I got scared that morning four months ago. So scared, I drove myself to the club, still drunk, and asked for help. By nighttime, Trunk had me on a plane to Denver where I spent sixty days in an addiction treatment center. The worst part of getting sober is discovering how low you’ve really sunk.
Coming home had been fucking torture. Everyone eyeing you like any minute you were going to fall off the wagon. Careful with what they say around you. Fucking awkward as hell. I jumped at the chance to take over the Riverside Apartments, needing something to keep me busy. Nights are tough, though. Momma used to say idle hands are the devil’s playground; and I’ve never understood it as well as I do now.
I went to one AA meeting when I first came back, but sitting there, listening to everyone’s goddamn sob story, had only made me more depressed. I haven’t been back since.
Then the other night I found myself sitting at the bar at The Irish, ordering a shot. Fuck, that smell had my hands shaking. As some kind of personal challenge that I can lick this on my own, I kept that glass in front of me while asking for a glass of tap water on the side. I drank that. Then I spotted Detective Bucco sitting with a group of people, talking and laughing, and I knew if I didn’t get out of there I’d lose my battle of wills with that damn shot glass.
It’s so damn enticing to look for a hookup to keep the demons and loneliness at bay. That’s what had me jump on my bike tonight. Even the fresh-faced detective in unit twenty-four—not at all my regular type, which usually veers toward stacked and easy—is too much of a temptation.
The lights are still on at the clubhouse when I come through the gates. I’m not sure what I’m doing here, but I hope some brotherhood will do the trick.
Tse and Brick are sitting at the bar with a couple of beers. The moment Tse sees me coming in; he grabs both his and Brick’s bottles and tucks them away behind the bar.
“What the fuck is that all about?” I snap, annoyed.
“You don’t need to watch us drink, brother,” Tse says.
“You know what I don’t need? I don’t need my brothers to fucking tiptoe around me.”
“Good by me,” Brick says dryly, leaning over the bar to grab his beer, taking a deep swig.
“Asshole,” I grumble, pulling out a stool.
“You want something?” Tse asks when I sit down.
“Grab me a water, will ya?”
He tosses me a bottle and grabs fresh beers for him and Brick.
“So what are you doin’ out in the middle of the night. Hot date?” Tse nudges me.
“Fuck no. I was just bored.”
“Bored is bad,” Brick says, giving me the side-eye.
He’s about ten years older, and joined the Arrow’s Edge just last year. Decent guy, from what I can tell, although I haven’t had much opportunity to hang out with him. His comment is on point, though, and I wonder if he knows what that’s like.
“Very bad.”
“You going to meetings?”
I glare at him, about to launch a “What the fuck is it to you” at him when I catch myself. His gaze is steady and unwavering, dead serious. A quick glance at Tse shows him equally serious.
“No,” I bite off. “Went to one and that was enough. Not big on sitting in a circle, sharing sob stories, and singing fucking ‘Kumbaya.’”
Brick chuckles and takes a swig of his beer.
“More than one meeting in town, brother. Not all of them are in a church basement.”
“And you know this how?”
He shrugs. “You’re not the first alcoholic I know.”
I’m not an idiot, I know what I am—sixty days sobering up in a treatment center made sure of that—but hearing someone slap that label on me still doesn’t feel good.
CHAPTER 2
Lissie
“BUCCO!”
Ramirez sticks his head around the doorway and I quickly shove my private file into my desk drawer.
We share the large office space—separated by dividers—between the four detectives. It makes communication a lot easier, but it means I have to be careful guarding what I’m not ready to share. Not yet.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got an issue at the new subdivision they’re building near Hesperus.”
“What kind of issue?”
“They’ve dug up a body.”
My attention piqued, I scoot my chair back and shove my cell phone in my pocket.
“Let’s go.”
It takes us ten minutes to get to the new development just west of town. It’s clear the building is done in phases. Right off the road there is a row of houses that look finished. Another small section is under construction, but it’s the area where only some excavation is visible on the back end of the property, where a couple of cruisers are parked and a crowd has gathered.
“What’ve we got?”
One of the officers, Jay VanDyken, is waiting at the perimeter by the hole.
“It’s kinda ripe,” he shares. “Victim is male, my guess he hasn’t been down there longer than a couple of weeks.”
“Any identification on him?”
“Don’t know. Waiting for the crime scene techs to get here.”
“What about the coroner?” I ask him.
“New guy is on his way in.”
We’ve been short a coroner since Doc Franco became ill, but last week we were told a replacement had been found. We just haven’t had the pleasure yet.
“Let’s have a look at the body,” Tony announces, ducking under the caution tape.
I reluctantly follow him. Not my favorite part of an investigation, but a necessary one.
The smell hits me within a few feet of the edge of the hole. The ripe, heavy smell of death gets into everything. I know I’ll have to strip the moment I get home and get my clothes into the washer before I scrub myself in the shower. Even then, I’ll still be smelling death days from now.
The fact I don’t do well with death is a well-kept secret. I’m from a long line of law enforcement and my father and brothers would never have let me live it down if they knew.
Yes, everyone in my family is a cop. My grandpa had been, my father still is, and both my brothers are too. The only girl in the family, and the youngest, I grew up dreaming of becoming a cop as well. Mom supported that dream—she would’ve supported anything I set my mind to—but she passed away when I was thirteen. Dad and the boys, not so much. I had some hope when Dad remarried two years later, but Elsa was all about the ranch and never understood my ambitions.
I’d been a cop for close to ten years before the ribbing and ridiculing finally wore off, only to turn into anger and vitriol last year. Turns out, I handle taunting better than I handle outrage. Or dead bodies, for that matter.
“Not much left to identify him,” Ramirez points out.
There isn’t. His face is barely recognizable as such, and I immediately consider that someone had to be plenty pissed to inflict that kind of injury.
“Whoever killed him knew him, and didn’t particularly like him,” I point out.
“Understatement of the year…” Tony says, pulling a pen from his pocket to move aside the jacket the victim appears to be wearing. I suppress a shudder. “…seeing as this is a bullet hole in his chest. Overkill, if you ask me.”