One Little Secret Read online

  “There,” she panted. “Right. There.”

  I clenched the wooden spindles of the headboard and heard them creak from the pressure. The scarves bit into my wrists. I licked harder against her clit and hummed into her pussy.

  She gripped my breasts tighter and ground her lower body more solidly against my mouth. I heard her quiet curse and felt her body shudder: “Fuck, Cassidy.”

  Her movements gradually slowed as she rode out her orgasm. I could feel her body tense and twitch from sensitivity when I continued to lick against her.

  “Enough, enough,” she begged off.

  “What? That was too easy; I can do this all night,” I insisted. I opened my mouth wide and stretched out my jaw, which had started to become sore. But I would never admit that to her.

  She patted her hand against my collarbone. “At ease, soldier,” she murmured. “Let me catch my breath.”

  Julia dismounted me, one long leg at a time, and rolled onto her side to lie beside me on the bed. One hand rested in the now-sweaty valley between my breasts and the other tangled itself in my hair. She pressed the entire length of her body against mine, and I smiled when I heard her deeply contented sigh.

  My eyes fluttered shut and I loudly exhaled, appreciating being able to take a full breath again now that my mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied.

  “Whoops.”

  I cracked one eye open. “Whoops?” I curiously repeated.

  “I seem to have mangled your, uh, breasts,” she said, amusement in her tone.

  Still tied to the bed, I lifted my head as best as I could to see to what she was referring. The normally pale skin of my breasts were flushed an angry red. Her grip on my breasts had been tight, but in the heat of the moment, I hadn’t realized how hard she’d been holding onto me. I could practically see her fingerprints inlaid into my skin.

  “What did you do to me?” I squeaked. “I’m disfigured!”

  “Oh, hush,” she chastised. “It’s not that bad.”

  “But I bruise easily!” I complained.

  She nuzzled her nose against the side of my face. “Yes, but just think of how pleasant those memories will be, dear, when you see those bruises.”

  Her fingers began to work loose the knots at my wrists. All of my tensing and pulling had managed to tighten them even more, threatening to cut off my circulation. I was surprised my hands weren’t the same color as my Vikings jersey.

  When Julia finally removed the scarves at my wrists, I rubbed at the tender skin.

  “Loyalty, darling,” she purred into my ear. “Let that be a lesson.”

  I’d never been a strong pupil in school, but it was one lesson I wasn’t going to forget anytime soon.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The morning paper called it the Minneapolis Miracle. It was probably a moment I would always remember, but less for the last-second heroics on the football field and more for what had followed in Julia’s bedroom. I wasn’t a religious person, and I didn’t necessarily believe in concepts like ‘Fate’ or ‘Meant to Be,’ but I considered my relationship with Julia nothing less than a miracle.

  She was out of my league—anyone with working eyes could see that. But the timing of it all felt like some force, some guiding principle, had designed the circumstances surrounding us ever meeting. The spilled drinks at the Minneapolis bar. The job opportunity in the tiny, remote town of Embarrass, Minnesota. When I’d been cursing my bad luck, frying beneath the unforgiving desert sun, lips blistered and cracked, there was no way I could have predicted how my story would take a turn. If I’d never suffered from PTSD, if I’d never gone to Afghanistan, if I’d never joined the Marines—all of those circumstances and pathways had led me to meeting and falling in love with Julia Desjardin.

  “Are you done with that?”

  Stanley Harris’ voice snapped me from uncharacteristically deep thoughts.

  I hadn’t yet touched the daily paper on my desk, but Stanley’s question was part of the morning routine. I skimmed the front page before separated the sports section and comics for myself, leaving the serious bits for my Cold Case partner.

  Stanley Harris was more gnome than man. His full, bushy beard typically held clues to whatever he’d eaten earlier in the day. His awkward sense of humor was out of place everywhere except for the basement of the Fourth Precinct. Our entire division was a haphazard, motley crew of misfits who didn’t quite belong anywhere else within the city police department.

  I didn’t quite have an office of my own. We all shared a communal space with the exception of our supervisor, Captain Forrester. He was a seasoned veteran, disenchanted with police work. From the moment I’d met him I knew we wouldn’t get along. He was biding his time until he could collect his pension and social security, and I was a young cop looking to cut my teeth and make a name for myself somewhere.

  “Yeah, man. It’s all yours.”

  Stanley took the newspaper and folded it in half. He rocked back on his heels. “If anyone calls,” he began.

  “No one ever calls,” Sarah Conrad piped in. She sat at her desk, eyes focused on her computer screen. I wondered if she’d broken her top score in Solitaire yet.

  Besides Stanley Harris, Captain Forrester, and myself, the last member of the Cold Case division was a woman by the name of Sarah Conrad. She split her time between our office in the basement of the Fourth Police Precinct and a Victim’s Advocate office across town. Whereas Stanley and I worked to solve unresolved crimes or put criminals behind bars, Sarah’s role was to assist the victims, or in our case, typically the victim’s family. If I wasn’t already head-over-heels in love with another woman, Sarah’s beauty probably would have made me nervous. Even then, she was a challenge to be around. Dark hair, long eyelashes, a perpetually painted, red pouty lip. She had a penchant for scoop and v-neck shirts that showed off her prominent cleavage. She was also dry, sarcastic, and a terrible flirt.

  “Well … if they do.” Stanley clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

  “Don’t worry; I won’t tell them you’re in the can,” I promised with a grin.

  Stanley produced a tense smile before leaving the office, newspaper tucked under his arm.

  “Does anyone else find it morbid that he reads the obituaries in the bathroom?” Sarah announced when Stanley had left the office.

  “My grandma would cross names out of the phonebook while she read the obits,” I noted.

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Okay. That’s morbid on a whole new level.”

  “Or practical,” I supplied in my grandmother’s defense.

  The squeak of tennis shoes on aging linoleum drew my attention to the perpetually open door of our shared office. A red-faced and out-of-breath Stanley Harris stood in the threshold.

  “That was fast,” Sarah observed. “I hope you washed your hands.”

  “I found a person of interest from an old case in the newspaper,” Stanley panted, ignoring Sarah’s unorthodox humor.

  “Oh yeah? Which case?” I asked. I was starting to feel more comfortable with our case load, but I was nowhere near as versed as Stanley. The guy must have had a photographic memory the way he could recall the tiniest details.

  “About three years back, a group of local high school kids were partying after their graduation. Someone at the party got shot and later died in the hospital. No one fessed up to firing the gun, and the case went cold.”

  “What’s our person of interest in the paper for?” Sarah asked.

  “She’s dead.”

  + + +

  When a cadaver is discovered, standard operating procedure varies depending on the cause of death. When the death appears to have resulted from natural causes, a medical examiner or licensed physician signs a death certificate before the body is released to the deceased’s next-of-kin. If foul play is suspected, however, an entirely different chain of events—like a complicated dance—is evoked.

  In the hospital morgue, bodies slide in and out on metal trays, just like on TV.
But instead of paper tags attached to big toes, plastic bracelets around an ankle identify a name and a date of birth. Weight and height are recorded. Identifying marks like scars or tattoos are observed. The body is photographed, and forensic evidence is collected—scrapings under the fingernails, clothing is removed and bagged, pelvic exams are conducted for signs of trauma. Not all bodies are given an autopsy, however; some causes of death are more obvious than others.

  “Kennedy Petersik. 20 years old.”

  I stood in a hospital morgue with Stanley and a forensic pathologist who’d simply introduced himself as Gary. We all wore surgical masks, not so much to prevent contamination, but to counter the stale smell of formaldehyde that hung in the air.

  Gary had a full head of grey hair. His face was long and drawn with wide-set blue eyes. I didn’t really know if we were supposed to be there. Cold Case typically didn’t gain access to recent deaths, but Stanley had called ahead; he apparently knew Gary from when they’d been in college together. Stanley had originally gone to school to become a medical examiner, but his path had deviated to Cold Case.

  Kennedy Petersik’s eyes were closed. Her long, blonde hair was fanned out behind her on the metal trolley. Everything but her head and neck were blanketed with a cheap, crinkly sheet that hospitals insist on using in life as well as in death. I was used to photos of dead bodies, but it had been a while since I’d been in front of an actual cadaver. I don’t think anyone really gets comfortable with death, unless it’s their job. I hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of these two veteran men, but even Stanley looked a little paler and more uncomfortable than usual.

  Gary sighed wistfully as we collectively gazed upon the body. “These ones don’t get any easier. I mean, Christ, she was just a kid.”

  I’d been ankle-deep in Afghan sand when I was twenty. I hadn’t felt like a kid then. But I kept those sentiments to myself.

  I cleared my throat. “Cause of death?”

  Gary consulted a clipboard and flipped to the second page. “Single gunshot wound to the abdomen. Slightly downward, right-to-left internal bullet path.”

  I visibly winced when Gary pulled back the sheet that had been covering the body. Kennedy Petersik was naked. Her skin was pale, almost light blue. The Y-shaped autopsy incision stretched across her chest, connected at the sternum, and continued down to her pelvic bone. I wanted to yank the thin blanket out of Gary’s hands and shield her body; this young woman been through enough without having to be on display in a room of strangers.

  “Gunshots to the stomach are tricky,” Gary remarked. “The death can be quick and painless, slow and messy, or not fatal at all. It all depends on what the bullet hits as it makes its way through the body. She was lucky. The bullet could have severed her spinal cord and paralyzed, but not kill her. If it had hit her intestines, which are full of bacteria, it would have been a slow, painful death by infection.”

  I didn’t know how ‘lucky,’ death was, but I saw no reason to interject.

  Instead of moving closer to get a better look at the star-shaped bullet hole in the woman’s midsection, Stanley took a step back. I observed him out of the corner of my eye. It was hard to read his emotions because of the surgical mask that covered most of his face, but something had him thrown. He wasn’t naturally gregarious or outgoing, but he seemed to have become more withdrawn in the morgue, even more than was usual for him.

  In the absence of his assistance, I stepped up.

  “What are we thinking? Homicide? Suicide? Accident?” I proposed.

  “There was only one gunshot; multiple shots typically indicate homicide.” Gary ran a gloved finger around the skin that surrounded the tidy, single bullet hole in Kennedy Petersik’s abdomen. “But we also have to consider the distance of the gun from body. Suicide shots are at contact or near contact range. It causes a burn mark around the wound, just like this,” he said, tapping the taunt skin, “and it leaves behind gunfire residue, or GSR.”

  “Was GSR present on our victim’s hands, too?” I asked.

  Gary nodded. “But we also have to consider that the gun went off inside a contained environment—in this case, inside the victim’s car. We found GSR on just about everything. This also goes back to our contact range wound,” he continued. “At contact range the gunshot wound tends to form a star-shaped entry wound, like what you see here.”

  “But someone could have just as easily pressed the gun against her stomach and shot, right?” I proposed.

  “True,” Gary conceded. “But there’s no signs of struggle—no other scratches or bruises that suggests she fought back. You would expect to see those if her attacker was in such close proximity when the gun went off.”

  “What about these marks?” I didn’t touch the body, but I motioned towards the insides of the young woman’s arms where I could just see small, pale, horizontal lines, slightly raised in comparison to the rest of the surrounding skin.

  Gary didn’t show the same restraint as me. He gripped the woman’s wrist and twisted the arm awkwardly so the neat lines were more visible.

  “Old scars,” he said. “I’d guess she was probably into self-harm. We found little lines on her inner thighs as well. Typically in cases like this, the cuts start out hidden, then they become more visible, like a cry for help that becomes progressively louder.”

  Gary, thankfully, returned the white sheet to its previous position and covered up Kennedy Petersik’s nakedness.

  “If it was suicide, the method used strikes me as unusual,” he noted as he covered the body back up. “Men tend to choose more violent suicide methods like guns or hanging; women are more likely to overdose on medications. They go to sleep and never wake up.”

  I heard Stanley’s sharp intake of air. When I looked in his direction, he tried to cover up his reaction with a cough.

  I had more questions for Gary, but I was growing concerned about Stanley’s well-being. I watched him rapidly swallowing as if trying to force down the rising bile in his throat. He hadn’t spoken a word since we’d arrived. I’d thought death and decay didn’t rattle him, but maybe I’d been wrong.

  “Gary, thanks for seeing us on such notice,” I said in earnest. “I’ll be in touch if we have other questions.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine, Detective,” he said, nodding his head obligingly. He looked around the room at our somber surroundings. “Feel free to drop by anytime; it gets a little lonely down here.”

  + + +

  The door of my beat-up Crown Vic slammed noisily behind me. I hadn’t used much force, but the old cop car seemed to rattle on its axles.

  The small parking lot was mostly empty, which made Julia’s black Mercedes more obvious than usual. I hadn’t memorized the vehicles of Julia’s co-workers, but then again, I’d never met any of them with the exception of Alice, the cute and capable office manager. It made me question if my girlfriend was the only one who actually did any case work.

  New that day was a silver Mercedes coupe, a style newer and slightly flashier than Julia’s sedan. Parked beside the two luxury cars, my police-issued vehicle looked more embarrassing than usual. Cold Case was like the estranged third-cousin of the Minneapolis police department. Our resources, like my patrol car, tended to be hand-me-downs.

  I reached the front door of the public defender office at the same moment that someone was leaving. I instinctively yanked the door wide open and held it for the woman exiting. I smiled and made eye contact as she breezed past without so much as a thank you. I froze, forgetting my annoyance at the woman’s lack of courtesy, when I realized I knew who she was.

  She didn’t give me a second look, however, no sign of recognition. Melissa Ferdet unlocked her silver sports car from afar. The fancy vehicle chirped before she opened the driver’s side door and stepped inside, one long leg after the other. Her tailored pantsuit accentuated the long, lean lines of her figure. I couldn’t imagine what business the high-profile criminal lawyer would have had at a public defender’s
office, but I immediately suspected the worst.

  I stood on the concrete stoop of Julia’s law office and watched Melissa Ferdet drive away. A peculiar, uneasy feeling settled in my chest. I was instantly transported back to the bar where Julia and I had originally run into the woman, but more so than the visualization, I remembered how it had felt. In her shock at seeing her old acquaintance, Julia had ignored me—failed to introduce or involve me. All of those same feelings of inadequacy bubbled to the surface.

  The front lobby area of the legal aid office was empty. I hovered near the front reception desk and waited for Alice, the fresh-faced legal assistant, to make an appearance, but she never appeared.

  Instead of waiting in the lobby, I walked down the short hallway that led to Julia’s office. Her door was slightly ajar. The mostly-closed barrier between us caused the feeling in my chest to grow heavier. What would I find on the other side of the door? My girlfriend working diligently behind her desk? Or a disheveled Julia, cleaning up the signs of indiscretion. I shut my eyes as a wave of what I can only describe as extreme nausea cascaded over me.

  Stop being a coward, Marine. Open the door and get it over with.

  I nudged the door open with the toe of my heavy black boot. It swung noiselessly open and stopped just before it could connect with the wall behind it. It was the same motion I might make if I was searching a house for a wanted felon.

  Julia stood behind her desk, eyes cast down.

  She hadn’t noticed my silent arrival. I did a quick scan of the room. The file folders and books on her desk were intact, not flung to the floor in a fit of passion. Her hair was carefully tucked behind one ear, not sweaty or in disarray, and her bright red lipstick was in place, not smudged or kissed entirely off.

  The hemline of her pencil skirt was straight, the white Oxford shirt carefully tucked in. Her shirt was crisply pressed, unbuttoned to that damn third button, straining but not obscene.