Page 50 of Violent Skies

“I just got the tickets, you did all the hard work.” I awkwardly wink and Hayden scowls.

“Don’t do that ever again,” he says, and then starts to laugh. “Get out of here.”

In reality I paid a girl way too much money to take Hayden out so I could cement our relationship and make sure he never forgets how helpful I can be. It cost me two grand and I had to buy season tickets to the Suns. Hayden got one game, Lauri got the other forty. And she finished in the parking lot twice that night, once when I dropped her off. I have two texts from her I should answer…

On my way back to the IA offices I take the chance to sneak through the heavy steel doors marked MORGUE as an officer comes out of them. I’ve never been down here and it’s cold enough to make me glad I haven’t. Out of the main area the warm tans and carpets are gone, leaving me to descend two levels of concrete stairs down into the basement. There’s a waiting room and an empty desk situated outside of another set of doors.

I wait for five minutes before taking the chance to sneak back and find the body myself. Maybe they’ve all gone home for the day. There’s barely any lights on except for a small, cold office at the other end of the long, pitch dark hallway and a white-blue light that spills across the floor in front of me to my right.

I move forward, uncomfortable with the stench of death, and peek around the corner to find the massive freezer room empty. “Fuck, that’s creepy…” I grumble. I leave the door open just in case someone notices how dark the hall got and make my way to the small cluttered desk in the corner. It’s piled with folders, it’s nearly impossible to find a starting place, but luckily enough, the folder I’m looking for is open on the desk. Accompanied by a half eaten pizza, a can of Dr. Pepper and a pair of hot pink glasses that give me a headache even looking at them.

The fact that someone can even eat in here around all these dead bodies makes my stomach turn, but I slide the folder out from under the pizza. It’s tagged with door twelve and, given my track record with time today, I move as I read. Body came in this morning, so it can’t be the same guy that Birdie killed. This is a new man with the same tattoo. It’s a heavily inked row of triangles interconnected with very little white and the photo is blurry… but maybe I can run it through the computer later. I sigh, pulling out my phone and snap pictures of the files, throwing the manila folder on the nearby bench as I pull on door twelve.

I swallow the bile that rises at the smell of the body as it rolls out and clicks into place. There’s no name on the door, not that I expected there to be. He’s covered with a sheet and the second I pull it back I understand why. A wave of nausea hits and I gag loudly, turning away from the body.

He’s covered head to toe in what looks like animal bites?

“If you need to puke there’s a bucket.” A small, sarcastic voice floats over the cold tile floor toward me and I bite back the urge to do just that as I turn to face them. She’s tiny, with warm olive skin, and the lab coat she wears practically swallows her whole. Beneath it is a striped, cropped sweater and a pair of oversized black overalls stuffed with pens and a pair of latex gloves that match the glasses on the table.

She watches me with a pair of massive brown eyes, framed by sleek, dark brown hair and a tiny smirk on her face that gives away how excited she is to have caught someone doing something bad. She looks me over as I press the back of my hand to my mouth and nose. As she walks the gold jewelry that lines both her ears glimmers under the fluorescent lights, distracting me for half a second.

Until she picks up a piece of pizza and takes a bite. “You stole my folder…” She looks up from the desk, completely unbothered by the dead body.

“I can’t—” I turn away from her as my stomach flips.

“Men are so squeamish,” she complains and I hear the slice hit the cardboard box. “Did Taylor send you down here? I told him I’d forward anything I found in the morning. He’s quite possibly the most impatient person alive,” she rambles, moving around the desk toward the body. “What does he want?”

She asks me so bluntly that it takes me a second to remember what I’m doing down here. I turn slowly back to the body and find her standing across from me, fixing her hot pink gloves with her teeth.

“Oh.” She cocks her head to the side, a smile growing there, two of the smallest, sharpest incisors frame it. Like a little punk rock vampire of my dreams. A goofy grin forms on my face, completely enamored with her. Fucking get a hold of yourself. “You’re adorable.”

“I’m not adorable.” I’m quick to defend myself and I stand up a little straighter. “I came because this body has a tattoo matching another one that came in a couple days ago,” I lie to her and go along with the story she assumed for me.

“Oh, and he speaks full sentences. Hot,” she purrs, pulling the sheet away from the body's wrist and exposing it completely. If I wasn’t so disgusted I might be impressed by the size of the dude. “I had the same reaction. Even cold, it’s massive.” She clocks me instantly, raising her hands in a ridiculous form of measurement that causes the most natural of laughter to spill from me in the most embarrassing way.

“The tattoo,” I remind her.

“The spearhead.” She holds up the wrist with absolutely no respect for the dead and a big smile on her small face. “It’s in a different spot but it’s the same as the nightclub…” she trails off and turns, moving down three doors and sliding out another body. “A bleeder,” she giggles. “I had to hose him down.” I know she’s talking to me but she just rambles without a care and I shift around, coming to stand behind her so I can look over her shoulder. She can’t be more than five foot three and she looks up at me with infectious excitement.

“See,” she points to his throat. “Same tattoo, different placement. If I had to guess it was done at the same time. The ink has a similar fade to it.”

“So you think they’re connected?” I ask her, trying to follow between her constant stream of words.

“Definitely. How isn’t my job to figure out, but they weren't killed by the same person,” she says confidently.

“What do you mean?” I ask her. I know they weren’t but the explanation will help us find out who else is out there killing these assholes.

“Whoever did this—” she points to the nightclub body, “—is female. The movements were graceful. Deep, but with precision. And with the angle of the cuts, she’s short,” she explains. “Whoever did that,” she turns back to the mangled guy, “wanted to prove a point. He died twice as slow and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was on purpose. I think it was fish…”

“Why do you think that?” I ask her, genuinely curious and maybe a little in love.

She smiles at me, entertained by my curiosity. “He had a bunch of…” she looks around and reaches for a box of silver garbage: safety pins, pop cans, chains. “...These thingies—technical term—”She smirks, showing me the contents. “They were attached to him. He has rope burns on his ankles and I’m not an ichthyologist,” she says, like it’s a real thing.

“A what?” I must sound confused because she laughs.

“Fish scientist,” she shrugs, right, obviously. “Google says that, based on size and shape, those bites are from a barracuda.”

“They dropped him in a tank with fish?” I’m going to vomit.