Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [1]
A simple OD doesn’t usually warrant a homicide detective, but I had been driving to work and picked up the call. It was a block away, so I swung by. By the way the dead guy smelled, I was wishing I hadn’t. He was stale—stale skin, stale sweat. The tang of cooked heroin burned the back of my mouth as I inhaled.
“CSU is on the way, Detective!” Martinez called from his patrol car. I rolled my shoulders. Thank the gods. I was in a bad neighborhood with limited backup, and someone in the dark row houses that lined the street was probably itching to shoot me right this second.
“You want a cup of coffee, Detective? I got a thermos in the prowler.”
I shook my head at Martinez, who looked sweetly disappointed. He was baby-faced, stocky and short, but had blazing black eyes and big hands that could probably snap a suspect in half.
“I don’t drink the stuff.”
“Something a little stronger?” He pulled his blue satin jacket aside to show me an engraved silver flask. My mouth quirked.
“Your captain know you have that?”
“Don’t ask about the captain’s late-night lady visitors, he won’t ask about what you do on patrol.” Martinez grinned back at me. “Hey, don’t take this as a come-on or nothin’, but you look familiar. You didn’t just transfer in, did you?”
I sighed. It had to happen sooner or later. Savvy editors had slapped my headshot from the police academy on the front page of every major newspaper in Nocturne City. Above the fold. “I’ve been on medical leave for three months. Just got back today.”
“Three months…” Martinez’s gears ground for a second and then he blurted out, “Hex! You’re that cop that killed the DA!”
“Former DA,” I growled, “and it’s not like he didn’t try to kill me—and call a daemon—before I did something about it.”
“Holy shit,” said Martinez, slapping his leg. “We got all your clippings up in the locker room at the precinct house. There was a pool whether they’d let you back on the force or Section-8 you.”
I had an unpleasant flash of Dr. Merriman, my department-appointed psychiatrist, and beat it back. “Can I assume you bet against me?”
“Hell, no,” said Martinez. “You’re a tough bi—er, lady. I knew you’d be back.”
“Your confidence is touching,” I told him, and turned back to the body. Suddenly, the company of a dead junkie didn’t seem so bad. At least he couldn’t point and whisper.
I was going through the black messenger bag emblazoned with a fancy winged-foot logo and the legend MESSENGER OF THE GODS when the CSU van pulled up.
A black Lincoln with the seal of the city medical examiner parked behind the van, and Bart Kronen exited after a fight with his seat belt. He brought a canvas tote bag holding the tools of his trade and waved to me with his free hand.
“Good to have you back, Detective! What present have you got for me this evening?”
“Nothing exciting, I’m afraid,” I said as a CSU camera clicked and lit the scene to blinding daylight with a flash. “Just your standard street OD.” I gestured to the one lit row house a block away. “I figured he came out of that shooting gallery and dropped dead before he realized he’d gone past the point of no return.”
Kronen checked the man’s pulse perfunctorily and then wiggled the arm. It moved like a store mannequin, all stiff joints. “Rigor is fixed, skin is close to ambient temperature … dead less than six hours. Can’t be more specific, I’m afraid.”
I shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, unless someone jabbed him with that needle against his will.”
Kronen flashed his light over the man’s hands and fingernails. “No trace evidence that I can see.” He lifted the lids of the staring eyes and examined them. The dead man had had green eyes, a bright grassy color that was already fading.
The pain caught my gut, a physical sensation to go with