Fucking idiot.
He’d never had such a visceral reaction to a woman before, had never wanted to kiss a stranger until her breath was coming in short, fast gasps.
So, why her? She was beautiful, sure, with her pale skin, caramel-colored curls, and big, brown eyes. But that wasn’t it, or at least not all of it. She was…spunky, independent, but also, he realized, completely vulnerable. He wondered if needing to protect her had anything to do with his irrational reaction to her proximity.
Because the urge to go and ask her out on an actual date had been following him around all day, he rolled over in his bed and replayed every conversation that they’d had. He cringed when he remembered that he’d told her to contact her parents, rubbed a hand over his eyes when he remembered the solid step away from him that she’d unconsciously taken. The crazy thing was, he hadn’t given a fuck about her parents. He’d just been so goddamn afraid of his reaction to the pain in her eyes when she’d spoken about it and for some reason, he had sensed that she did want to reach out to them.
Just go over tomorrow and ask her out, asshole. Not once had she indicated that she was interested in him. Not once had she openly flirted with him. Yet, there’d been chemistry. Real chemistry. He wasn’t an idiot. He dated a fair amount and knew when something was worth a shot.
When his cellphone rang next to his bedside table, he reached for it, grateful for the distraction. “Simmone,” he answered.
“Jake,” his Captain’s voice, despite the underlying fatigue, boomed over the phone.
“What is it?” he asked, sitting up abruptly.
“We have the Northeast boys on the line. Apparently, they found a body. Unidentified female victim in her early thirties. The officer on patrol…ah,” Jimenez rifled through some paperwork, “McConnell, thought you might be able to help. He mentioned a call you responded to yesterday?”
“What?” His heart beat rapid-fire in his chest. “When?” He hurriedly got out of bed and pulled on the clothes that were hanging on the handle of his closet, ready for the morning.
“She’s been dead for a few hours. I didn’t get much more but figured you’d want to go to the scene yourself.”
“Yes, Sir. Send me the location. I’m on my way.” When the Captain hung up the phone, Jacob pulled on his shoes, ignoring the feeling of dread that was swishing in his stomach with every step that he took. He grabbed his keys and wallet from his bedside table and made for the door without checking himself over in the mirror.
Exactly eight minutes later, he was in his car and pulling out of his driveway, turned in the direction his GPS was taking him. He steeled himself when he saw the address, felt a wave of unease come over him when he realized that it was only two blocks from Lola’s apartment.
He knew that he couldn’t get worked up, that he needed to be calm and focused when he arrived. But for the first time since he’d become a cop, he dreaded what he’d find at the scene of the crime, felt an acidic sickness move from his stomach into his throat at the thought that it could be Lola.
The Captain had said that the victim was a Jane Doe. Unidentified. He also said that McConnell had asked for him, which could only mean two things. One: McConnell thought that Jane Doe could be Lola, but her body was unidentifiable. Or, two: McConnell knew that the Jane Doe wasn’t Lola but the nature of the crime and the proximity to where they’d responded to Lola’s call made McConnell think to patch a call through to him. As hard as it was to admit, and as much as he’d never will harm on any woman, he sincerely hoped that it was the latter.
When he arrived at the location that Captain Jimenez had sent him and saw the police cruisers parked on the side of the road, their lights flashing red and blue, he parallel parked across the street outside of a tired-looking, single-story building. There was a big, red sign hanging over the roof. It read: Hal’s Hardware.
It was nearing one in the morning and other than the hypnotic strobing of the police vehicles’ lights across the street, everything seemed quiet, peaceful even.
Turning off his car, Jacob took a moment to compose himself against the thud, thud, thud of his heart in his chest, and then hopped out before he could change his mind or think about the situation any further. Glancing left, he noticed that there was a 7 Eleven on the corner of the adjacent street and that a trio stood outside the store, their faces painted with that same human curiosity that wonders what terrible thing would bring out a swarm of uniforms in the middle of the night.
Above the trio, a banner advertising the Phantom of the Opera displayed the phantom’s mask, a white mold of a face, staring down at the near-empty street. The hollow eyes and mouth of the mask made his skin pull tight, made his hair stand on end.
Looking right, he saw a few small, concrete buildings, stacked with vacant retail on the bottom and dilapidated residential units above. It was an old part of town. A tired part of town. Everywhere he looked, paint was peeling, and shingles were missing; even in the dark of pre-dawn, it was clear that the gentrification creep that had moved into Silver Lake had yet to encroach into this particular thoroughfare neighborhood. He cast a quick look into the quiet street before crossing and then flashed his badge to the officer on the perimeter. “Lieutenant Jacob Simmone.”
“Our Captain’s been waiting for you, Sir.” He cast a haunted look behind him but didn’t take a single step towards the scene of the crime. “Head on back into the alley. You can’t miss it.”
Nodding, he ducked under the police tape and stepped onto the sidewalk. The alley ran between a single-story restaurant with a dry cleaner further back and what looked like a single-family home that had been subdivided to accommodate four separate units. The narrow alley did not dead-end as he’d expected—it led through to a local road that sat at the bottom of a hillside residential neighborhood. The large houses that sat on the top of the hill looked down on the little neighborhood condescendingly, their big windows staring back, unblinking eyes in the night.
He saw the small group of police officers huddled together about half-way up, noticed that they were rounded over a man who, from where he was standing, looked like one of the city’s medical examiners. The group was caged in by the coroner’s van, which sat like an obese phantom in the background, its tinted windows like black, soulless eyes sitting in a big, white body.
Jacob could not see the victim, and it took him a moment to take the first few steps towards them. His vision narrowed slightly as he drew nearer, his heart thumped wildly in his chest and his palms started sweating, but he forced one foot in front of the other until he came astride of the group and all eyes turned to him.
He nodded, quickly scanned over those assembled, recognizing Doug Brennan, one of the two captains of the Northeast Division; McConnell, his six-four, gaunt frame hovering well above the rest of the men; and, Jason Ridley, the medical examiner. The other two he knew loosely from previous assignments. Burns and Williams were both detectives, and he’d worked with them a few times over the years. “Doug.”
“Thanks for coming, Jacob.” Doug walked around the body to shake his hand. “McConnell says you helped him out with a call in this neighborhood last night?”
Jacob nodded slowly, refusing to look at the body until he had to. If the other men noticed his behavior, they didn’t comment. Everyone had their process for coping with homicides. Some men laughed and told crude jokes. Others didn’t talk at all. Usually, he wasn’t so squeamish, but for some reason, he kept picturing Lola Michaels’ face when she had laughed. “It was a suspected break-in, but” he looked at McConnell, “we found no evidence.”