“Dad.” My bedroom door opens to Cereus glaring at me. “I’ve been calling you. Geez, Donovan is downstairs.”
It tickles me that she calls all my friends by their last name like we do at the precinct. She picked it up from all the family barbecues she’s had to attend over the years, and just like her Daddy, she hates them. I still have little patience for most people, and when the neighbor stops me to chat when I’m collecting my paper, I have visions flash in my head of me sneaking into his house and shooting him in his sleep. I didn’t say I wasn’t still me. I still have some dark thoughts I just don’t let them control me. Everyone fantasizes about killing the annoying neighbor, or their boss. It’s normal, well more normal than Ryan’s thoughts.
“Dad! Seriously, what’s wrong with you lately?”
Shit, I zoned out again. “Sorry, baby girl. I’m coming now.”
I hear voices coming from the kitchen as I descend the stairs, and I’m glad Mel’s home today. I want to rectify things with us. Starting by making love to her all day, fucking her all night and then us both falling asleep in our bed.
Her laugh travels through me and settles my soul. “What’s so funny?” I ask.
All eyes turn to me. My wife’s smile is still on her face, and Cereus looks guiltily at her mother over the rim of a mug of coffee. Donovan stands from the stool he was sitting on and smiles, but his posture is stiff.
“Mom keeps being poked.” I raise an eyebrow and stare at my daughter who motions poking at her Mom. I look to Mel for an explanation and she waves me off. “He’s a hottie, too,” Cereus continues and now I’m more interested.
“Cereus, stop.” Mel laughs, slapping our daughter on the shoulder.
“We need to talk,” Donovan says, but I’m far too curious about what Cereus is referring too. I hold my hand up and ask, “Elaborate please?”
“Facebook.” Mel shakes her head and waves her hand away in a nonchalant gesture.
“He looks familiar too,” Cereus says, and I know she’s trying to get a rise out of me. Mel is throwing shut up eyes at her.
“Who’s poking you, Mel?” Words I never thought I’d say.
“Your school pictures,” Cereus gloats, holding up her finger like this revelation only just came to her. I pin Melody with a stare. She puts her mug down and strides towards me, wrapping her arms around me and then pecking my cheek. “It’s just Zane.”
She throws it out like it’s nothing. Fucking Zane the cocksucker.
“Isn’t he married to some starlet and living the high life as a football star?” I ask. Donovan squints at me, detecting the hint of hostility in my voice.
“No, he blew out his knee last year of college. He did marry the starlet, though, and is now in politics. I told you all this,” Mel says.
“Why is he trying to poke you? You lost contact years ago,” I growl and she bites her lip to stop from laughing at me.
“I actually came here with a real issue, Cap, not to watch you getting all bent out of shape over some good-looking guy poking your wife on Facebook.”
I glare at Donovan. “I’ll poke him with the bullet end of my gun, and I’m not bent out of shape over him. He was some old school boyfriend. She’s my wife.” I grab her and pull her into me.
“He’s an old boyfriend?” Donovan whistles.
“I have a bigger dick, now get out my house if all you’re going to do is piss in my coffee.”
He holds his hands up and Cereus scrunches her nose up from across the room “I did not need to hear that, Dad. Gross.”
Donovan waits for Mel to leave to take Cereus to school before he tells me why he came over.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“There was a death at Grace Manor last night.”
I jump from my chair, grabbing his arms without thought. “What? A death? Who?”
He puts his hands on my shoulders to ease me back. I let go and shake my head.
“Calm down. It was a girl, believed to be suicide, and Blake, it more than likely is. This girl was ill and very damaged. This wasn’t her first attempt.”
“Autopsy?”
“I’m having it rushed through. We will know soon enough.”
“I need to go see the coroner.” I grab my keys and make it out the front door before Donovan grabs me. “You need to calm down. You can’t go acting all crazy every time something happens.”
“I’m not acting fucking crazy,” I bark.
He looks down at my feet and back up to my face. “You have no shoes on.”
Fuck.
JOHN ROSE, THE MEDICAL EXAMINER on duty, waves me in after I knock for the third time.
“You lack patience, Mr. Braxton, and it causes high blood pressure. It will be you on this slab if you don’t control yourself.”
“Are you threatening me, John? You’ve been trying to get me naked and laid out for you for years now.”
He chuckles and writes something on a clipboard. “Are you here for the gunshot victim or the Cinderella suicide?”
“Cinderella?” He usually only nicknames a Jane Doe.
John walks over to a body covered in a green medical sheet. Pulling it down, the pale frame of a young girl laid bare fills my vision. Her blonde hair is brushed back; she looks so young.
“She looks like a Cinderella,” John says.
“How old is she?”
I didn’t ask Donovan any details on the girl. I was too eager to get here and learn what happened, to find out if Ryan had anything to do with it.
“She’s twenty-four but undernourished. She’s bulimic,” John, says, opening her mouth and pointing his finger to her back teeth, which are disintegrating, and some are missing. He holds her hand up and points to her fingernails. “She’s covered in self-inflicted wounds, and all evidence suggests she took a razor and sliced her wrist sideways, and when there wasn’t enough blood for her liking, probably due to old scar tissue, she went upwards.”
“Why not both wrists? Isn’t that usually a suicide’s MO?”
He tuts at me and walks around the table to lift her other arm, showing me the cut. “Would you be able to use this arm with a wound like that?” he asks with a cocky chin jerk.
“So no foul play?”
I have to know. He places her hand back down. “The cause of death is without doubt this injury. I’m having her stomach contents tested. Her bloods came back just before you arrived and they’re all clear.”
“She was submerged in water when they found her which would wash any evidence away if there was someone else there,” Donovan says.
“There’s no sign of a struggle, and from the report, no sign of anyone else being there.”
“What about sexually?”
“With her being in the water for quite some time, we couldn’t tell if she had been sexually assaulted due to water causing the soft tissue to swell, but there was no semen found inside her.”
“Could the bath water have washed that away?” I ask.
“Not always. When a male ejaculates the semen shoots upwards and clings to the vaginal wall. Traces can still be found some of the time within a twenty-four hour period.”
“But not all of the time?”
“Mr. Braxton, there are no signs of foul play. She was just a sick girl who didn’t get the help she needed.”
I don’t know how I feel. Relief that Ryan didn’t kill her and revert back to his nature, or pissed that I can’t arrest him and put him back where he belongs. I want to get Dr. Leighton’s thoughts about the death and try to Gauge if he is also suspicious.
“Thanks John,” Donovan tells him.
“You owe me, Donovan.”
I know Donovan pulled in a favor to get her autopsy done straight away, and I’m grateful. He’s become a good friend over the years. He was my superior a long time ago but now he works under me. The thing about Donovan is he is a good detective and that’s all that matters to him. He isn’t one for ego trips and he offered his friendship with no strings. That wasn’t something I thought I would ever have or need, but it’s not until you stop numbing the pain and hate that you realize how lonely you’ve been.
“Where now?”
“I want to go see Ryan’s shrink.”