Love Me Dead Read online

  “And yet, I’m standing right here in New York City, wearing an FBI badge.”

  “Are you here to work the case?” he asks.

  “No, I’m here to bring you lunch.” I reach in my field bag and hand him a package of cheese crackers that are about a year old. “I heard it had been a long night.”

  “Smartass,” he grumbles, staring down at the crumbled mess in his hand. “I see your attitude hasn’t changed.”

  “You mean the one I learned from all you old-timers who thought I was too young to profile?”

  “You were a kid when you started out. You still are.”

  I don’t bother to tell him that twenty-eight is not a kid, or that my brother is North Hamptons’ police chief, a job he inherited from my father, who is now the mayor. I stopped justifying my skills versus my age a long damn time ago, but my silence doesn’t matter. Carl is still talking.

  “Take it from me,” he adds. “Opt out of this one. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

  In other words, a little girl like me just can’t play with the big boys. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You haven’t even been up there yet.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “I should, in fact, be up there right now, but you know why I’m not?” I don’t wait for a reply. “I’m not up there now because I’m standing here wondering what idiot thought this spot where we’re standing isn’t part of the crime scene? Which idiot is that, Carl?”

  He blanched. “I—the detective in charge—”

  “Before you finish your sentence, there’s a person who lost their life tonight. If that was your mother, father, daughter, son, or wife would you want muddy boots stomping past this door?”

  His jaw clenches. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Get a tarp here ASAP and set it up as wide as possible. We need the teams to be able to cover up and clean up before and after they leave the building.”

  “Got it. Handling it.”

  “Is Roger here yet?”

  “Roger Griffin?” he asks. “I haven’t heard any mention to him showing up. I thought that’s why they called you.”

  He’s wrong. Roger doesn’t give up a crime scene. “Who exactly is in charge of this scene?”

  “Lori Williams.”

  “Wrong answer,” I say. “I am.” I open the bag I have hanging at my hip and pull out a pair of booties, stepping close to the door to slip them on my wet feet.

  Another cop, a big burly guy with brown hair, tries to enter the building. “Hey!” I snap. “Don’t even think about walking in that door without covering up.”

  He glares at me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “The girl who will bitch slap you, and it only took one meeting, if you don’t do what the fuck I told you.” I shove my hand into a glove and then repeat.

  “That’s Lilah Love, Reggie,” Carl chimes in. “She’s FBI and a profiler here to help. She’s also a bitch. I’d take her seriously if I were you.”

  I give Reggie a condescending smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t turn you in to your boss. I’m not that big of a bitch. I’ll just tell the family of the victim that we’re sorry that the evidence was destroyed, but Reggie hates covering up, and we don’t like to make Reggie uncomfortable.”

  “Bitch,” Reggie bites out.

  “Now you get the idea,” I say, pleased that he’s not the slow learner I’d suspected. I eye Carl. “What floor?” I ask.

  “Ten,” Carl replies.

  I shrug out of my raincoat and drop it next to Carl because, unlike the rest of these assholes, I don’t plan on contaminating the evidence with a dripping wet jacket. I enter the building, stepping into a small foyer with mailboxes to the left. Taking nothing for granted, considering the fuck show this has proven to be, I scan the area, eyeing the ground, and even looking up toward the ceiling. I find nothing of interest, but I repeat my scan because what we miss the first time, we might not miss the second.

  I start the walk up the narrow stairwell, which must be a bitch to travel after a big meal or a bunch of booze. For a big man, it would require skill to navigate quietly, a detail that I tuck in the back of my mind for later review. Even without overindulgence, for someone who doesn’t run five miles a day, much of it in the Hamptons on the sandy beach, like myself, this walk would be tough. That says something about the person who maneuvered the steps and disappeared without notice. Unless they were noticed. Maybe they belong here. Maybe they visit regularly. Maybe they’re a delivery person.

  Apparently ten is the top level, and that was too simple a description for Carl. I pause at the top of the steps and canvas the roughly seven-by-four foyer, another tight spot, in this case, a tight spot that would be hard to escape for a woman being overpowered. There’s nothing here that presents like obvious evidence, just a few bagged jumpsuits waiting to be used, which tells me the scene is bloody. That’s one of my dirty secrets. Despite my comfort level with dead bodies, I don’t like blood, at least not in excess. Blood is actually fine. A bucket of blood, not so much. Blood to the ankles, which I’ve experienced, definitely not. I freak the fuck out. It’s a weakness that I don’t share with anyone, and yet, today, I’m asked for, by name, and the scene is bloody. Some might call that a coincidence, but as Roger taught me years ago and has always proven true, there is no such thing as coincidence. The fucked up part of this equation is that Roger knows exactly how I feel about blood. He was with me the first time I freaked out, the only time anyone of professional consequence has ever seen me freak out. Okay my ex back in LA might have seen a little bitty incident, too, but that was literally ankle deep blood, and he wasn’t a superior of professional consequence.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Setting aside my personal hate for blood and the fact that I now estimate the amount beyond that apartment door to be excessive, I have questions, starting with: where the hell is the person who’s supposed to be making sure we wear those bagged jumpsuits laying on the ground? If they’re counting on humans being smart, they’re stupid, which proves my point: someone should be on guard in front of the door, managing the integrity of the crime scene.

  Oh, wait. There is no integrity to this crime scene, which is so poorly managed that I wish I was a drinker. I’d drink myself into throwing up and then check into recovery, where I’d survive a few days before my irritation at the people who couldn’t control their urges would then cause me to beat some asses. Which would be highly hypocritical of me since I have a few urges I can’t seem to control either, like killing people and ending up naked with Kane fucking Mendez. A thought triggered by the ringing of my phone in my pocket that is most assuredly Kane fucking Mendez.

  I ignore the call simply because I don’t want to ignore the call. Fuck you, Kane Mendez, for making me want to talk to you. Just because you buried a body for me doesn’t mean you get to control me.

  I grab one of the suits and dump my field bag on the floor. Reggie appears at the top of the stairs, hovering there. I have a bad history with the name Reggie. The body Kane buried for me bore a tattoo done by a guy who worked for a tattoo parlor owned by another Reggie. Therefore, if your name is Reggie that immediately puts you on the wrong foot with me. I shove my arms into my suit. He’s still watching me. “Are you role playing for some practice session at the police academy and pretending to be a Peeping Tom or is creepy just your thing?”

  “You aren’t the detective in charge,” he snaps.

  “Did you know,” I begin, zipping up my orange suit and wondering why cleanliness means looking like an inmate in this city, “that I was the girl most likely to in high school?”

  “Most likely to what?” he asks, taking my bait, his thin lips thinning even more when they’re already pencil drawings on his face. “Get naked?”

  “Kill someone,” I say, grabbing my field bag and sliding it over my head and across my chest, so I don’t have to try to hold onto the damn thing when my feet and stomach are
swimming in blood. “You wouldn’t be my first,” I add. “Put on a pretty orange suit or don’t come into the apartment.” I offer him my back and reach for the door.

  “You aren’t the detective in charge,” he bites out, repeating himself, his limited vocabulary rather irritating, as is his need to get the last word.

  That said, I’ve found that men who need the last word with a woman typically have deep-rooted confidence issues, in essence, little man complex. And since Reggie isn’t little anywhere that I can obviously identify, I can only assume his lips aren’t the only things pencil thin. I feel sorry enough for him to let him think he’s won: I give him the last word.

  I open the door and inhale the scent of iron, that distinctive promise of blood, lots of blood, but I don’t find it. The scent is there, but the room before me is a simple, clean living space with an untarnished, basic cream-colored couch, and two pastel blue side chairs. Of the not one, but four, jumpsuit-clad forensic specialists working the tiny space and beyond in an open concept dining room and kitchen, not one of them so much as looks up to greet me. That’s okay. I don’t need to be greeted. I’m here for the victim and no one else. This is a crime scene, and while this space might be missing the body that is here somewhere, it could hold clues. I stand there, taking in every detail, eyeing the painting of an ocean on the wall and nothing more. There are no photos of people. No trinkets. No memories. This person is as fucked up as me. That means he or she doesn’t let people close.

  “Ms. Love.”

  At the sound of my name, I turn to find a thin redhead, I’d place in her mid-forties, who isn’t wearing a jumpsuit. “Agent Love,” I correct. “And were you afraid the orange would clash with your hair or did you just not give a fuck that you might contaminate the crime scene by failing to wear one?”

  “I’m not rolling around in the mess that’s been made,” she bites out. “Nor should you. You’re supposed to profile the killer, not perform forensic analysis.”

  Obviously, this bitch is Detective Williams, the detective in charge, but she won’t be for long. “Where’s Roger?” I ask, still trying to solve the mystery of how I got here in the first place.

  “Roger said you can handle this on your own. Was he wrong?”

  She’s baiting me, but I’m not one to be baited. Roger called me in, but he’s not here. Any relief I feel at avoiding his all-knowing inspection fades quickly. “Where’s the body?”

  “Down the hall in the master bedroom.”

  I start to walk in that direction.

  “You don’t want to know who she is?” Williams calls out.

  “She’ll tell me herself,” I reply.

  “You might want a barf bag,” she calls out, making herself all too easy to read. Detective Williams is a walking, talking power trip out to prove that she’s better than me. Which is why I don’t bother to reply, and why would I? She’s not important. The woman who lost her life tonight is another story. She matters. The person who took her life also matters, right up until the moment that we make them pay.

  Cutting down a narrow hallway, the walls along my path are barren and the iron scent of blood now permeates the air with a vicious punch. I could work myself up about the buckets of blood that could be waiting on me, but that’s just not how I’m made. I need to be punched in the face with the crime scene. I need to take it all in, feel the shock and pain, and do it without any reserve. And so, I enter my Otherworld, my zone where nothing but the crime scene exists, where Kane Mendez and my shitty father don’t exist. Where assholes that fuck up crimes scenes don’t exist. There is just me, and the victim who needs me to speak for them. I step to the doorway of the bedroom and let the scene take over, clicking through what I find in what has become an almost mechanical process for me.

  There is, of course, a dead body, a naked woman lying in the center of the room on her back. That’s expected. What’s not expected is the fact that she’s holding an open umbrella above her head. She’s been dead long enough that rigor mortis has set in, and her fingers are frozen around the handle. There is also blood, but not in buckets. It’s dispersed in splatter marks on the walls, the ceiling, all over the white, neatly placed bedspread, and virtually every other spot in the room.

  There’s also an unexpected but familiar woman kneeling by the body, smartly wearing an orange jumpsuit. “Beth,” I say, drawing her attention.

  Her gaze jerks to mine, going wide in surprise. “Lilah fucking Love,” she says, using her gloved hand to pull down her paper mask.

  “Why is a Long Island coroner at a Manhattan crime scene?”

  “I go where they send me,” she says. “But it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that we’re both here, now does it?”

  Considering she just worked a case with me that directly linked to the Society, no, no it doesn’t, but she doesn’t need my agreement. Not to mention she looks unsettlingly like the victim. This entire crime scene is starting to feel like a puzzle, and we’re not the ones controlling the pieces. I need to change that and quickly. I cross the room and kneel beside the body, across from Beth, then look up at the ceiling fan that is holding a Tupperware container with holes in it.

  “My understanding,” Beth says, “is that the fan was on when law enforcement arrived.”

  A rather brilliant contraption that took time and some level of engineering to execute. I frown and look at her and then the body, my brow furrowing at the untarnished face and body, no cuts, no wounds. “I know what you’re thinking,” Beth says, “and you’re right.”

  My gaze lifts sharply to hers. “The blood isn’t hers, is it?”

  “No. The blood isn’t hers.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Just to be clear,” I say, motioning to the room. “I’m standing in a room that looks like a scene from a B-rated flick that’s one-part horror and one-part porno.” I hold up a hand. “Not that I watch either of those things—but I’ve heard, and you’re telling me that the added cherry on top is that, that blood doesn’t belong to the victim?”

  “That’s the general gist of it all,” Beth confirms.

  “If this isn’t her blood,” I say, “then whose blood is it?"

  Beth lifts her gloved fingers. “Exactly.”

  “Exactly? That’s not an accurate response to my question.”

  “It was exactly the right answer because that's exactly the question. Whose blood is it? Or perhaps, the real question should be, where’s the other body? Because no one survived losing this much blood. There has to be another body.”

  I grimace and say the most appropriate thing I can think to say in this moment, “Fuck.”

  “Pardon my French,” Beth chimes in, “but yes, fuck.”

  I give her a deadpan stare. “Did you just say ‘pardon my French?’ How fucking old are you?”

  She visibly cringes. “I spent the weekend with my parents. Sometimes I'm terrified that I could become my mother.”

  “You should be. I’m terrified for you.” I eye the woman on the floor and I’m instantly checked out of the conversation with Beth. This woman, whoever she is, will never see her parents, siblings, friends, or anyone ever again. “Who is she?”

  “Mia Moore,” Beth says. “Twenty-eight. A retired, but successful model, who worked in fashion for a high-powered advertising agency.”

  “Mia Moore,” I repeat, my gloved hand touching her hand where it’s been posed to hold the umbrella. This is about power, about domination. This was done by someone who never feels quite as good as everyone else. Someone who feels overlooked. “Cause of death?” I ask, eyeing Beth.

  “To be determined.”

  Considering Beth’s years of experience, that says all I need to know. The answer isn’t obvious, but I trust her to figure it out. “Was she raped?”

  Her lips thin. “All I can tell you right now is that there are no bindings and no obvious struggle.”

  Which could mean she knew the killer or that she was t
oo afraid to fight, which might mean a weapon was involved or threats to her family. “What do we know about her personal life?”

  “I don’t ask those questions. I want to go into the initial screening as blind as possible. I prefer to not even know what I already know in this case.”

  I give her a quick nod. “Understood.” I scan the room and visually confirm what she just told me: there was no struggle. Everything is in order, nothing appears out of place. “Did she die here?” I ask.

  “Based on the lividity of the body, yes, but I’ll confirm once I do the official exam.”

  “I’ll attend the autopsy.” I try to head off any questions she might have about why we’re both here, questions better discussed elsewhere. “That will be a good time for the two of us to talk.”

  “Right,” she says, but for a smart person, she chooses to ignore my obvious avoidance. She lowers her voice. “Why are we both here, Lilah? It feels off. What is this?”

  “A black fucking hole,” I say, “where we bleed out if we’re not careful.” Because it’s true. This, us here, together, is a warning, and I’ve made enough powerful enemies recently to take it seriously. “Which is why we’ll act normal and talk later.”

  “Sometimes I really could do without your honesty,” Beth snaps, pulling her mask back into place. Whatever. She can be pissy as long as she keeps her mouth shut, so I can, in turn, keep her alive.

  I stand up and start a deeper inspection of a room that’s really quite cold in its basic, sterile nature. Even the damn Kleenex box on the single nightstand sits in a perfect line. A white wooden dresser calls to me, and I pull out a drawer and then another. One after another, I scan and find perfectly stacked and folded items to such an extreme that I decide Mia had some level of OCD, which may or may not come from some kind of abuse in her youth. Abuse leads to an abuser. Some might think the blood means the killer doesn’t have OCD, but I don’t. The blood is part of a perfectly painted canvas. I just don’t understand its perfection.

  Yet.