Chapter 5

"What is up with that cop?" Tami demanded as she stomped into the morgue. "Does he not know how to take no for an answer or what?"

Bashir looked at her over the file he'd been reading. "Sorry, what?"

She huffed with even more annoyance than she usually did, which honestly spoke volumes. "He just seems so…" She flailed a hand in the direction Detective Villeray had gone. "Persistent."

"He does?" Bashir lowered the file and pulled off his reading glasses, studying the flustered technician. "What makes you say that?"

She peered at him. "You don't see it? Ugh, he had desperation radiating off him."

Bashir blinked. "I, um… No, I hadn't noticed?" He shrugged. "He asked me if I wanted to go to dinner, and when I said no, he left. I wouldn't call that particularly persistent."

She rolled her eyes and dropped into her desk chair but said nothing more .

Bashir watched her for a moment, then shook his head, pulled on his glasses again, and went back to the report he'd been reading. Not that he could concentrate. The conversation with Detective Villeray had already left him somewhat off-balance, and now there was Tami's prickly attitude toward the detective. That was seriously weird. Though…

Okay, no, it really wasn't. Because while Tami was very good at her job, she had some issues with personal boundaries. In particular, it was no secret that she had a thing for Bashir or that it had ended her engagement. When Tami had come into work last year with red eyes and no ring the Monday after her now-ex-fiancé had confronted Bashir, Bashir had sat her down and made it clear in no uncertain terms where the lines were.

"I'm gay," he'd told her. "And even if I wasn't, I don't date coworkers, especially not subordinates. We're colleagues, and maybe friends, but that's it."

He didn't know if her heartbroken expression had been because he'd rejected her or, well, because she'd just had her heart broken by the man she'd been planning to marry. Either way, they'd come to an understanding that had allowed them to continue working together.

Sometimes he wondered if that part—continuing to work together—had been a wise decision. Today was one of those times.

Well, it was what it was. If nothing else, he supposed her attitude would make the detective think twice about trying again.

That thought gave him pause. Usually, he'd be all over a buffer between him and someone whose advances he wanted to reject. Especially when the guy was absolutely off-limits thanks to minor details like "he's a goddamned cop."

But this time…

Bashir suppressed a groan, took off his glasses again, and rubbed his eyes. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he almost regretted turning down Detective Villeray. Almost. The man was anything but unattractive, and Bashir had to give him credit for being ballsy enough to ask, even if he hadn't been as slick about it as he'd probably intended. Suuure, he'd "accidentally" left his phone in the morgue. Because that was a normal thing to do. Most people outside the death business were way too squeamish to put a personal effect on any surface in a morgue, never mind forget it, never mind voluntarily walk back into the morgue to retrieve it. Even the most grizzled cops who'd seen everything under the sun—like the ones who routinely attended autopsies, which many of the detectives did—weren't fond of this place. They sure as shit wouldn't relish the idea of carrying around an object that had spent time here. The one other time someone had left a phone in the morgue, Tami had called their desk to let them know, and they'd said, "You know, I really need to upgrade anyway and everything's stored on the cloud. Just, uh… get rid of it, I guess."

It was a nice phone, too, but whatever.

And yet Detective Villeray…

Hell. Maybe I should give him a chance.

No. No. Fuck, no. He was a cop. Bashir was done dating cops. He wouldn't even date someone who worked with cops. Like that seriously hot diver they sometimes called in to recover bodies? Nope. Not gonna happen.

But he's hot. And he's into me. And—

And clearly Bashir was just frustrated because he still had blue balls from last night.

Ah. That was it. This wasn't mutual attraction. It was a nasty case of datus interruptus .

Maybe Max would be game for a hookup. They obviously weren't compatible for a relationship if Max couldn't handle Bashir getting dragged away in the middle of dinner, but some guys would still be down with a roll in the hay with no strings attached.

Of course, Bashir's phone was almost guaranteed go off at the most inopportune moment. Always fucking did. Like that time last fall when Bashir had been plowing a gorgeous bartender over the back of a couch, and right when things were getting good—

His shrill ringtone startled him so bad, he dropped the report he'd been reading.

Then he swore under his breath and snatched up the phone. The caller ID had more curses tumbling from his mouth in all the languages he spoke.

Dispatch. Because of course it was.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he accepted the call. "Dr. Ramin."

Another death scene. Because of course it was.

By the time Bashir arrived at the scene, he was in an exceptionally foul mood. Not that death scenes brought him any particular joy, but there were a lot of people trying his patience today, and he was at that point where he would've sworn he was hangry, except he'd eaten. No hangry, then—just bitchy.

Most of it had come from his cranky colleague. Boyce had already been none too pleased about taking on a couple of "boring" autopsies that had been on Bashir's schedule this morning. For a while, it seemed like he'd gotten over his bullshit from this morning. Then he'd gone to lunch, where he'd apparently spent an hour getting himself all worked up again. Right about the time Bashir was getting ready to come to this scene, Boyce had stomped back into the morgue in a pissy mood.

"You can't just pawn everyone off on me!" Boyce had declared. "I've got a full schedule too!"

"And I have an emergency call," Bashir had responded. "I'm the only one who can go, so—"

That had been a mistake. Boyce ranted, loudly and at length, while Bashir tried to tune him out. This was exactly why he tried not to bring up the morgue's hierarchy. Few things grated on Boyce more than reminders that Bashir was both the county medical examiner and a forensic pathologist. While Boyce was a pathologist himself, he'd chosen not to pursue the forensic pathologist designation, which was why he'd been passed over for the role of M.E. and Bashir was hired instead. Sometimes that meant he was stuck taking on Bashir's workload when something demanded the M.E.'s presence.

The thing was, Boyce wanted to be the one going to death scenes and being involved in the cases he thought were "exciting." He resented—he fucking hated —being Bashir's backup. And in fact, it would've made everyone's life easier if he could've taken some of the more complicated cases that Bashir did, but no, that wasn't how this shit worked.

Whatever. They'd both made their choices, and Bashir wasn't here for pissing contests or temper tantrums.

"I'm sorry, okay?" he'd said on his way out. "I'll put out a memo for people to stop getting murdered so I don't have to dump my caseload on you."

Boyce hadn't been happy with that, and it admittedly hadn't been Bashir's most professional moment, but there it was. Between flirty cops, prickly technicians, and bitchy pathologists, he was a hundred percent done with the living, and it was barely noon .

The scene was clear out on Parson's Creek Road, and the drive would usually give him time to cool off, but it didn't help today. He doubted anything would unless it involved alcohol, orgasms, or both.

And wasn't that Detective McKay's car?

Bashir indulged in a frustrated sigh as he shut off the engine. He was about to bang his forehead on the steering wheel in hopes of the sweet relief of blunt force trauma, but a uniformed officer was striding toward him with a clipboard under her arm.

Time to be an adult. He'd knuckled through worse. And the alcohol and orgasms at the other end of this shitshow would be worth it.

"They fucking better be," he muttered to himself as he stepped out of the van. By the time he'd shut the door, he had on his professional face, which consisted of a smile that made him approachable without giving the appearance of over-the-top cheerfulness. Nothing unsettled people quite like the M.E. waltzing onto a death scene with a bright realtor smile.

Not that he was in any danger of appearing too happy today.

The scene commander met him at the edge of the perimeter, clipboard tucked under her arm. "Dr. Ramin." She extended her hand. "I'm Officer Lane."

He shook her hand. She quickly logged him in on her clipboard, then lifted the crime scene tape for him to duck under. After he'd put on his gloves, mask, and booties, Officer Lane led him down the marked path toward the middle of the scene. Much like Officer Doran had yesterday, she'd wisely cordoned off a wide perimeter around the scene and laid down tape and cones to indicate a path. Two CSI techs were already working their way through the scene—one crouching beside some ferns a few yards off the road, the other standing near the middle and, Bashir guessed, making a sketch.

About two yards away from the one making the sketch, sprawled at the feet of Detectives McKay and goddamned Villeray, was the reason Bashir had been called out here.

Caucasian male. Mid-twenties, most likely. Maybe early thirties. Dressed in nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks. No visible signs of trauma. He had no idea why someone thought this person had drowned other than the swim trunks. And… did he smell chlorine? That could've been bleach, though.

Blowflies were gathering, as was to be expected, and rigor mortis had set in. The victim probably hadn't been here more than few hours.

The dirt surrounding him was barely disturbed. There were tire tracks in the clay, but no footprints near the body. The footprints Bashir could see were likely from whoever had discovered the body, the CSI techs, the officers, and the detectives, all of whom had carefully stayed back several feet from the body.

Bashir's best guess at this stage? The deceased had died elsewhere and then been left here. Probably dumped from a vehicle—possibly a moving one—given the position of limbs and the lack of shoe impressions nearby.

He met Detective Villeray's gaze. The detective's cheeks darkened, and he glanced away for a second, but then he cleared his throat and reclaimed eye contact. "The, uh… The person who called this in thought he drowned. "

Bashir cocked a brow. "In what? Student debt?" He gestured around them. "There's no water up here."

Villeray pressed his lips together as if trying to stifle a laugh. "Yeah, we… can't figure that one out either."

Officer Lane cleared her throat. "Well, the scene is dry, but the deceased was soaking wet when we got here." She turned to Bashir. "And there's the chlorine smell."

Bashir nodded. "Good call." He looked over the body again with the smell in mind. Chlorine from a pool? Or bleach? The deceased's lungs would tell him a clearer story, hopefully. And now that he looked, the guy's hair did look like it had been wet recently. On closer inspection, so had the clay near the body. Maybe he had been in a pool or something.

He needed to put drowning out of his mind and focus on the body and whatever story the autopsy told. Conclusions would come from those rather than evidence backing up the assumptions in his brain.

Observe and analyze, he reminded himself. Don't assume and overlook something because it doesn't fit the assumption.

"Well," he said to the cops, "if he drowned, he didn't do it here. We'll just have to see what the evidence says."

With that, he got to work, and the cops left him to it. Villeray hesitated as the other two walked away, and Bashir was hit with the overwhelming horror that the detective was going to hang back and make things worse between them. Like apologize for making things awkward, which would only succeed in making things more awkward. Or try to start chatting in hopes of buttering up Bashir to reconsider his rejection.

Mercifully, about the time Bashir was considering striking up a conversation about what the blowfly larvae would be doing to the body's eyeballs once they hatched, Villeray left to catch up with his partner.

Thank fuck.

Bashir glanced at the detective's back, and admittedly, he felt bad. Villeray was a nice enough guy—for a cop—and he wasn't hard on the eyes at all. He hadn't deserved Tami's attitude earlier. Hell, maybe Bashir should apologize for that.

That could wait, though. John Doe of Parson's Creek Road could not.

With the help of Officer Lane, Bashir put up a small canopy to protect the body and this portion of the crime scene from the elements. A sheet strategically draped over two sides would protect the dignity and privacy of the deceased if looky-loos showed up. Not that there would be many at a remote crime scene like this, but especially with the advent of drones, one couldn't be too careful.

Bashir had just finished photographing every visible inch of the body and the ground immediately surrounding him when a commotion turned his head. He'd been vaguely aware of a car engine approaching, but he hadn't paid it much mind because it was hardly out of the ordinary. People came and went at crime scenes.

The scream of, "Let me see him!" however, was… irregular.

Not unheard of, but not an everyday thing. Bashir swore under his breath, schooled his expression to something placid and professional, and peered around the curtain toward the sounds. Unsurprisingly, there was a woman trying to shove past police and onto the crime scene. She was probably in her sixties or so, and a man of about the same age was trying to hold her back. Her husband, Bashir guessed, especially since he looked distraught himself even as he tried to calm her down.

The woman was having none of it. She alternately sobbed and raged, demanding to see her son. Bashir felt for her. She wasn't the first mother to come to a crime scene, overwhelmed with every stage of grief simultaneously, and she sadly would not be the last. Today was about to be the worst day of her life, and the ones that came after wouldn't be much better.

Bashir sighed and got back to work. These poor people. At least they would most likely have an ID on the body now. He didn't have any identification on him—the pockets of his swim trunks were empty—but some difficulty identifying a body was preferable to this . No one wanted the cops showing up at the door with hats in their hands, but personally, Bashir would take a somber visit like that over showing up to the scene and actually seeing the body of his lost loved one.

The screaming died down a little, and Bashir chanced another look outside. The woman was now perched on the front bumper of a patrol car, crying and dabbing at her eyes. In front of her, Detective Villeray was saying something, gesturing in a way that suggested he was trying to soothe her, but his expression and mannerisms weren't patronizing. In fact, even from here, he looked genuinely sympathetic, and whatever he was saying… it was working.

Bashir ducked back into the tent and stood there for a moment, trying to process. Some cops were good at dealing with the panicked and the grief-stricken. Some were… not. He wasn't even surprised that Villeray was apparently good at it. If anything, he was caught off-guard by the effect that ha d on him.

C'mon, Ramin. A cop with an understanding of basic compassion isn't that out of the ordinary.

A cop with an understanding of basic compassion who was also attractive, queer, single, and interested? That was something of a unicorn.

Bashir shook himself and got back to work. The woman's son deserved the focus of a forensic pathologist who would figure out what had happened to him. Not one who was distracted by the cop he maybe should've taken up on the offer for dinner. The cop who'd quite famously been a literal actor before getting his badge.

The thought gave Bashir pause. Then he rolled his eyes and got back to work.

No wonder Sawyer was so convincing.

And attractive.

And…

Goddammit. I am so fucked.

The following morning, Bashir found himself with a serious case of déjà vu.

Of course, starting the day with autopsies wasn't unusual. Any bodies brought in were autopsied the following morning, and in a city this size, a handful of people dying on a given day wasn't that out of ordinary. The vast majority of them weren't even suspicious. Aneurysms. Embolisms. Myocardial infarctions. Accidents. Someone choking on a meatball at a wedding like that lady a few months back. That guy last spring who hadn't thought to make sure he wasn't allergic to bee stings before getting into beekeeping. Bashir had seen it all, and he started most of his days by opening up bodies to find out why they'd stopped ticking.

What was new, however, was two days in a row of staring at a body he'd been autopsying, completely at a loss to explain what had happened to the person.

Christopher James White, twenty-seven, had not drowned.

He had been in chlorinated water recently, but there was no sign of drowning. No water in the stomach or lungs. No hemorrhage in the mastoid cavity of the ear. No bloody froth in the mouth or trachea. It was still possible—drowning was a weird one that was sometimes determined by excluding everything else—but still, even this far into the autopsy, literally the only things that even remotely suggested drowning were the swim trunks and the smell of chlorine.

There were signs of bleeding between the endocardium and myocardium. Some fluid had also accumulated in the myocardial interstitium and in the brain. The stomach was mostly empty, and there was some damage to the esophagus that suggested the kid had been sick. Perhaps violently so.

He didn't drown, Bashir , he told himself. Let go of that hypothesis and figure out how he did die.

That was how he always did things. Even when he had a general idea of what probably killed the person, he scrupulously kept an open mind so he didn't miss anything. But this time, "drowning" hung in the back of his mind like a relentless earworm. Probably because it was so wildly incongruous with where and how the body was discovered. It was too weird to ignore.

Ignore it anyway. Stop trying to drown him.

Bashir stared at the body. At his notes. At the body again. "Hey, Tami? "

She looked up from some notes she'd been going over from a routine autopsy. "Yeah?"

"You're not doing anything messy right now, are you?"

She showed her hands, which weren't gloved. "Nope. Just paperwork."

"If you've got a minute, would you mind calling Detectives McKay and Villeray for me?"

Her neutral expression darkened. "Oh. Them."

Bashir fought the urge to roll his eyes. "They're investigating this case." He gestured at Christopher's body. "I need to talk to them."

This time, interest sparked in her eyes. "Ooh?" She picked up her phone. "Another weird one?"

"Yeah," he said, almost more to himself. "You could say that."

"Do you want them here in the morgue? Or just to call you?"

Bashir thought about it. An irrational part of him wanted to tell her they needed to come to the morgue. Specifically, that Villeray needed to come to the morgue.

Because I'm a fucking idiot, that's why. Jesus Christ.

He cleared his throat. "Just have one of them call me."

That was the safer option. The more professional one. The one that guaranteed Bashir wouldn't say or do something stupid, purely because he was lonely, and frustrated, and stressed the hell out from two weird deaths in less than twenty-four hours, and—

"Okay," Tami chirped. "Done."

"Thanks."

"No problem." She flashed him a quick smile before she got back to work. At least yesterday's bad mood was forgotten, and anyway, she was always good about making calls or sending texts or emails for him when he was up to his elbows in things no one wanted on a phone or keyboard. He did the same for her whenever the need arose. Just one of those things that came with working in a morgue.

And given Tami's attitude about Detective Villeray, he didn't need to check to see if she was clear about how he needed to call , not come into the morgue.

Yet, maybe twenty minutes after she'd called, no phones rang and no text tones went off. No, the detective himself strolled into the morgue, coffee cup in hand.

"Um, I believe I was clear that Dr. Ramin wanted you to call him," Tami said testily. "He's very busy."

"Uh." Villeray halted, eyes flicking between Tami—who was practically in his face now—and Bashir, who was still taking some tissue samples from the body.

"Let him in," Bashir said. "I need to talk to him."

Tami turned her irritated look on him, but then she rolled her eyes and got out of Villeray's way, stomping out of the morgue and out into the hall.

Villeray didn't move for a moment. He watched Tami leaving, eyes wide. Then he faced Bashir and took a tentative step closer. "Is, um… Is this a bad time?"

It was, but it also wasn't. Bashir should not have been pleased to see the detective, nor relieved he hadn't brought his partner.

Am I losing my mind? I'm losing my mind.

Sure he was blushing and with absolutely no way to explain why, he muffled a cough. "No. It's not a bad—you didn't have to come all the way down here, though. We could've done this on the phone."

Villeray came a little closer, his smile far more endearing than it had any right to be. "I was upstairs when she called, and Kurt was getting…" He trailed off, holding Bashir's gaze. Then he was the one blushing, an d he looked away. "Um. Anyhow. You wanted—" His gaze landed on the body Bashir had been working on, and he sobered. "Is this about…?" He gestured at Christopher.

Bashir nodded. "I… Look, I don't know if there's a full moon or what, but two incredibly weird and unnatural deaths in twenty-four hours is…" He shook his head. "Especially since I can't see how they're possibly related except for being weird."

Villeray eyed him. "Wait, you think this is related to the Upworth case?"

"I…" Bashir considered it. "I don't know. Maybe? There's literally nothing connecting them as far as I can see except the timing. But it's weird as hell to have two bizarre deaths in a row where it looked like the cause of death was one thing, but on closer inspection, it's something else."

The detective's eyebrows climbed his forehead. "So he didn't drown?"

"No."

Villeray pursed his lips, an expression that was also annoyingly attractive. "What do you think happened?"

"Poisoning." Bashir glanced at Christopher. "Without going into a ton of detail, the symptoms are consistent with yellow oleander ingestion."

"Oh. Shit." The detective's gaze slid toward the body again. "Were you able to find any? Like in his…" He gestured at his own stomach.

Bashir shook his head. "One of the symptoms is vomiting."

"Ah. Point taken. Is there any way to detect it in his system?"

"Yes, but it'll take time. I won't know for sure until the toxicology report comes back, so I wanted to loop you guys in so you can check his home for evidence. "

"Good to know." Villeray took out his phone. "You said it's… What was the toxin again?"

"Yellow oleander."

"Yellow oleander," the detective murmured to himself as he typed it in. "I'll have to look up what that looks like so—" He paused, then flicked his eyes toward Bashir, his expression full of earnestness and curiosity. "It's a flower, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Villeray nodded as he typed something else into his phone. "We've got CSI techs at his apartment right now. No idea yet if that's where he died, or if there was another secondary location, but it's a start."

"Any leads at all?"

Sighing, Villeray shook his head. "No. We tried to interview his parents, but they're a mess. Understandably so, you know? So they didn't give us much. Same with his girlfriend." He tucked his phone into his pocket. "I'll try talking to her again later. I think she's just in shock right now."

Once again, compassion from a cop shouldn't have been a novelty. It shouldn't have done these weird fluttery things to Bashir's insides.

He's an actor , Bashir.

So why can't I convince myself this is all an act?

He ignored the hell out of all that and shifted his weight. "I can't imagine." He paused, then added, "I don't know how you deal with the living."

"It's, um…" Villeray rolled his shoulders. "It's a lot tougher than I thought it would be. That's… I mean, when I joined the force, I worried how I'd react the first time I saw…" He nodded toward Christopher. "But the hard part is definitely the li ving."

"That's why I went into this line of work." Bashir almost slid his hands into his pockets, but he remembered at the last second that he was wearing less than clean gloves. Instead he rested a hand on the autopsy table beside his clipboard. "I had every intention of becoming a physician, but as soon as I started my rotations, I knew it wasn't for me."

Villeray's brow pinched. "Yeah?"

Bashir nodded. "The emergency department was what did me in. It was just…" He shuddered at the memory. "You'd treat one person who was in horrible pain or was terrified or had been failed by the system. Then you'd move to the next room and do it all over again. All night. Every shift. I just… I couldn't do it."

The detective studied him. "Wow. I don't think I could cope with that either. It's bad enough the families of victims, or the survivors, or…" He shook his head. "It's hard." Then he huffed a soft laugh. "But someone has to do it, right?"

"Someone, yeah. I think I'll stick with…" Bashir tilted his head toward Christopher.

"Well, you handle that part, and I'll deal with…" Villeray held up his phone.

Bashir actually managed a chuckle. "Deal."

That earned him a smile that was far too gorgeous for this situation. And for a cop. Because Bashir was not interested in cops and didn't date cops and definitely didn't notice or care when cops had sexy smiles or beautiful eyes. Damn it.

"Um. Anyway." Villeray schooled his expression. "I should catch up with Kurt and follow up on this. Thanks for the tip about the yellow… uh…"

"Yellow oleander. "

"Right. That." Another quick smile. "Hopefully I won't see you on a scene again any time soon."

"Yeah. Let's hope."

Villeray turned to go, and his parting words stuck with Bashir. Hopefully they wouldn't see each other on a scene for a long time. But… he was suddenly disappointed at the prospect of not seeing this detective—this cop , for fuck's sake—at all.

Bashir mouthed a curse. Then he called out, "Detective?"

Villeray turned in the doorway. "Hmm?" God, his eyes were so pretty.

"Is, um… I know you're not going to have a lot of spare time for a while, but…" Bashir swallowed, and he admittedly sounded a bit resigned as he asked, "Is that offer for dinner still open?"

Fuck. That smile. The way this man lit up the goddamned morgue . Bashir was doomed.

"Offer's still open." Villeray inclined his head. "Text me?"

He shouldn't. He absolutely fucking shouldn't. But…

"Yeah." Bashir smiled even as his brain rattled off all the reasons he shouldn't do this. "I'll text you."