Quintic (9 page)

When
Charles showed up, Chris was thinking about
coffee. An espresso from Vitto’s coffee shop hand-delivered by a
beautiful secretary. As the Italian barista considered his coffee
so good it deserved to be sipped from a ceramic cup; the old
barista didn’t deliver. And indeed, Vitto’s coffee was well worth
the short walk down the block, but on previous occasions, Vitto had
conceded the paper cups for Patricia when she was on the go. Hell,
the Italian guy had even brought her lattes on three different
occasions. But upon seeing Charles, Chris knew shitty cafeteria
coffee would have to do. He just hoped it was going to be better
than the morning’s brownish brew.

Anyone
entering the office had to zigzag through the randomly distributed
desks to reach Bridget’s reception desk.
It had been Bridget’s idea back in the early days to
position her desk far from the door. Although she never confirmed
it, Chris suspected it was so she could stare down
visitors.

T
he reception desk sure caught
Charles’s attention as he walked in. Its view, and Patricia
smiling, hand outstretched, looking very friendly as she was coming
over to greet him, stopped the rookie dead on his track. Once again
Chris was thankful of his office view: an officer was ogling his
new secretary.

Patricia
met up with Charles next
to his office door. Not quite in front of his door, though, so he
had to get up to join the party. The team hadn’t left for the
night. They were now looking Charles over with smug
interest.
We’re a fucking
homicide squad, people, not a damn social club.

“
Hello,
Charles, it’s nice to see you again. You look very dashing in that
suit. Much sharper than in the uniform you usually wear. Are those
little guns on your tie? I like the colour if not the pattern,”
Patricia complimented Charles. The damn woman liked ties, and she
innocently touched the rookie’s, making him blush. A fucking grown
man! Time to rescue the guy.

“
Charles,
good to see you. Glad you took me up on my offer.” Chris had
suggested Charles dropped by
. They were
to review the case together; Chris had a nagging feeling the
rookie’s old chief might not be up to the task. “Listen up, guys.
Charles’s the officer working the motel case I told you about. How
about taking five to help him out?” Help and test the rookie
simultaneously.

T
he team’s often tactless input
was a good way to learn what kind of cop Charles was. Chris had
learned his lesson with the quartet: better an average choice than
no choice at all or worse, a fucking quartet from hell. They
retreated to the conference room.

As
they were all taking seats and goofing around,
Patricia joined them. “Should I hold all calls, or is one of you
expecting an important call?”

A repeat of
the morning’s meeting
. No one asked for
coffee. Chris winked at her; he knew she knew what he was
thinking.

She winked
back
. “Does someone wants something from
the cafeteria?” His guys were wise enough to keep their mouths
shut. “How about you, Charles, would you like a coffee or
something?” She asked sweetly, brushing her hand slightly on the
rookie’s shoulder to catch the guy’s attention.
No need to touch the guy.
He hasn’t seen anything but you since he came
through the door, Pussycat
.

“
Yes, coffee
would be nice. Thank you.”

“
Anyone
else?”
Having proven her point,
I’ll fetch coffee when and for whom
I damn want to
, she smiled at the kid.
“Coming right up, Charles.” And out she went.

“
OK,
Charles, why don’t you go over the case for the guys?” Chris had
briefed the team at the meeting that followed the murders, so they
already knew the general but not the particulars, and not what
Charles had found out since then. Which wasn’t much.

“
Cause of
death looks to be strangulation. The medical examiner said he won’t
confirm it for now. Assuming strangulation, the weapon used on the
woman is a leather strap, and on the client a silky ribbon tie from
an undergarment. The ME found signs of trauma at the base of the
man’s skull.” A blow to the head. “No signs of trauma on the
woman.” Had the man resisted the killer? Why just one
blow?

“You sure the stiff was the
whore’s john?” Ham.

“
Body fluids
matched,
” Charles answered readily before
looking at Chris. Chris nodded with his chin, and the officer
pursued his review. “The woman had prior arrests. Beatrice,
profession prostitute.” If one considered prostitution as a
profession. “I haven’t located a pimp.”

“
Possible
she changed trade.” LeRoy.

“Yah right. And the motel was a
date?” Ham.

“Anything on the john?” Chris
asked the kid.

“
Nothing
yet. DNA and fingerprints didn’t turn up anything. We’ve toured the
neighbourhood, but nobody saw anything.”

T
he rookie didn’t know what to do
next hence his visit.

Charles was
wrapping up his presentation with the partial autopsy report when
Patricia returned.

P
rofessional smile on. “Sorry for
the interruption, lady and gentlemen. Charles, your coffee, as
requested.” She pushed a cart in with a big coffee pot, no donuts
but a plate of very Italian-looking flaky pastries. She poured
Charles a cup in a non-paper porcelain mug and left the coffee pot
on the table, the tray with the pastries next to it.
“Enjoy.”

Point
made and
underlined, Angel of mine
. Not that it
would stop Chris from having her fetch him coffee tomorrow. Macho.
He planned on taking her out tonight to prove
his
point.

Charles was
smiling big. “Wow. Thank you. This is really good coffee.”
Damn right it’s good, you jerk, it
should have been mine
.

Patricia
gave the rookie a sweet smile. “I’m glad you like it, Charles. It
is good, isn’t it? It’s Italian.” At this point, she had trouble
not laughing.
So fucking
childish, Angel
. Vitto’s coffee was
fucking worth it, though.

Chris
thought back to her at the motel;
they
had not talked about it afterwards, had they? Seeing as she was in
such a good mood now, he decided to see what he could get out of
her. “How about quitting the receptionist stint to sit with us,
Patricia? Hell, bring your coffee if you want.” Vitto wouldn’t have
brought them a pot of coffee without making a large decaffeinated
latte for her. And indeed, when she came back to sit with them, she
had one of Vitto’s ceramic mug in her hand.

Charles
was sitting at one end of
the table, so she took the opposite end. An unusual spot for her.
At meetings she normally sat wall-side, flanked by Reid and Fred,
while Ham, Des and Frankke sat window-side. Shapiro and Le were
less peculiar about their seats and took whatever ones were
available. Chris remained standing to look over his guys, studying
their faces attentively, making them talk in turn, following their
thoughts, noticing when one had an idea or an
interrogation.

The
rookie had done a thorough job, a lot of legwork
around the motel’s neighbourhood. Charles talked with more
confidence now, once again retracing the steps he had taken so far.
Patricia smiled and nodded but kept silent. Chris noticed how she
avoided looking at the autopsy pictures Charles had fanned in front
of him. Good. Chris didn’t want her to look; she had seen enough of
the dead john at the motel as far as he was concerned.

Chris had
them talked and
bounced ideas around for
thirty minutes before calling the meeting to an end. The team stood
as one, ready to take their leave. He intended to go over it once
again with Charles, to see what the kid had drawn from the review
and plan the next steps with the rookie. Sitting window-side, Ham
had to circle the table to exit the conference room, and he passed
next to Charles. “Not bad for a virgin, Rookie,” he offered,
patting Charles’s shoulder patronisingly. The guy couldn’t resist,
could he? Noticing the pictures still on the table, Ham picked one
and slid it on the table toward Patricia. A full-body shot of the
john on the autopsy table, naked and cleaned but cock ring not yet
removed. “Hey, Puss, I heard you knew what this was. Care to show
me how to put it on?”

Patricia
opened her mouth to
snap back, but no
sound came out. She swallowed a breath as her face turned white.
Shit. Nobody moved, but they were all thinking the same
thing.
She’s going to be
sick
. She bolted to the door.

They had all
been witness to Patricia’s visceral reaction to dead bodies or
stress. Be it instantaneous or delayed, her response, for she
always had one, was the same. She turned white and felt sick. Most
of the time, she wouldn’t throw up for real but running to the
toilets gave her time to calm down and compose herself. No doubt
when she returned in a few minutes, she would have a few chosen
words for Hamilton.

Chris
turned
his attention to Ham, as did
everyone else. Hamilton had turned a little white himself. The guy
acted crude and macho around her because he enjoyed sparring with
her and, as Chris had fucking noticed, because the guy
liked
her.
Everyone on the team liked her. Le and Des thought of her as a sexy
cousin, Frankke more like an annoying kid sister. Shapiro expressed
paternal feelings; Reid considered Patricia her best female friend
(if not her only female friend), and she was Bridget’s godchild.
Hamilton was different, though. More like Fred but with a
knowledgeable dick in his pants.

Plainly put,
Ham
was hot for her but hid it under
sexist remarks and sexual innuendo. It had worsened in the last
weeks. Months. OK, it had been there right from the start, but
Chris had no intention of protecting her from Ham’s interest. He
didn’t need to, Patricia could hold her on in the verbal
department, and he suspected the damn woman enjoyed the badgering
almost as much as Ham. Chris didn’t doubt Hamilton’s loyalty, the
guy had taken punches for both Chris and her in the past, but her
kissing the guy awhile back to lure the quartet out seemed to have
fried Ham’s self-restraint.

“
Sorry,
Boss. I’ll go get her.” Hamilton left sulking.

It took a
good ten minutes for them to come back. The guy must have pleaded
some. She might have made him beg a little too. Knowing she would
be OK, she was damn tougher than she looked, the team was trying
hard to act as if nothing had happened. At their return, the
pictures were all back in the file, the file closed and in
Charles’s hand.

Her face was
as pale as when she had run out. “Sorry about that,” she whispered
staring at her shoes.

She had felt
sick before
, and the following
embarrassment had made her blush. Something was wrong for she
wasn’t blushing now. It might not be shyness that made her avoid
eye contact. Did Ham do something inappropriate? The guy had his
paw at her elbow, but she wasn’t shying away.
Think, MacLaren!

If
not Ham then the picture itself? Had she seen
something in it? Chris took the file from Charles and looked at the
picture again. Hard. He didn’t see anything he had not seen at the
scene. And since she had found the fucking body, he didn’t see
anything
she
had not seen herself at the scene.

She had seen
naked guys before
as she had also seen
naked dead guys before. She had seen that particular dead naked guy
before too, in the flesh, lying on the ground, dirt smeared all
over, cock ring full-on. Yes, the discovery of the body had shaken
her, yet he thought not by the corpse or his nakedness but by the
fact that it was her who had found it. The damn woman sure had the
knack way of stumbling on dead bodies. It angered her, depressed
her, made her physically sick, but her reaction was temporary as
anger would kick in and bypassed her fear. Her coping mechanism,
pretty damn effective too.

She kept her
eyes glued to the tip of her shoes.
Tell me what’s going on in that complex brain of yours,
Princess
. Was she embarrassed because of
Charles? Angry at Ham? At him? She didn’t look angry, though. He
could hear her soft pants. Knot tightened low in his stomach. He
looked at the picture again, mentally comparing it to the body at
the motel as she would have seen that afternoon.

Was it a
d
elayed reaction from the motel? Why? If
anything, the picture was easier to look at now, the guy all
cleaned up on, his eyes closed like he was sleeping.
Eyes closed
. Shit. The photo showed the john’s fucking eyes, the
jerk’s fucking face! Good-looking face, not a bruise on it. As a
piece of black underwear had previously covered the stiff’s face,
she had not seen said face at the scene. Now that she had, she had
reacted to it. A hair-trigger reaction. Shit. It could only mean
one thing.
Fuck! You know the
fucking guy!