lingered there and wondering if he smelled it, too.
“We can do the rounds,” I continued in a softer tone, “but you know that telling me is the right thing.”
“We’re calling it murder, Work, and it’s going to be the biggest story to hit this county in a decade. That puts me in a tough spot. It’ll be a media frenzy.”
“I need to know, Douglas. This has hit Jean the hardest. She’s not been the same since that night—you’ve seen it. If I’m going to tell her about our father’s death, I’ll need to give her some details; she’ll want them. Hell, she’ll need them. But most of all, I need to know how bad it is. I’ll need to prepare her. Like you said, she shouldn’t read it in the paper.” I paused, took in a breath, and focused. I needed to visit the crime scene, and for that I needed his agreement. “Jean needs to be handled just right.”
He steepled his fingers under his chin, as I’d seen him do a thousand times, but Jean was my trump, and he knew it. My sister had shared a special friendship with the DA’s daughter. They’d grown up together, best friends, and Jean was in the same car when a drunk driver crossed the center-line and hit them head-on. Jean suffered a mild concussion; his daughter was nearly decapitated. It was one of those things, they said, and it could just as easily have been the other way around. Jean sang at her funeral, and the sight of her could pull tears from Douglas’s eyes even now. She’d grown up under his roof and, apart from myself, I doubted that any one person felt her pain the way Douglas did.
The silence stretched out, and I knew that my arrow had slipped through this one small chink in his armor. I pressed on before he could think too much.
“It’s been a long time. Are you sure it’s him?”
“It’s Ezra. The coroner is on-scene now and he’ll make the official call, but I’ve spoken with Detective Mills and she assures me that it’s him.”
“I want to see where it happened.”
That stopped him, caught him with his mouth open. I watched as he closed it.
“Once the scene is cleared—”
“Now, Douglas. Please.”
Maybe it was something in my face, or maybe it was a lifetime of knowing me and ten years of liking me. Maybe it was Jean after all. Whatever the reason, I beat the odds.
“Five minutes,” he said. “And you don’t leave Detective Mills’s side.”
Mills met me in the parking lot of the abandoned mall where the body had been found, and she was not pleased. She radiated pissed-off from the bottom of her expensive shoes to the top of her mannish haircut. She had a pointed face, which emphasized her look of natural suspicion; because of this, it was impossible for anyone to find her beautiful, but she had a good figure. She was in her midthirties—about my age—yet lived alone and always had. Contrary to speculation around the lawyer’s lounge, she wasn’t gay. She just hated lawyers, which made her okay in my book.
“You must have kissed the DA’s ass to get this, Work. I can’t even believe I’ve agreed to it.” Mills stood only five five or so but seemed taller. What she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in smarts. I’d seen her shred more than one of my colleagues who had presumed to challenge her on cross.
“I told him I won’t leave your side, and I won’t. I just need to see. That’s all.”
She studied me in the gray afternoon light and her animosity seemed to drain away. The sight of a softening expression in a face rigorously trained against such things was vaguely repellant, yet I appreciated it nonetheless.
“Stay behind me and touch nothing. I mean it, Work. Not one damn thing.”
She began a purposeful stride across the cracked, weed-filled parking lot, and for a moment I was unable to follow. My eyes moved over the mall, the parking lot, and then found the creek. It was a dirty creek, choked with litter and red clay; it flowed into a concrete tunnel that ran underneath the parking lot. I could still remember the stink of it, the chemical reek of gasoline and mud. For an instant, I forgot why I’d come.
It could have happened yesterday, I thought.
I heard Mills call my name and I tore my eyes away from that dark place and the childhood it