Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just looking at this scene unconnected to the others?” She chewed at her lip. “A role-play, maybe?”
“Role-play?”
She turned toward him fully, and he backed up immediately, a step, and then two. The distance he put between them was excessive. She’d brushed her teeth and showered after her run, so she didn’t think it was that. “Well, sex toys,” she said, gesturing to the bedside table, “and kids toys? The two absolutely do not go together. So. Say the guy”—she pointed back toward the dead man on the bed—“has a thing for kids and hires a couple of prostitutes to role-play his kiddie sexual fantasy, right? That’s how they end up here at this abandoned motel. And then a fourth party shows up and stabs them to death.”
He seemed to think about that. “What would be the motive?”
“Maybe the dude”—she inclined her head back toward the male’s body—“didn’t keep his fantasy strictly to role-play. Maybe someone who knew that offered him free drugs and then came here where he knew he’d be, and killed all three of them.”
The agent’s brow dipped, and he looked around again. “Someone came to this hotel while he was in the middle of . . .” He waved his hand toward the purple dildo. From this angle, with the light shining on it, Lennon could see that it had glitter either on it or in it. “To avenge something he’d done to a kid?”
“Just spitballing.” It was Tommy’s word, and he’d used it regularly.
He watched her closely, obviously assessing, and it made her uncomfortable, so she looked away. And again, she missed the hell out of her partner. They were in the habit of throwing out every possibility at a scene, no matter how far fetched. It helped her. The constant dialogue. The mental removal from the physical location. Ambrose obviously didn’t work that way.
“Or,” he said, surprising her so that she turned back to him, “there was another partner, the drug-fueled orgy they all agreed to partake in went sideways, and the killer stabbed all the partiers.” His expression was strangely hopeful, and she got the feeling he’d thrown out the idea—which was an actual possibility—as a way to work with her rather than against her.
“Why?” she asked.
He blinked, those bedroom eyes widening and then drooping again. “Why what?”
“Why did the fourth mystery partner, if there was one, stab the other orgy members?”
He looked at the man lying on the bed, his gaze then moving to Teresa, who was putting the teddy bear into an evidence bag. “This kind of scene? Who knows. Could be anything. Might be nothing. Drugs don’t exactly make people logical.” His eyes met hers, something passing over his expression that she didn’t catch in time to name. The guy was taciturn, and it made her trust him even less.
She crossed her arms and chewed at her lip. Reticent or not, he wasn’t wrong about drugs making people illogical and impulsive. She’d seen people killed over a baggie of weed or a side-eye. The idea of motive could be dialed way back when drugs and mental issues were involved. On the streets, you might be killed over nothing at all. A personal scenario going on in an individual’s mind and nowhere else.
Hell, someone might have taken one turn too many with the purple, glittery plastic phallus.
Whatever was going on, she still couldn’t figure out where the cocktail of hallucinogens came in. Lennon heard at least a few voices just outside the room, and a moment later, two more criminalists came through the door.
Her muscles relaxed slightly. Lennon’s job was done here. Now it was time for the tech team to gather and catalog and arrange for these bodies to be sent to the medical examiner. She greeted the criminalists and then stepped outside the room. She heard Agent Mars introducing himself to them but didn’t wait for him to join her before heading toward the stairs.
As far as she was concerned, her very brief partnership was now over.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, Lennon made it her first priority to go straight to Lieutenant Byrd’s office. “You stuck me with a fed without even consulting me?” she said as she sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
“Dial it down, Gray. The call came down from the chief’s office, so you’ll have to take it up with him when he gets back into town. But if it really is a serial killer we’re dealing with, we’re going to have to manage this properly. Hell, even if it’s only a new toxic street drug that just hit the market, we’ll need some assistance. Agent Mars worked in a field office outside the city and is transferring here to San Francisco. He’s never worked this kind of case, so he might need some guidance.”