“Do you want to go grab something to eat?” I asked.
Naomi wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Maybe later. Got called in for a floater earlier. The body had been in the water for a few weeks, so everything had turned kind of, you know…” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “...soupy.”
I hummed thoughtfully. “Funny you should say that, I could actually go for some hot soup right now.”
Naomi snorted, just as I knew she would.
“There’s something seriously wrong with you, Hayes.”
Except, it wasn’t Naomi who said it. That smooth cadence, laced with a subtle hint of authority, could only belong to one person.
Detective Sawyer stood in the doorway, her posture military-straight, arms crossed over her chest in a way that made it clear she wasn’t here to make small talk.
“Detective,” I greeted her, offering a polite smile that did nothing to thaw the ice in her eyes. “Apologies—I didn’t hear you knock. Is there something I can help you with today?”
“It would help if you did your job.”
She proceeded to move through my office as though it had her name written on the door. Her presence crowded the space in an instant, the thinly veiled impatience filling the room to the brim.
“Is Linda Fell’s tox screen done?” Detective Sawyer asked, but I could tell there was only one acceptable answer to that question.
Straight to the point, then. Alright.
It took me a few moments to locate the file, which was tucked neatly beneath a stack of other lab reports. All the while, I could feel the detective’s gaze burning a hole into my back. She’d do well to take a few pointers, considering the perpetual state of her own office, which hovered somewhere between organized chaos and a full-blown disaster zone.
I retrieved the file and turned to hand it to her. “As you can see, the toxicology screen shows a high concentration of diacetylmorphine in Linda Fell’s system.”
“Heroin, then. Interesting…” Naomi mused to herself, sounding intrigued.
I couldn’t say I shared her interest.
The only thing that truly stood out about Linda Fell’s death was the brutality of it. There hadn’t been a single defensive wound on the victim, no signs of struggle or restraint marks, nothing to suggest she’d fought back, except for one glaring detail that dominated the entire case. Her hands had been severed clean at the wrists, removed with something extremely sharp, the edges of the wounds almost perfectly smooth.
The killer couldn’t help but show off, so it seemed. Personally, I never understood the appeal. There was a quiet elegance to being efficient and discreet, as far as I was concerned. Violence for the sake of violence held little to no interest for me.
Of course, I’d be lying if I said the urge never resurfaced. Every so often, I’d come across something vile and monstrous enough to stir it, but I never let it take the reins.
Linda Fell’s murderer seemed to be of a different ilk—not that I expected our principles to overlap. Most of the killers I’d come across were monsters themselves, preying on the defenseless and weak. Cowardice dressed up as dominance.
Detective Sawyer remained silent at the news, seemingly lost in thought. I couldn’t help but notice, with the clinical detachment that came from years of studying corpses, that the shadows under her eyes looked darker than usual today, making her already sharp features seem even more drawn. Her white button-up shirt was slightly wrinkled at the collar, like she hadn’t bothered ironing it this morning. Her cuticles were raw, compulsively picked at until they bled in places. But despite all of this, her eyes remained bright and alert, gleaming with a single-minded focus.
At last, Detective Sawyer gave a small, decisive nod, seemingly satisfied with whatever conclusion she’d reached. “I want the completed autopsy report on my desk first thing tomorrow morning,” she told me, one foot halfway out of the door, before she paused. “Oh, and by the way, the word you’re looking for isduplicitous.”
By the time I processed what she’d said, the door was already swinging shut behind her.
Detective Sawyer never failed to leave me feeling off-balance.
It wasn’t her intelligence that made her unsettling. Plenty of other detectives had that in spades, but she was something else entirely. It was the way her mind worked, like a well-oiled machine engineered for this exact purpose. It was easy to admire, like lightning threading across a dark sky—fascinating to look at until it struck too close. Should she ever turn that focus on me, who was to say what she might find?
It also didn’t help matters that she clearly didn’t like me.
It showed in the way her gaze sharpened the moment it landed on me. In the faint, subconscious stiffening of her shoulders whenever I entered the room. In the quiet tension that hummed beneath our every interaction.
It put me off more than I’d care to admit.
I’d spent years sculpting the perfect persona. As a forensic pathologist, I had a reputation for being competent and meticulous in my work. To my coworkers, I was friendly and polite, though not overly social. Known, but never noteworthy. Easily overlooked.
And it worked. Everyone bought it.
