Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

When I walked back into the kitchen fifteen minutes later it was empty except for Martinez. He was still at the counter reading through the autopsy report.

Martinez looked up and stared at me appraisingly. "Much better," he said. "You clean up nice, Doc."

My ability to clean up nice had everything to do with genetics and nothing to do with giving a crap about my appearance. I'd been working life-or-death situations since my med school days. People coding on the table didn't care if my hair and makeup were red carpet ready.

Both of my parents had dark, almost black, hair, just like me. But I'd always wondered where I'd gotten my gray eyes since they'd both had brown eyes. They'd always told me it was some distant relative and recessed genes, but it had just been more lies on top of many.

My hair was still damp since I'd only run the hair dryer over it briefly, but it was short and straight and it would dry soon enough and fall where it was supposed to around my jawline. I rarely wore makeup—my lashes were thick and dark and I'd been told people would pay good money for my lips, whatever that meant. I had high cheekbones and good olive skin, so I generally slathered on moisturizer and called myself good to go.

I knew we'd be making the rounds today of city officials and probably the press, so I pulled on black leggings and a pale gray, lightweight sweater that matched my eyes to ward off the damp chill. I'd worn nothing but my black rain boots for what seemed like the past month, and my nice black raincoat I used for funerals was hanging in the mudroom.

"Where'd everybody go?" I asked.

"Sheriff and Cole headed back to court," he said. "Lily said she needed to study. And Sheldon got a call from the hospital to pick up a body. Emmy Lu went back to the office to start the paperwork. Looks like you're back in the funeral business."

"So much for having a couple of days off."

"Death is the one thing you can always count on," Martinez said. "At some point everyone is going to do it."

No truer words had ever been spoken.

"Speaking of," he said. "Let's go pay a visit to the Lidles. I hate giving death notices to families."

"I can't imagine it's anyone's favorite thing to do," I said. "But when it's done well it's a gift. As messed up as my whole family situation was, I remember the knock on my door and Jack standing there to tell me my parents were dead. It's a lot easier to hear news like that coming from someone who cares. The Lidles' daughter is dead. Death isn't supposed to be easy."

Martinez blew out a sigh. "I guess when you put it that way."

I had to admit, tagging along with Martinez was weird. Jack and I had a rhythm when we went to give death notifications. We also had a rhythm when it came to questioning potential suspects. I had no idea about Martinez's rhythm. Being with Martinez felt a little like going to a bar and seeing an old boyfriend from high school. There was a little bit of history there, but I had no idea who Martinez really was, and I wasn't really sure what we should talk about.

Martinez drove one of the new unmarked black SUVs the department had recently gotten, and I climbed into the passenger seat, buckling my seat belt.

"Why don't you type in the address on the computer," Martinez said, looking both ways before doing a U-turn in the middle of the street. "They live in Nottingham."

"Ooh, fancy," I said, shifting the laptop attached in his police unit toward me and typing Everett Lidle's name into the database. As a councilman, his personal information was protected, so the mobile data terminal was the best resource we had for that kind of sensitive information. "I guess there are perks to being a councilman."

"It doesn't hurt that he owns all those car dealerships either," Martinez said. "Or that his mother is the heiress to a ketchup kingdom."

"Yeah, I guess that doesn't hurt," I said. "Sometimes I think it's weird that Nottingham and Bloody Mary can be on the same planet, much less in the same county."

"Nottingham is where all the tech money is," Martinez said, tapping his fingers impatiently on the wheel. "It used to be a lot like Bloody Mary, but the tech giants started infiltrating, and then all of a sudden it became a hub for artificial intelligence and data mining."

"Jack calls it a mini Silicon Valley," I said.

"He's not far off. And then there's Newcastle. Once they revitalized things, that's where all the young professionals relocated. It's full of townhomes and art districts and eclectic shops that will stop being trendy in the next decade."

"And King George Proper?" I asked, enjoying hearing his take on the towns that surrounded us.

"King George Proper is full of military personnel from the naval center and a bunch of college students from KGU. It tends to be a catchall for people who want to commute into DC and those who are stuck and don't know where to go next."

"And Bloody Mary is still the same small farming town with people holding on to their land, the Second Amendment, and the American Dream. Or what's left of it."

"There's a lot of people angry at Jack for holding the line on that and not giving in to the big developers who want to buy up all the farming land. And he made some powerful government enemies when he refused those federal prisons to be built here. That was billions of dollars those investors lost out on."

"The people from King George aren't angry," I said, shrugging. "And they're the only ones who matter since they have to live here. It's their votes that count. But this is a great place to live, and the word is out. We're already seeing an influx of people moving here. With it they're bringing crime and jacking up the housing market. I can see a time in the not-so-distant future where we lose all of this."

"Yeah, well," Martinez said. "I'm hoping I'll be dead by then so it can be the next generation's burden to bear. All I'm saying is you and Jack need to be careful."

I stared out the window as we left Bloody Mary and made our way toward Nottingham. The streets widened, the trees disappeared, and the shops and restaurants all had the same stone fronts so everything looked uniform. There were no more chain restaurants and bargain stores. Instead the shops became luxury stores, the restaurants high end, and there was an increase in plastic surgeons' offices. That in itself said a lot about Nottingham.

Martinez's thoughts of dying before society got too bad were not unique to him. Jack and I had been having the same conversations over the past months while trying to decide if we wanted to bring a child into the world. Maybe our jobs made us more sensitive to the life and death side of things, but we'd ultimately agreed that we did want children and that we'd do everything within our power to protect them and continue to make our area of the world as safe a place as possible.

Now I just had to live up to my side of the bargain.

I felt a tear leak from the corner of my eye, but I was still looking out the window and away from Martinez's view. I was a mess. And I was struggling big-time. Just to get through the days like a normal person. I almost didn't recognize myself, and it was becoming harder to act normal around the people who saw me on a day-to-day basis, when in reality I was falling apart.

I didn't know what conversations might trigger tears, just like I didn't know what conversations would trigger the guilt and anger inside of me. Somedays I'd feel pity for myself and others just straight-up defiance and I'd tell my body to get a grip.

I'd known earlier this morning that standing over the body of twelve-year-old Evie Lidle was going to have an impact on my mental state. And I was having to find new ways to cope with the strain of not being able to have my own child. I was resilient. And more than a little hardheaded. And just like always, I straightened my spine and pushed it all down to be dealt with at another time.

"How come I've never met your family?" I asked Martinez. "You grew up in Bloody Mary, and I know just about everyone."

"You do know my family," he said. "Or at least some of them. My brother and his wife own the taco place you like to go to. And my Tia Maria owns the bath and body shop on the square."

"Get out of town!" I said shocked. "I love that place. How did I not know that?"

"My family has its issues," he said. "Just like any family, I guess. But let's just say there's a little resentment among certain members of my family, so they don't always claim me. I wasn't kidding when I said I was my abuela's favorite. She's very Catholic, and when I was baptized as a baby a priest told her I was to be protected and favored because I held the key to our family's legacy."

"I can see why there'd be resentment," I said, grinning. "That's a pretty big obligation to put on a baby's shoulders."

"I was the most loved and hated kid you could ever imagine," he said, smiling good-naturedly so the dimple in his cheek showed. "My great-grandparents hit it big in the oil boom in west Texas, and then my grandfather tripled the family fortune once he took the reins. But his two brothers had ties to the Mexican cartels and they were always in trouble, and I remember as a kid the extra security around the house and the fear in my parents' eyes. One of my abuelo's employees borrowed his truck one afternoon and it exploded before he could pull out of the driveway.

"Oh, wow," I said.

"It was meant to kill, and my abuela told him that God had spared his life for a reason, and that he needed to figure out what that reason was. So my abuelo decided the best thing to do was to sell the business and get out of Texas. He and my abuela, my parents, aunts and uncles and cousins all picked up and moved here. I was about to start my freshman year of high school."

"And then you became a cop," I said, understanding what drove Martinez a little better now.

"Oh yeah," he said. "I always wanted to be one. There were several cops who worked off-duty details trying to protect my family, and I watched the homicide detectives come and work the case after the pipe bomb. I was obsessed. I realized pretty early on that it was a calling to want to protect those who were weaker or who needed help."

"Nice to know you're not doing it for the paycheck," I said.

He snorted out a laugh. "When my abuelo died he left me in charge of the family business."

"I thought he sold the business," I said.

"He sold the oil business," Martinez corrected. "But my abuelo knew a thing or two about investing money, the stock market, and real estate holdings. So I'm officially the president of the Toro Corporation, though I've hired people to see to the day-to-day operations. I don't have the time or energy for more than quarterly board meetings at this point."

"And your family?" I asked.

"Grateful that I make sure they all get dividends and have healthy portfolios so none of them ever has to work another day in their lives. But resentful that I hold the purse strings and that abuela doesn't hide it that I'm the chosen one."

"I can see why she'd be upset about you not continuing on the Martinez line," I said, brows raised.

"Yeah, well," he said uncomfortably. "Like you said, it was a lot of pressure to put on a little kid about being the key to the family legacy. I had a rebellious moment in college where I decided I was tired of being everyone's puppet and that's when I got it done."

I wasn't sure what it was, but I sensed a little bit of regret in Martinez's youthful indiscretion.

"You can always get it reversed," I told him.

He grunted and then turned onto High Pointe Avenue, where trees and manicured flower beds lined the street, and the small lake the community was built around glinted like glass in the distance.

He pulled into the curved driveway of a traditional Colonial with red brick and white columns just as the sky opened up and the rain started to fall.