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"That reminds me, did your mom ever tell you about how we met?"
Kamila grabbed another doughnut off the plate. "Not really. You were a cop and she was working at the morgue, right? It seems kind of obvious."
Jowd took a doughnut of his own. "That's the basics. But it was a little more interesting than that…"
* * *
Everyone had warned him that paperwork would be the most boring part of his job, but Jowd had found that he actually liked doing it. No matter how chaotic the day had been, no matter how confusing the situation, there were always reports to file at the end of it—clear, logical statements that tied everything up neatly. There was something very tidy and reassuring about it.
For that reason, he was rather annoyed when, midway through his filing, he was interrupted by Cabanela dancing up to his desk.
"Heeeeeey, partner!" he called. "I've got someone here with a rather iiiiiinteresting theory."
"About what?" Jowd asked, keeping his pen moving and his head down. He'd found that Cabanela's interruptions were unimportant at least half of the time.
"It's about some of the bodies we've been getting in lately," a female voice interjected. Jowd's pen stilled. As he looked up, Cabanela executed a neat pirouette to reveal the woman standing behind him. She was wearing a white lab coat, and she was remarkably pretty. Or she would have been if she hadn't been so pale, her mouth set in a firm line.
He turned his chair toward the two of him, his partner and the mystery woman. "So you're… a forensic pathologist, I'm guessing? Work for the coroner's office?"
"I—" the woman faltered, blushed, but soldiered on. "Well, no. For now, I'm an administrative assistant. But I'll be a pathologist soon! I've been taking night classes, and everyone says I have a lot of promise, and…" She trailed off, looking at Jowd nervously.
Jowd sized her up. "And what does an administrative assistant at the morgue have to do with a pair of beat cops?"
In this area, she was clearly on firmer footing. "You see, I've been going through old records lately, and I've noticed something that bothers me. My boss doesn't think there's anything to it, but I couldn't let it keep going without telling someone, so I thought I should come down here."
"Well?" Jowd asked, all of his attention now on her. She had been gaining more confidence as she spoke, not less. Whatever was going on, she clearly believed it.
"Based on the evidence I've collected, I think we might have a serial killer on our hands."
Jowd blinked. Of all the things he'd expected her to say—"A what?"
"Seeee?" Cabanela crowed. "I knew you'd like this one, baby."
* * *
As a beat officer, Jowd had never really gotten a chance to see the morgue before this. He was pretty sure they'd come at some point during training, but a hurried walk-through with fifteen other promising recruits was somewhat different than seeing examining rooms with bodies laid out and the tiny offices of the pathologists.
The secretary—Alma, she'd said her name was—took them all the way to the end of the hall, to an office somehow further subdivided into tiny cubicles. There were several somewhat frightening stacks of papers and folders teetering dangerously close to the edge of her desk, but undeterred, she picked up one of the piles and started riffling through it.
"Just half a second—I know I have it here somewhere. Ah!" She plucked one folder out, plopped the rest of the stack back onto the desk, and started thumbing through it.
"I was filing our backlog, and I noticed a pattern in several of the cases we listed as suicides," she said. "There were two strange things about a particular set of bodies." She showed Jowd and Cabanela a photograph of a hand, then another one, and then another. "Do you see it?"
Jowd took a look at the photos, pushing down his own squeamishness. They didn't particularly look like corpses, which helped. There wasn't anything in particular to distinguish them, although, perhaps…
"They… all have ink on their fingers?" he ventured.
He was rewarded with a brilliant smile from Alma. "Exactly! That's exactly what I noticed! Now that's not uncommon for suicides, a lot of people write notes before they do it. But what is uncommon is to have an ink stain without leaving a suicide note."
Cabanela moved to a new pose, which meant he was paying attention. "Sooooo?" he asked. "Is that the only connection between them?"
"No, the other thing is the tox reports. All of them had traces of a particular drug in their system—2,5-dicyclohexylamine." At their blank looks, she clarified. "I think they're calling it 'blue haze' on the street."
Jowd had been leafing through the reports. "There's an awful lot of spread between the victims, though. A college student, a housewife, a banker…"
Alma sighed. "That's what my boss said. He said anyone could be an addict, and anyone could leave ink on their hands without it being anything more than coincidence. He thinks I'm being ridiculous, and I ought to get back to filing."
Jowd was already putting the clues together in his head. "But you felt strongly about this, so you went over his head to the police department."
"And the department sent you right to uuuuus, baby," Cabanela finished.
"Yes." She looked at the two of them, studying their faces. "Well, what do you think? Is there anything to it?"
Jowd and Cabanela exchanged a glance. When Jowd nodded, Cabanela smiled, and made an elaborate bow to Alma.
"Weeeeeellll, let's find out."
* * *
"So you met working on a case? Before mom even became a pathologist?"
"Yup. It was the first time any of us had ever done an investigation, and we were working on it in odd hours whenever we got the time. I'm still not sure how she found the time, on top of work and classes."
"But why did she become interested in you? I mean, Cabanela was there too, and she didn't start dating him."
"Couldn't tell you," Jowd said around his doughnut. "I guess you'd have to ask your mother herself."
"Ask me what?" Alma appeared
"Dad was telling me about how you two met."
Alma laughed. "Oh, of course. Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with Cabanela, of course. But me and your father… we just hit it off, I guess. Ooh, are those doughnuts?"
* * *
"I'm surprised that you wanted me to help with this," Alma said from behind the stack of papers she was carrying. She sneezed, but managed not to drop them.
"Unfortunately, this isn't exactly an official case," Jowd said. "The chief said we can take it, but we have to work on it on our own time." He reached his desk and put down his own stack of papers, giving her a sideways glance. "You know, you don't have to investigate with us—"
"No, no, I want to," Alma said. She put her stack of papers down on the desk beside his. "I want to know if I'm right about this. So, um, what am I looking for in here, exactly?"
"Anything useful," Jowd told her. "Names that come up more than once, things that don't quite seem to add up, anything that's out of the ordinary."
She looked rather dubious at that, but nodded dutifully. "I'll do my best."
It was late, and there were only a few other people in the precinct, giving them an oddly intimate feel. Alma went through the papers doggedly; she asked him about particular items a few times, got up and stretched her legs once. When he made coffee, she asked for two sugars, no cream.
Finally, around 11 they packed it in. "Cabanela will go over these tomorrow morning, too," he told her. "After that, we can compare notes and see if anything comes up."
Alma nodded, then yawned. "Oof, I don't even like to think about how I'll feel tomorrow," she said. "You said you could drive me home, right?"
After several hours spent in companionable silence, it was hard for Jowd to think of anything to say as they drove to her house. Alma was the one who finally spoke.
"I wanted to thank you—you and your partner—for taking me seriously about this," she said. "I wasn't sure if anyone would believe me."
Jowd looked over at her. The streetlights made her look washed-out, but when she noticed that he was looking at her, she ventured a smile. It was just as stunning as it had been before; he coughed, trying to disguise his reaction, and looked back at the road.
"Don't worry," he said. "We'll get to the bottom of this. And if it is a killer, we'll find him before he strikes again."
* * *
A month later they were having a meeting in one of the precinct's back rooms. It was early, just after 6 am. Jowd brought in the last mug of coffee, handed it to Alma, and then turned to the whiteboard.
"Okay, putting together everything we've gotten so far, it seems like we've got a few strong leads. We've got five victims in all. The first victim's roommate was also the son of the second victim, so it seems likely that he's involved somehow. The third and fifth victims had odd, recent provisions in their wills to distant relatives. And the fourth victim had ties to organized crime. They're all dodgy in different ways."
Alma studied the board. "But there's nothing that really ties all five of them together, right?" she asked. "So… is it all just a coincidence?"
Cabanela sat forward suddenly. "No, that's not it," he said, eyes sharp. "They're connected." Alma blinked; Jowd supposed she'd never seen Cabanela when he got really serious.
Jowd trusted Cabanela's intuition—more than he trusted the evidence, sometimes. "What are you thinking?" he asked.
"I'm thinking that we're dealing with a contract killer, baby."
"A what?" Alma gasped.
Jowd was already nodding. "Yeah, that would make sense. The kid kills his roommate and his father, maybe by accident, but then he realizes that he can use his talents for money. Hire out his skills to people who need inheritance money, perform mob assassinations that need to be kept hushed up."
"But how would he do it in the first place?" Alma asked. "He isn't a drug dealer…" and then she realized it, completing the thought herself. "But he is a chemistry student."
"Exactly." Jowd put down his marker and headed out. "Come on, Cabanela. We've got someone to bring in."
* * *
"And he asked me out around the time that the case wrapped up." Alma finished. "Though if he hadn't, I would have asked him."
"Really?" Jowd asked. "I never knew that."
Alma leaned down to kiss him. "Of course! I wasn't going to let a prize like you get away."
Kamila rolled her eyes. "But what happened with the case you were investigating? Did you catch the killer?"
* * *
Alma was at her own job during the interrogation, of course, but she came by at lunch. The chemistry student was small and pale and looked terrified by Cabanela's dancing. Alma watched him through the two-way mirror with Jowd.
"You're sure I can be here?" she asked again.
"It's fine," he reassured her. "You're part of the team. So what do you think? I know you can't really tell from here, but what are your impressions?"
Alma shook her head. "I can tell you more about dead people than I can tell you about living ones," she said. "He doesn't look like a killer, but I suppose that doesn't mean anything."
"He's already admitted to some of it. Seems like he came up with a variation of blue haze that makes people susceptible to suggestion. Told his roommate to jump out of a window, and then told his father to amend his will and then kill himself. He's being pretty cagy about the other cases, though."
"Is it because the mob is involved?"
"That's what Cabanela thinks. He's doing his best to put the fear of God into the kid now."
They watched the interrogation for a little longer.
"Um," Jowd said, feeling suddenly nervous. "I know this is a bad time, but there's been something I've been wanting to ask you for a while."
Alma turned to him, her eyes bright. "Yes?"
"Well, uh…" He trailed off as he saw Cabanela leave the interrogation room. A few seconds later, he danced into the windowed area.
"So?" Alma asked. She looked a little disappointed.
Cabanela grinned. "Sung like a canaaaaary, baby! He says his handlers are in an office downtown. What say we go bring some people in?"
Jowd turned to Alma. "Do you want to come? You've been with this case from the beginning. Now maybe you'll see how it ends."
Alma beamed, and Jowd felt his heart catch in his chest. "Of course!"
* * *
An hour later, Jowd suspected that Alma was seriously regretting her decision to ride along. The two of them were tied together, back to back, in what looked like a janitor's closet. Cabanela was lying unconscious where they'd dumped him in front of the door, blood trickling from the wound on his head.
"You told the chief we were coming, right?" she asked again. "Shouldn't we be getting backup?"
Jowd groaned, and reached up to rub his face with his bound hands. "There must have been some kind of mix-up," he said. "Don't worry, they'll figure it out soon enough."
"But if they decide to kill us before—"
"Don't think about it," Jowd warned her. "They'll find us."
Alma was quiet after that. It was long enough that he started to notice things like how warm she was, and the scent of her perfume. He was sternly telling himself to knock it off and come up with an escape plan when she spoke again.
"Yes."
"What?"
Jowd could feel her taking a deep breath before she spoke. "You were going to ask me out, right? Back during the interrogation."
"Uh…"
"Jowd, I know you don't want to admit it, but we might die here. And whether we do or not, I just want you to know… the answer is yes."
He was quiet for a moment. And then: "There's this place that just opened, called the Chicken Kitchen. It's not the most expensive place, but the food is good, and, I thought you would like it. I was thinking we could go next week sometime."
"I'm free Tuesday night," she said. He couldn't see Alma, but he could hear the warmth in her voice, and his heart lifted. Then she shifted in an odd way.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I'm just looking at the placement of that mop, and those cans of paint, and that axe"
Jowd tried to look around. From the corner of his eye, he could see some paint cans on a high shelf near the door. "So?" he asked.
"So, there's this little hobby I have that might be useful here," Alma said. "Do you know what a Rube Goldberg machine is?"
* * *
"After the axe knocked the doorknob off, we sort of crab-walked into the hallway, and snuck around until we could find a phone to call the precinct and tell them what had happened. And that was pretty much it! Your father and Cabanela became detectives the next month, and when I got my degree the next year, they hired me as a pathologist right away. By then your father and I were engaged."
"Oh," Kamila said. "But Dad, didn't you know that Mom doesn't like chicken?"
* * *
"Are you sure it's all right? Because if I'd known, I never would have—"
"Don't worry about it at all," Alma said. "I like to watch people eat. And we can go out for ice cream later!"
"Well, if you're really sure…" And he finally dug into his chicken, with enough vigor to make Alma smile. She took a sip of her water.
"Have they caught everyone involved yet?" she asked.
"There's two or three more at large, but none of the big guns got very far," Jowd said around mouthfuls of chicken. "All you have to worry about now is testifying."
"That and my GPA," Alma sighed.
"Don't worry, you'll make a great pathologist. Anyone can see that" Jowd managed to put his fork down for a moment, and grabbed her hand. "Let's try to talk about something lighter," he said. "How did you learn to make those Goldberg things?"