“You’re so full of shit,” he laughed. “You’ll be crying in your cornflakes worse than your wife when he leaves.”
Once the paperwork was finished, Carter got back to business. “Let me know what you can get from any of this. The ME has the body right now, so I’ll get their prints sent to you, hopefully tomorrow. Once I pick up the personal effects, I’ll get those to you also.”
“Will do. I’ll be on the lookout for them.”
Jerry stood and the two men shook hands before Carter walked back to the elevator. As he headed to the parking lot, he saw Sean, his arms full of a fire evidence collection kit, walking in. Sighing as he climbed into his SUV, he thought of the hours they kept. Glancing at the time on the dashboard, he calculated that if he was lucky, he might be able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2
Carter parked in the first-floor parking garage of his condo building. Perfectly situated near the Inner Harbor, his seventh-floor condo sported wide windows with views of both the Inner Harbor to the east and the professional football and baseball stadiums to the west. He had been lucky to snag it when he did, renting it from a young couple who had spent a considerable amount of money on upgrades before being forced to rent quickly when the husband was transferred.
The carpet had been ripped out, replaced with hardwood floor. The walls were painted a soft gray, complementing the granite countertops and black, tiled backsplash in the kitchen—at least that was what the real estate agent said. A far fucking cry from the gutted townhouse he’d just been inside.
Minimalist in his own furnishings, the two-bedroom condo gave him plenty of space to move around while being comfortable enough to call home. Something he appreciated at all times but especially when he’d been out in the dark of night, staring at the face of death in a young person.
After shutting the door behind him, he tossed his keys, wallet, and badge onto the kitchen counter to his right. He stood for a moment, squeezing the back of his neck, hesitating over the decision to have a whiskey, a beer, or just a glass of water. At a slight movement out of the corner of his eye, he jerked his gaze into the open dining and living room.
Before he had a chance to speak, the beautiful, elegantly-dressed woman sitting on his sofa beat him to it. “Well, it certainly took you long enough to get back here.”
Her words dripped with disdain, and her anger was evident by her narrowed eyes and tightly-pinched lips. When he saw her last, they had been in the process of stripping each other in his bedroom. When the call came in, he distinctly remembered her silently fuming as he redressed and him telling her to leave since he had no idea when he would be back.
“I’ve been sitting here for,” she began, then swung her arm out to look at her watch with exaggerated movements, “four hours.” She lifted her hands to the side, still glaring. “When is this ever going to change?”
Fatigue had already morphed into surprise and, with her words, was quickly morphing into anger. “What the fuck, Allison? I told you to go home when the call came in. If you’ve been here for hours, that’s on you. Don’t sit around, then start bitchin’ at me when I walk through the door and you’re not even supposed to be here.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Carter?” Standing, she placed her well-manicured hands on her narrow hips. “I don’t know how to make it any plainer.”
His head jerked back. “Make what plain?”
“Argh,” she growled in response, her mouth twisting into a sneer. “You must not be a very good detective if you can’t figure this out.”
“Allison, I’m really not in the mood to try to guess what the hell you’re pissed about. If you’ve got something to say, then just say it.”
“Typical.” Shaking her head back and forth slowly, she continued to glare. “Okay, fine. I’ll spell it out for you. We’ve been seeing each other for six months. I can’t believe you haven’t noticed that I’ve been calling more, texting more, even insisting on cooking dinner for you. I thought we were taking the relationship forward.”
“Allison, there is no relationship to move forward.” As soon as those words left his mouth, he wanted to retract them. Not because they weren’t true but because the look on her face gave evidence to the screech that followed.
Lifting her fist, she shook it in the air. “No relationship?”
Turning to face her fully, he now placed his fists on his hips, his jaw tight with anger. “Let’s recap, shall we? We met at a party. We flirted. We slept together that first night after both of us clearly stated that we were looking for fun only. In the last six months, we’ve had dinner occasionally, usually followed by fucking—”
“Don’t be crass!”
“Crass is all I got right now, Allison. Hell, you’ve even called us fuck buddies. So why are you coming at me with this relationship bullshit when I’m exhausted?”
“I thought casual was just how we started. I expected after a while we’d become more. But with you, it’s always about your job. How am I supposed to feel? You leave here because you get a call out, and I’m expected to just go?”
Count to ten, boy, before you explode. His father’s wise words came back to him, and he closed his eyes, mentally counting. He cast his mind back to the previous months, searching his memory banks to see if there was anything he’d missed but came up blank. In the last six months, they had gone out occasionally for drinks or dinner, never spending the night after having sex, no matter which bed they were in. And they rarely talked, at least not about anything
