style="font-size:15px;"> “You lock up your holster?”
“A lady doesn’t wish to remind gentlemen callers of guns in her bedroom.”
She slumped against the doorframe, depleted. She wanted Morgan to hold her.
Morgan glanced through the open bathroom door, where the heat lamp was still on and emitting a soft red glow, then he turned and eased her back into the living room.
When she was settled on the sofa he squatted in front of her. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.
The security buzzer sounded and Morgan pressed the release button. “They’re here,” he said, as if she might not have heard.
“Morgan.”
“Yeah.”
She started to rise, then sank back against the sofa. Squatting in front of her again, he held both her hands in his.
“Morgan, thanks.”
“Hey, it’s only begun. Wait till you really owe me.”
“I mean thanks, you know …”
“I know.”
“I didn’t …”
“It never crossed my mind.”
David, she thought. She never called him by his first name. No one did. He was Morgan, like she was Miranda. It’s not about gender, she thought. It’s a personality thing. David.
The door rattled against knuckles. She stiffened and turned pale.
Morgan opened the door.
“Hello there,” said a woman of Miranda’s age, poised to enter with a black satchel in one hand. She gazed into Morgan’s eyes as if assessing an extravagant purchase, then past him at Miranda and back to Morgan.
“I’m looking for a murder.”
Morgan stepped to the side.
“This is it, then? Sorry, love.”
She moved around him and addressed Miranda.
“I was told there was a body in a detective’s bed. Never dreamed it was yours. Nice place.”
She smiled at Morgan, leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, hesitated and held out her hand, which he took momentarily before releasing his grip. Miranda did not look up; it was almost as if she were embarrassed.
“Ellen,” said Morgan, his tone formal. She was not here as Miranda’s friend — if she was Miranda’s friend. He wasn’t sure.
Ellen Ravenscroft kneeled down to place herself in Miranda’s line of vision. She reached out and touched Miranda’s cheek. “You’re cold, love.” Their eyes briefly connected. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get this all sorted out.”
She stood up and turned to Morgan. “Now where is the body? No, you stay with your partner. I’ll look in myself.”
As Ellen Ravenscroft disappeared into the bedroom, a file of men and women came trooping through from the corridor. Miranda watched, and Morgan watched her watching them. Most were familiar, but each was now a stranger.
He assumed a position in front of her, a little to the side, slightly in everyone’s way.
Miranda shut her eyes and it was like she was dreaming. She could hear the forensics team, medical examiners, and police personnel, but with her eyes closed they seemed a great distance away. She suppressed a rush of vertigo but refused to open her eyes, convinced that the jumble of images inside her head would reveal something, if only she could hold on. She was not trying to make a nightmare go away, she was struggling to bring it back. She wanted to be there again — inside whatever went on that she could not remember.
Morgan moved to the bedroom, but he was uncomfortable with his role as observer. The medical examiner, to the accompaniment of a photographer’s flashing, in conjunction with the careful ministrations of a forensic specialist, meticulously raised the sheet covering the corpse and drew it aside, where it was folded and bagged. Even from Morgan’s perspective near the door, he could see the gaping wound in the victim’s gut, his innards extruding onto the bed.
“Nasty business,” said Ellen Ravenscroft as she stood up and moved close to him. “Nothing showed through the top sheet. He was over on his side. The disembowelling was done in the bed after he was dead.”
“Disembowelling? And the head wound.”
“Executed on the spot. Bullet’s in the pillow. Another pillow kicked under the bed was used as a silencer. There was a kitchen knife under the bed as well, with blood on the blade. He wiped the handle clean.”
“He?”
“Whoever did this.”
“Ellen Ravenscroft …”
“Yes, love.”
“You’re a good person.”
“And whatever makes you say that, Detective? I’m a regular bitch.”
“I’m sure you are. But you assume Miranda is innocent, even though she’s the most logical suspect.”
“Hardly. I mean, who’s innocent these days? But a suspect, no. Look, Detective, if you wanted to kill your lover, would you nail him, eviscerate him, and crawl in beside him? I can think of better ways to spend the night.”
“Yeah,” said a rumbling voice from just behind them. “That is exactly what you might do if you’re a homicide detective and think sleeping in sludge will throw off the dogs.”
“Spivak,” said Morgan. “Welcome to the crime scene. This is Ellen Ravenscroft, she’s the M.E.”
“Yeah,” said Spivak. “We’ve met.” He was a burly man with the parched eyes of an inveterate smoker.
Spivak moved around beside Morgan and acknowledged the coroner with a wet cough.
“You want to get that looked at, Detective. You’d do better spitting than swallowing.”
“You too,” he leered.
No one acknowledged the joke. Sometimes, thought Morgan, there’s no double in double entendre.
“I’m not yours till I’m dead,” said Spivak, with the righteous sneer of the self-afflicted.
“I can hardly wait.”
Spivak relished being an unpleasant cliché. He had long since forgotten what he was really like. At least Ravenscroft is ironic, thought Morgan. The stereotype she animates is intentional.
“What’re you doing here?” said Morgan.
“It’s my case.”
Morgan said nothing. It had
