“He still examined the scene. Tested the blood.”

“I can get you an updated repor—”

“I’ll get it myself, thank you.”

“Fine. I’ll have Penny set it up.”

“For this afternoon.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. What about the other thing?”

He turned back around. “The other thing?”

“I’ve taken the case. Hand over whatever you have.”

That time he shook his head. “When you clear El, you’ll get the file.”

“You have a file?” I asked, getting up. “How odd. So do I.”

He sat down again, leaned back, and clasped his hands behind his head. “And just what’s in your little file, Mrs. Davidson?”

I let a slow, satisfied smile—it was more of a smirk, really—widen across my face as I pulled out my phone from my jacket pocket. “This conversation, for one thing.”

That time the blood drained from his face, his gaze superglued to my phone.

“It’s in the cloud, so don’t even think about it. Do you think I’m an idiot, Parker? I don’t appreciate being blackmailed. Or extorted, for that matter.”

He started to get up, but I motioned him to sit back down. “Go ahead and keep whatever you have on me. But just remember, games are much more fun with two players.”

I turned and walked out the door, feeling slightly vindicated from the stunned look on Parker’s face. He shouldn’t have punked me like that. A woman’s wrath and all. I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to actually record the conversation, but he didn’t know that.

He could keep whatever he had on me. I wouldn’t be the one losing sleep tonight.

Or so I thought.

16

Right? And I’m not even on drugs.

—T-SHIRT

I went straight to the Office of the Medical Examiner from Parker’s office. Wade was a friend of mine, but without clearance, he would never have let me look through his files willy-nilly.

“Hey, Charlotte,” he said.

“Hey back.” One of his assistants walked in. I had no choice but to take advantage. “How’s the chlamydia?”

The assistant chuckled.

“Oh, don’t worry. You won’t shock her. The moment Parker called, I told everyone all about you and your … creative sense of humor.”

“Man. I was so looking forward to humiliating you.”

“I know. I was looking forward to being humiliated. So, anything, huh? How’d you rate that?”

“Haven’t you heard? Parker and I are now besties.”

“I didn’t think Parker had any friends.”

“Well, he does now, thank goodness. That stick up his ass was getting longer and straighter.”

He laughed and led me to a computer. “Okay, so you look up the files here, and then, depending on how old the case is, you may have to take the call number to the dungeon.”

“Wade,” I said, surprised. “Last time you had me in the dungeon, we got the cops called on us.”

Wade looked over his shoulder at a lab tech who’d walked in to grab a file. “Nope. Told him, too.”

“Dang it. You’re no fun since you got married.”

“Hon, I’ve been married longer than you’ve been alive.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Call out if you need any help.”

“Are you off to perform an autopsy?”

“That’s the plan. Want to come in?”

The smile I offered was part in-your-dreams and part surely-you-jest. “No thank you.”

One would think that, with all the corpses at a morgue, the place would be filled with the walking dead, wandering about, trying to find their bodies. It didn’t work like that, thankfully. I didn’t need a sudden influx of life stories to hit me all at once. That had happened to me in my late teens. I’ve never been the same.

I sat at the computer, which was perched on a lab table, and started looking at the names Cookie had texted me along with the dates of birth. The OME may not have gotten all the kids here, but surely they’d had to autopsy a couple. A child dying was not an everyday occurrence.

The first one popped up on the screen immediately, and unfortunately her files were in the dungeon. I wrote down the number and went on to the next name. By the time I got to the bottom of the list, only two names were not in Wade’s system. Seven were, with all those residing in the basement/dungeon. I always got the feeling Wade was a big D&D fan.