Last Voice: A Concerto
4: Lacrimoso
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"Kasey Kinsey, age twenty-seven. What a name. No listed family. Worked as a waitress. Poor girl," Mandy said, handing over several printouts.
"In more ways than one." I flipped through the papers. "Wow… She was a saint. No arrests or anything. No record of even a parking ticket,"
"Her fingerprints were added to AFIS because of a safety thing at one of her previous jobs."
"I just don't see how she got by without a ticket, that's all."
After a pause, Mandy nodded slowly. "Makes me realize how dangerous it is…"
"What?"
"Everything," she sighed. "There is no safety zone."
"Yeah," I replied. "Life's not like games in P.E."
I thanked her and left.
And ran into Abbie.
"Hey, hi," she said. "I was looking for you."
I bet you were, I thought irritably, forcing myself to keep my gaze above her neck.
What I said was, "Results?"
"Some. We've got blood that's not the vic's – I'd guess she took a swing at him. Gave him a bloody nose, from the looks of things."
"We know for sure it's a him?"
She handed me a folder.
"Yup. Oh, and we know something else, too – he's HIV positive."
What?
Abbie kept talking for a second, but I didn't hear. For a moment, everything went fuzzy and my conscious mind was pushed aside by shock.
"—Greg? Greg? Earth to Greg?"
"What?"
"I was just asking if you wanted to come to this club I go to sometimes."
"Oh."
"With me."
"Oh."
"Saturday."
"Oh."
"And, well, after that…"
I blinked and shook myself.
I opened my mouth to say "yes".
"No, sorry, Abbie, I can't."
Her shoulders relaxed and her mouth twisted into an irritated pucker.
I turned and walked away. I saw her determined "I'll-get-you-yet" look in the reflection on the trace lab window.
I shook my head as I rounded a corner and entered the break room.
"I hate this," I grumbled.
"Hate what?" said Nick from his place, raiding the refrigerator.
For a second, I considered telling him.
A second.
"Nothing your primitive mind would understand," I blew him off.
"Ah. You don't wanna talk about it. Okay…" He wrinkled his nose at the contents of the appliance. "Bleach."
"I know. Some of the stuff in there is disgusting."
"No, I mean, bleach. This stuff smells like bleach. I'm not even going to think about what might have spilled all over my teriyaki shrimp leftovers."
Nick shut the door with a sick look on his face and flopped onto one of the lounge's couches.
"So. What sort of case did you get for a first homicide?"
I shook my head, getting a Styrofoam cup and filling it with some of the coffee-colored slop that had probably been brewing for a few hours. Or days. Maybe weeks, no one quite knew for sure.
If I hadn't been so dead tired all of a sudden, I'd have broken into my stash of the expensive stuff.
"I'd rather not talk about it," I said, sitting down across from Nick.
He nodded. "I get ya. My first wasn't pretty either. It looked like a suicide, and it wasn't nearly as bad as a beat… ing… um…"
I sighed. "I'm not going to ask how you found out."
Nick looked uncomfortable. "It, umm, well, it was a hanging. Turned out to be an accident – scarf caught on…" He trailed off. "Anyway, it was bad, but it wasn't that bad, and I reacted like that, too. Don't worry about."
"Right. I've heard things, too – accidents are worse than murders. You know, no one to blame."
He looked around, trying to seem innocent. "So..."
"Hey, Nicky? Why did you become a CSI?"
He looked a little surprised.
"Why do you want to know?"
I shrugged.
"I guess… It's mostly because of my parents. My mom was a cop, dad was a judge. He didn't want me to deal with what she had to deal with; she didn't want me to spend my life sitting on a bench."
"So it's a compromise."
"Yeah."
I thought for a moment. "That's not what I'd say. I'd say it's worse than either – you still have to deal with death, destruction, and grieving families. And you have paperwork."
Nick grinned half-heartedly. It wasn't that funny – police offers have paperwork, too.
I gave the "coffee" a dirty look.
"This tastes like mud." I placed the hateful cup on the table. "So, what about you? What's your case right now?"
"A guy who was found in his apartment. Beaten—" Here I huffed, wondering again how he'd found out about my case if Cath hadn't told him, which she wouldn't. "—with a flat instrument with a sharp end. Funny thing is, there's a girl in the same building who's been missing for three – well, no four days, actually. No one reported it or anything, but…"
That woke me up like a shot of caffeine.
"Missing?"
"Hmm?"
"Flat instrument, sharp end?"
Nick blinked.
"I think you'd better put a rush on your tests."
A/N: Whew! Look at that! Four chapters! And a sorta kinda cliffhanger. Sorta. Kinda.
