[Chapter 29: Discovery-Part One]

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The dock worker held up his gauze-wrapped hand appraisingly. "That's the prettiest damn bandage I ever seen." Annie added a last strip of tape while he showed his arm to Leah. "Ain't she somethin'?"

"Oh, yes," Leah agreed, glancing at the bandage and then at her watch. "She's something all right."

"Are you sure you don't want to get an x-ray?" Annie asked the man. "There could be more damage that we're not seeing."

His weather-worn cheeks creased with a smile. "It won't get me back workin' any faster, sweetheart, and I ain't spending my lunch hour in a waiting room."

"Well, if you're sure…can I have you sign this form?" She helped him hold the pen with his good hand while Leah started up the ambulance.

"He could probably get worker's comp," Annie said, pulling her door closed and hiding the sharp pain it caused in her ribs. "But he'll never know if he doesn't try."

"He knows what his union tells him."

"But his union's supposed to work for him—they should be telling him to file a claim."

Leah shook her head in that familiar Annie, you're so naïve kind of way. "Don't get me started. This town is more corrupt than even Hollywood makes it out to be."

"But, how do you know-"

"Nevermind," Leah snapped. "Let's just get some food and forget about it, all right?"

Annie pinched her lips shut, mentally adding unions to the growing list of topics not to discuss with Leah when she was hungry.

They followed a cargo truck through rows of warehouses to a frontage road out by the waterfront. Suddenly Leah braked. The cab wall behind their seats was pummeled with flying gear from the other side. Leah rolled her window down and inhaled deeply.

"Oh God, yes," she breathed. "Do you smell that?"

Annie sniffed and felt her lip curl instinctively. "Eh. Hot dogs."

"Fenway Franks, Newbie, unless I'm wrong." She sniffed again. "Which I'm not. I didn't know they sold them out here!" Annie started to make her case for a Cobb salad, but Leah was already jogging over to the mobile wiener stand that had set up shop for the lunch hour. They were just on the border of where the shipping warehouses gave way to public waterfront access, parked in a gravel lot that would hold about a dozen cars. Right now only a few were occupied, but more cars were starting to pull in. Apparently the locals all knew about the Fenway Franks; even a few dog-walkers and joggers from the waterfront were making their way over.

Annie's stomach growled, defying her taste buds, and with a groan she grabbed a few bucks from her wallet.

Amazingly, there was a turkey version, or abomination as Leah called it. Annie took a handful of mustard packets and followed Leah and her mmms of pleasure over to a weathered wooden bench next to the water.

"I can't believe you don't like Fenway Franks," Leah said around a mouthful.

"Do you know what they put in those things? Connor detailed it for me once, and I could never bring myself to eat them after that."

Leah raised an eyebrow. "And you think the turkey ones are any different? Bird scraps, left-overs, by-products…"

And just like that, Annie could no longer swallow. Leah watched her, laughter in her eyes, and Annie started giggling between gags. Just as she was spitting the half-chewed bite into a napkin, she inhaled mustard down the wrong pipe.

Instantly she was coughing, coughing, coughing, every breath like an axe-blow splitting her in half. She clenched her arms around her middle, doubling over, her eyes blurring with tears. Leah's hand pressed gently on her back.

"Take it easy," Leah said in her calm, matter-of-fact voice. "Slow breaths, as deep as you can."

No shit, Sherlock! Annie wanted to shout, but since speaking wasn't happening any time soon she did as she was told. Slowly she was able to suppress the coughing into mild throat clearing. She moved out of Leah's reach as soon as she could stand upright.

Leah turned away, feigning interest in a passing commuter ferry.

Annie wiped her eyes quickly. God, this was humiliating. She'd thought she could hide the fact that she shouldn't be working—now that was out the window. Leah would rat her out and Josh would cut her out of everything, just when she'd finally found a way in.

"You should have told me it was this bad," Leah said, still watching the ferry, "I would have given you that IV."

"Yeah, right!" Annie scoffed, wincing. "Ow. Don't make me laugh, seriously."

"I would have," Leah said with mild surprise. "How evil do you think I am?"

How evil is there? Annie sent her a wary glare, but Leah actually looked sincere. "You saw the bruise when Murphy dragged me in. My shirt didn't unbutton itself."

"Uh, no – and I didn't either. It was already open when he laid you on the couch."

Annie closed her eyes, feeling her cheeks flame. Damn him.

"So, yes, I checked it out," Leah went on, "but there was no way to tell the extent when you were dead to the world."

"When you couldn't hear me scream and cry."

"Exactly. And despite various claims to the contrary, I don't actually have x-ray vision. So-"

"Get to the point, Leah. Are you calling the hiring supervisor now, or do I get to finish out the shift?" She knew she wasn't being fair, but there was no point peeling the band-aid off slowly.

It was hard to hold Leah's gaze, and in the end, Annie looked away first, wiping a spot of mustard off the side of her finger.

"He doesn't work on Mondays," Leah said. "I guess we'll both have to suffer a little longer."

A woman in a jogging suit hurried up to them, dragging a yapping terrier by its leash.

"Excuse me," she said, trying to subdue on the dog, which was fixated on something near the parked cars. "All right, Lucky, that's enough! You're paramedics, right?"

"Can we help you?" Leah asked, brushing her hands on her pants.

"It's not me," the woman said. "There's a guy in one of those cars…I think you'd better come see."

The three of them followed Lucky, approaching a line of three cars from the front, while the woman explained how she'd been walking by, minding her own business when the dog started going berserk.

Annie was about to ask why when her eyes fell on the crumpled fender in the middle. It looked like it had been kicked by a giant. Her focus went into hyper-drive, the woman's voice fading into the background as Annie took in the hideous and undoubtedly familiar two-toned paint: faded burnt sienna and sour milk.

It can't be the same one. It can't be.

"Over here," the woman said urgently. She and her dog hurried around to the driver's side door. Annie's feet turned to lead.

Murphy filled her mind: his dark intensity in the car that night, the anger in his voice, the fear she'd felt, even as drunk as she'd been, when he'd uttered those two little words: Brace yourself.

She wrapped both arms around her middle, feeling goose-bumps cover her skin. The woman beckoned to her, glancing at the dock workers that were wandering closer, looking curious.

That was when Annie noticed the dark-haired, heavily built man lying very, very still in the front seat.

It was nearly noon, and the sun shining directly overhead cast a shadow over the man's face. Heart heavy with dread, she slipped passed Leah, walking close enough to peer into the shadow and see the black-brown crust of dried blood covering the lower half of his face and neck. The rest of his skin had a bluish, waxy sheen. And there were small, round objects resting on his eyelids.

The Saints. The Saints had killed this man and left him to rot in his car, the very same car and probably the very same man that she and Murphy had chased across South Boston not two nights ago. Acid seeped into her gut.

"Annie-"

Leah's voice sounded strangled. Her face was white. Annie realized with a stab of alarm that her partner, for the perhaps the first time ever, didn't know what to do.

And suddenly Annie did.

"Can you get these people out of here?" she snapped. Heart thudding, not waiting for an answer, she reached for the door handle.

Please, please, please let it be unlocked.

It was.

The latch released without resistance. Leah and the dog owner, who apparently felt her discovery gave her some sort of authority, had started herding the small but growing crowd of onlookers a short distance back from the car. Knowing she'd have only seconds, Annie held her breath and leaned into the car, wincing as she slid her back against the steering wheel, trying not to look directly into the body's creepy, lifeless, half-closed eyes.

Had the woman noticed the coins? Had Leah? Even in shadow, the two pennies shone with an unnatural brilliance, self-righteous and superior in their putrid setting. Oh, how the media would eat it up.

A wave of hatred rolled though her, all the way to the tip of her little finger, which she used to flick first one, then both pennies off the dead eyelids and into the palm of her hand. It took less than five seconds. Then she backed out and sucked in fresh air, lightheaded from the burst of adrenaline and lack of oxygen. She closed the door and leaned against it for support, crossing her arms to hide her shaking hands, and the pennies still clenched inside.

"No pulse," she reported unnecessarily. Leah would never have allowed her the first look if there was any chance he was a live patient, and not just a corpse. Leah's radio was already in her hand. "Did you call it in?" Annie asked.

[to be continued….]