Contact High
1.
"It's not like her to be late."
Nonplussed, Dr. Morales turned his gaze from an X-ray of the femur belonging to the unidentified murder victim occupying his autopsy table to the well-dressed form of Detective David Gabriel. The pathologist's eyes narrowed, his gaze turning skeptical. Gabriel shuffled, his loafers dragging across the linoleum in an awkward two-step. His eyes met Morales's and then dropped away as he coughed dryly into a fist. Morales made no effort to hide the scornful quirk of his eyebrow. On what planet could anyone claim that Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson was punctual?
"I assume you're referring to Captain Raydor," Morales shot back, his tone edged with an unseasonable frost. "Yes, it's unlike her. Chief Johnson must be holding her up."
Gabriel expelled an impatient breath. "It's unlike the chief to be late to an autopsy," he clarified, sounding more put-upon than usual. "Especially when she hasn't gotten to see the victim yet."
Morales's expression transformed itself into a smirk. "Not that there's much to see," he quipped. "Tell me, detective: was the victim by any chance found in an extremely well-insulated, dry location? Because as you can see –" Morales whipped the sheet back with something of a flourish, and Gabriel flinched in anticipation of a gruesome sight before his eyes widened in fascination – "the flesh is desiccated. In other words, the body is essentially –"
"Oooh, it's a muuuummyyyy," interrupted a third voice, a low, distinct alto. A blue scrubs-clad Captain Raydor drifted – that was really the only word for it: she seemed to be drifting, like a ship that had come unmoored – into the autopsy bay, lurching to a stop only when she collided with the sharp metal edge of the table, as if she wasn't quite sure where her body stopped and started. Her wide green eyes reflected with a peculiar glossy sheen under the fluorescent lights. "Where did you find it?" she continued in the same stage whisper, oblivious to the men's stares.
"Um… at 864 Coldwater Canyon, ma'am." Gabriel knew he was repeating information Sanchez had already given to the captain. Was Darth Raydor's memory going? "Although decomposition made it impossible to identify the body visually, we're operating under the assumption that our victim is the owner of the property."
"King Tut?" Raydor suggested jauntily, and then flashed them a silly smile, amused by her own joke.
"The property is registered to one, uh, Greta Garbo."
"Capt'n!" called an irate voice from the hall, almost wailing. "Where'd you go? You left me, and these things are confusin'."
As she finished the sentence, Brenda exploded into the already crowded room, her scrub top on backwards and, Gabriel observed in dismay, her feet bare. Her toenail polish was bright pink. "These things," presumably, were the booties regulation dictated they wear over their shoes; perhaps the source of the chief's confusion was their current location, one on each hand.
"Chieeef," Raydor exclaimed in an even more exaggerated stage whisper, "it's Greta Garbo, and she's a mummy!"
Brenda smacked the booties together (for emphasis?) and shouldered her way up against the table, jostling against Raydor and Gabriel in the process. She peered down at the shriveled form, and the two men waited with baited breath for one of her incisive pronouncements. Her eyes rolled upward until meeting the detective's from beneath the screen of her lashes. "She shoulda used more moisturizer."
Gabriel looked at Morales. Morales looked at Gabriel.
The stern Captain Sharon Raydor, Ms. Propriety herself, snickered. "Now we know why she vanted to be alooone," she intoned in a horrible parody of a Swedish accent. "The years were not kind."
She bumped her shoulder against the petite blonde's – hard, from the looks of it – and both laughed uproariously, staggering and gripping one another for support.
"Uh, chief," Gabriel began. He hesitated and edged closer to Morales, who seemed to be the only other sane person in the room. "Is there a reason why you and the captain are an hour and a half late?"
"Is there a reason why you and the captain are an hour and a half late?" parroted Raydor in a deep voice. "I believe your detective is going to tell on us," she added. "Go confess to the Pope, David." She crossed herself lazily, her eyes sparkling with mirth, and then leaned forward to prop her hands on the autopsy table, heedless of the body. Morales looked too stunned to protest.
"Oh, David." Brenda swatted him playfully on the arm. "There's no need to be such a stickler for the rules! We just lost track of time is all. She's not goin' anywhere." The deputy chief cocked her head and looked down at the body, her face drooping in an exaggerated pout. "Miz Garbo. I don't suppose there's any point askin' her for an autograph, huh?" She extended one finger and poked very deliberately at the exposed sternum.
Finally shocked out of the stupor that the women's arrival had induced, the doctor seized her hand and pulled it back. "Don't do that!" he exclaimed. "The flesh is extremely fragile and you're not even wearing gloves. You could compromise the evidence. Why do I have to be the one telling you that?"
The blonde blinked at Morales, as if it were taking her a moment to process this information, and then her lips curled down into a pout. "Well, you don't have to be so mean about it," she replied in a petulant tone. She stepped back toward Raydor.
The door flew open again, forcing Gabriel back against the metal freezer compartments housing additional bodies. He grimaced. He tried the best he could to hide it, but he was squeamish when it came to all things morgue-related, not least its resident expert, Morales.
The pathologist's face had tightened with annoyance. "This isn't a clown car!" he snapped.
But the new arrival, Sanchez, ignored him, his cell phone already clamped to his ear. "Lieutenant Flynn," he was saying. "Don't worry, sir. I found them." His fierce eyes narrowed as he surveyed the two women. "They're unharmed."
"I wish I could say the same for my autopsy bay," snapped Morales. "I don't know what the hell's going on, but everybody out! I'll send the report of my findings to Major Crimes and FID as soon as I have something to send. But for now, Greta and I want to be left alone."
Sanchez was ready and willing to comply, firmly but gently grasping the captain's upper arms and muscling her toward the door. "Gabriel," he instructed over his shoulder, "get the chief."
Julio moved them along so quickly that they were in the elevator before he looked at Gabriel and said, "Provenza lost them at the Sizzler."
"The Sizzler," David repeated in a flat tone. "The Sizzler, like – the Sizzler? What in the world were they doing at the Sizzler?"
"Some serious damage to the buffet, the way the lieutenant tells it. We need to get them back to the chief's office before anyone sees, and then Flynn and Provenza say they can explain." Sanchez's emphasis and dark look telegraphed his skepticism.
The elevator doors slid open, and Gabriel guided the chief into the corridor. "Where are my shoes?" she asked suddenly, staring down at her feet. "Someone stole my shoes."
Meanwhile Captain Raydor laid her hand on Sanchez's arm and asked, with great dignity and politeness, "Pardon me, Detective Sanchez, but do you have any change for the vending machine? I gave all of mine to the chief so she could buy a honeybun, and then she wouldn't share."
Brenda looked over her shoulder, guilt-stricken. "It was stale anyway," she lamented, and then her eyes lit up. "Candy drawer!" she exclaimed, and would have taken off at a sprint if not for Gabriel's restraining grasp.
Sharon heaved a sigh. "I wanted potato chips," she murmured, her voice steeped in world-weariness. "Just potato chips. Is it really so much to ask?"
Flynn jerked from his slumped position against his desk to fully upright with alacrity as soon as he glimpsed the new arrivals. "Conference room," he snapped. "Buzz – candy drawer." He led the way, Tao bringing up the rear, while Raydor muttered about potato chips and the chief grumbled about the loss of her shoes. Gabriel's head was spinning. He'd last spoken to Chief Johnson just over two hours ago, when he'd phoned to tell her not to bother coming to the victim-less crime scene but to head straight to the morgue.
Chief Johnson's behavior had been a bit off since the beginning of this whole leak thing. Having Captain Raydor as their perpetual watch-dog had put everybody on edge. But this… this was not stress. This was something else. He looked down at what he could see of his boss – a blonde ponytail. "Are you…?" He sought Provenza's gaze. "Are they…?"
"High as kites."
"What happened in the last two hours?" Gabriel demanded, his voice straining.
Buzz entered with a giant bag of Skittles, which Brenda snatched from him. Pulling away from Gabriel, she went and sat down next to Raydor. The civilian tech watched, curious, as Chief Johnson poured a little mountain of the candies onto the table between herself and the other woman and then began to sort them by color. She appeared to be content.
"You know the chief – can't keep her away from a crime scene." Flynn glanced at the brunette who now sat in one of the hard plastic chairs, docile. Her head was bowed. "And where she goes, Raydor goes."
"Darth Raydor. The Wicked Witch."
The unexpected pronouncement caused all the men in the room to look at the captain. She only looked at her cuticles. After a moment Flynn continued, addressing David, "You'd left with the body and Tao and Sanchez were canvassing the neighborhood –"
"For all the good it did. Everyone has a twenty-foot security gate. They've never seen their neighbors, never mind meeting them," Tao groused.
"Yeah. – So Louie and I are there when they roll up, late because –"
"Because someone wouldn't let a certain captain drive," Provenza chimed in. "And this woman shows up from the whatsit, caretaker's cottage, and of course these two want to interview her, so off they go while we tie up the loose ends."
"It was totally normal." Flynn crossed his arms over his chest in a defensive pose. "Routine. Until we got ready to leave and found the chief and the captain – ah –" He turned to Provenza for help.
"They were out by the pool. Guess they'd decided to take a swim. We caught them… disrobing."
Brenda perked up in the act of ingesting a yellow Skittle. "My shoes!" she exclaimed. "That's where my shoes are! Sharon threw them in the pool."
Raydor giggled. The sound was eerie.
It was at that point that Gabriel realized Brenda's yellow cardigan was inside-out. He shuddered. Oh God, he did not need visions of these two undressing.
Flynn looked right at him with a glimmer of amusement in his own eyes. Of course. The lieutenant had probably enjoyed being the one to have to wrangle them back into their clothing.
"This caretaker woman, Mary Baldwin, has quite the green thumb," Provenza explained drolly. "Grows her own. Bakes it, apparently. Into cookies."
Gabriel frowned. It was hard to imagine Raydor eating a cookie.
"She makes it into tea too," Sanchez said as if he were clairvoyant. "She's still in booking."
"Wait, but –" David reached up to touch his head. It was beginning to ache. "The Sizzler?"
Provenza shrugged. "We passed it. They insisted. I didn't think it would do any harm."
"Until they went to the bathroom and didn't come back," Flynn finished. "I guess somebody remembered there was a body in the morgue."
"They didn't drive here?" Tao sounded horrified.
The eldest lieutenant's response was a dismissive gesture. "Nah, took a cab. I drove the chief's car back."
"Does this have anything to do with the murder?" Buzz asked quietly.
"We're not sure there was a murder, until we get the autopsy reports from Morales," Gabriel pointed out.
"In the meantime, what do we do with these two? I don't think we want the Pope to find out about this."
Provenza was right. The men looked apprehensively at one another. Sharon continued examining her fingernails. Brenda ate Skittles, purple ones now.
"We'll take them home."
Flynn raised an eyebrow.
"We'll draw straws."
Gabriel drew the short straw, because that was the kind of day he was having. Who was he kidding? That was the kind of life he was having.
The captain had a lot of trouble with her seatbelt. The chief helped her, which didn't work out particularly well, since she was also having a lot of trouble with her seatbelt. With them both buckled into the backseat, David felt like a combination Hoke and soccer dad. Brenda's mouth was stained lurid colors from the candy.
He headed toward Brenda's house first, because it was closer and because the chief was fidgeting and twisting and giggling, unlike the captain, who was quiet to the point of moroseness. It wasn't until he reached the end of her block that the blonde exclaimed, "Oh, no, I can't go home! Fritzi'll be so mad. He was so mad last time. I wanna go home with Sharon. Okay, Sharon? It'll be fun. Take me home with my Captain Sharon."
The last time? Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
Raydor just leaned her head against the window and sighed, so he made a U-turn. Thirty-five minutes later, he watched the two women walk into the ultra-modern condo's front entrance, Brenda still barefoot and Sharon still drifting. That, he thought, was his duty done. They could get themselves into Sharon Raydor's living space and manage not to end up on the news at eleven. The unintoxicated members of Major Crimes had actual work to do.
Sharon had never liked getting stoned, because she was such a stoned stoner. Marijuana made her ravenous and thirsty and then turned her into a zombie. As she stepped into the cool, quiet interior of her own home, she thought the drug-induced fog might be lifting somewhat – and then she tripped over her own shoes and came inches away from smashing her skull on the corner of the coffee table.
"Why're you in the floor?"
Sharon blinked, disoriented. Brenda loomed over her, and then the blonde's face came closer and closer, her features distorting until the captain closed her eyes in fear that the other woman was going to pass right through her. Perhaps her own body was no longer solid; perhaps its molecules had come unbonded.
"Capt'n?"
The other woman's voice was accompanied by a warm puff of air on Sharon's cheek. The captain opened her eyes, cautious. There was Brenda, lying close beside her on the floor with her cheek propped on her open palm, but still reassuringly distinct from Sharon's own body.
"We're in the floor," Brenda confided as their eyes met.
Sharon sighed. Her feet felt very far away. She still had feet, didn't she? And hands? One of her hands appeared in her field of vision. Okay; somehow she'd made that happen.
"Barbecue potato chips," said the older woman.
Dark brown eyes lit up. "You got any?"
"Rice cakes."
"Ooh, cake!"
"Rice…" Sharon's voice trailed off. Getting up from the floor was turning out to be difficult. She managed to roll onto her knees and push herself up with her hands. By the time she reached the kitchen, she had forgotten why she'd come; but it was just as well she was there, given her intense thirst. She grabbed a liter of seltzer, considered glassware, and then gulped directly from the bottle. Sweet relief.
"Where's the cake?"
Sharon held the seltzer out like an offering. Brenda's lip protruded in a pout.
"Want to order a pizza?" the captain suggested as a reasonable compromise, flopping down on the sofa. It jiggled, and she bounced.
Brenda crawled toward the couch, unfazed by the hardwood beneath her delicate knees, and reached a stubby hand out for the seltzer. "Pepperoni?" she asked hopefully.
Sharon watched the bubbling liquid slop down the other woman's neck, seeping into her cardigan and blouse, as she drank. "And pineapple."
Brenda scrunched her nose up in dismay. "I'll pay," Sharon added. The blonde rocked back on her heels, placated. She appeared content to watch with glassy eyes while the captain fumbled with her cellphone. It took a couple of tries and one inadvertent call to her son, but then –
"Victory is mine." Sharon's iPhone arced through the air before landing a few feet away on a purple ottoman.
The deputy chief didn't answer. Sharon was thirsty again, and hungry (although she thought maybe she'd eaten earlier, something with mashed potatoes and meat that had not been Grade A), and the pizza was a good thirty minutes away. The pause was a lengthy, awkward one. Her eyelids drooped.
Something sharp dug into her leg just above the knee. It turned out to be Brenda's chin.
"How d'you do that?" Brenda asked, her voice dreamy.
"Hmm?"
"Make your hair like that. All… magic-y."
To Sharon's chagrin, those plump little fingers seized a dark lock and tugged – hard. Her reflexes were slow, her pupils no doubt already dilated. She tried to duck away, which increased the painful tugging.
"It's soft, too. It's like… like one a' Charlie's Angels. Not Farrah Fawcett. The one with the dark hair. She was real pretty."
Automatically the captain reached up to adjust her glasses but encountered empty space. Maybe the marijuana wasn't the only reason everything appeared blurry.
"You're pretty too. I like your hair."
Sharon's hand closed around Brenda's and pulled it away from her tortured hair.
"Your hair is nice as well." Oh God, she sounded so formal. This was a great time for her to go all awkward turtle, but Brenda was too high to notice. The woman obviously had no tolerance for THC. "You've gotten much better at styling it."
Brenda's slow grin was delighted. "You've been payin' attention to how I fix my hair? It gets all frizzy, but I got this new spray. I never really liked bein' blonde."
"No no, the color suits you."
"Yeah? You like blondes?"
Sharon blinked. "I don't have a particular preference."
"I find that hard to believe, capt'n." Said blonde struggled up to her knees, bringing her face closer to Sharon's. "I've heard tell a' your preferences."
"My – my –" Goddamn pot. Sharon's mouth was so dry that she could scarcely get the words out. She licked her lips, but it didn't help the situation. Her tongue felt like sandpaper.
Strike that: it made the situation worse. She watched Brenda's pupils follow the movement.
So the LAPD still hadn't gotten tired of talking about the fact that the hated head of FID was a big ol' dyke, as if the two somehow went together. How unsurprising, boring, banal, etc.
The way the deputy chief was fixating on her mouth, though – that was intriguing. Sharon's accelerating heartbeat suggested she was more intrigued than she cared to admit.
No, she wasn't that high. "Redheads," she blurted, and groped for the seltzer.
Brenda pouted for a split second before being distracted by Sharon tilting her head back to take a long swallow. As the captain lowered the bottle, a trail of liquid dripped from the corner of her mouth down over her chin. The blonde caught it with her finger.
"Couldn't you make an exception for this blonde?" she husked.
Sharon's eyes widened in panic. She had little time to take in the other woman's coy tone before Brenda's mouth was on hers, clumsy and insistent. Her boneless fingers released the seltzer and she heard the bottle clunk to the floor.
Like hers, Brenda's lips were dry, but soft and full. Stunned, Sharon let her own lips part, and the younger woman surged deeper, her tongue probing at Sharon's teeth. Awkward fingers again tugged at her hair and she bent her head, not sure if she was moving away from the pain or toward the woman. Brenda tasted like high-fructose corn syrup, like sugar, the kind that would go to Sharon's head and make her feel sick and queasy.
Suddenly Sharon was tumbling toward the floor (because you can't tumble slowly, not even stoned) with Brenda beneath her. She landed hard on one knee, sprawled half above the blonde and half in a puddle of something sticky and bubbling. The seltzer.
Startled brown eyes fastened on hers from inches away. "You're bleedin'."
Sharon's arms were trapped between them. Elbow at an awkward angle, Brenda lifted a hand to the captain's mouth. Her index finger came away stained with a smear of red. "I'm sorry."
It occurred to Sharon that she should try to get up.
Brenda's tongue followed the path that her finger had taken, soothing. The fine hairs on the back of Sharon's neck stood on end; and then she kissed Brenda back, softly, thoroughly, with the kind of attentive efficiency she brought to bear on her work.
The doorbell rang.
The sound was enough to shock Sharon back to reality. Her mouth was still dry, but her head was clearing, and this was very bad. "Must be the pizza," she said shakily, scrambling up as if her limbs didn't quite belong to her. "That was fast."
She tugged her blouse back into place and smoothed her seltzer-splotched skirt as she trotted toward the door. Maybe it hadn't been fast at all; she didn't know. She had no sense of how much time had passed since she placed the order.
The ringing was succeeded by pounding. Since when were delivery persons so aggressive?
She didn't want to think about how she must look as she yanked the door open. When she saw who was standing on the other side, she really didn't want to think about how she must look.
"Delivery." Hatchet-faced, Provenza held the box aloft. "You're bleeding." He looked over Sharon's shoulder at the mess she could only imagine Brenda to be. She winced. "And she's wet. Please tell me there's at least pepperoni on this thing."
2.
The next morning Brenda was pouring herself her second cup of coffee when Sharon strutted into the break room on a pair of extra-high heels. Brenda's face heated instantly, but, to her surprise, in place of the answering flush of embarrassment she'd expected on the captain's face, she got a shark-like smile. "Good morning, chief." Raydor shook her hair back like a snotty head cheerleader and held up a clear plastic baggy. "I've got your shoes here for you."
"Oh, uh – you got them outta the pool?" Brenda stammered, juggling coffee, creamer, and, now, shoes. Oddly, they looked none the worse for wear after their tenure submerged in chlorine.
"They were never in the pool." The taller woman's perfect smile didn't waver. "I was wearing them. You threw my shoes into the pool. I'll be sending Major Crimes a bill."
"I figured your feet were bigger than mine" was all Brenda managed in the way of a comeback.
Sharon amped up the smile. "Dr. Morales has the autopsy results for you, and the toxicology results on Mary Baldwin's tea and cookies. Interesting reading. You have a nice day."
On her way out Raydor brushed against Gabriel, who was on his way in with an armload of files. "Morning, Detective," the captain trilled. Gabriel looked over his shoulder at her as if the woman had sprouted a second head.
"Are those my autopsy results?" Brenda snapped, holding out a hand.
"Yeah, autopsy and tox –"
She cut him off by snatching the files. Her eyes immediately began to scan the top page. What on earth had Raydor meant? And why was she acting so smug about the whole thing?
"Ooh, that wo –"
Brenda broke off in mid-growl. Her eyes widened.
"Chief? Everything okay?"
She whirled, the file hugged protectively to her chest. "Fine. Fine, David." She smiled. "You just go on about… whatever you were doin', now."
Ignoring the baffled expression on the detective's face, she turned back to the report. She wanted to be very sure that she understood exactly what the typed words said. She read it again, and then a third time. Still, she thought, gnawing on her lip, she'd never been great at all the science stuff. She should probably go down to the morgue and have Morales explain it to her. Yes. That was exactly what she'd do. She had to be misunderstanding what she was reading, and Captain Raydor had misunderstood too.
Dr. Morales was elbow-deep in entrails when the deputy chief let herself in. He sighed, long-suffering. "Doesn't anyone knock anymore?"
"This, right here." Thumbnail stabbing at the appropriate blank, she shoved the tox screen in front of the doctor's face. "Explain this to me."
"Um, yeah." One gloved finger pressed the papers back to a distance from which the letters were readable. "Those are the results of the tests we ran on the food substances collected from your hippy-dippy gardener's cottage. It means that while the 'herbal' tea had a high THC concentration, the cookies were just regular old chocolate chip."
"That's not possible. I didn't drink any tea." Her face a mask of consternation, Brenda Leigh snatched the report back. "And Captain Raydor – she's seen this too?"
The way Morales smirked made Brenda wonder what Sharon had said to him. Oh God, she hadn't been high. And she had kissed Sharon Raydor. Sharon Raydor, of all people! She had felt foggy, disoriented, ravenously hungry for junk food, inexplicably drawn to the older woman – This was not happening.
"Run the tests again."
"Chief, the results are clear –"
"Run 'em again!"
As Brenda bolted from the morgue, Morales's voice followed her: "Don't worry about it, Chief. You probably just got a contact high."
A vivid memory of Sharon's warm mouth pressed against hers flashed through Brenda's mind, and she shuddered.
She was never, ever going to live this down.