Page 51 of Spade

The turnoff was gravel, two ruts carved through caliche and loose stone. A half mile down, I saw the black Suburban with county plates, idling by the water. The lake was a dark green mirror, too still for this hour. On the shore, three people in jackets, one pacing, one squatting by the marker cone, one standing and writing in a field notebook.

I parked with the hood aimed at the waterline. The engine ticked as I killed it. I stepped out, the ground soft and unsteady.

The lead tech looked up as I approached. She was small and neat, hair in a severe bun, gloves already pulled on. “Detective Shaw?”

I nodded.

She pointed with a capped pen. “Victim’s there. Solo dump. No vehicle tracks we can find—tire prints are probably at the roadhead, if they exist. Found by a birdwatcher at first light.” She offered the kind of smile you give to a stranger you don’t want to remember later. “Lucky for her.”

I looked at the scene. The body was half in, half out of the water, tangled in a snarl of reeds. Face up. Even from a distance, I could see the bruising, the marks circling her throat.

“Preliminary says time of death less than two days,” the tech continued. “Water temp’s slow to give up, but she’s not bloated. No ID on her, nothing in the system. Clean hands, no tattoos, no obvious punctures. Her teeth are good.”

I walked the perimeter, staying out of the footprints. There was a yellow evidence marker stabbed into the mud by her wrist. The arm was twisted at a wrong angle, the fingers stiff and splayed, reaching for something the rest of her would never find.

“Manual strangulation,” I said. Not a question.

“Looks like,” the tech confirmed. She snapped her gloves and crouched by the head. “Blunt force postmortem, maybe to mask the ligature. Or just insurance.”

“Anything in her pockets?”

“She’s in a skirt,” the tech said, straightening.

I didn’t say anything. The air was colder by the water, and the reek of decay rode just below the surface, sweet and heavy.

“You want to do the canvas, or wait for the divers?”

“Canvas,” I said. I looked out over the lake—no boats, just a raft of cormorants skimming the edge.

“You have a guess on who she is?” the tech asked.

“I’ll know soon enough,” I said, and heard my own voice from far away.

She nodded, satisfied or maybe just checked out. “We’ll bag her. Report will be on your desk by EOD.”

I let her go back to her work. Walked down to the waterline, careful not to slip on the silted rocks. The lake lapped gently at the corpse, the smallest movement animating the face for a moment, as if she might cough up the truth before sinking again.

I crouched, careful not to touch. The face was already fading, the features softening at the edges. Whoever she’d been, it was nearly gone. What was left was a warning, one I should’ve paid attention to.

I stood, turned from the lake, and made it back to my car with the sun just starting to break over the ridge. I didn’t drive right away. Just sat with the engine off, feeling the weight settle into my chest.

The phone buzzed again, but I ignored it. There was no message that would change what waited at the end of the day. I just watched the road unspool in front of me, the line between me and the city as straight as a confession.

I turned the key, let the engine idle, and let the silence stretch. The lake was behind me. The road was ahead. I was the only thing still undecided.

19

Spade

The phone rang at the precise minute he’d promised, but it didn’t vibrate with the cop-call energy I’d come to expect from Shaw. It just lit up, a blue-lit slab on the counter, the name I shouldn’t have saved in my contacts burning through the lock screen. I didn’t bother with hello.

He was driving, wind noise over his speaker, the road unspooling beneath him at eighty. “You pack already?” he said, no prelude.

My jacket was still on, keys clipped to my belt. I hadn’t decided if I was leaving or just waiting for the decision to happen to me. “I said I’d call you when I did.”

A sigh. He let it hang, just the road for a second. “Spade, don’t.”

I braced my left hand on the counter’s edge, fingers splayed, tension in the tendons. “Don’t what?”