"For money?" Detective Simms asked, his voice booming across the office. I turned to face him and his judgment. "Are you a sex worker?"
Ryker stepped towards, everything about his demeanor tight and outraged on my behalf. "Hey."
"No. Not a sex worker. We . . . the Marsdens and myself . . .we belong to a club. Club D. It's all very consensual and free-of-charge."
The partners exchanged another one of those looks and I knew what was coming next.
"Where were you last night?" Cross asked, moving closer to me. He didn't reach for his handcuffs but the twitch in his fingers betrayed his trained inclination. My confession had just pushed me to the top of the people-of-interest list. "Between the time of ten o'clock and three in the morning."
"I was at home. Alone." I stood, bringing myself to my full height as I answered the unspoken question in the room. "For the record, I didn't kill Nathan."
Ten
A DC After Dark Novel
by Robin Covington
Eleven
AIDEN
Senator Nathan Marsden was dead and as naked as the day he was born.
I crouched down beside the king-sized bed, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as I took in the all-too-familiar scene before me. Not that I'm used to seeing dead national-level politicians every day. Contrary to the constant parade of thriller movies with dead senators and judges littering the streets, it doesn't happen that often in Washington DC. Street people, junkies, gang bangers, sad domestic cases . . . that's the usual victim I'm called to see in their worst moment and then charged to catch whatever shit bag did them in.
Very rarely was the victim a guy whose face was splashed all over the cover of TIME magazine.
I swore under my breath, already wondering whose karma I pissed on to catch such a high-profile case. I could look forward to everybody in DC with any connection to this case to be up my ass 24/7 until this one closed. Fuck.
The room was very quiet except for the sounds of technical crews doing their part to catch a killer. The air was rank with the odor of death and sex, the vibe in the atmosphere all wrong. Each scene felt off and finding out what caused it was usually the first step to solving the case.
For a dead guy he didn't look too bad. I'd definitely seen worse. His pale body, eyes wide open and covered in the haze of death, was sprawled in the middle of a mess of sheets. Legs splayed wide, his flaccid cock lying against his thigh. He was in shape, a healthy male in his mid-thirties who took care of himself. The bullet hole in his chest and the dark spread of blood under his body were out of place in the upscale surroundings of the hotel room. This was not a by-the-hour joint, catering to the rich and self-important who flocked to DC to broker deals, make money, or fuck somebody over. I wondered which vice lead to the bullet in the chest of the up-and-coming junior Senator from some square state in the middle of the country. I could predict some unhappy Bible-toting constituents who probably weren't going to be okay with why and how this went down.
"What's the estimated time of death?" I asked the M.E. kneeling on the opposite side of the three-billion thread count sheets. I didn't know this one, just one of the new faces in that office that appeared on a semi-regular basis. She was small, with dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes tired and I wondered how long she'd stick around. The Office of the Medical Examiner was busy and it wasn't the place for everyone.
Just like the Homicide Division wasn't for every cop. No, you had to be my particular brand of crazy asshole to endure year after year of people killing each other and still love the job. And I fucking loved the job.
The M.E. answered without even looking at me, too engrossed in labeling vials and bags and shoving them in her evidence case to give a shit about making eye contact. I was okay with it. It wasn't her job to cater to the living. "Twelve hours or so. Give or take a couple of hours."
"So, midnight or one in the morning," I muttered as I leaned down to get a better look at the body sprawled on the disheveled sheets. I didn't bother to ask what was the cause of death. The bullet hole in middle of his chest was a good indicator of how the Senator had bought it unless the tox screen came back with a surprise. "Must have used a silencer or something for people not to hear. Nobody reported a goddam thing much less a gunshot in the middle of the night."
"And the perp was allowed into the room," Peter, my partner, gestured towards the crime scene techs messing with the front door. "They say there's no evidence of forced entry."