Seth Mays
work
Are you at least not sleeping at work?
Are you there?
Canttalk
You can still stay here.
I didn’t respond.
I wasn’t trying to be mean or petty, although I was questioning the wisdom of continuing to text Elliot because continuing to text Elliot after he’d left Richmond was how I ended up in the current mess I was in—both the emotional mess and the physical mess in which I was currently stuck.
I was wedged extremely awkwardly in a half-crumpled, mostly burnt, and absolutely rank vehicle trying to get close enough to the weeks-old corpse in the front in the hope ofdetermining literally anything at all. The medical examiner—a man named Douglas Borde who was apparently the third one they’d gone through since January after Hart had brought down the last permanent one, according to Detective Smith—had stuck his dirty-blond head in the door, pronounced the guy dead, and left.
I’d been taking pictures on my phone because we still didn’t have more than one crime scene camera, but then Smith had looked at me and asked if I could possibly be any more helpful than, and I quote, “That lazy jerkface.”
So I was trying to get my too-tall self through the trunk because the driver and passenger side doors were both fused shut, and my phone’s constant buzzing was the only reason I’d actually bothered to try to take it out. I’d missed two calls from Elliot, then his texts. After his last message, I put it on mute and shoved it back in my pocket.
Dead guy now. Living guy later.
I squirmed a little more, trying very hard to at least not hit the dead man as I squeezed through the narrow gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, wincing as multiple joints objected strongly to the positions I was forcing them into. At least I managed to preserve the integrity of the body, if not the seats or myself. And at least I had a bunny suit this time.
Regretting my current life choices on multiple fronts, I got myself close enough to the extremely deceased driver that I could try to get a swab for chemical or DNA analysis (although the latter seemed unlikely), and I wrinkled my nose at the stench of… something chemical. I pulled down my mask and took a deep sniff, grimacing. In the midst of roasted and rotting flesh, I could smell a thread of it, clear as day. Lighter fluid.
What I’d been told by Smith and the admittedly un-thorough ME was that this was supposed to be a freak accident. A car that had ruptured its gas tank when it hit the guardrail and exploded.Well, gas tanks do not smell like lighter fluid. Same family, yes, but trust my now-canid nose, they arenotthe same.
Both lighter fluid and gasoline had been on the very long list of chemical substances that I’d had to sniff from the crime scene at which Detective Maginot of Richmond Homicide had realized that my nose could be a useful forensic tool. I hadn’t planned on reenacting that particular—and particularly painful—escapade, but it had at least provided me with the clear knowledge that gasoline and lighter fluid didn’t smell even remotely the same to my shifter nose.
Given that it was deeply important that people know that this was now almost certainly a murder, I had to convey that information to someone outside the car while being stuckinsidethe car. The thought of extricating myself only to have to un-extricate myself again was unpleasant enough that I was going to be borderline rude. That maybe wasn’t the best way to behave on my first solo case—Roger and Lacy had taken the first call of the day, assuming it would also be the last so that I could settle in. But no. So it was my sixth day of gainful employment, and here I was, origami-ing myself into a burned-out car and being rude.
“Detective!” I’m a big guy. I can be loud when I need to.
The sound of approaching feet told me I’d been loud enough. Shortly after, Smith’s head poked through the open hatchback. “What do you need?” he asked me, seeming entirely unconcerned about my rudeness or the fact that I was doing an admirable impression of a human pretzel.
“Our friend here was set on fire,” I told him.
“How do we know this?” he asked me, sounding tired.
“Lighter fluid.”
“There’s a can up there?”
I looked around. “Not that I can see, but I can smell it.”
“Can you get the door open from in there?” he asked me.
I did not particularly want to cuddle up to the dead man as close as that was going to require me to do, but I squirmed through into the otherwise empty passenger seat and managed—with several kicks, lots of swearing, and a good, hard shove—to get the door open. Smith poked his head inside.
“I can’t smell anything.”
Of course not. Because my nose was better than his and every other human’s on the force.
I sighed. I was going to win the award for shortest-employed CSI tech in Shawano County. Six whole days.
Smith’s blue gaze was sharp. “I suppose there’s a reason for that, isn’t there?” he asked.
