I wasn’t in the mood for a middle of the night call out. Two weeks out from an undercover gig in Seattle, and I was still running on nerves and broken sleep, notnearlyenough distance between me and the things I’d had to do up there. I’d told myself I’d get a breather before diving back into the grind of being an LA detective—three days, minimum. Instead, the department had dragged me out of bed as if rest was optional.
“Sure you’re okay?” Frank asked for the third time since picking me up.
I’d given him the abridged version of what I’d done to close the case, but he was used to me wandering off-script and into the grayer areas of policing, used to my leads he never asked the source for. He knew I was fresh off a case where I’d crossed lines Internal Affairs wouldn’t want written down, and that I’d come back to LA hoping for something—anything—closer to regular police work. But normal never lasted for me. He knew the dark corners I worked in—the informant I let walk, the suspect I leaned too hard on, the evidence I didn’t exactlyfind—the gray world I lived in, and he never asked questions he didn’t want the answers to. That was why we were good partners, because he didn’t need me to becleanto trust me.
“Peachy,” I gave the same answer.
He took another long sip of his sugar-bomb coffee, steering with his knees, and the car drifted toward the center line before he corrected, swearing at a driver who wasn’t even there. My knuckles tightened on the door handle, the smell of burnt coffee mixing with the faint ozone of impending rain.
Outside, the streets gave way to the dark curve of canyon roads and high-walled homes. Gated driveways replaced corner stores; the city lights dropped away behind us as we climbed. Frank kept talking—this time about his impending retirement and how fucked-up it was that he had to attend courses to learn how not to be a cop. “Apparently, I need a goddamn hobby! Like I don’t already know how to mow a lawn or balance a checkbook.” He slurped again, almost missing a turn. “They need to go fuck themselves.”
Frank Mullins had been a cop since before I was born—gruff, cranky, and too old to change now. People whispered about his retirement as if it were a soft landing, but Frank didn’t do soft. He wasn’t scared of leaving; he was pissed I’d have a new partner and worried they wouldn’t roll with my hunches as well as he did. The old man cared for me.
I cared for him back. I’ll miss him.
Not his driving, but yeah, him I’ll miss badly.
I watched the road twist ahead, Frank’s coffee cup tipping dangerously as he talked, and thought for the hundredth time that the man could survive shootouts but not his own driving. I’d always thought he’d burn out on caffeine or take us both off a cliff long before a bullet got him.
I let him vent, tossing in the occasional grunt of agreement as his voice washed over me, half static, half comfort. He’d earned the right to spit venom at the department, and I was too tired and messed up to engage with him.
Word from the water cooler was that after Frank retired, they were looking to pair me with Tess Calloway, a year younger than me, sparky-eyed, and tenacious as fuck. She’d call instant bullshit on mysupposedhunches and my loose intel, whereas when the Cave fed me information, Frank went with it, called it good policing and contacts. I didn’t want a new partner.
Frank had taught me how to read a scene, hone my intuition to know when a witness was lying, and most importantly, how to keep my head down when politics got ugly. If the department didn’t value him, I certainly did, and I’d miss him for more than his ability to turn a blind eye to where my intel came from. He moved on to berating pension paperwork, as I sipped my bitter coffee, and I flicked the heating up a notch. LA could warm into typical December sunshine by midafternoon, but right now it was cold, drizzling, and I was already done with the day. Not helped by the fact I was running on two hours of sleep after a late meeting at the Cave, believing I’d actually have today free.
The radio crackled with an update from dispatch, dragging away from our thoughts.
“Units twenty-seven and twenty-nine, be advised—county coroner and fire units on scene. Perimeter unsecured, hillside unstable.” Dispatch had been chirping warnings like this since we’d left the station—half safety updates, half reminders of the mess waiting for us up there.
I grabbed the handset. “Detective Rosen. Two minutes out,” I said, adding the codes for arrival and acknowledgment before clipping it back to the dash, grabbing the oh-shit handle when Frank fishtailed to a stop next to the first cruiser parked at the mouth of the blocked road, its lights strobing off charred trunks and vast hillside. The tape started just beyond it, where a cluster of cops and firefighters stood under the floodlights. My gut tightened; I’d expected a crime scene, sure, but nothing warranting so many units and this kind of dread bleeding from every uniform on the line. What the fuck had they found? We weren’t the first detectives on site—Stanton-the-asshole and my alleged future partner, Tess Calloway, were leads, first on scene, along with another pair from the Hills division I didn’t know.
I squared my shoulders and stepped out into the chill pre-dawn morning. The smell hit—earth, wet oil, and something darker underneath.
Frank grunted, tossing his empty coffee cup into the bag he collected garbage in—no one messed with his car. “Well, here we go,” he muttered.
We flashed our badges and ducked under the tape. Portable lamps threw harsh, white light over the mud, cutting into the darkness, but we didn’t head over to our colleagues; there was no sense in getting a feel for a scene secondhand. Instead, we headed to where floodlights washed everything to bone-white, and techs moved slowly and quietly. Frank gestured a hello to our fellow detectives across the vast lit space and got an up nod.
“Cho! Hey!” Frank called, and a familiar figure stepped out of the gloom—a white-suited shape, mask and goggles fogged, but still unmistakably Dr. Cho, one of the senior coroners out of downtown. “Guess you pulled the short straw, huh?” Frank said.
Cho shot him a weary look over the top of his mask. He let his gaze drift toward the scar of the open pit in the hill, the light carving hard planes into his face.
He moved closer to the edge, and I followed with Frank right behind me.
“What do we have?” I asked.
Cho didn’t answer. He gestured toward the line of lamps illuminating a trench maybe twenty feet long. Under the light, there were bones twisted through torn, weather-stained tarp, fragments of skulls, ribs jutting like wreckage, all packed together in dense layers of decay. The smell crawled up the back of my throat. My eye caught on something that didn’t fit—the shape still whole, skin not yet turned, male, naked, a body among the pit of old bones.
“Ball park on how long that new one’s been dead?” Stanton asked Cho, who huffed at the temerity in asking such a generalized question.
“I won’t know until we get him out,” he chided, then angled his flashlight toward the trench walls. Layers of bone and tarp caught the light. “But fresher than the rest if you haven’t already worked that out for yourself. You’re talking years of decay in the others—see the strata here?” He pointed with his torch hand, tracing each layer. “Old bodies maybe six-deep.”
I leaned closer, the beam reflecting off ribs half-buried in the mud, the older remains fused by time and pressure. This place wasn’t a one-off. It was a terrible history in earth and bones.
What a fucking mess.
“When are you pulling the new one out?” Stanton asked.
“Now.”
