Four

Dayton

Every murder investigation took me back to that day.

Every. Single. One.

My partner and I had just met up to question a shop owner about the suspected drug activity in the back alley behind his store when we'd gotten the call. Whoever had dispatched us, because we were closest to the Tindale Brokerage, didn't know the victim's identity, just that it was a young woman with GSW—gunshot wounds.

Foolishly, na?vely, I'd thought I'd do my bit there then steal a moment with Melonie, who'd no doubt need some comfort after what had happened. We'd argued that morning—mostly my fault—so I'd resolved to apologize.

Everything after that… Horror.

That sort of thing never went away, no matter how distant you got from it. Weeks, months then years rolled by and the image of it was as fresh as when I'd walked in on the EMTs trying to stabilize the victim. My wife. Still alive but barely.

She'd been gone before I could make it to her side at the hospital, my partner, Dutch Pritchard, seeming to almost purposely hit every light until I'd demanded he use the fucking siren—which he should have done anyway. Afterward, I couldn't forgive him for that, which meant I had a new partner now. Due to the tension between us, Dutch had transferred to another precinct.

"You okay?" Anderson asked me, her no-nonsense tone at odds with the question. As my new partner, she knew how murder investigations hit me harder than any of our other work. But I was a dog with a bone, and probably had the highest solve rate in the department. But that one investigation still ate at me, one I wasn't allowed to touch. The team in charge of it hated me, too, because I was a thorn in all their asses. Did I fucking care? No.

"Yeah. Fine."

"Detectives," the uniform in charge greeted us as we strode down the brightly lit apartment building hallway, toward where he stood in the doorway to the scene. So far, the place seemed like the typical apartment farm, one of many that had popped up around this part of the city. Clean but utilitarian. Gawkers stood in the entrances of their units, taking it all in.

Anderson and I stepped inside number 305, away from all the prying eyes and eager ears. The scene looked well-kept and clean aside from bodies and dried blood. We took the booties and gloves he offered, so we wouldn't get bitched at by forensics.

"Give us the details," I said, while covering my shoes, in no mood for anything even remotely related to niceties.

He rolled his eyes at me a focused on Anderson, a response I was used to. Nonplused, I yanked on my gloves.

"Don't mind him," she said, finishing with her own gloves before she looked up. "Got up on the wrong side of the bed."

"For five years," the guy muttered, and my fingers flinched into a fist.

"Uncalled for, Officer Evans," Anderson warned. "Details, please."

"Neighbors called it in an hour ago. Appears to be a woman, early twenties, and a man of the same age. Execution style. Close-range shots to the head. Though both bodies sustained subsequent shots postmortem. Vics are unidentifiable on scene. Coroner's there, now." With a nod over his shoulder, he indicated to Anderson's boyfriend, Felix, who was leaned over one of the corpses.

"He got here fast. Gang related? Drugs?" I asked. The drug cartel I'd been investigating five years ago had recently resurged as strongly as the memories that continued to haunt me.

"Unknown. No signs of it."

"Neighbors only called an hour ago? They all have colds? That smell's hard to miss," my partner complained, breathing into her upper arm.

"Give it a minute and your senses will get accustomed to it," Felix said, coming toward us.

"Yeah, you always say that," she griped.

"And I'm always right, because it's true."

"Whatever you say."

He looked over at me. "Detective Windsor."

"Pretty sure you can call me Dayton. We get beers together," I muttered. My chin lifted toward the scene. "What's going on here?"

"Straight forward." Felix launched into detailing the mess with mind-numbing intricacy before Anderson and I could move in with our cursory investigation, careful not to disturb things and directing the on-scene photographer on what we wanted. By noon, it became apparent the likely perpetrator was the female victim's ex-boyfriend. By mid-afternoon, I was still reeling through my own memories of Melonie's murder, while Anderson and I put together our findings and strategy to nail our suspect, who hadn't been savvy enough to cover his tracks.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked over her cup of acrid, police-station coffee. Stereotypical but unfortunately a fact at our precinct.

"You asking me for a date?"

She sniffed a laugh. "Felix might seem laid back, but we'd have another murder on our hands if that happened. And trust me, he'd know how to make it look like natural causes."

My pen tapped on the folder we'd compiled so far. "Fair. Brennan's got some summer lacrosse thing going on tonight, then he's hanging out with the team. So I'm probably gonna grab some wings and kick back with a beer to watch the game."

"Your team is shit this year."

"My team is always shit, but hope for homeruns springs eternal."

"Yeah, good luck with that. You think we've got enough to haul in this guy?" she asked.

"Uniforms are meeting him when he gets off the airplane in the morning." Looked like the asshole had killed his ex and her new boyfriend then hopped a plane to take a three-day vacation in Cancun. If he thought it would be an alibi, he didn't know much about forensics.

"Hope it scares him enough he wets himself and sings. No way he did it alone."

"He might have. He could have ambushed one then taken the other by surprise when they got home,."

"Timeline doesn't really line up with that." She was right. The security footage and cell records didn't point to the couple coming home separately. She studied me. "You okay? You seem distracted. Worse than usual when we catch one of these."

Distracted? Yeah, I was. For the last few days, my mind had been on a Melonie loop practically 24/7. I wasn't getting enough sleep and certainly no peace of mind.

"Today's the anniversary of it."

"Shit! You should have taken today off."

"For what, though?" Wallowing in grief wouldn't bring back my wife, but taking down the bad guys sure helped. If only, I could nail the one person who'd destroyed my future. Then I might take a day off. After he or she went down.