing.

It shouldn’t be like that, especially not in an industry where lives are at stake.

I mentioned it once to one of the other shields, and they looked at me as if I was crazy, like they had no idea what I was talking about.

So maybe it’s just something about me the CSIs don’t like.

Either way, when Freddie and I go into the primary bedroom, they leave it and provide no information as to what they’ve photographed or whether anything in the room contributes to the scene.

The room is drenched in floral print, a variety of designs covering the walls, the curtains, the bedspread, and the pillows.

It smells vaguely of cat, but I don’t see one anywhere, and there’s been no damage to the body.

That’s the telltale sign of cats: they start eating almost immediately, which tells me all I need to know about having one as a pet.

Dogs will starve to death beside their owners.

Not cats. They start munching the ears first.

There’s something that always throws me off about being in a dead woman’s room.

The weight of it—not of the death, but of everything involved in the aftermath.

Someone will need to go through each of these drawers.

Her trash can. That dirty pair of underwear or the dusty vibrator in the bedside drawer.

Her knickknacks on the dresser. The earrings pushed into the corkboard on the wall.

It’s why it takes me an extra half hour before I ever leave the house for weekends at the ranch.

What if we died while away? I couldn’t have my colleagues walking through my house, opening drawers and digging through our trash.

I’ve worked too hard to make our home a sanctuary of peace and order, each item carefully curated with a goal of cohesion.

In comparison, Reese’s selections are much more utilitarian.

Price over beauty. Function over form. She has a giant blue body pillow that is stained and ripped in one corner.

An annual calendar with pigs in various costumes hangs from a nail on the yellow wall.

October 25 has a heart around it, and I stare at it for a long moment.

October is a bad month, in general. The month I almost lost everything. The month my younger sister got married. The month serial killers Gary Evans and Mack Ray Edwards were born, among others. No wonder the holiday of horror falls inside it.

We spend almost an hour in the ten-foot-by-ten-foot space. I search under her mattress and through her jewelry box. I look in all the places where secrets are kept but don’t find any.

“No computer,” Freddie remarks. “Have you seen a phone anywhere?”

“No.”

“Suicide victims don’t hide their phones.”

An astute observation for a newbie.

“Agreed.” I let out a breath and think through it. The lack of a phone is something a DA would pounce on, if this case ever crosses their desk. But the missing phone is also like a body. Without one, it’s hard to prove murder, even though the absence points to it.

I stand. “Let’s look at the rest of the house.”

The second bedroom raises a bigger question.

It’s a young woman’s room, one that smells of fruity body sprays.

Everything is neat and stylish, the color scheme all creams and pinks, the bed made with a fuzzy set of pillows that spelled out J-E-B.

The closet is in perfect order, with even rows of dark jeans, teeny tops, and at least a dozen pairs of shoes.

I thumb through a stack of matching folded T-shirts that have an ice-cream logo on them.

“Got a bunch of employee shirts for a place called Chunky Mike’s. ”

Freddie pauses before the dresser mirror and points to a photo taped to the corner. “I bet this is her daughter. Looks to be ... what? Eighteen? Twenty?”

I lean forward and study the photo. In it, Reese Bishop has her arms around the neck of a young woman who is laughing.

The girl looks happy, as does Reese, and I feel a stab of jealousy at the maternal bond.

Clearly, they are close. They love each other.

Maybe this is what it looks like for an only child who doesn’t have siblings to split the love with.

Freddie clicks his mouth. “There’s a bunch more pictures here. Pretty girl.” He is at her desk, and slides one of the photos leaning against a lamp to the center of the white-painted surface.

Pretty. I study the girl, who is standing on a lawn at some sort of outdoor concert or event. Her arms are spread out, a peek of her stomach showing, her grin wide, hair down, sunglasses perched on the top of her head.

“There’s lotsa books here.” He turns his head, studying the names on the spines of the paperbacks that are crammed into the bookshelf above her desk. “Novels, but some textbooks too. US Politics and Procedures . Chemical Equations . Looks like she’s in college.”

“We got a stat sheet on the victim?” I pull out my phone to check the case file. By now, we should have the background check, next of kin, public records, and ... There’s a new attachment. I tap the file. “Never mind, I got it.”

I scroll through it. “Reese has a daughter named Jessica. Sophomore at UCLA. This is the address listed, so this has gotta be her room.”

“Lives at home but hasn’t reported her mom’s body yet?” Freddie frowns. “Maybe she’s out of town?”

“Or stays with a boyfriend.” I glance at the collage of photos tacked on the wall above the desk. “See anyone who fits the bill?”

It takes a moment to look over them all. There are too many faces and too many photos. I’m not sure I could find even a handful of people I liked enough to take a photo with, and she has her arms wrapped around a few dozen.

I frown. “Not even a best friend,” I muse. “Look at her in these photos. Notice anything?”

He leans forward and studies them, trying to see what I do, but I already know that he won’t. A man could never understand all the dynamics that go into trying to survive as a young woman.

“I don’t know,” he finally says. “She’s got nice teeth?”

“In all of these shots, she’s the outsider.

” I study one of the photos, the girl perched on the end of a row, clinging to the group but not touching the blonde in front of her, like she doesn’t want the girl to realize she’s there.

I remember that age. How awkward I felt, twenty pounds too heavy, my social circle interrupted by my time away, each interaction a minefield of saying or doing the wrong thing.

I hated that time. It was one of the reasons why I joined the police force. I wanted the built-in family, one that all wore the same thing and cared about the same objectives. Nothing to screw up there—except that I forgot I was a girl, and that alone made me a target in our trainee group.

Meeting Joe, talking to him ... it had been a scuba tank of air at a time when I’d felt like I was drowning. He had pulled me to the surface, pulled me onto his raft and wrapped his arms around me, and from that day forth, I’d been in the sun. Warm. Confident. Safe.

Breathing.

There were a few photos of her with different guys, their arms slung around her neck or pulling her in a little too close.

No love there. Only lust. Control. Use of a body before discarding it.

Another feeling that was old yet familiar.

I pull a Polaroid off the wall and hold it out to him.

“What’s your take on this? Boyfriend? Fling? ”

He glances at it. “Fling. Or a friend with benefits.”

I look over the rest of the photos, but they are more of the same.

A girl ignored in the midst of a crowd. I could relate to that when I was her age, but unless she has her own dark secret that’s built up her wall, our reasons are very different.

Maybe she’s emotionally stilted. Maybe she’s a bitch.

I reattach the photo to the wall, and I hate the way the guy is looking at her. It’s a sly look, the kind a fox would give its prey, and she’s beaming. She probably slept with him and then he ditched her, his knife still stuck in her clueless heart.

I turn away from the wall. “Let’s call her work. See what’s up.”

It takes less than an hour to confirm that she didn’t show up for her shift this morning. I issue an APB, and Jessica Bishop officially becomes a missing person in Los Angeles County.