At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(5)
“Sounds fuckin’ awful,” Patrick said. “But it works somehow. You know?”
Kind of like the Chicago PD, she thought.
“It’s the Irish in you.” Wao wrinkled his nose. “You guys’ll eat anything. I mean, haggis? I wouldn’t touch that for love or money.”
“Haggis is Scottish, not Irish,” Patrick said. “And anyway, aren’t you from Cambodia or something? Don’t you guys eat monkey brains?”
“Fuck you,” Wao said amiably.
Addie snugged her Chicago Bears beanie lower over her ears as rain drizzled over the scene. It promised to be a Monday in the worst sense of the word. The call to the scene had come as she lay spooned against the warm and deliciously hunky body of her latest romantic interest—Clayton L. Hamden, attorney to the stars. Or at least attorney to the Cook County political body. Their plan, just as soon as they’d dragged themselves out of bed, had been to enjoy breakfast and a run through the park near his condo with maybe a few minutes to play in the shower before they departed for their respective offices and began the week in a suitably satiated manner.
Someone had once told Addie that she went through men the way a rat terrier chewed through vermin—quickly and with ruthless efficiency. But Clay felt different. Never mind that they all felt different until, without warning, they felt like all the others. Maybe Clay wouldn’t be just a few weeks’ fling. Maybe he’d be something more. Her cousin had called the night before with the news that yesterday’s horoscope had guaranteed Addie’s life was about to undergo a dramatic change.
The body, she was sure, didn’t count as dramatic change. It was the department’s six hundredth homicide of the year and the twenty-sixth for her and her partner. Murder as usual.
Even if it was unquestionably the weirdest body they’d had.
Patrick wandered back over to stand beside her on the low ridge, one hand curled around a cup of coffee from a nearby gas station where they probably pulled their water straight from the Calumet. She curled her lip. The tech was right. Detective Patrick McBrady would put anything in his body. Not for the first time, she observed that her partner was the color and size of a slab of beef. His broad face and thinning hair shone red, like a can of tinned meat; his wide eyes Frank Sinatra blue; his generous nose a map of broken capillaries. Classic old-school Irish cop, a stereotype Patrick played to the max. In his immense paws, the twenty-four-ounce cup looked like it had been filched from a child’s tea set.
“You catch the game yesterday?” he asked.
She shook her head. Clayton wasn’t a native Chicagoan, and in his opinion, the Bears were worthless, unable to scare up a good quarterback and thus perennial losers at America’s favorite sport. So far, this obvious lack of faith and foresight was the only mark against him.
“You missed the Bears against the Vikings?” Patrick’s eyes flicked toward her. “Whoever he is, it must be serious.”
She pushed up her beanie with her middle finger.
“Ha!” He was gleeful. “Definitely serious. But the asshole doesn’t like football. Did you run ’im?”
“You only think you’re funny, Paddy Wagon.”
The nickname made him laugh, as if he hadn’t heard it a thousand times. But no way was Addie going to share her love life with her partner. She trusted him every day with her back. She’d pick him as her partner over just about anyone on the planet when it came to drug dens and dark alleys. But not with her private romances. That was when Patrick got all fatherly and tried to give her advice. If her own daddy wasn’t allowed to comment, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let “Father” Patrick McBrady throw in his two cents.
She used a tissue to dab the end of her nose—which ran whenever the weather turned cold—and huddled into her coat.
The rising sun rippled over the city. It spotlighted the tops of the trees and danced a line across the water. It didn’t reach the corpse. Addie noted for the fiftieth time the braided noose pulled tight around the swollen neck. Just below the rope, the throat had been slit ear to ear. And the back of the head was staved.
“Three in one,” Patrick said. “Why, you think?”
“I’m thinking it was part of a ritual. What’s also odd is the way the killer made sure the victim couldn’t move—presumably after death.”
Patrick furrowed his brow. “Maybe he didn’t want the body floating away.”
“Or maybe he was afraid it would get up and come after him,” she said, unable to resist baiting her superstitious partner. “Haunt him forever.”
He took the bait. “True that. It’s an eerie setting to serve as a man’s final resting place.”
“Dirty, you mean. Polluted. The water just about glows.”
“Nah. It’s more than that.” Patrick shoved his hand in his left pocket. She knew he kept his father’s World War II pocket shrine there. Joseph holding the baby Jesus.
“Oooooohhh.” Addie moaned like a ghost.
This was a routine between them. Addie teased her partner for being superstitious, and he acted more gullible than he was, pretending to cringe at every black cat and broken mirror.
But this morning, Patrick gave a mournful shake of his head. “All the people used to work around here in the factories, and now they and their kin are nothing but ghosts. Either because they were forced out and had to leave their hearts and homes behind. Or because they died here, probably of hopelessness.”