Page 42 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

His brows lift incredulously. “Me? A serial killer?”

It’s such a ridiculous idea that I have to laugh. “The neighbor is always the last to know.” I mimic holding a microphone under my chin. “He was so quiet, kept to himself. I only saw him carrying a bloody chainsaw that one time, so this really came out of nowhere.”

One corner of his mouth tilts up, but whatever he’s about to say is lost when Braunstein asks the room at large, “Anybody find the source of the blue stones?”

There’s a chorus of noes from the techs and police who’ve fanned out through the house.

“You good for a bit?” Bart waves his battered pack of Parliaments at me, and I give him a thumbs-up. Any evidence fudging I need to do will be easier if my partner’s not looking over my shoulder. And bless his heart, he doesn’t wait for me to finish nodding before he’s parked a cigarette between his lips and beelined to the door.

“You might want to join Bart outside for this part,” I tell Hugo as I unzip my evidence kit.

“Oh yeah?” He brightens, seemingly ready to rise to the challenge I’m about to throw his way, the big weirdo.

“Ever watch someone take a vitreous humor sample?” I ask as I select a needle and approach McEwan’s body.

“No.” He cocks his head, calm and curious.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

I place the thumb and index finger of my left hand on the corpse’s eyelids and gently pry them open, exposing the dull, milky orb underneath. “The fluid in the eye is invaluable in postmortem toxicology reports,” I say as I carefully insert the needle into the outer corner of the sclera, angled toward the center of the eyeball. “Less decomp, less contamination.”

I pull back on the plunger to extract the fluid, and the eyeball softens under my fingers.

“How you doing?” I glance over my shoulder at Hugo, braced for puke but surprised to see nothing but rapt attention.

“You’re fucking amazing,” he breathes.

I tell myself that the shiver rippling through me is from hearing stuffy Dr. Mohr curse and not from the awe in his voice. Either way, I almost fumble the syringe.

“Hugo!” My laugh’s more of a wheeze. “I only have one other shot at this. You can’t distract me like that.”

“Sorry.”

He doesn’t sound sorry, and I’m not terribly sorry about the pleased little smile on his face. I hastily cap the needle and busy myself storing it safely.

“I threw up the first time I did one of these,” I tell him in a low voice for his ears only. “Eyes don’t really bother me, but there’s something about sticking a huge needle into one for the first time that upsets the system.”

But not Hugo’s, apparently. He leans closer to study the slight depression beneath McEwan’s now-closed lid. In fact, he’s mostly been steady in a setting that would send the average civilian screaming for the door, which has me wondering what he’s seen in his life that prepared him for this.

“Would you be able to let me know what turns up from the, uh, eye fluid?” he asks, his hands in his pockets.

“I can, but it’ll take a couple of weeks, and the report itself will be pretty technical.”

He shrugs. “Clinical psychology emphasizes the biopsychosocial model, so I’ve got a hard science background.”

The casual confidence. Jesus. Where has this guy been hiding?

Maybe it’s for the best he didn’t bust this out at our mailboxes. If he had, I might’ve been tempted to⁠—

“Found the rocks!”

The excited shout from one of the techs pulls everyone into the kitchen, where we gather around the pull-out trash can under the sink to stare at shards of gray ceramic and at least fifty blue stones.

“So he broke the bowl holding his marbles,” Braunstein says. “But where was it originally, how’d it break, and why did three of these end up in the fireplace vent?” She plucks one of the stones from the trash and tosses it to Dominguez, who takes off like a bloodhound.

“Here.” He points at a narrow table set behind the sectional. There’s a bowl-sized empty space between a lamp and a stack of glossy coffee table books. McEwan liked reading about architecture and America’s dive bars.

“Good work.” Braunstein offers Dominguez an approving nod. “So that’s where.”