for us, Biggs?” I said.
Biggs creaked back to his six-plus height. “Hispanic female, approximately sixteen years old. No I.D.
Pretty safe to assume she died from an impact injury, but there’s also evidence of assault.” He looked
over her fingernails, where even I could see the blood. She’d fought like a wildcat as the perp tossed her
off the top of a building. “I’ll confirm the DNA when I get her back to the lab.”
I nodded. She was a pretty girl, and much too young to be on these streets at night.
“Hooker?” Roddy said, craning his neck back to take in both buildings. Both were old brownstones
owned by slumlord millionaires, and I could tell he was already trying to calculate their heights in
relation to the crime scene. This was a bad neighborhood in need of dire urban renewal. The only types of
people who lived here were folks who sold illegal product and folks who bought them.
I crouched down and looked the vic over. “Looks like it.” She looked less like a teenaged kid and more
like a broken bag of bones. I glanced right and left, spotted a giant blue dumpster with a massive dent in it
and started calculating trajectories, drying to guessimate how far a body had to fall to hit the Dumpster,
bounce, and land there.
“She’s really creepy when she does that,” Biggs said.
“That’s why I love her,” Roddy answered.
I pointed at the top of the brownstone to our left. “She was pushed from there.”
“Is that a knife wound?”
“Looks like it.”
“Probably couldn’t pay her pimp.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Let’s canvas the area.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“You two always talk like cop buddies in a movie,” Biggs laughed.
“All the world’s a stage and we are but the actors,” I said, getting to my feet and dusting myself down.
“No Chinese proverbs?” Biggs kidded.
“That’s racial profiling,” Roddy explained in a droll tone. Then he turned to me. “No Chinese proverbs,
Confucius?”
I flipped him the bird.
“See, that’s what I like to see: bickering like an old married couple.” Biggs and his team started zipping
up the vic in a body bag.
“We should,” said Roddy, “but then Mrs. Rodriguez might find out about our torrid love affair.”
Biggs laughed.
An ongoing joke at the precinct was that Roddy and I were in each other’s pants. Roddy cleaned up real
nice, and I’d never made noises either way. Nothing makes you look guiltier than denying accusations
every chance you get. But it still bothered me.
As we went around to the front of the building, I said, “Do you have to put fuel on the fire, Roddy?”
He waved it away. “Don’t let Biggs get to you.”
“He doesn’t,” I answered in a tone of voice that suggested otherwise.
He snorted as we reached the doors to the old project. “It really bothers you…what they say?”
“It could get in the way of a promotion, so yeah.” I knew that, generally speaking, female cops didn’t
command the respect that their male counterparts did. So far, our chief of police had been pretty fair and
evenhanded with me. He neither pandered nor disparaged me. But the same couldn’t be said of other
cops, and in my line of work, a rumor—even a false once—could kill your chances of promotion.
“You worry about the job, of course,” he drawled.
“Sure,” I answered, holding the door open for him. “Don’t you?”
Roddy went in ahead of me. I’d never been one for chivalry. “I love you, Charlie,” he said over one
shoulder, “but you do need to get some interests outside the job.”
***
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Indecent Proposal
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The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn
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Eyes Wide Open
Touch
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Angel in the Dark
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Lady Luck
House of Dolls
The Reluctant Bride
A Woman on Top
The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky
All I Want for Christmas: A Dollhouse Society One Shot
Red (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Puss ‘N Books (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Snow (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
The Little Mermaid (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 1
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Volume I
The Beauty of the Beast (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
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Cinderfella (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Beauty’s Sleep (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
50 Shades of Fairy Tales Volume II
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 2
50 Shades of Fairy Tales Volume III
The Dollhouse Society: Margo
The Dollhouse Society: Felix
The Dollhouse Society: Bad Girls
Blood & Lace (Blackstone Hall #1)
50 Shades of Fairy Tales (Courtesan Press Ultimate Collection)
The Dollhouse Society: Ultimate Collection
Devices & Desires (Blackstone Hall #2)
Blackstone Hall, Volume I
The Dollhouse Society: Isabelle
The Dollhouse Society: Teachers’ Pets
The Dollhouse Society Omnibus Collection Volume I
The Dollhouse Society Omnibus Collection Volume II
The Dollhouse Society: Charlotte
The Dollhouse Society: Stefan
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