one.
But I tended to have a habit of crashing us back down to bumbling and awkward every spare chance I got.
“Alex!” I said, trying to keep my cool as every synapse in my head shot urgent and improbable messages:
Alex had his hands on his hips, his police badge winking on his belt, his leather holster nestled up against the firm plane of his are-you-kidding-me chest. His shoulders looked even broader, even more well muscled if that were even possible, making his square jaw look that much more chiseled. His lips—full, blush-pink lips that I had pressed mine against more than once—were set in a hard, thin line. His ice blue eyes were sharp.
“We need to talk.”
While normally those words would make me swoon and rethink today’s lingerie choices (white cotton panties dotted with pastel pink hearts, no-nonsense [and no cleavage] beige bra), the set of his jaw let me know that this wouldn’t be a tea-and-cookies kind of chat.
My stomach flopped in on itself.
Alex led me to his office, one hand clamped around my elbow as if I might dart or steal something at any moment. It was awkward and annoying, but I guess he had just cause: I may have occasionally pilfered a cup of coffee, a jelly donut, or a piece of pivotal evidence in an open investigation once or twice.
I sat down in the hard plastic visitor’s chair and he sat behind his desk in his I’m-the-boss chair, arms crossed, eyes holding mine.
“What do you know about Gerald D. Ford?”
Heat pricked all over my body. I had just finished a case at a local high school, going under cover as a substitute teacher, but I “taught” English, not Social Studies.
“Uh, he was our twenty-sixth president and, uh, something about his teeth?”
Alex cocked a brow. “That’s Gerald R. Ford and he was the thirty-eighth president. Our Ford was a homeless vet who took up residence at the bottom of the Tenderloin.”
My saliva soured. “Was?”
Alex opened his ever-present manila file folder and handed me a photograph. “He was burned to a crisp two weeks ago Sunday.”
I glanced down at the photo—a half-charred body sitting on the sidewalk, what remained of his torso propped up against a pink, stuccoed wall advertising
“That’s awful, but what does it have to do with me?”
“He was ultimately identified by his dental records.” Alex passed me that sheet then, stamped with a military ID and government info. There was the standard image of disembodied teeth—top set and bottom—teeth randomly marked by ballpoint ink x’s for a missing molar and a handful of cavities. But the ballpoint pen was used for something else, too—Ford’s dentist had drawn two narrow images, one on each incisor. Rounded at the gum line, then each tapering to a fine point.
“Vampire.”
Alex nodded.
I stood. “I’ll bring this down to Sampson. I can’t recall a Gerald Ford in any of our records.”
Alex’s face remained unchanged. “That’s not why I asked you here, Lawson.”
Fireworks shot through my body as thoughts pinged through my brain.
I wasn’t so much sexually morbid as I was sexually frustrated.
“When the paramedics initially got there, Gerry was still alive, still talking.”
I stepped back, interested. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Find her.’”
I slipped back into the chair and leaned forward. “Find who? An estranged wife, a daughter?”
Alex shook his head, blue eyes intent on me as he handed me a scrap of paper sealed in a clear-plastic evidence bag. I looked down at the paper; its edges were curled, licked by fire, but the words were clearly legible. A cold stripe of needling fear made its way down the back of my neck as the words swam before my eyes, then burned themselves into my brain: Sophie Lawson, Underworld Detection Agency, San Francisco, California.
