“What do you mean, a body?”
Brynn stared at me as if I’d just announced that Martians had taken over the state house. I couldn’t blame her. I was still stunned by last night’s events myself, and I’d been there. It was surreal. If I hadn’t had to scrub the smell of death out of my hair and nostrils last night before going to bed, I might have thought the whole thing had been some awful nightmare.
“There was a corpse in a chair in the basement,” I said, matter-of-factly. I hadn’t processed any of the competing emotions that had kept me awake last night, and I recognized in my tone that my analytic tendencies were popping to the surface. Everyone had go-to behaviors that kept us grounded, and searching for facts was one of mine. “Female. Youngish. But hard to identify age given the state of decay.”
“Gross. That’s disgusting!” Brynn said, shuddering. Her monster mug of coffee sloshed its contents over the edge and nearly slipped from her hand. “And you were the one who found it—I mean, her? Who is she?” Brynn slumped back down into the chair as if not trusting her legs to hold her.
I handed her a tissue. “I have no idea who she is, was.” I shook my head, the image of the decaying body fresh and unyielding. “I’m afraid the medical examiner may have his work cut out for him. I hope they can find dental records.”
“Maybe she’s the prior owner? It’s hard to pay your mortgage when you’re dead,” she said, stating the obvious and dabbing at the mocha droplets on her fingers.
While that theory was the most logical first conclusion, it didn’t immediately ring true for me. Why hang out in a cold basement if you had the whole house to play in? And why would the homeowner have dumped all their furniture and instead slept on a box? Surely she could have salvaged a mattress even if she had some legitimate reason to stay downstairs.
“CPD seemed to be speculating that she was a druggie using the abandoned house as a crash pad, at least that’s what the responding officer seemed to think. No official word yet.”
Given the limited creature comforts in the basement, that made more sense to me, yet I hadn’t made it above the first floor. Perhaps the second level showed clearer signs of habitation, which would shift the inquiry back to the homeowner.
“You don’t look convinced.”
My legal training had drilled into me a solid respect for the gut-check. Facts mattered, of course, but a well-developed gut instinct told you when to question whether all of the facts had been revealed. Brynn didn’t have my legal background, but she had developed a sense for knowing when my mind was still uneasy.
“I’m not sure about anything I saw last night,” I said, releasing an exasperated sigh. “But that’s just my gut talking or maybe the shock or the lack of sleep. I don’t know. There were a couple of odd things in the space, and I can’t wrap my head around it yet. Have you ever heard of smudging?”
“Only if you’re talking about smeared ink.”
Movement outside of the glass walls of my office stopped me from explaining further. Michael was pushing his way past my fellow coworkers toward my office. In tow, were the responding officer, Bernstein, and Michael’s partner, Karl Janek.
Janek? What was he doing here? Was this about the body?
“Looks like we’re about to be interrupted, Brynn.”
She turned and looked over her shoulder as Michael hit the door. “Got it. I’ll catch up with you later on this stuff. Hello, Detective Hewitt,” she said, giving me a small wink.
Although Brynn certainly knew we were dating, I hadn’t been overly vocal about my relationship with Michael, at least not at work. It was too complicated, too fraught with innuendo, for eyebrows not to be raised. So I tried to convince myself it was nobody’s damn business. I wasn’t hiding the relationship, exactly; I just didn’t want it to get in the way of my job. I knew Michael shared the same concerns about complicating his work life, but his solution was to jump past the dating phase into something more committed, apparently believing somehow no one would find our relationship inappropriate if we lived together instead of just occasionally sharing a bed. Maybe in a man’s world that might be true, but I knew my reality would be an unspoken bias that I’d slept my way into every story that involved CPD.
I also had one other little problem: ice-cold feet. Once burned, twice shy and all that. In the meantime, we played annoying little games with our public lives and private lives that made us feel better but probably fooled no one.
“Gentlemen, what can I help you with today?” I said, trying to keep the smile off my face as I looked at Michael. I always enjoyed seeing him in work mode. There was something a little decadent about it, as if it were a private secret between us. In reality, it just made me want to see him naked.
“Come on in, have a seat.” I motioned to the chairs and pulled another over, but no one took me up on the offer, so I stayed on my feet.
“We have a couple questions for you about the property,” Michael said. “Can you tell us again why you were there?”
His voice was all business, but I recognized the way his gorgeous brown eyes lit up when he looked at me, and I smiled anyway. Although I’d answered a million questions last night, I knew that repetition and checking my consistency were just part of the investigative process. This wouldn’t be the only question that I would be answering more than once.
“As I said last night, my sister, Lane Kellner, purchased the property at an auction just before she left town on a business trip. Her contractor had an early opening, so she asked me to pick up the deed and do a quick check on the condition of the home while she was away. So, I met a locksmith at the property. He did his thing, left, and that’s when I went inside and found the body.”
“And what did you do when you got inside? Can you retrace your steps for us?” Michael continued while Janek and Bernstein stood silenty.
The blush of seeing Michael was starting to wear off, and I was now acutely aware of the serious expressions the men were sporting. Whatever had happened, this was not an average overdose. I could feel it in their eyes, hear it in Michael’s.
“I walked through the living room and dining room. Both rooms were empty, so I continued to the kitchen.”
“You didn’t go upstairs at that point, correct?” Bernstein asked.
“That’s right. When I got into the kitchen I noticed footprints on the floor, as if someone had been using the room. I was curious, opened a few cupboards. There were a few basic kitchen items but nothing more interesting. I did find the back door unlocked. Looked like the latch was damaged. I should have checked before I called the locksmith, but I was in a hurry. Anyway, I looked outside briefly but didn’t see anything concerning at that point, but that’s not why I was at the house, so I didn’t give it much attention.”
Michael and Janek exchanged a glance. “Is that when you went to the basement?” Janek asked. His voice was tight in a way I couldn’t read, but I immediately knew something was wrong.
“Yes, there were clear footprints leading to the door, so I went downstairs, found the body, and called it in. I think you know the rest.”
“And your sister, where is she?” Michael asked.
“She’s down in Mexico, at a resort in Cabo, for a real estate junket. I spoke to her this morning and updated her.”
The men looked at each other.
“You spoke to her?” Michael said.
“I did. I assume you’ve been trying to reach her. She indicated that she’d received several calls and had chosen not to answer.”
“Does she have a habit of ignoring cops?” Bernstein asked.
I tamped down a smile. “Obviously, you don’t know my sister. Let’s just say she’s flighty. Right now she’s sitting by the pool talking deals and drinking things with fruit and lots of rum. She simply couldn’t be bothered to answer your calls. As far as I can tell, she’s as in the dark as I am about who the dead woman is or why she’s there. Right now her primary focus is how inconvenient all this is for her remodeling schedule.”
I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Michael and Janek knew all about Lane’s character flaws, even though it was inconvenient for them to be on the receiving end of her drama.
“And when will she be back?” Bernstein continued, clueless to the underlying history.
“Next week, I think. She just got down there,” I said, trying to recall if she’d specified a day. “But she doesn’t share her schedule with me. Given last night’s development, I encouraged her to come home and deal with this herself, but she didn’t seem inclined to cut her trip short.”
Michael raised his eyebrows and shook his head. He knew exactly how infuriating Lane could be.
“And when you saw the victim, what did you do?” Janek asked. “Did you step close to her? Did you touch anything?”
There was the slightest bit of a waver in his voice, as if he were struggling for words. The Karl Janek I knew didn’t waver when he had something to say. He could be the strong, silent type, but this was something else, something emotional.
“Quite frankly, I was so shocked, I couldn’t do much of anything,” I said, keeping my eyes on Janek. “I first saw her in the reflection in the mirror, and it startled me. I dropped my phone. When I had it back in my hands, I got to within maybe eight feet of her and couldn’t move any closer. Obviously she was dead and had been for quite some time. That’s when I phoned you guys. I didn’t touch anything other than retrieving my phone.”
Small pricks of confusion were starting to pique my interest as I watched the men, and confusion meant questions.
“I got the impression last night that you guys were viewing this as an overdose,” I said. “A typical overdose doesn’t get personal attention from guys in your pay grade. Is there more to this?”
“Just covering all the bases until the ME can determine cause,” Michael said quickly, too quickly. He also avoided my eyes. He wasn’t being truthful.
My reporter instincts were pinging. “Do you think the items on the dresser mean anything? If this was just a place for her to squat and get high, I can think of a whole lot of other things that would make more sense to have around than a bundle of sage and some rocks. The way everything was arranged, it feels more like it was an altar.”
Although I hadn’t consciously considered the idea that the dresser had been an alter before this moment, the intensity of Janek’s response had my mind running hot and fast. I had nothing other than sparks of confusion and intrigue, but they were there nonetheless.
“It’s not worth making sense of. Logic goes out the window when these guys need a fix,” Bernstein said, dismissing my concerns. Whatever Michael and Janek were considering, they hadn’t clued him in.
Janek’s jaw clenched. The beat cop had been quick to judgment and even quicker with his self-professed knowledge of addiction. Hard to fault a guy who only sees the aftereffects on bodies and lives lost, but the quick answer was never a complete picture. I looked again at Janek, then back to Michael. There was a tension present that I didn’t normally see. Michael was watching his partner, as if reading him. Or waiting for a reaction.
Something was playing out between the men, and I didn’t know what. It was as if this case was hitting close to home. Did Janek have some personal experience with addiction, or was this about the identity of the body?