Cold Blooded Lover

by Eliza Lentzski

  “I can’t believe you’re not still full from last night,” she observed. “I may never eat again.”

  “I can always eat.” I took a bite of my toast, spraying burned shards across the tablecloth.

  I watched Julia’s caramel eyes drop to the mess. She was probably counting the seconds until I left so she could disinfect the entire area. Thankfully she sat far enough from me that she wasn’t in my splash-zone.

  “How are you feeling about today?” she asked. “Nervous? Excited?”

  “A little bit of both,” I admitted. “I know I’m a good cop, but this is totally new territory.”

  “You’re good at everything you do, darling. This won’t be any different.”

  “Thanks, babe.” My gaze drifted to the digital clock on the oven. “Damn it, I gotta go. I’m supposed to meet with Captain Forrester at 9:00 am and morning traffic is hell.” I shoveled one more mouthful of scrambled eggs into my mouth.

  Julia shooed me away. “Leave your dishes. I’ll take care of them. Can’t have you late on your first day.”

  “Sure that’s not an excuse to ‘accidentally’ break my coffee mug?” I teased. I didn’t think she’d purposely break my favorite coffee cup. Not really.

  Julia picked up my fork and stabbed at the scrambled eggs that remained on my plate. She popped the tines into her mouth, but made a face and dropped the fork. “Ugh. You ruined them.”

  “You have no taste,” I scolded.

  Julia snorted into her coffee cup as she raised it to her lips. “That’s debatable.”

  “So I’m bringing you dinner tonight?”

  “Not Mickey’s.” She was emphatic.

  “Fine,” I huffed. “Only healthy, boring rabbit food.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “Shit. I’ve really got to go.” I gave her a quick kiss in parting and darted toward the front door. “Thanks for breakfast!”

  “Cassidy!” she called after me.

  I jerked to a stop before heading out the front door. “What?”

  “Your badge. I think I saw it in the key bowl on the table in the entryway.”

  Thank goodness my girlfriend paid attention to details. I scooped my badge out from the change and key rings in the catchall bowl and hooked it to my leather belt.

  Julia’s light step sounded behind me. Her hand lingered on my badge, tugging to make sure it was securely fastened. “That’s a good look for you, Detective,” she purred.

  “Thanks. Someone once suggested I wear it like this,” I smiled.

  Julia looked pleased. “This person sounds incredibly smart and accomplished.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  + + +

  My right knee bounced erratically while I waited for Captain Forrester to finish eating a jelly donut. His sticky fingers flipped through a dark green folder, which I assumed contained my personnel papers. As a police officer for the Fourth Precinct, my immediate supervisor had been Inspector Garnett, a serious and component man. Below ground in the Cold Case division, Captain Tom Forrester would be responsible for signing my timesheets. Inspector Garnett had a reputation for being hard-nosed with high expectations for the officers under his command. I had never heard of Forrester before, however, and had no idea what to expect. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a demotion, not a promotion. The silence of the basement office, save the buzz of halogen lighting, made that all the more clear.

  Captain Forrester’s office had no windows except for a glass-block cutout that allowed filtered sunlight into the small room. The narrow desk took up the majority of the space along with a metal filing cabinet and two hard-backed chairs. The desktop was bare except for a computer monitor and an MPD coffee mug filled with pens.

  Numerous shelves lined the otherwise empty walls, each cluttered with tiny, stuffed woodland animals. A chipmunk, a few squirrels, some small birds. There might have even been a ferret. Their tiny black eyes peered down on me as I continued to wait to be acknowledged.

  I cleared my throat. “You, uh, you get these all yourself?”

  Captain Forrester continued to read. “I don’t hunt. I just stuff.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  He used a flimsy paper napkin to wipe the powdered sugar from the corners of his mouth. “Top of your class in the academy. Former Marine.” He squinted his light blue eyes as he read. “Awarded the Navy Cross?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He tossed the file on his desk and looked up at me for only the second time since I’d entered his office. “What the hell are you doing down here?”

  I felt a modicum of tension lift from my rigid shoulders. Apparently Inspector Garnett had kept my removal from active duty out of my permanent record. I’d come back to MPD on a probationary period. While I’d believed my PTSD hadn’t hampered my ability to do my job the second time around, my appointed partner hadn’t agreed. After we’d broken up a fight at a local nightclub, he’d recommended that I be removed from active duty.

  “I just want to make a difference, sir,” I tried to explain.

  Forrester raked his fingers through salt-and-pepper hair that he wore parted to one side. “I gotta warn you—it’s not like what you see on TV. We don’t open up a case and twenty-four hours later have the perpetrator behind bars.”

  “I recognize that, sir. I only want to do good police work.”

  “Even with good DNA evidence, you gotta track down these witnesses with shitty memories. And sometimes the person we’re looking for is already in jail or maybe even dead. And before we open a new case we gotta talk with the D.A.’s office and the medical examiner to make sure it’s a realistic case.”

  I shifted in my seat. I had been optimistic for the new opportunity, but my new supervisor made it sound like I was destined to fail. “Where or how do you suggest I start?”

  Forrester sucked on his teeth and continued to appraise me. “I suppose I can show you where you’ll be working.”

  We left the Captain’s office and traveled only a few steps down the basement hallway before Forrester ducked into another room. It was the same space that Inspector Garnett had brought me when he’d first proposed the job to me.

  “This is our central office space,” he explained. He gestured to a metal desk shoved again a wall in a far corner. “You can set up your things over there.”

  He tapped an ancient-looking computer monitor. “The immediate details of all our open cases are recorded digitally on a database. You can only access those files using the network though—no working from home. Cuts down on the overtime requests, too. We have a limited budget down here.”

  “How very practical,” I murmured.

  “The physical files are stored offsite—evidence and interview transcripts that haven’t been digitized,” he explained. “Harris can help you with the request paperwork if there’s something you want to look at. Takes a couple days for the files to get here unless you go to the warehouse yourself.”

  The office door opened wider, squeaking on its metal hinges, and the man whom I remembered from Inspector Forrester’s orientation appeared in the doorway.

  Stanley Harris was more gnome than man. He had short auburn hair and a full beard. Wild, shaggy eyebrows sat atop chocolate eyes. I didn’t consider myself particularly tall, but he was at least three or four inches shorter than me.

  “Speak of the devil,” Captain Forrest remarked. “Stanley Harris, this is Detective Cassidy Miller.”

  I bobbed my head. “We’ve met.”

  “Then I guess we’re done with introductions. Harris, I can trust you to show Detective Miller the ropes?”

  Stanley Harris nodded his consent.

  “Then I’ll let you get to it. Welcome to the team, Detective.”

  Captain Forrester stuck his hand out, and I was obliged to shake it, sticky residue and all.

  Once our supervisor left the room, I wiped my now-sticky palm down the side of my pant leg. “So. Now what?�
��

  Stanley only shrugged.

  “Are we it?”

  “Sarah Conrad. You’ll meet her later. She splits her time between a Victim’s Advocate office across town and here. She usually comes in on the days I’m at the warehouse.”

  “What exactly is it that you do, Stanley?” I didn’t want to be rude, but I was also trying to figure out my place on this very small team.

  “Data entry mostly,” he said wistfully. “The Captain has me poking around the warehouse once or twice a week to blow the dust off our oldest case files. If I find evidence in a box that was perhaps overlooked, I send it to get tested. There’s usually long lines to wait on DNA results, but MPD has two analysts in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s lab dedicated to Minneapolis cases only.”

  “That’s awesome for us, I guess?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Stanley tried to assure me. “Here, let me show you what I’ve been working on. I pulled a few boxes from the warehouse knowing you’d be coming in this morning.”

  We walked over to the long wooden table in the center of the room and a stack of several archival boxes. Stanley removed the cardboard lid from one of the boxes and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.

  “The key for any case to be selected is the availability of physical evidence for DNA testing that’s been stored properly and not contaminated. DNA found on an envelope or stamp—back when people still licked stamps and envelopes. DNA from a discarded cigarette butt at a crime scene. People leave parts of themselves all over all of the time.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the thought. “I’ve never thought about it like that before.”

  “Gross, sure, but it’s how we do this job. Our oldest case dates back to 1972. We can’t go much further back than that; cases deteriorate over time,” he continued. “Technology gets better, but if the evidence sits for too long, we may never know what really happened. Jack the Ripper, for example—unless we find a signed confession, that mystery will probably go unsolved. The case is too old; no DNA evidence is going to help us with that one.”

  I peered into one of the open boxes, but didn’t dare touch any of the files. I didn’t want to contaminate anything or get the folders out of order.

  “All of the collected DNA goes into CODIS—the Combined DNA Index System,” Stanley continued. “We can compare DNA left at a crime scene against convicted offender profiles from other cases.”

  “Like AFIS,” I observed. AFIS—the Automated Fingerprint Identification System—functioned in a similar way, but with fingerprints.

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. “And CODIS can help us with missing persons cases, too. The database contains the DNA profiles of unidentified remains and the DNA profile of relatives of those who are missing.”

  I exhaled deeply as I scanned the open archival boxes. “So what am I supposed to do? Stick my hand in the open case files and pick one?”

  “Why don’t you take a couple of days to orient yourself with the active case files we’ve been working on?” Stanley suggested. “Take some notes and see if you notice something we might have missed. Who knows—maybe a fresh set of eyes will be a good thing.”

  I spent the remainder of a mind-numbing day staring at a computer screen trying to familiarize myself with the cold case database. By the end of my eight-hour shift, my brain was jam-packed with the names and faces of missing or murdered men and women.

  I straddled my parked Harley in the Fourth Precinct parking lot and packed my on-duty gun into the lock box in my saddlebags. Another shift was ending just as I was leaving, so I took a moment to check my phone instead of trying to battle the traffic leaving the lot. I had no missed calls or text messages; it shouldn’t have surprised me, but I’d expected at least one encouraging text from Julia on my first day at the new job, but I supposed since I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal about it, she’d followed my lead.

  I looked up when I heard a deep yell. The loud noise was followed by someone calling my name. “Yo, Cassidy! Cassidy Miller!”

  Across the packed parking lot, I spotted a broad-shouldered figure waving his warms over his head.

  My friend Brent hustled across the crowded parking lot. In civilian clothes and a wet head, he’d recently finished his own shift. His mustache was starting to grow back in. He’d shaved off the impressive handlebar mustache after finding a decomposing body while on duty. The stench had gotten caught in his facial hair.

  “How’s the new gig?” he asked.

  I forced a smile to my lips. “Today was only my first day, but they’ve already got me working on some really exciting cases.”

  Brent’s smile matched my own—his genuine and mine fake. “That’s great, Cass.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m psyched for you.”

  I didn’t know why I felt compelled to lie. Brent was one of my few close friends whom I could tell everything. He had seen me at my best and at my worst. At yet the lie hung between us.

  My mouth twitched as I continued my forced grin. “Yeah, me too.”

  “You wanna grab a beer and tell me all about it? Celebrate your promotion?” he proposed.

  “Eh, I can’t. Sorry. I promised Julia I’d bring her dinner.”

  Brent’s smile broadened instead of dropping. “Yeah, you should do that. Go bring your lady something to munch on.”

  An unplanned laugh bubbled up my throat. “You’re sick, dude.”

  He wiggled a pair of bushy blond eyebrows. “Another time then.”

  I pulled my helmet on and adjusted the chinstrap. “You bet, Viking.”

  + + +

  Julia lived in St. Paul, but the public defender’s office for whom she worked was in a transitioning neighborhood in Minneapolis. It wasn’t dangerous, per say, but I was always impressed when I dropped by to discover that her luxury sedan wasn’t propped up on cinder blocks.

  I smiled at the office assistant as I walked through the front door. Alice was a graduate student at the university and worked as office manager to subsidize her tuition. She was pretty, young, and wholesome in a way I found unique to women who’d been raised in the Midwest. Her light brunette hair was typically held back in a smooth ponytail and she opted for clean, simple, but professional clothing. I had never met any of Julia’s lawyer co-workers before. My visits tended to be after hours when the rest of them had gone home for the day and only Julia and sometimes Alice remained.

  “Is she in a meeting with anyone?” I asked.

  Alice shook her head. “Nope. You can head on back. Oh wait!” she called to stop me. “Ms. Desjardin told me to check you for contraband before letting you pass.”

  “What?”

  Alice stood and rounded the reception desk. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “What’s in the bag?” She lowered her voice almost comically.

  I looked down to the brown paper bag I held in one hand. “Dinner.”

  “Open up,” she commanded in that same low, authoritarian tone. “C’mon, I don’t have all day.”

  Befuddled, I set the paper takeout bag on her desk, which she proceeded to rifle through.

  “Salad with walnuts and dried cherries, that’s good,” she remarked. “What’s on the sandwich?”

  “Uh, roast beef and Swiss. Some kind of fancy aioli, I think.”

  She straightened and re-crimped the top of the bag. “You’re free to go,” she decided.

  “Sure you don’t want to frisk me?” I wiggled my eyebrows playfully. “You never know—I might have contraband hidden on my person.”

  Alice’s features flushed prettily. “N-no. I trust you.”

  Julia’s office was at the end of a narrow hallway. I knocked as a courtesy before pushing through the partially open door. Julia sat at her desk, her head tilted down as she scanned a stack of official-looking papers. Her blue Oxford-pressed shirt brought out the raven glossiness of her dark hair. My eyes strayed to the third button, which struggled to contain what I was sure was a devastatingly sexy bra.

  I
cleared my throat to garner her attention and jerked my thumb toward the hallway. “Your assistant is weird.”

  Julia glanced up from the documents on her desk. “Hmm?”

  “When did Alice become Border Patrol?”

  “Be nice. Alice is the best assistant I’ve ever had,” Julia defended. “She’s organized and punctual and professional.”

  “And she grabbed my ass.”

  “What?!” came Julia’s shrill response.

  I held up my hands in retreat. “I kid! I kid!” I was quick to amend. “But what was with the shakedown out there?”

  “Oh. That.” Julia frowned. “I have no willpower around you,” she complained. “It used to just be sex and playing hooky from work, but now it’s happening with food now, too. I asked Alice to make sure whatever you brought was health-conscious. I didn’t want you sneaking sweets into dinner.”

  I felt like laughing, but Julia’s features were serious and concerned. “Babe, you can’t punish yourself for having a cheeseburger.”

  She stuck out her lower lip in an adorable and uncharacteristic pout. “My pencil skirts are a little more snug than usual,” she protested.

  “You look great,” I insisted in earnest. “And you feel even better. But if you’re really concerned, maybe we could start working out together.”

  My words brought a smile to her face, which told me I’d done my duty as supportive girlfriend. Maybe I wasn’t so terrible at this relationship stuff after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Stanley Harris drove a tiny hybrid car, not much bigger than my motorcycle. When he’d offered to drive, I’d imagined a far more comfortable ride. My knees bumped against the dashboard as we drove across town to the evidence warehouse where the physical cold case files were stored. Captain Forrester had approved the field trip as part of my orientation.

  The radio was silenced, and even though the drive wasn’t far, I felt the need to break the quiet.

  “So what’s your story, Stanley?”

  “A mystery.” Stanley kept his eyes on the road. He drove with his hands perfectly at 9 and 3 o’clock.