Page 5 of Our Daughter's Bones

Lakemore, WA

September 11, 2018

Mackenzie picked up the crime scene photograph and stared at it for the billionth time. The prostitute was lying on the bed. Her hair was soaked in blood. She was a blonde, but now she looked like a brunette.

She had been stabbed forty-seven times. There were puncture wounds all over her body. Her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her arms, and her buttocks.

She had cheated on her lover forty-seven times.

“Here you go!” A hand blocked her view and placed a bottle of champagne on her desk. She squinted at it then looked up. “What is this?”

Sergeant Jeff Sully leaned his bulk against her desk. “It is Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs. Famous Californian champagne.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mackenzie mumbled.

“It’s sparkling chardonnay.” He rolled his eyes, his thick unibrow tracking the movement. “Your knowledge of wine is disgraceful.”

“Your knowledge of wine is surprising. You clearly look like a beer person.” She pointed at his large drum of a belly.

Sully ignored the jibe and crossed his arms, his thumb reaching up to scratch at his graying mustache. “How do you even look at that without flinching? One of the worst ones I’ve seen in my career.”

She clipped the picture back into the case file. “I’ve seen worse.”

Detective Troy Clayton pushed his chair back from the cubicle next to hers and came into view with a Cheshire cat smile on his face. He reminded her of a carrot—tall, lean, and stiff, with a mop of light brown hair that looked orange under sunlight. “Guess you saw a lot of dead bodies in New York?”

She froze. She imagined what Troy would look like ifhiseyelid were swollen to the size of a golf ball. She wondered about the amount of force required to fracture a skull with a frying pan. It needed a staggering amount of rage.

What Mackenzie did twenty years ago needed astounding cowardice.

The phone trilled.

Papers shuffled.

The toilet flushed.

Sully’s stomach growled as he stood up.

The little sounds snapped her out of her spiraling thoughts and kept her grounded. A little trick she learned from the internet. She smiled. “Nah, I just have bigger balls than all of you combined.”

Sully laughed behind her. Troy reddened, but his lips resisted a smile. He tapped a pen against his chin before wheeling back to his cubicle.

The Investigations Division in Lakemore PD consisted of a Special Investigations and a Detectives Unit. Special Investigations looked into robberies, fraud, and drug and gang-related crimes. Sully was in charge of the Detectives Unit, leading six senior detectives and three junior detectives, investigating homicide, missing persons, felony assaults, and cold cases. Located on the same floor, the detectives had cubicles close to each other, with the sergeant’s office right down the hall. It was like being in a fishbowl. There was no privacy.

Mackenzie placed the blue binder back on the shared shelf. She looked at the unoccupied cubicle behind hers. Files were stacked in a corner. Pictures were pinned to the bulletin board on the wall. An empty coffee cup sat on the desk.

Her nostrils flared; her chest pinched. She looked away. “I think I’m going to go home.”

“What? No way!” Sully said incredulously. “The DA charged your guy, Mack. You solved the case. You celebrate here.”

Troy stood up and looked over the screen separating their cubicles. “Care to share some of that booze, Detective?”

“It’s been a long week––” Mackenzie started, but Troy interrupted.

“I’ll finish that entire thing then. We can celebrate for Mad Mack without her here.”

Mad Mack.

It was her nickname in the department. They called her that mostly behind her back and sometimes to her face. She didn’t appreciate the name, but she knew where it came from.