name.
“Want to go to the gym?”
He shrugged his assent, and when Tony left the room to get ready, Marc took out his cell phone to call Gina at the lab. “Did you run Blue for marijuana on the toxicology screen?”
“No. We don’t usually add it on, unless specifically requested.”
“Can you?”
“Sure, if I had another sample. THC stays in the system for quite some time, so urine would work.”
He thanked her and hung up, his heart rate quickening, not because he may have discovered a break in the case, but because he had an excuse to see Sidney again.
Chapter 9
Thursday morning dawned in dismal gray layers, peeling away inch by inch until the sun was revealed like a hazy, shimmering orange fireball. Thunderclouds rumbled in the distance, more bluster than threat, for there was only a twenty percent chance of precipitation.
As he jogged in a steady loop around the beautifully manicured grounds of the San Luis Rey Mission, Marc prayed for rain, and release. The oppressive air surrounded him like a steamy blanket, and his mood was as heavy as the weather.
He hated having time off.
If he had any control over the situation, he might have breathed a little easier. Instead Sidney Morrow had turned his life, and his investigation, upside down.
By the time he got home, the morning newspaper was resting innocuously at the base of his front steps. Sweating up a storm, he sat on the stoop and opened it, cursing when he saw the headline: “Police Department Works With Psychic.”
He should have known Crystal would approach Sidney for the story on her own. She was infamous for her back door dealings; he’d discovered that the day he showed up unannounced at the station and caught her blowing her boss in her dressing room.
It was three years ago, but he remembered the scene, and how he’d felt coming upon it, like it was yesterday.
He could still see himself, standing like a fool in the open doorway, the flowers he’d brought to surprise her slipping from his hand, forgotten. If he’d arrived a moment later, he might never have known. If he’d arrived a moment earlier, Crystal might have been able to jerk away from Carlisle and leap to her feet before Marc walked in on them.
In a cruel twist of fate, he entered the room at the exact moment another man was coming in his girlfriend’s mouth.
Marc didn’t say a word, he just turned and left her doing what she did best.
Shaking away the remnants of that unpleasant recollection, he turned his attention to the newspaper in front of him. The caption below the photograph read: “Lieutenant Marc Cruz carries a fainting Sidney Morrow away from the public rest rooms at Guajome Lake Park, near the scene where the body of Anika Groene was found.”
It could have been worse. He read on, considering himself lucky the article wasn’t entitled “Police Officer Suspended for Hitting on Suspect.”
“Local psychic Sidney Morrow may be aiding the homicide division with their latest investigation. Victims Candace Hegel and Anika Groene were taken within weeks of each other, under similar circumstances, and perhaps by the same assailant. Lieutenant Cruz had no comment on Morrow’s involvement with the case, and Deputy Chief Amanda Stokes has stated that the Oceanside Police Department does not consult psychics.
“Sidney Morrow has offered her assistance to the police department before. More than fifteen years ago she helped solve a missing persons case in neighboring Bonsall. A local girl, Lisa Pettigrew, was found trapped in a well on a rural piece of property. Miss Morrow disclosed the girl’s location to police officers, stating she’d seen the place in a ‘psychic vision.’
“An unidentified source at the Bonsall Fire Department indicated Pettigrew couldn’t possibly have fallen into the well without sustaining considerable bodily damage. Due to the minor nature of her injuries, it was suspected that Pettigrew and Morrow, who were in the same grade at Bonsall Middle School, had perpetrated a preteen prank.
“Deputy Chief Stokes has named no lead suspects in either of the latest killings, nor has she confirmed the brutal slayings are related…”
As he sat there, glaring at the page and condemning Sidney Morrow to an eternal damnation he no longer believed in, the clouds overhead broke open and it began to rain.
When Sidney arrived at Pacific Pet Hotel, Marc was already there. He’d called last night to ask if he could pick up a urine sample from Blue.
Ignoring her jittery pulse, she opened the gate and drove through it, parking in her usual spot beside the building. When she got out of the truck he was striding toward her.
From across the expanse between them, she could feel his anger, shimmering like a mirage on hot asphalt. It had rained for a few moments, just a teasing sprinkle, before the relentless sun returned and evaporated every drop of moisture from the baking earth.
Now the air was as muggy as shower steam.
Judging by the hard set of his jaw, another kind of storm was brewing. It was too bad he looked mouthwateringly good in a plain white T-shirt and navy-blue trousers, because she had a feeling he was going to ruin the effect when he opened his mouth.
“Here,” he grated, shoving a sterile cup at her chest.
Refusing to rise to the bait, she took the small container placidly and retrieved Blue from his kennel. True to form, the dog growled at Marc, teeth bared, hackles up.
Again, Marc didn’t seem surprised by the dog’s reaction, and Sidney wondered at the animosity between him and man’s best friend. Once bitten, twice shy?
“Will he piss on cue?” he asked.
“He’s a male, isn’t he?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Intact dogs like to mark their territory,” she explained.
“Intact?”
“Not neutered.”
She led Blue through the front gate to a tree-lined median, letting him sniff the area’s most popular target. Sure enough, he lifted his leg. She stuck the cup under him, capped it when he was finished, and thrust it at Marc, a self-satisfied smile on her face.
“Thanks,” he said tersely, his expression far from grateful.
“So what are you testing for?” she asked as he walked away. Her eyes lingered on the way his T-shirt fit across his broad shoulders, the fading scratches on the back of his neck, the still-raw patch on his elbow.
He arched a backward glance at her. “Marijuana. Do you think that’s what he was on?”
She shrugged. “Could have been, I guess.”
“Aren’t you familiar with the effects?”
“I’ve never tried it.”
“Right,” he scoffed, setting the sample on the top of his car.
“I suppose you have?”
“Many times.”
Sidney wasn’t sure she believed him. He didn’t strike her as a free-loving, experimental type, but perhaps he hadn’t always been so iron-willed. “Were you one of those wayward boys who turned his life around by joining the other side of the law?”
“No.”
She urged Blue to sit by tugging on his leash. “What were you like, as a child?”
