24. Diem

24

Diem

I didn’t care that it was Sunday. I didn’t care that it was evening and the likelihood of running into other detectives was slim, and I really didn’t care that Aslan-fucking-Doyle had done us a fucking favor because now it meant I fucking owed him, and I hated owing anyone.

Tallus elbowed me in the ribs. “Stop growling.”

“I’m not.”

He chuckled as we rode the elevator to the fourth floor. “I can hear the bear in your chest from here. How do you want to play this?”

“Play what?”

“What impression should we give? What vibe are we emitting?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Guns, everyone thinks we’re dating. Do we run with that?”

“They what?” The growl in my tone intensified. How the fuck were rumors spreading about my personal life when I didn’t know what was happening in my personal life. Dating? Jesus Christ.

Tallus bumped my arm. “Relax. If it helps, I’ve stubbornly denied all claims on you so far, but…” He heaved a dramatic sigh. “It’s a matter of time before someone else scoops me up, D. I’m a pretty young thing in a bustling city of single men who all want a piece. Are you going to let that happen?”

Over my fucking dead body. Because it would be Memphis. I knew it would be Memphis, and I’d rather slit my fucking throat than lose Tallus to that flake. I breathed deep through my nose, nostrils flaring.

No thanks to whatever had happened on my couch twenty-four hours ago, I was in a state unlike any other. Tallus had me inside out and backward. I didn’t know up from down. I didn’t know left from right. I was tumbling out of control and hated not being in control. My whole body was hot and alive. My temper vibrated under my skin, scarcely contained. I didn’t want to be an asshole. I didn’t want to yell or say anything wrong, but I was having trouble thinking straight.

The heat of Tallus’s gaze warmed the side of my face, but I refused to meet his eyes. I had an uneasy feeling he could read my mind. Ever since the previous night… No. Ever since I’d spilled my guts about the past and tried to warn Tallus off… No. It went further back. I'd been floundering ever since he’d kissed me that first time.

“Nothing? No comment, cuddle bear?”

I grunted noncommittally. We weren’t dating. I wasn’t equipped to date anyone.

Even if I wanted to.

Tallus sighed again. “Damn. It’s Sunday, September first, you know.”

I racked my brain for the meaning behind the date but came up with nothing. “So?”

“The end of the month has come and gone.”

“And?”

“And I’m a loser, Guns. L-O-S-E-R. Loser. Memphis will rub it in my face so hard when he decides to talk to me again.”

My spine stiffened at the mention of Memphis, but I counted backward from ten and stayed quiet.

Our conversation ended abruptly when the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Fine with me since I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, and if Memphis was at its core, I didn’t want to know. For all Tallus got on my ass about not being able to hold a conversation, he could be annoyingly cryptic at times, and I was not a skilled mind reader.

We were greeted by homicide’s mostly empty bullpen. Tallus exited the elevator bold, beautiful, and confident as always. Like he deserved to take up space in the world. I followed, lumbering behind because I didn’t.

The day got progressively worse when I realized Detective Doyle was not alone. He was joined at a far desk by his husband, MPU detective Quaid Valor, and Tallus’s cousin, Costa Ruiz. Why did we need an audience? Why the fucking hoopla? All we needed to do was view a few autopsy reports. It was a wonder they hadn’t invited the whole goddamn board of directors or the mayor.

“No one told me the circus was in town,” I mumbled before we were upon them.

“Be nice,” Tallus said. “Let me do the talking.”

I grunted and hung back as Tallus stepped up to the plate. He was a spark of life, glowing in the dimly lit room.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he cooed, hamming it up too much.

Doyle, whose ass had been planted against the desk in a relaxed lean, stood and straightened, offering Tallus a congenial tip of the head and smile.

Valor, who’d been chatting with Ruiz, acknowledged us as well.

It was Ruiz who spoke. “Double trouble has arrived. How’re you doing, Krause?”

I grunted and offered a nod, indicating all was fine.

Doyle eyed me before speaking to Tallus. “You should be glad I’m on friendly terms with Dr. Thornlow. Getting anyone to do anything on a Sunday is usually impossible, but she’s a workaholic, so I was lucky enough to catch her at the office.”

“I appreciate your help. I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble.”

“Meh, I get what I want when I want it. But you owe me.”

And there were the words I was waiting for. Fucking great.

Tallus, unfazed as always, offered Doyle a coy smile, tsk ing. “Careful. You’ll upset your husband again. In my world, returning favors usually involves a severe lack of clothing.”

Doyle snorted. “Is that so? I’m not worried about Quaid. You about decimated all feelings of jealousy with your little observation about my age. Thank you very much. I have not lived it down.”

Tallus chuckled. I had no clue what they were talking about, but if it meant we weren’t indebted to Doyle, I didn’t care. And what the fuck was Tallus talking about? Lack of clothing? Who did he owe because someone was going to die.

“So where are we doing this?” Tallus asked.

Doyle waved a hand toward a hallway. “I’ve got you set up in Interview Room Three. It’s all yours. You get one hour of my Sunday, and we’re taking off.” Doyle shifted his attention to me. He stood more rigid, his features less friendly, his tone sharper. “I can’t leave you unsupervised.”

My nostrils flared. “Is that why you brought backup?”

Doyle chuckled and glanced at Valor and Ruiz. “Backup? For real? Do you mean the tattooed freak and grumpy bear? Not a chance. If I wanted backup, I’d have brought Torin… or Frawley.”

The pair behind him wore matching scowls. Valor crossed his arms as Ruiz snapped, “Hey. I’m far better backup than your pint-sized partner.”

Undeterred by their mutual animosity, Doyle continued, “You see that bruise?” He gestured to his husband’s left cheek. “He got that sparring with his five-foot-nothing, hundred-and-ten-pound partner. It’s been a year, a year , and he still hasn’t learned to dodge the left hook.”

“It’s the combination that precedes it that messes me up,” Valor snapped, sneering at his husband.

“Which is the same combination every single time.”

“It is not, and how would you know? You aren’t there every single time .”

“Frawley tells me.”

“I would appreciate it if you’d stop talking to my partner. She’s a pest and a liar.”

“She’s a beast.”

If I was supposed to be amused by their banter, I wasn’t, and Doyle soon noticed. “Look. It’s not personal, Krause. I’m not putting my ass on the line. That’s all. If you want to view the files, you’ll do it with an audience. You know the rules.”

“Fine.” Doyle might claim he was adhering to certain regulations, but what regulations was unclear. Was he concerned about the security of the files? Technically, Tallus and I had no legitimate reason to gain access to the autopsies, but if we did, a civilian was not permitted to view those types of documents alone unless they were family, and even then, there were hoops to jump through.

Or was he worried because I wasn’t supposed to be unsupervised in this part of the building? I hadn’t left the department on good terms. In fact, I was a wrecking ball the day I quit my job, leaving a literal path of destruction in my wake. The department probably could have slapped me with a fine for the amount of property damage I’d left behind, but they hadn’t. The papers I’d been made to sign indicated that apart from the public areas of headquarters, I was not to go anywhere unsupervised.

Or maybe Doyle didn’t care about those rules, and his curiosity got the better of him. Maybe the only reason he planned to sit in was because he wanted to know what we were up to.

Either way, we followed him down the hall to Interview Room Three. I don’t know why I expected a long row of file folders on display or that we’d have to pick through a mountain of legal forms, but I was wrong. The pathology department had gone paperless a few years ago, which was why it was easier for Kelly to gain access to reports when I needed them. It also meant everything was digital.

On the long white table in the middle of the austere room sat a laptop. In front of it, two plastic chairs had been arranged. The one-way mirror was an affront, and I had the distinct feeling Valor and Ruiz were on the other side.

Doyle woke up the computer, logged into his account, and motioned for us to have a seat. “All yours.”

He hovered nearby, leaning against the wall and taking out his phone as a feigned distraction.

I had a hunch Doyle and his posse had gone through the reports before we’d arrived, wondering, no doubt, what it was about them that interested us so much. I wish I fucking knew.

Tallus had brought a yellow legal pad to take notes. He let me have the chair in front of the machine so I could go through the reports. We’d agreed before leaving the office that since I had more knowledge of how to read these types of documents, I would be the one to evaluate them and pick out the important information. If I came across anything I didn’t understand, Tallus was in charge of performing searches on his phone or writing it down so we could look it up later.

I got situated and familiarized myself with what was on the screen, knowing Doyle’s attention was on me the whole time, ensuring I didn’t take advantage of his department access to do something I shouldn’t.

Eleven virtual folders filled the screen. Eleven names. I started with the familiar ones and clicked Ezra Berlusconi first. According to Ezra’s mother, he’d died of diphenhydramine poisoning. Since I wasn’t a doctor and struggled to speak the language, I read through his chart slowly from beginning to end, looking for keywords and focusing on the summaries in each section. The toxicology screen interested me the most, but the rest wasn’t dismissible.

Technically, according to the report, Ezra had died of cardiac arrest, and the tox screen was… toxic . Not only did Ezra have high levels of diphenhydramine in his system, but the lab results had found increased levels of alcohol and codeine along with moderate to high levels of heroin, marijuana, opioids, and phencyclidine, also known as PCP or angel dust, a drug commonly known to cause hallucinations. The kid had been a long way from recovery. If he’d been clean any length of time, they wouldn’t have shown up except maybe in a hair follicle analysis, but these results were from a blood test.

The doctor’s summary at the end of the report indicated that Ezra’s heart showed a narrowing of the blood vessels commonly seen in heavy opioid users. It was believed the cause of death was due in part to Ezra’s long-term dependency on illegal drugs. Although his opioid levels were not in the danger zone at the time of his death, with the compromised presentation of the heart and elevated levels of diphenhydramine, the doctor hypothesized that Ezra went into cardiac arrest due to a weakened system.

With heavy drug users, sometimes, you were nothing more than a ticking time bomb. Ezra’s file proved nothing.

Regardless, I had Tallus note down all the excess drugs found in Ezra’s system and make notes about his heart condition.

Next, I looked at Peggy Andrews, the type one diabetic who supposedly died from complications of her uncontrolled disease. Peggy’s toxicology report showed a veritable array of prescription drugs, a list that put Ezra’s to shame. Peggy took medication for her heart, kidneys, blood pressure, neuropathy pain, insomnia, bowel irritability, and more. I had to have Tallus look up more than a few drug names since I didn’t recognize them.

“No illegal substances?” Tallus asked, leaning in to read the screen.

He was close enough that I smelled his cologne and the underlying hints of his natural essence—a scent I was becoming intimately familiar with. It stirred my blood and made me squirm.

“No,” I said, shifting away a few inches so I could think straight, “and nothing in a high or toxic range. All her levels were considered to be normal.”

“Shit. Do they list herbal stuff on these things?”

It didn’t look like it, but it didn’t mean Peggy didn’t take them. In the end, Peggy’s official cause of death also had to do with her heart giving up. Again, not a red flag, according to the pathologist. Nothing more than the unfortunate result of poorly managed diabetes.

What if this was all a joke? What if there was no connection between these people? What if seeing Madame Rowena was nothing more than a coincidence? Fuck knows mind control didn’t kill them. Life killed them like it would each and every one of us in time.

“D, next one.”

We moved on.

Amber’s file was exactly as Kelly had reported. A few prescription drugs were found in her system, those used for migraine control and an elevated level of antihistamine or diphenhydramine as it was written. Like Ezra, it was not in a toxic range, and the pathologist didn’t so much as mention it in her summary. It was not what killed her. Amber had jumped off a balcony, and the pathologist concluded nothing more than severe head trauma as the cause of death.

“We’re wasting our time.”

“We’re not. Keep going.”

Allan was next. He, too, had moderate levels of prescription drugs in his system, all for managing arthritis. Anti-inflammatories and analgesics. But there was more, including elevated levels of marijuana, alcohol, and… fentanyl?

Tallus stabbed a finger on the screen. “That’s an opioid, right?”

“Yeah.” A strong one commonly bought on the street.

“Do you remember if Winifred mentioned Allan being prescribed opioids for pain?”

“I can guaran-fucking-tee it wasn’t prescribed. Not for arthritis.”

“So he bought it illegally.”

“More than likely.”

“Could it explain his odd behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Is it mentioned in his cause of death?”

I skimmed to the bottom of the report. “No.”

Allan, too, had taken his own life, and his cause of death was written up as exsanguination. If drugs had played a part, which was likely, it wasn’t noted. His levels of fentanyl were elevated but not in the danger zone.

Tallus wrote it down.

“This is stupid.”

“It’s not.”

“They aren’t connected to…” I glanced at Doyle, who was pretending not to pay attention. “To what we thought.”

“They are, we just don’t know how yet.”

I growled under my breath. “Didn’t I give you one week to play investigator? Today is one week.”

“Next one, Guns.”

Grumbling, I opened the next virtual folder.

On it went.

Every other person on our list was taking prescription drugs of one kind or another due to ailments we already knew about. Our other suicides were on antidepressants, so their deaths also made sense. A handful had dabbled with illegal drugs, mostly marijuana, but a few had low levels of PCP, like Ezra. Two more people had low levels of opioids in their system—not fentanyl, but the more commonly prescribed hydrocodone.

Kennedy, a woman in her late twenties, was the only other person who was listed as a victim of overdose. Her drug of choice had been oxycodone. The rest of our subjects had either succumbed to suicide or unexplained heart failure. The pathologist’s summaries of the unexplained cases presented hypotheses much like Ezra’s. Weakened systems due to prolonged use of regulated drugs used in tandem with unregulated drugs or rare adverse side effects from the combination of several regulated drugs.

Considering the chronic health conditions we were looking at, opioids were something that could have been prescribed for pain, but they also could have been bought off the street. Opioids also had a high rate of abuse, so doctors were sketchy about their prolonged use and risks of addiction. Prescription opioids were usually closely monitored.

No one, apart from Ezra and Kennedy, had toxic levels of anything in their system. No one, apart from Ezra and Kennedy, had died from an overdose. I didn’t expect to waltz in and contradict a trained professional, but I had been hoping we would see something out of the ordinary. Something we could point a finger at that would link these people’s deaths.

After we’d reviewed the final autopsy, I sat back, irritated.

“We’re missing something,” Tallus whispered, low enough that Doyle wouldn’t hear. “I’m not convinced eleven of Rowena and Hilty’s patients randomly died of perfectly normal and explainable causes.”

But what else did we have?

Nothing.

I thought of the handwritten sticky notes on each profile. The words vulnerable, suggestible , and impressionable were written in flowing cursive as though they, too, were case file summaries.

People with chronic pain.

People seeking outside help because the pain had become unmanageable, and they were desperate for relief.

I glanced at the virtual files lined up on the screen. Eleven patients. Dead.

People who all took medication on a regular basis. One failing heart due to drug complications I could understand, but of the eleven people highlighted, only the suicides and Kennedy died for another reason. Coincidence?

Fuck if I knew.

“Are you two finished?” Doyle asked, cutting into my musing.

Frustrated, I wanted to slam the laptop closed and storm out of the building. We’d hit another brick wall. Maybe I was letting my imagination get away from me. Maybe I’d been spending too much time listening to Tallus spin theories. We weren’t Sherlock and Watson. We were fucking Shaggy and Scooby, and I feared I was the mangy dog, loyally following his brain-dead master all for the chance of a Scooby Snack.

I glanced at the man in question. Tallus was deep in thought, staring at the filled notepad, but I didn’t think he was seeing it. He had a faraway look in his eyes, but it was nowhere close to the stoner cartoon’s airhead expression. Tallus was smarter than Shaggy. Tallus’s gears were spinning.

“Are we done?” I asked. I’d given him the figurative badge and made him lead on this convoluted case, so I waited for instructions.

“No. Hang on.” Tallus took out his phone and made a call. When whoever it was answered, he identified himself and asked, “Did you find anything out?” A pause. A soft chuckle. “I appreciate it.” Another pause. “Really?” Tallus sat straighter. “Uh-huh… Oh wow.” He scribbled a few notes beside Peggy’s name. “Yeah… Yeah, that’s perfect. It’s all I needed.” Another chuckle. “Thanks for checking.”

He hung up and stared at what he had written for a long time. It was too illegible for me to read.

Tallus made a second phone call, similar to the first.

When Doyle cleared his throat, I wanted to tell him to chill the fuck out, but I held my tongue.

“Tallus,” I mumbled, urging him along.

He held up a finger as he finished the second call.

More notes landed on the page, this time beside Amber’s name. He touched several words on the notepad, sliding his finger around, pausing here and there before he swung to face me. “I have a thought.”

I held his gaze, waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Something sparkled in his hazel eyes. Mischief. Intent. Could the man be any sexier? For a moment, I tumbled back in time.

To the couch.

To his weight on my lap.

To his mouth, tongue, and sweet moans as he rocked his hips, feeding his cock into my hand.

To the way it glided next to mine.

To…

“I know what you’re thinking.”

I shook away the images. “What?”

“It’s written all over your face.” Tallus winked, adjusted his glasses, and faced Doyle. “No golden ticket yet, old man.”

Doyle raised a brow. “Can I ask what you two are chasing?”

“No,” Tallus and I both said at the same time.

“But I’ll call you if I’m right.” Tallus pushed away from the table and brushed a hand over my shoulder. “Come on, Guns.”

“Right about what?” Doyle asked, taking the words out of my mouth.

But Tallus didn’t elaborate. He thanked the detective with a Tallus-esque smirk and hurried me out the door.