Arnet was standing beside me, looking down at the body. She looked a little pale around the edges. Maybe it was only the lack of makeup, but I didn’t think so. She was actually wearing a little eye makeup and pale lipstick. But her eyes were a little big, and her skin pale against her short dark hair. Not like pale with contrast, but pale like I was ready to grab her elbow in case she started to faint on the body.
I wanted to ask her if she was alright, but you don’t ask cops that, so I tried to get her talking. “How did you know she was in here?” I asked.
She jumped and turned startled eyes to me. She was seriously spooked.
“Why don’t we step outside and get some air?” I said.
She shook her head, and I knew stubborn when I saw it, so I didn’t argue. “I saw blood under the door, or what I was almost certain was blood.”
“Then what?”
“I called for backup, and we kicked the door open.”
“You and Abrahams,” I said.
She nodded.
“The door bounced into her arm, but we didn’t know it was her until we shoved the door again. I took low, and I was kneeling on the ground, so I saw her first. Saw that we were trying to shove the door through her.” Her voice shook a little at the end.
“Let’s move over there by the kitchen, okay?”
“I’m alright,” she said, and was angry suddenly. “Why is it that you think you’re the only woman that can handle this kind of shit?”
I lifted eyebrows, but didn’t say anything for a count of five. I wasn’t mad, I just wasn’t sure what to say. I finally tried the truth.
“I’m not the one that’s pale and looks ready to faint.”
“I’m not going to faint,” she hissed at me. Angry whispers always sound so evil.
“Fine, then we’ll stay right here.”
“Fine,” she said, still angry.
I shrugged, strangely not angry. “Fine. You checked the woman, found she was dead, and then…”
“You know, I don’t have to report to you. You’re not my boss.”
That was it. “Look, Arnet, if you’ve got a personal beef with me, fine, have a personal beef with me, but not on her time.” I pointed down to the body.
“What do you mean, her time, she’s dead. She doesn’t have any more time.”
“Bullshit. We’re on her dime right now. This is her murder, and catching the son of a bitch that did this to her is more important than anything else right now. You stonewalling me and acting like some damn rookie is just giving him more time to run. We don’t want him to run. We want him to be caught, right?”
She nodded. “I am not acting like a rookie.”
I sighed. “I apologize for that, and if you want to fight, we can fight, but later, when we’re not wasting valuable time, when we’re not wasting her time.”
Arnet looked down at the body again, mostly because I pointed again. Maybe it was overly dramatic, but I already spent time fighting with Dolph at crime scenes, I didn’t need another prima donna on my hands. Murder first, personal stuff later, that had to be the order of things, or you lost your way.
Zerbrowski was behind her. I noticed him walking up, but I don’t think Arnet did. “Go outside, Arnet, get some air,” he said, smiling, trying to take some of the sting out of it.
“I’m a detective on this team, she isn’t.” She pointed at me with her thumb.
“Outside, now,” Zerbrowski said, and his voice had lost all of its hail-fellow-well-met cheer.
Arnet stood there glaring at him.
“If I have to tell you to go outside again, Arnet, it won’t just be for air.”
“What’s that mean?” she asked, and her hands were starting to tremble. She was so angry she was shaking. What the hell had I done to make her this pissed about me? Was it about Nathaniel? Hell, she’d never dated him. She’d never met him before he was already living with me.
“Do you want to be off this case?” Zerbrowski asked, voice low and suddenly not at all like Zerbrowski’s voice.
“No,” she said, and she looked sullen, but surprised, as if she hadn’t known that he had a voice like that in him. Me, neither.
He looked at her, it was a look to match that new voice. “Then what should you be doing?”
She opened her mouth then closed it until her lips were a thin pink line. She turned on her sensible, two-inch heels and marched out.
Zerbrowski sighed loudly and frowned at me. “What did you do to Arnet?”
“Me? Nothing.”
He gave me a look.
“I swear, I didn’t do a damn thing to her.”
“Katie says Arnet was pretty pissed at something you said at the wedding.”
“How does Katie know she was pissed?”
His look got really narrow. “You did say something, didn’t you?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and glanced down at the body. “We’re wasting time with all this personal shit,” I said. Okay, I also hadn’t wanted to discuss my boyfriend situation with Zerbrowski, but we really did have a murderer to catch.
“True, but when this slows down, you fix this between you and Arnet.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because you’re not wicked pissed at her,” he said, and his face was as matter-of-fact as his words.
I wanted to argue with the logic, but as far as it went, it made sense. “I’ll do what I can. What did Abrahams tell you?”
“Arnet saw the blood under the door. They called backup and entered. Searched the place and didn’t find one Avery Seabrook. The bed was unmade, and the blood trail seems to start in the bed.”
“Not in the bedroom, but the bed,” I said.
He nodded.
“Do we have an ident on her?”
Funny, he didn’t ask who “her” referred to. “Purse is beside the bed with her neatly folded clothes. Sally Cook, age twenty-four, 5’3”, and I never believe the weight on a woman’s driver’s license.“
“Yeah, women fudge the weight, but men will add an inch to their height.”
He grinned at me. “Most of us just aren’t smart enough to remember how tall we are.”
I smiled at him and resisted the urge to punch him on the shoulder. He can have that effect on me, even at murder scenes.
“I noticed you were doing fingertip push-ups looking at the body.
You messed up our blood pattern.”
“I wasn’t doing push-ups, and I touched as little as I could. But I know why she bled out, at least partly why.”
“Talk,” he said, he was starting to sound like Dolph. Not a bad a thing, just a little unnerving.
“She’s got a partial bite mark on her very inner thigh. Looks like it punctured her femoral.”
“Why did you say ’partial’ bite mark? Either he bit her, or he didn’t.”
I shrugged. “He bit her, but it looks almost like he started, then either she jerked away, or he wasn’t able to finish. For lack of a better analogy, it’s like being bitten by a snake. If it’s not poisonous, you’re better off not jerking away. Vampire fangs are recurved not as much as most snake teeth, but still, if you pull away abruptly, you’re going to tear yourself up worse than if you just let it chew on you and try to pry it off, sort of gently.”
“It’s instinct to pull away from something that’s biting you, Anita.”
“I’m not arguing that, Zerbrowski, I’m only saying that it’s not a good idea. You will tear yourself up.”
“So he bit her, and she pulled away, and that tore her femoral open. Are you saying he didn’t mean to kill her?”
I shrugged. “I’m saying that you can bleed out from your femoral in about twenty minutes, maybe less. Most people don’t understand that.”
“Anita, don’t do this to me.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“I saved the best for last. She’s got a little case in there with what sure as hell looks like a stripper outfit to me. All fringes and not much else. If she’s a stripper, then we’ve got one of our vampires. But you’re standing here telling me that he didn’t mean to kill her. If that’s true, then he isn’t one of our guys. I’m in the process of getting you a warrant of execution for his ass. I’d hate to have you killing the wrong guy.”