Checkmate

The rest of the car ride had been mental torture. I itched for my Rubik's cube but knew he was watching my every move to gauge my emotional state, so I stayed as still as I could manage and tried focusing on the trees that barrelled past.

I felt guilty, but I had to lie to him. My father's career was on the line, in the palm of my hand. Valentine had unresolved emotional trauma from my mother, even if it had been 6 years ago since her arrest but only she and God knew how long she was killing innocent people right under the nose of the Captain of Salem Police. He had been under fire and scrutiny from Internal Affairs for a couple years after she was caught. Eventually they went back to the cesspool they crawled from but the damage to Valentine's mental strength and reputation had been done.

It was three and a half years ago that I found him lying unconscious on his couch for the first time—that was also the day I received my first bruises.

Little did I know, that would be the first of many instances.

The car stopped at the curb of a public park. Lush green grass covered the hard packed ground for an acre, a small sun-bleached jungle gym swimming in a sandpit sat in the center. No children were playing, no residents walked their dogs—the yellow tape surrounding the entire acre had them fleeing behind their deadbolted doors.

I reached for the door handle but drew back at Jace's warning grunt. I've made him mad enough, may as well not add fuel to the fire by snapping off the antique handle of his prized possession.

With my hands up in surrender, he got out and stalked to my door, swiftly opening it and only taking a single step back. I stood, nearly touching chests with the detective. His angry gaze dug holes into the top of my head, my own anger flickered at his inability to control his facial features and at least act civil. I looked up at him with equal fire.

"Clary!" A familiar voice called from a crowd of forensic techs in the park. I continued to hold Jace's glare but knew by his voice that it was Simon—and by the way a muscle in Jace's jaw clenched. Footsteps approached slowly at our visual standoff. "Am I interrupting?"

"Yes—"

"No," I cut off the detective, finally breaking eye contact and stepping into the grass. Simon stood in his regular clothes instead of his Tyvek suit, the top half of his hair was wet and brushed back as if he rushed through a shower at home to get here. The yellow police tape was pulled up to allow me in. Jace's eyes burned on my back as I left him behind.

"What happened here?" I quietly asked Simon as we walked in the direction of the jungle gym. Just then, my eyes landed on a man slumped over in his seat onto a public chess board. Thick black blood trailed out of his mouth along the checkered plate. My steps stuttered and I tore my eyes away to stare at the green grass under my feet.

"Gary Thompson, 47 years old, estimated death to be around 2am to 3am. His body was reported by a dog walker an hour ago." I sat on the info and orbited the scene while techs buzzed around. After a few beats of silence, Simon spoke again, "I really enjoyed our date last night."

Startled by his sudden admission that it was in fact a date, I looked up to see a smiling Simon with amber eyes roaming my face. I felt like I was supposed to swoon, but memories of his not-so-gentlemanlike behavior only allowed me to give a forced smile before looking back down. I felt his hand graze the small of my back, the hair on the back of my neck raised and painful goosebumps littered my sleeved arms.

"What do we got?" Jace's voice cut in harshly right behind us.

Just as quickly as Simon's hand appeared, it fell back to his side. "Nothing yet. No prints, no hair, nothing," the tech said, flicking his eyes between Jace and I.

"Hm," Jace hummed and walked right between us. Simon took a step back to avoid collision but I stood my ground. The detective's chest brushed mine enough to invoke a flutter.

Instead of sticking with the forensic tech, I followed closely behind my partner like a shadow as he scanned the scene. "Do you think he was murdered?" I whispered.

He was quiet for a few minutes to the extent where I believed he was ignoring me for keeping secrets, but he soon spoke again. "It might be too soon to confirm, but I believe so."

He pulled a pair of black rubber gloves from his jeans pocket and snapped them on before tilting the man's face to get a better view of his throat—a long, deep, black and blue slash decorated the skin from ear to ear. The longer I looked at the man's face, the bigger the pit in my stomach grew. His gray eyes stared distantly.

I don't think I would ever get used to seeing dead bodies.

My stomach leapt into my throat as bile threatened to rise and my eyes watered suddenly. My arms crossed over the front of my chest uncomfortably, drawing Jace's attention. "What's wrong?" he asked, concern coloring his eyes.

"Mm-mm," I shook my head. Words failed to escape my closed throat.

Jace removed his gloves and approached me close. His rough hands hovered an inch from my shoulders as if he was unsure how to comfort me. I took the daring step, letting myself get enveloped by strong arms and a hard chest—mostly to keep myself from passing out onto the grass. "Clare…" he whispered into my hair. I took a deep breath in, the smell of Jace was a good distraction from the deceased man beside us.

"How do you do this everyday?" I exhaled shakily into the cotton of his long sleeve. My fingers gripped the soft fabric as I fought off white sparkles in the corners of my vision.

"It's hard, but it's something I have to do. If I don't do it, there might be a detective that doesn't care as much as I do that takes my place," he said down to me, rubbing soothing circles on the curve of my back.

My breath caught in my throat. Jace being selfless enough to endure mental torture everyday for the sake of the deseased was a new character trait, a positive one.

"Clary," a voice called from a few yards away, pulling Jace and I out of our embrace and plummeting us into an awkward tension. I huffed a breath when my eyes met with my father's. His were groggy and dull from last night's choices but I assume mine appeared the same way. He held out his arms while he approached.

My bruises ached at the sight and I felt my shoulders tighten. "Hi, dad," I greeted with a half smile and met him halfway, hesitating to enter his arms but relenting anyway.

"How are you, my love?" He planted a kiss on the top of my pale hair.

"I'm ok," I lied. He never remembered his actions, there was no point in bringing him more trauma. "Would be better if a man hadn't been murdered at my favorite park."

Memories from my childhood flooded my mind as I looked out to the playground, but the playground wasn't where I had typically spent my time. The same chess board that held up the dead weight of a murder victim was where I had sat thousands of times before.

"I remember bringing you and Simon here with a box of chess pieces every Sunday when you were little," Valentine reminisced. A frown tilted my lips as the good memories were quickly overshadowed by the crime scene in front of us.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that," Simon's voice chimed beside us suddenly, I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Good times." A soft finger brushed against the back of my hand before I casually pulled it away and shoved both hands into my back pockets as I made myself look invested in the pool of blood leaking from the egregious wound.

My stomach had settled with Jace's words, giving me the courage to study the body of Mr. Thompson. Regardless, I kept my distance from the detective, heeding the warning he gave me from a week ago to avoid telling him how to do his job. Though, so far I had nothing to work off of.

More forensic teams were beginning to arrive in their white vans but I felt Simon watching me.

"Clary, come look," Jace said from his crouched position beside the body. He was prying open the cold hand that lay on the table, revealing a clump of orange tucked under the rigor mortis stiffened fingers.

"What is that?" I choked down vomit. The object rolled onto the table and into the puddle of sticky blood.

"A rose?" Jace said with furrowed brows, plucking the flower from the puddle by its crimson soaked petals. A long string of congealing blood dribbled onto the table like molasses.

"An orange rose? That…" —didn't make any sense— "is unusual."

"Hm," he hummed simply while carefully setting it into a sterile evidence bag. "This was placed after the fact, there's no rose bushes here."

"You think the killer could've been his lover?"

Simon scoffed beside me. "Hardly. The dog walker who found him said he was still very devoted to his wife, who passed away two years ago."

"Yeah, thanks," Jace bit coldly. I shot him a look to be nice but he disregarded me. "Take this and run it for prints or something." He carelessly tossed the bagged rose to Simon who barely caught it with unready hands. He rolled his eyes at Jace's callousness.

"Sorry about him, Simon," I mumbled.

"Don't worry about it." He wrapped an arm around my waist before pulling me flush against him. I looked up at him in surprise. Pink colored my cheeks at the overwhelming fact that Jace and Valentine watched from feet away but I resisted the urge to push him from me in fear of garnering more unwanted attention. "I'll see you at the precinct." He planted a kiss on my cheek and stalked to his car parked across the street.

Valentine looked at me with surprise of his own while Jace shot daggers at the back of Simon's head. "What?" I snapped a bit too harshly at my dad's unwavering eyes.

He cleared his throat. "So…what was that?"

"They went on a date that wasn't a date, then he took her home but didn't," Jace chimed in with a resentful scoff. "It's hard to sort the truth from the lies."

I looked at him and couldn't help but feel guilty, but that guilt was overshadowed by a bit of anger. He was acting like I had to tell him every single thing that happened in my life as if he wasn't just my colleague.

"Wow, so he finally asked you out, huh?" Valentine responded, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "Did you use protection?"

"Dad!" I hissed, my face flushed impossibly hard.

"All I'm saying is you're young, and I know it's fun trust me that's how you're here, but I'd prefer if you didn't have to deal with a…consequence at this point in your life—"

"Jesus Christ," I groaned and rubbed my hands down my face. "Please stop."

"I definitely don't want a baby forensic tech running around my crime scenes," Jace stated as he searched the pockets of the victim.

"Fuck off, Jace," I grit through clenched teeth.

This entire exchange was overstimulating and my racing heart pulsed painfully through my bruises as well as coated the skin under my long sleeves in nervous sweat.

"How was the…date that wasn't a date?" the Captain asked.

"Yeah, Clary, how was it really?" Jace added to the barrage of questions.

"Horrible! It was bad! Is that what you want to hear, Jace?" I exploded to the smug gold gaze staring at me with a raised eyebrow. I turned to my dad. "It was going great until I noticed you never checked in so, while I was having a good time, I had to cut it short to have him drive me to your house!" My chest heaved and my brain was firing in a million different directions. The emotional pain from being attacked started to peek behind the curtain because in all honesty, I was sick of it—sick of feeling so meek and fragile in my body and brain.

My dad's face became guilt ridden as he clicked together the reason why he hadn't checked in. I almost felt bad but he was a grown man. I shouldn't have to put my life on hold to make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit with a needle in his brachial artery.

Jace's smug look dissolved into a calculating one as he studied me. I didn't want to acknowledge the fact that I just fell into another lie-hole with the detective because he was bound to shuffle the pieces around to expose the truth if I spent energy trying to backtrack.

Frustrated with the interrogation from the two men and flustered with the tangle of my lies, I stormed off to the street. "Call me if you actually need me," I called back to the duo watching me.