Page 11 of Don't Say a Word

“I already told my boss I have to leave on time Thursday,” Josie said.

Josie worked days, which meant 5:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Day shift was usually coveted, but she was on the Thursday through Sunday schedule, and most cops didn’t like to give up their weekends. She’d worked nights for a year and said it threw her entire system out of whack.

“I hope you’re bringing the boyfriend you haven’t introduced to anyone in the family,” I said.

“I can’t do that to him,” Josie whined. “I’ve only been seeing Ryan for six weeks, and a family party would be like throwing him to the lions.”

“Oh, please. We don’t bite, and barely scratch.”

“I’ll see. He works forty-eight on, seventy-two off, and has to be on duty six a.m. Friday morning.”

“A firefighter? I thought guns and hoses didn’t get along.” She practically blushed, and I laughed. “You really like him.”

“Sure, well, yeah, I do,” she fumbled. “It just happened. We give Fire a ton of shit. Most of them are jerks, anyway. But the ribbing became more fun with Ryan, and then a few weeks ago we raninto each other off-duty at the Apple Store, of all places. We talked, went to lunch, just clicked.”

“I can’t wait to meet him on Thursday.” I grinned.

“On one condition.”

“No promises.”

“Come on, you have to keep the family off him. He’s an only child.”

I laughed. The Morales clan could be overwhelming for someone who didn’t have a big family, but I didn’t make the promise. If Ryan the firefighter couldn’t handle good-natured teasing, he wouldn’t fit in with our family and was thus unworthy of my cousin.

I changed the subject. “What can you tell me about the Elijah Martinez case?”

“Tragic.” Josie retrieved her Hydro Flask from her bag, drank deeply. “My partner and I responded early Saturday morning, nine days ago. Our first call of the day, but because Mountain View Park is down the street, we rolled out right away. Park rangers found a DB. We didn’t have any info until we got there, saw that the deceased was a teenage Hispanic male. Secured the scene, covered the body, called for detectives. There was no external sign of injury. Detective Rachel King arrived on scene, retrieved the victim’s wallet and a baggie of small blue pills. She determined likely drug overdose. ME confirmed. Fentanyl.”

“Shit,” I mumbled.

“Yeah.”

“Signs of a party?”

“No sign of anything—no beer bottles, no trash, no drug paraphernalia. He was lying against a tree, in a fetal position. As if he laid down and fell asleep. I’ve seen it before, but never someone so young, so smart—he was in all honors classes.”

“How’d he take the drugs? Ingested? Smoked?” I knew fentanyl could be taken in several ways.

“Ingested,” she said. “ME stated time of death between one and three a.m. Saturday morning. His body was found after five by the rangers, we rolled up at five forty-five. Nico was there.”

“My brother?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, staffing issues at the lab.”

The Phoenix Crime Lab handled forensics for multiple police departments, including the Maricopa County Sheriff and Phoenix PD. While there were specialty units, most of the staff moved seamlessly from one department to another. My brother usually worked in toxicology running all the fancy machines, but I wasn’t surprised to hear he was picking up the slack in crime scene response.

Josie continued. “He collected trash from the can—the cans are emptied every evening by park rangers because of javelinas and coyotes, so anything in there was deposited after eight p.m. the night before. There was one of those generic thirty-two-ounce soda cups.”

“Did the detective try to figure out if it was Elijah’s?”

Josie shook her head. “It’s listed as evidence, but no tests have been run because the ME determined accidental OD.”

“Wouldn’t it be important to know if there was fentanyl in the cup? Or if it was even his?”

“If it’s accidental, that means he voluntarily ingested the drugs.”

“But if it was in the cup, maybe he didn’t know.”