Reckless

Chapter 5

Present Day

Character POV: Roxanne

The officer leads me back behind the barricade, to meet with the detective in charge of the scene. Zebulun's words keep ringing my head, that a cane would do wonders for me, and that I might have an easier time walking if I were sober. That familiarity with which he made those suggestions, as if we were friends instead of on opposing sides of a war. And then the threats I had made against him in my anger. . . Shake it off. I need to shake it off and see what Analize found so interesting about this crime, besides it being obviously staged and a vampire being behind it.

Ahead, I see the man wearing a tan suit, his beer belly protruding, straining against the confines of the buttons. His handlebar, gray moustache and almost cowboy looking hat make me instantly apprehensive for this interaction. If anyone is going to hate a woman coming in from a big city and taking over their investigation, or even just consulting, this would be the description that I would expect would fit the bill.

He eyes me, his blue eyes giving me the once over. He walks over to me, hand held up for me to stop, and I slowly come to a halt, just about ten feet from where I can see pole in question looming ahead of me, the arms tied with rope around the back of it. Bare arms, and I try not to notice the track marks that are visible even from here, try not to let my recently drug-free brain think too much on that, as I square my shoulders and brace myself for what's coming.

The man pulls up short, extending his hand to me in greeting, and I shake it even as he says, "Ma'am, even though I got the call telling me you were coming, I don't think your presence is strictly necessary. We may be a small town, but we have run murder investigations before. We don't need some fancy-dressed woman from D.C. coming down her and rutting around in our business. We know what we're doing. So, you can go save your fancy dress from ruination and head back the way you came. . ." he stops, looking down at my leg then.

I glance down, seeing that the wind has caught my dress and pulled it back to reveal the mottled scar tissue of my leg. He stares at it, even though he doesn't mean to. I quickly pull the dress back over it, trying to hide it from view before it comes a conversation piece as tends to happen. He looks back at me then, but I can tell from the way his eyes roam over my face that he is noting the scar over my eye more than he is meeting my gaze. He seems to catch himself then, giving a rough clear of his throat as I push past him, desperate for this awkwardness to dissipate. "I understand your concerns, but I'm not here to step on your investigation. I'm just here to see if the M.O. fits with a case I investigated a few years back. If it doesn't, it's all yours." I don't tell him that it'll be all his anyway. I'm just here to see if Ariadne did this, if it fits her style. Once I report that back to Analize, we'll leave it up to these men. They'll be so confused that they'll never hit on the truth, that a vampire did it.

The deputy follows behind me in silence for a moment, but I feel the pressure building like a storm about to break. Then, he asks the inevitable. A rough clear of his throat announces the onslaught before he asks, "If you don't mind my asking, what happened to your leg?" When I don't immediately reply, he continues, "I've seen my fair share of burn scars when I served in the U.S. Army during Desert Storm. Did you serve?"

"I've waged my fair share of wars," I answer, though if I told him the amount of times throughout history that I was on a battlefield, it'd blow his mind. I won't do what Analize would do though and claim to be a service member when she has never served in the way he thinks. But how else would I explain the scarring, the limp?

He seems to relax around me a little more, feeling a sense of comradery. "Where did you serve exactly?" He asks me, finding something that we could possibly bond over as we walk along the side of the highway towards the body, his boots crunching on the gravel at the edge of the roadway.