THIRD (DC After Dark #1)(5)

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."

I eased up off the floor, careful not to lean on the bed when my knees and achy joints protested the movement. At thirty-eight I wasn't old and I kept my body in great shape but partying at a bar last night until the wee hours and spending some quality time on my knees servicing the cock of a beautiful boy wasn't conducive to being at the top-of-my-game today. As usual, nothing got past Peter.

"You need help there?" His smirk quickly morphed into a full grin when I flipped him off. A big guy with an imposing frame, his bulk usually made criminals and cops think twice about tangling with him but his smile stripped him of all that edge. It was boyish, bright white teeth against the ebony of his skin and it completely ruined his tough-guy game. "You're getting too old to be running the streets at all hours."

"I was in bed early enough." I didn't elaborate that I hadn't done any actual sleeping in the bed of the man I'd picked up at a club. I didn't need to. We'd been partners long enough for him to jump to all the correct conclusions. I pointed at the body. "So was he from the looks of it."

Several used condoms were in the trash can, their wrappers scattered on the bedside table along with lube and a large, flesh-colored dildo. That fucker had to be nine inches long and breathtakingly wide and I mentally saluted the senator and his mystery sex partner. He hadn't been conducting constituent town halls in this two-thousand a night junior suite last night. Not unless he had new and personal ways of obtaining votes. 

The M.E. perked up, sliding a used condom into an evidence bag. "He had sex. Lots of it according to our preliminary examination of the sheets." She paused as she wrote on a bag with a black Sharpie. "We'll determine if the semen in the rubbers is his but there's also evidence of anal penetration." She pointed her chin at the sex toy lying next to the telephone. "We'll test the dildo to see if that is what was used on him or his partner or both. Any DNA we can find we'll cross-check and get you the results."