“Yes.” So formal. So firm. So fucking unfeeling. “All three cases came with different MO, which made them difficult to connect. But the blood doesn’t lie. Go get your man. The results will stand up in court.”
“Fuckin’ A,” he hisses, snatching up his phone and pushing to his feet. “I will. Thanks.”
“No problem, Detective. It’s my job. Goodb?—”
“Wait!” He brings the phone closer to his mouth, his eyes widening. Panicking. Searching mine. “You there, Delicious?”
Silence.
“Delicious?”
More silence.
“Chief Mayet?”
“I’m here,” she rasps, drawing a long, pained breath, and exhaling again so the sound whistles along the line. “Did you need something else, Detective Fletcher?”
“Uh… yeah. I guess.” He moves around his desk, mercifully perching on the edge of mine. Bringing her closer to me, even when I didn’t ask him to. “You, uh…” He clears his throat. “You good? Mia didn’t get to say goodbye to you yesterday afternoon, so?—”
“I have to go, Detective. Take care approaching and apprehending your suspect. He probably won’t receive the news so well when you arrive on his doorstep.”
“Wait—”
The line goes dead, our connection to the woman I fucking breathe for, severed. It’s like we’ve rewound a year and a half to the people we were before we ever met. To the relationship we had with the medical examiner’s office before my wife became the chief, and the thought of hanging with the stiffs was laughable to a couple of homicide detectives.
“Don’t try to force a conversation with her anymore.” Furious,with her, with Estefan Cordoza and Anthony Agosti, but mostly with myself,I shove up from my desk and sweep up my phone.
She didn’t call me. She called him.
“You know she’s uncomfortable with small talk.” I slam my chair under my desk and leave the brain-destroying spreadsheet behind. “Stop forcing something she doesn’t want.”
“So we’re not even friends anymore?” He slips his phone into his pocket and dashes across the bullpen, catching up to my long strides seconds before I step onto the escalator. “I was at her wedding, Arch. Both of them. My daughter calls her Auntie. But now you and your wife are having an argument, andI’mthe one who can’t even talk to his friend anymore?”
“Hey, Dickhead?” Detective Banks rides the escalator opposite ours, heading up while we go down. “What the fuck do you think you?—”
I drop my hand to my gun and flick the latch to release it from its leather holster.
“Nope!” Fletch muscles his way in front of me. “Move it along, Banks.”
“Why? Because he?—”
“Go! I’m doing you a favor, I promise.” He grabs my shoulder and forces me down the steel steps and off at the bottom. When I try to jump onto the other escalator and follow the prick back up, Fletch gets in my way and pushes me toward the door. He fights me, but he does it in such a way that other cops, dozens of them, don’t realize this shit is life or death. “Get it under control!” He hustles me out the door and onto the sidewalk that burns hotter than the surface of the sun, then he slams me against the building’s brick façade. “Pull it together! Fuck!”
“I can’t work with him.” At some point in the last five minutes, I soared beyond the explosive anger portion of myMalone temper. I said goodbye to bickering. To threats. To warnings. Now I’m in the Timothy Malone the Second phase, where I slit throats in silence and move on with my day. “I can’t do it, Fletch. I can’t work with a fuckin’ fed—thefuckin’ fed—who stood by and allowed my brothers to be brutalized every damn day of our existence. I won’t do it.”
“So you’re gonna kill a cop and land your stupid ass in prison?” He tears me away from the wall and tosses me toward our cruiser. “You dumb son of a bitch.” He drags the passenger door open and clamps his palm to the back of my neck, manhandling me like I’m a perp and not his best fucking friend. The instant I’m in, he whips the door shut so forcefully that the entire car rocks on its chassis. Jogging around the hood, he drops into the driver’s side and extends his hand, palm side up, and growls for every second I simply stare.
“Give me the fucking keys!” He snatches them from my fingers and starts the car, revving the engine until it roars. Pulling away from the curb, he shakes his head, blistering mad and speeding away from what could have been—wouldhave been—a crime scene if I’d had just one more second before he reacted. “Jesus, Archer!” He slams his palm against the steering wheel. “Fuck. I get it. You’re pissed. Your marriage is wobbly right now, and that shit stings, but killing a cop isnothow we move forward.”
“Detective Banks abusing my family has nothing to do with my marriage.” I sit back and drop my legs wide, cranking the window open to allow a little air into this godforsaken oven.
For the first time in a long time, I pat my pocket and crave the poison of nicotine on my tongue. The click-click-click of a lighter bursting to life, and the glowing red end of a cigarette,my visual focal point when the rest of the fucking world seems intent on chaos and pain. “It’s separate and needs dealing with. Also, I told you to shut the fuck up about my marriage already.”
“Ihaveto talk about it! You’re not.”
“Because I don’t wanna!” I grip the brim of my hat and drag it over my head, pulling the front low and shadowing my eyes. “You remember when Jada was spiraling, and life hurt so fucking much it felt like you couldn’t breathe?” I sling my glare his way. “This is like that. Quit it.”
“Oh yeah, because you respected my wishes not to talk about it too, right?” He rips the car around a corner, the wheels squealing on tar. “You totally listened every time I told you to drop it.”
