Every time Joe Martinez walks into the OCME, Lucy Wahl feels like she's having a hot flash. She's not old enough for menopause, but Detective Martinez is just so hot he melts underwear elastic just by being in the room with a woman. He's like the cool biker dude that all the girls in her high school wanted to lose their virginity to, and he's got that rock star hair to go with it. That's only because he's a detective, though. Lieutenant Reece wouldn't let that kind hair go on a beat cop.
Not that Joe looks at her most times. He's a man's man, and he communicates mano-a-mano with Dr. Morgan. Lucy sighs and hates life for just a moment more when she remembers the nickname some of her classmates gave her. Wahl-flower. Like they were clever or something. No, they were stupid jerks is what they were. And when she lets herself go, she can think of all sorts of other colorful words that would make herself blush if she let them. Lucy's figure isn't much to write home about either, nothing that the great detective would notice since she's tall, skinny and as flat as Nebraska. No, a man like him would want more cushion for the pushin'.
"Wahl!" Detective Martinez says with an impatient snap of his fingers in front of Lucy's eyes. "Where did you go?"
"I'm sorry?" she says, shrugging a little and laughing unsurely.
"Morgan's out. I need you to help me with the latest case. The good doctor assures me you're up to task. Are you?" Martinez looks doubtful.
"Well, yeah," Lucy says, smiling uncontrollably for a moment that Dr. Morgan actually said something nice about her when she wasn't around.
"Then what have we got?" Martinez asks as he hands her the case folder and crosses his arms over his chest as if waiting to be impressed.
Lucy looks at the folder name to remind herself of the case, and this one involved an old rich white man with his much too young and perky paid companion. She almost laughs at how typical this story is. The family of the dead man claims nothing but he is an upstanding citizen and that the working girl caught in the crossfire is nothing but a murderous pox on society. The facts of his death clearly indicate otherwise.
"Accidental overdose," Lucy says so dispassionately she's almost reached contempt. "It was a mix of performance enhancing drugs and alcohol, both of which the victim had in his system longer than he was with the suspect."
Martinez quirks his head with interest. "What about the ligature marks? It wasn't a death by strangling?"
"No," Lucy says as she shows him evidence photos of the marks. "The strangling happened after death. Beforehand, he was engaged in a risky but not fatal game of autoerotic asphyxiation."
As manly as Martinez is, he shivers at the mention of that particular bedroom activity. "I really don't need that much help getting it up," he says.
"No, I'm sure you don't need it, Detective," Lucy says softly, surprised she's commented back out loud.
"What?" Martinez asks, as if he, too, was surprised by their little exchange.
"Accidental overdose," Lucy says with an awkward smile as she hands the folder back to the detective.
"Thanks, Lucy," he says, tapping the edge of the folder against the palm of his hand while looking at her a few seconds. It's enough to make Lucy sweat down her back, but Martinez seems to shake himself out of it.
"I'll be sure to tell the doc you did good. Time to go close the case upstairs," Martinez says as he's already in transit toward the door.
Lucy whistles lowly after he's safely on the other side of them, and she fans herself briefly. There are definitely times when she's glad she works in the morgue where things are just a little cooler than the rest of the building.