Chapter 19

There were a lot of reasons why Bashir didn't, as a rule, date cops. Erratic, demanding hours made it impossible to see each other. Conflicts of interest could arise if they were both involved in the same case (not that he'd had any experience with that recently). There was a high probability of a violent and untimely death.

And, in Bashir's experience, cops were often shockingly ruthless about doing whatever it took to solve a case. That could be a good thing—some criminals were only busted because of extraordinarily tenacious and creative policework—but it could also raise some serious red flags about a cop's morals and ethics.

Such as, say, when a cop faced down a terrified young person and lied through his goddamned teeth in order to wring a confession out of her. That Sawyer had apparently lied to Tami about Bashir was just the dog shit icing on this garbage fire cake.

Resting a hand on her back while she cried on his shoulder, Bashir glared hard at Sawyer. "What the fuck is going on? "

Sawyer put up his hands and presented his best there's-been-a-misunderstanding face. "It's not what it sounds—"

"You fucking liar!" Tami whirled out of Bashir's arms and stabbed a finger at Sawyer, very nearly hitting him in the chest. "You both told me I had to talk—confess to shit I didn't even do—or Bashir would lose his job. Don't even try to tell me you didn't, you lying pig."

Bashir narrowed his eyes at Sawyer. "Seriously?"

"I… That's…" Sawyer stammered. "Look. I can explain the—"

"Sure you can," Bashir growled. "You can feed us only the information we need to know for you to get information out of her." He tsked and shook his head. "I know you have to pull shady crap to solve cases, but I didn't think you'd drag me into it."

Sawyer's features hardened. "So you think I should handle things differently because I'm involved with you? Let our relationship affect my investigation?"

Okay. Yeah. He made a valid point.

But so did Bashir.

He let Tami go and stepped around her, putting himself between her and Sawyer as he stepped up into Sawyer's face. "I understand you have to be unbiased. I understand you have to do whatever it takes to find this goddamned killer. But if you have to weaponize my job and my professional reputation to manipulate one of my subordinates into a bullshit confession, then maybe I'm not the one whose professional reputation should be called into question."

Sawyer's lips parted.

Bashir didn't wait for a response. He turned, wrapped an arm around Tami's shoulders, and herded her down the hall .

All he heard behind him was the other detective murmuring, "Let them go."

"I'm sorry about that," he said to Tami.

She leaned into him and sniffled. "They really think I killed those people. I… You know I'd never kill anyone, right?"

"I know."

Deep down, he was more conflicted about that than he wanted to be. Not because he actually believed Tami was capable of murder. No, it was because he'd been doing this long enough to know that most people who killed were exactly the kind of people everyone assumed were incapable of doing so.

But this wasn't a crime of passion. This wasn't the one-time incident that had shellshocked people telling cameras that "He was always so quiet" or "I never imagined she could do such a thing." This was a serial killer. Most of them had tells. They were "off" in a way that had people keeping their distance and wondering how long until that creepy weirdo's name was in the headlines.

Then again, he thought as he led Tami into an empty conference room, some of the people who knew Ted Bundy were shocked when he was arrested.

Still, Bashir had a hell of a time believing she could be behind these terrible killings. It just didn't make sense.

In the conference room, he sat her down with a cup of coffee and some tissues. Her attorney joined them a moment later, and Bashir stepped out to give them some privacy.

In the hallway, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Was this just the universe getting back at him for thinking it was simpler to work with the dead than the living? Maybe. It really did have a fucked-up sense of humor sometimes.

Footsteps approached. Dress shoes, but not Sawyer's. No, this was the clomp of thick heels.

Bracing himself and hoping this was just someone passing through, he opened his eyes and turned his head. Detective Nan Walker was coming up the hall, and she was laser-focused on him.

Damn.

She stopped in front of him and gestured at the door. "Is she…?"

Bashir nodded. "She's talking with her lawyer."

"Good." She stared at the closed door for a moment before turning to him. "Listen, I don't want to put my nose where it doesn't belong. This thing between you and Sawyer—it's none of my business, and I'm not getting involved."

He pressed his lips together, biting back a retort that there wasn't a thing between him and Sawyer. Not after today. Fuck that guy.

Detective Walker must've seen the anger rolling across his face, because her expression softened. "I was part of that interview, Dr. Ramin. It… I don't think Sawyer is quite as much of a villain here as it sounds."

He cocked a brow. "How so?"

"The thread Sawyer and I were pulling was that someone put Tami up to some of the activities that have her under suspicion. We may have laid it on thicker than you would have liked, but our point was that if she didn't come clean about who was behind it, then it was quite possibly going to fall back on you." She shrugged. "And… I mean, we're not wrong."

Bashir's blood turned cold. "How in the world could any of this fall back on me? She works for me, but that doesn't mean I dictate her life outside of the morgue."

"Of course not. But there are emails between someone in the morgue and that podcaster, Felix. Someone who used a morgue computer."

"What?" Bashir leaned against the wall for balance as his knees tried to wobble out from under him. "The leaks—they're coming from the morgue?"

"Yes. And when we have footage of Ms. Glen driving the vehicle of a victim on the night of the murder when she has no connection to him…" Another apologetic shrug. "You can see why we're concerned about her involvement."

Bashir swallowed. "So you and Sawyer tried to get her to either tell you I put her up to it, or admit she'd done it herself."

Walker nodded. "Or tell us who did."

He closed his eyes again and sighed. It was an underhanded tactic, but he could follow the logic. As much as he didn't like them backing Tami into a corner like that, dangling his potential guilt over her head to convince her to crack, he saw what they were going for.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Ramin," Walker said gently. "We have to follow where the evidence takes us, and right now, the evidence is leading us to Ms. Glen."

He met her gaze. "It can't be her." God, he sounded like a family member in denial, insisting the person had to be innocent despite the mountain of reasons to believe otherwise. "That isn't…" It isn't who she is? She isn't capable? She's not a killer? How many people have said that about how many murderers? "Fuck."

"I know. This isn't easy for any of us." She paused. "Including Sawyer."

Bashir winced. "Yeah. I'm sure it's not. But I'll take it as a pretty unmistakable sign that us being involved with each other is just going to cause problems."

Her eyes widened. "I'm sure you can both learn to navigate—"

"No." He shook his head and shouldered himself off the wall. "There's no working around a job where one of us has to…" He made a face. "Just no."

She looked like she was going to argue, but then she murmured, "Well, that's between you and Sawyer. Not me."

He was about to say there was nothing between him and Sawyer anymore.

But of course that was the moment the man himself swept around the corner, locked on to Bashir and Walker, and strode toward them. There was no escape, and damn it, professional considerations meant Bashir should try to escape.

Sawyer gave Bashir a wary look, but then cleared his throat and gestured with a manila folder in his hand. "We've, um… We've got some more information."

Bashir and Walked watched him silently.

Sawyer shifted a little as he opened the folder. "We've had some officers doing more digging. Looking for any connections between Ms. Glen and the other victims."

Bashir's gut clenched.

Sawyer flicked his eyes toward him, and the uneasiness in his expression didn't help Bashir relax at all. It might've been because of the new and alien tension between them, but Bashir doubted it very much.

"There's CCTV footage of her at or near three of the crime scenes around the times of the murders." Sawyer slid out a couple of glossy black-and-white images. One showed Tami entering what looked like a supermarket through a rear Employees Only door. The other caught her on the sidewalk near the park where McKay was found. Yet another entering the parking garage where the victim had been found in the stairwell.

After both Walker and Bashir had taken a look at the images, Sawyer put them back in the folder and pulled out another, this one showing Tami walking past the front desk of a gym. "This is her usual gym, but it turns out it's also the usual gym of our drowning victim, Christopher White."

Bashir breathed a couple of curses. Denials wanted to tumble off his lips. How this was all circumstantial and meant nothing. On their own, no, the images weren't incriminating. Put together, though? Not good. Not good at all.

And Sawyer wasn't done.

"There aren't any cameras near the first two crime scenes." He shuffled some photos. "But there are traffic cameras near them."

Again, the images were benign and not at all incriminating on their own. But Bashir recognized the timestamps. He also recognized the street names printed on each image. Highway 72 was the last major thoroughfare before the county road leading to Gilroy Upworth's residence. And Morris Boulevard was the only way to get from downtown to Parson's Creek Road, where Christopher White—who apparently went to the same gym as Tami—had been found.

Bashir sagged against the wall again, rubbing the back of his stiffening neck. "Fucking hell."

"I know," Sawyer whispered. "And it, um…" He thumbed the folder and chewed his lip. "You're not going to like this one, Bashir. I'm sorry."

Bashir searched his former lover's eyes. Behind the practiced mask of empathetic cop, there was genuine sympathy and regret. Wasn't there?

Maybe. It didn't matter. Sawyer was another cop now. A detective looking to break a case, not the man who'd been steadily convincing Bashir to drop his defenses and give him a chance.

Of course he got me to let down my guard. That's literally his fucking job.

Bashir's mouth suddenly tasted sour. "Okay. What have you got?"

"I sent an officer by her apartment building with a warrant for records of packages received by the front desk." He grimaced and pulled some images and printouts free. "Bashir, she got a package from a company that distributes snake venom." Shaking his head, he whispered, "I can't overlook that."

Bashir took the papers.

A photo of a package log with Tami's distinctive loopy signature beside a tracking number.

A screenshot of a shipping website with the tracking information entered.

A return address to Fangz Direct.

And an emailed receipt from Fangz Direct showing a successful credit card payment from one Tamara Lynn Glen for one vial of black mamba venom.

Bashir pushed out a breath and shoved everything back at Sawyer.

There was no way. Tami wasn't a killer. She wasn't .

But he couldn't deny the connections Sawyer was making. Sawyer and Walker were professionally obligated to pull every thread they found, and to keep pulling them until they solved the case. It was their job. Like Bashir, they owed it to the victims and their families to leave no stone unturned, no matter what ugliness they found underneath.

And no matter what tactics they had to use to crack through the killer's defenses.

"I'm sorry, Bashir," Sawyer said again. "I really am."

"I know," Bashir whispered without looking at him. He meant it, too. He didn't think Sawyer was being malicious to him or to Tami. "Let me know if you have any more updates."

With that, he brushed past both of them and headed up the hall.

And for the second time today, he heard Walker murmur, "Let him go."

Regardless of what was happening with Tami, Bashir had a job to do. Usually, he could throw himself into his work and ignore anything else, but that was a tougher task today because there was no separating that work from what was happening. His assistant was gone. His own autopsies and forensic reports would quite possibly be what sealed her fate.

No, Bashir, he reminded himself as he went through the motions of a routine autopsy, she sealed her own fate when she killed all those people.

He swallowed hard behind his mask. He rarely got queasy during an autopsy anymore—though everybody got a little green when the body had been bloating in the August heat for a couple of weeks—but today, he may as well have been back in med school. Back when that first cadaver had sent his stomach into his throat and kept it there for the whole semester .

It had nothing to do with the body in front of him, though, and everything to do with the trail of corpses his own assistant had left behind. He wanted everything to go back to normal. He wanted her here, perched on her stool, taking notes for him, and sometimes helping out when he needed an extra pair of hands.

Her musical voice echoed in his ears: "I love watching you work, Bash."

He'd chuckled, glancing up at her. "You love watching me take apart a body?"

"No, no." She'd actually giggled at that. "I mean watching your mind work. It's just… You see things, you know? The little details that anyone else would miss."

In the present, Bashir froze, the decedent's liver heavy in his hands.

Other moments flickered through his mind like a film highlight reel, zeroing in on moments when Tami had been assisting him.

"No other pathologist would've caught that. No way."

"The way you think is mind-blowing."

"It's like watching someone figure out the world's most complicated puzzle!"

He lowered the organ back into the abdominal cavity and leaned his hands on the exam table as the world rocked beneath him. Another conversation—this one much more recent—lurched into the forefront of his mind like his breakfast wanted to lurch up into his mouth:

"Seems like a lot of work to cover something up," Tami had said. "Any pathologist was going to put the pieces together. Wouldn't a killer just let the reaction do its thing?"

"I don't think it's a cover up," Bashir remembered saying over Detective McKay's autopsy. "I think it's a game. "

"A— what ?"

"One body after another, each with an obvious cause and manner of death… until the autopsy." He'd stared down at the body. "This is someone playing a game. It has to be. They enjoy seeing if we can figure out the puzzle."

"Oh my God." She'd sounded genuinely horrified. "That's… that's really fucked-up."

"Yeah. It is."

"If this person gets caught," Tami had mused, "they're looking at capital murder charges. It's all premeditated. Like, hella premeditated." She'd chafed her arms. "What kind of sick fucker does… hell, any of this?"

That's a good question, Tami, he thought in the present. A really fucking good question .

Jesus, how had he been so stupid? So oblivious? He'd known for a long time that she had a crush on him, but it had always seemed fairly innocent, even after it led to her broken engagement.

Maybe that crush wasn't so innocent after all. Maybe after he'd gently rejected her playful flirtation over the years, she hadn't gotten the message like he'd naively thought. Maybe she'd been stewing this whole time, waiting to exact revenge.

Or worse, obsessing. Clinging. Looking for ways to get more of him and what she wanted.

"I love watching your mind work," she'd said hundreds of times and hundreds of ways. "You're amazing, Bashir."

He shuddered as that green first-year med student feeling intensified, threatening to send him looking for something to puke in.

What if she really was obsessed with him, and all these people were dead just so she could get some sick thrill out of watching him figure out how they'd been killed? What if this—

The morgue's side entrance banged open, startling Bashir so bad, he was definitely glad he'd put down the liver. Otherwise he'd probably be peeling it off the ceiling.

A moment later, Dr. Boyce came into the room, his pissy mood written all over his face. "Are days off just not a thing anymore?" he demanded. "I wasn't even supposed to be on call today."

Bashir blinked, but then recovered. "I'm sorry. We, uh… We're going to be short-staffed for a while."

Boyce eyed him. "Yeah? Who'd you fire this time?"

"No one. But something came up for Tami. She's going to be… indisposed."

He fully expected an eyeroll followed by a tirade about how she was an assistant and he was a pathologist, so he shouldn't have to fill in for her. And yeah, he was right, but the morgue's workload was what it was—everyone had to do grunt work and paperwork sometimes.

To his surprise, though, Boyce just tilted his head. "Indisposed? What does that mean?"

"It means she's unavailable," Bashir said coolly.

Boyce's features hardened, but only a little. Then he chuckled and continued toward his office.

Bashir watched him go, not sure what to make of the man's reaction. But hell, what else was new? His entire world had flipped on its ass since this morning.

He couldn't wait to see how much worse things would get.