Ryan Wolfe filed his paperwork, heading toward his hummer in order to process the next crime scene. He passed Keats along the way and glared at her.
"What?" She asked defensively. She was shrugging as if she had no earthly idea why he would have a bone to pick with her.
"I have third-degree burns from that shower this morning." He said. Keats gave a sheepish smile.
"You shouldn't have been teasing me." She exclaimed defiantly. Ryan rolled his eyes and headed toward the Miami Dade parking lot.
Alexx Woods examined the two inert bodies lying side by side, covered in grass and mulch. They had been buried behind a tree, soon to be discovered by a young couple going for a walk in the park.
"The male was shot once, the female at least three times…I can feel the exit wounds on the back of her skull." She took a step back and thought it quite eerie that the woman had been posed near the man, lying on his arm in some macabre, romantic way.
"This is actually making me uneasy, Horatio. Finding vics like this? It denotes the presence of a sociopath or something similar." She knelt down beside the bodies, giving them once last look-over before they were photographed and transported to the morgue.
"Hold on, Alexx. There's some sort of business card." Ryan picked up the card between his gloved hands and placed his camera to the side.
"Reverend Hal Edwards, Episcopal Church of St. Mary." He said, reading the card aloud.
Horatio peered around the tree and bagged a shell casing and a two-foot long lead pipe. The case was beginning to look like a Parker Brothers crime game.
Alexx slipped on her medical attire upon returning and immediately went to examine the bodies of her latest victims in the morgue. Horatio stood by, a thin veil of curiosity marked on his face.
"This couple has been dead for at least a day or two." She murmured.
"Which doesn't make sense, because in a well-populated area like the park, their corpses would have been reported sooner…" Horatio said.
"Do you think the bodies were just ignored? Or were they planted?" Alexx mused.
"Calleigh, what have you got for me on the bullet shell?" Ryan entered the ballistics lab with high expectations.
Calleigh handed him a report and picked up the shell with her tweezers.
"It's a .32 cal. Matches the wounds on the female victim." She rotated the casing in her hand as Ryan browsed through the reports.
Horatio entered the lab that Keats was occupying, trying her best to ignore her shadow detective. He stood in front of her with a stack of papers.
"Since Delko and Boa Vista are out for the day, I'd like you to investigate the personal circumstances surrounding this case. If anyone can build a scenario out of scratch, it's you." He handed her the papers.
Berkeley flinched, as though trying to find a reason why she shouldn't be able to perform the task at hand. He couldn't think of a single one.
Keats typed in most everything she thought would be useful in the case, noting with interest that the man known as the Reverend Hal Edwards was found dead beside a woman that wasn't his wife.
"So the dead man is really Reverend Edwards? Interesting." Jake mumbled, his mouth full of potato chips. Keats gave a hefty sigh.
"If I wanted to interview the late spouses of each victim…" Keats began, wanting desperately for Jake to give her the greenlight. He was almost more of a boss to her than Horatio was. More bossy, anyway.
"Well…that should be okay. As long as you don't tamper with a single piece of evidence." He said, gulping down a bottle of soda. Keats smiled.
"And as long as I go with you." He added. Keats frowned.
They pulled up near a shabby-looking house on the outskirts of Miami in Jake's Escalade. Keats hadn't wanted to pursue any questioning after she heard the terms, but Jake had practically dragged her with him to the house of the widow Edwards.
"Can I help you?" A middle-aged woman answered the door, pushing open the screen with one hand. She looked quite classy, definitely the sort of woman that would be married to a respected clergyman. But the house didn't match.
"I realize that you may not be in the most receptive of moods, but I'd like to ask a few questions if you don't mind." Keats said. The woman nodded, apparently not as upset as one would believe of a bereaved wife.
"…Jill Hughes. We had been friends for quite some time. I even took her to the hospital for checkups after she'd had her surgery." Gina Edwards said, her voice sounding remote and cold.
"You weren't aware of the Reverend's extra-marital relationship?" Keats asked.
"No. I trusted him. And moreover I had trusted her. She was one of my best friends." She blinked, her eyes blank and emotionless.
"Can you remember what happened the day before the murder?"
"Naturally. I was making candies and I took a call from Jill. She asked to leave a message for my husband. When he came home at six that evening, I relayed the message. She called twice after that, and the Rev. decided to go and check on her. She said she was having some problems.
"Later I went to bed. I wasn't worried…sometimes ministering calls for him to be gone until late. But when I woke up at three in the morning the next day, he hadn't come home, yet. I called my brother, Wilson, to go to the church with me to find him.
"Then we went to Jill's place. No one was there, either. It was at that time that I suspected they may have gone off together." Mrs. Edwards finally finished.
After a few more questions, Keats and Jake left the premises, walking back to his Escalade.
"This is odd. Both Mrs. Edwards and Jill's late husband, Ronald Hughes, claimed ignorance about the affair. But several church members said they had been seeing each other for four years…what the hell is going on in suburbia these days?" Keats mumbled, climbing into the passenger seat.
Jake glanced over at her, giving her a wry smile. He put the car in gear and sped down the road.
He parked in an abandoned lot overlooking the beach. Keats felt uneasy and wished that someone else could have come along.
"Jake…I don't know what you expect to achieve by getting me alone like this…but it ain't happenin', pal." She muttered, trying to open the door. Jake pushed the power locks.
"I told you to be discreet about our arrangement, did I not?" He said, running a hand across the side of his five o'clock shadow.
Keats folded her arms around her chest, glaring him down.
"I take it you actually expect me to go through with it, don't you? Listen, blab all you want to about my relationship with Ryan. I don't care anymore." She jerked at the door, nearly ripping off the handle.
"Calm down, Remington. I won't hurt you. Unless you want me to, that is. Some girls are into that stuff." He grinned.