Blood Red

Nancy shook her head. “Shut the fuck up, Bob.” Nancy was a short woman with big hair. He’d seen her wear it down once and it ran almost to her knees. When she was off duty, there was probably no one he’d ever met who was sweeter, but when she was working, she could out-swear a sailor and out-glare the sun. One hundred percent lean, mean law machine. There had been a few occasions when they’d almost gone at it like bunnies, and both of them still wanted to, but they had enough common sense not to mix work and pleasure that way. Besides, her husband liked to bench-press Mack trucks to stay in shape and Boyd wasn’t really sure he was willing to get himself torn into itsy bitsy pieces and buried alive just yet.

“What? I didn’t say we would take the case from them, I’m just saying we could.” Boyd didn’t take any offense and neither did Danny. Bob was teasing and they all knew it. It wasn’t like he didn’t have enough cases on his plate, and a couple of years back, Boyd had been partnered with him. That was back when the department had tried to actually have separate detectives for Vice. They gave up on that in a hurry. The department was well-off, but not filthy stinking rich. They were cops, after all, and it was much more important to have the extra money they could have used for detectives doing something important, like planting flowers on all the curbs in the springtime. Not that Boyd was bitter about it or anything. Much.

Boyd lit his own cigar, standing a long way off from the body when he did it. No one had touched the body since it had been found the night before by a couple of high school kids who wanted to get frisky. They were good kids; they were smart enough not to touch anything. He could see the spot where they’d had their blanket laid out a good thirty yards away from the actual crime scene.

Veronica Miller was not looking her prettiest. A couple of days in the woods will do that to a corpse. The crows had been picking at her face and chest; they’d removed her eyes and most of her nose. Not even Danny could look at what remained and think anything sexual. That was saying something, as Danny could probably look at his own grandmother and wonder if she was a good lay. No, that wasn’t really fair. Someone else’s grandmother, maybe, but he wasn’t a complete pig.

“Hey, Danny Boy!”

“Yeah, Richie?”

“You ever wonder if your grandmother was good in the sack?”

“Of course. I asked my grandfather about it.”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“He said your grandmother was better.”

“Fuck you.”

“Are you two ever serious?” Nancy was being all professional again. Well, mostly, she had a little laugh when she asked.

He looked her way and smiled past the plume of smoke from his stogie. Damn, she was a good-looking woman.

“Of course, hon. I’m serious about this case. Veronica Miller needs to be our little secret.”

“Why, Rich?”

“’Cause we think maybe a cop did this.”

“No shit?” Bob looked over at the corpse again and got a little pastier. Boyd wondered exactly which bright boy at the top had chosen to make him a homicide detective. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the job, because he could. It was that he hated the sight of blood. Okay, so most of the blood here was dried up and flaking, but still.

“Want to tell us which one?”

“Well, neither of you.”

Nancy nodded her head. “So let’s get the equipment and get this done.”

“We owe you, guys. Dinner’s on us tonight.”

Nancy looked at him long and hard, and he knew she was thinking the same thing that he was: no drinking tonight or things could get dangerous and her husband could find reasons to twist Boyd into a pretzel.

“By the book, guys. I want to make sure we find everything, okay? If we have a crooked cop, I want him going down hard.”

“You looking for a good fuck, Rich?” That was Nancy, and hearing her talk like that made him swear off drinking a second time.

“Only every day of his life, Nancy.”

“Shut the fuck up, Danny.”

They got to work. They were very meticulous and found the condom Brian Freemont had dropped when he was murdering Veronica Miller.

II

Brian woke up in a decent mood. He had the day off again, and planned on using it to just relax. That was the problem here. He needed to relax in a big way.

If he didn’t calm his ass down and soon, he was going to screw up.

His mood darkened when he realized Angie wasn’t there. For a minute he’d let himself forget that she was gone.

He missed her, even missed her being a bloated, irritable, screaming bitch.

Mostly though, he missed seeing her face in the morning.

Damnedest thing about it was he was a little surprised by how much he missed her.

“Get over it. She’s gone. Move on with your life.”

The problem was that as much as he loved her, he knew that he couldn’t stop chasing the college girls. It was heady stuff when they were begging him and thinking of ways to get out of their troubles. Even thinking about it was getting him in the mood to go out and do it again.

But he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t working. That was a problem.