“He’s the lieutenant,” I said.
She reached for the door handle, then said, “Don’t talk until we’re in the room with the stuff; if Thornton hears your voice, he won’t let us see it without him hovering.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
She frowned at me. “You use some of the oldest, fuddy-duddy expressions sometimes, Havoc. You’d think you were old enough to be someone’s grandpa.”
“Where I was raised that’s just the way everyone talks,” I said.
“Oh, Havoc, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget you were raised in a monastery.”
“I was raised at the College of Angels,” I said.
“From what I hear, same diff, except it’s co-ed.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and she must have realized it, so she saved us both from an awkward moment by opening the door, peering through, and then waving me inside. Apparently, the coast was clear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Adam Thornton appeared from around the corner near the break room. He had on latex gloves and was carrying a large, empty paper bag. His gray eyes were very serious behind the round, black frames of his glasses. He was short and slender, and politically incorrect words like effeminate came to mind every time I saw him, which was probably why he always kept his brown hair cut short and very traditionally male-presenting.
“Give it up, Havoc,” he said, his voice sharp, and if you didn’t know him, you’d think he was angry, but he always sounded like that. If he hadn’t been brilliant in the lab and at seeing things that everyone else missed, he’d have been fired, but instead he kept getting promoted. The ME just tried to keep him away from people, living people; the dead didn’t mind that he had the social skills of a cranky rhinoceros.
“Hey, Adam, it’s nice to see you, too.”
He scowled at me. “You know I don’t do social pleasantries, so we don’t have to pretend, just give me my evidence and I’ll leave.”
“I told you that you can have the evidence after Havoc has seen it,” Lila said, peeking out from behind me. I didn’t realize that she’d been hidden from Adam’s sight line until he jumped like she’d yelled boo.
“I-I don’t mean the evidence you collected from the house, Li-Lila. I mean the evidence from the hospital.”
Him stuttering when he talked to Lila was interesting; maybe there was more than one reason he bugged her more than the rest of us. “You should have all the evidence from the hospital,” I told him. If he had a crush on Lila, I wasn’t going to mention it.
His scowl deepened until I wanted to use my thumbs to rub his forehead smooth. I knew he was over thirty, older than me, actually, but he looked like he was still in his early twenties, except when he frowned hard enough and then he almost looked his age.
“Don’t play games with me, Havoc.”
“I’m not playing, Adam, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“First, stop calling me by my first name, and second, your shirt. Your shirt became evidence once you were attacked. You should never have left the crime scene with it.”
I looked down at my shirt as if it had just appeared on me and realized two things. First, there was no blood on my shirt, but there were claw marks in the cloth—that made no sense; second, that made it even more evidence. “Okay, Thornton, you’re right, I should have had it entered into evidence at the hospital.”
The frown softened and he looked puzzled. “So, you’re just admitting you were wrong?”
“Yes.”
He frowned, stopped frowning, and looked at me with those big eyes behind the glasses like he didn’t know what to do next. Not for the first time I wondered if he was on the autism spectrum somewhere, but I could never figure out a way to ask, and as long as he did his job it didn’t matter anyway.
“Most people get angry when you tell them they’re wrong,” he said, frowning again.
“I don’t get angry when I’m in the wrong. I’ve got an extra shirt in the locker room; let me change and you can have this one.”
He shook the paper bag at me hard enough for it to rattle. “No, you’ve compromised its value as evidence enough as is, just take it off and put it in the bag.”
“Adam,” Lila said, “you’re being unreasonable again.”
“I haven’t forgotten that you’ve kept me from a vital piece of evidence either, Li-Li . . . Detective Bridges. I will be waiting until the rest of the evidence from the home is ready to be transported.”
“I thought you were in a hurry to get Havoc’s shirt back to the lab,” she said, her voice far too sweet for the circumstances. Lila is at her most underhanded when she sounds like that.
The other officers were beginning to stop what they were doing to look at us side-eyed. The buzz of the room was growing quieter as they started trying to listen in on us. Cops are some of the nosiest busybodies on the planet, or we can be.
“You can follow me into the locker room and watch me take it off,” I offered.
He shook the bag at me again. “Just give me the shirt and I can get back to processing evidence, I’ve wasted enough time hunting the shirt down.”
Not hunting me down but hunting the shirt down. Adam often talked about objects instead of people. “Just let me change and you can have it.”
“Just take it off and give it to me.”
“I am not going to strip off here when we can just go back into the locker rooms.”
“Oh, come on, Havoc, give us a little show,” Detective Athena Ravensong called out from her desk. She was one of the most senior members of the squad, same age as Charleston, but where he hit the gym and watched his nutrition, Ravensong ate cheerfully. She did everything with joyous gusto, so she looked more like someone’s slightly overweight grandmother than one of the most powerful witches in the western half of the country.
“Athena, you’re being sexist and objectifying Havoc; we had a mandatory class on that,” Detective Raymond Stiltskin said as he walked through the squad room with a cup of coffee almost bigger than he was. He looked fat in the boxy suit and jacket, but he wasn’t. In fact, he was one of the most serious weight lifters in the department. He was also one of the shortest; combined with the serious weight lifting, getting a suit that fit his shoulders meant that he looked like he was wearing his dad’s suits. He had the sleeves and pants hemmed because he had to, but other than that like most cops he couldn’t afford professional tailoring, or better yet a tailored designer suit, maybe something from Italy. Nothing short of that was going to make Stiltskin look good in suits.
“He doesn’t mind an old lady admiring the view, do you, Havoc?” She waggled her eyebrows behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
I chuckled, because Athena had the ability to say almost anything and make it funny instead of offensive.
“If you take the shirt off here, she can admire the view and I can get back to work,” Adam said, holding the bag out to me like a kid at trick-or-treat.
“Athena isn’t the only one here; for the consideration of others we need to do this in the locker room,” I said.