The Aftermath

47

Detective Jasslynn Baker didn't bother to go to Mercy Hospital. She went to the crime scene. The arriving officers told her that Tom Blake left the scene to follow Life Flight before making a statement. She nodded, deciding that what he did was statement enough.

Obviously he didn't see who the perp was, because there was no dead perp's body. Baker, like many detectives downtown knew Kemp Simmons, if only by reputation. Ex Special Forces in Afghanistan, a Major when he was forcibly retired because of massive injury to his left leg. Now one of the owners of Shield Security, a high-tech security company that specialized in executive security, when going into high risk areas of the world. Baker figured that if Tom Blake didn't kill the perp, Kemp Simmons would have, so there was no perp. No one here except Charlie Davis, and she wouldn't be talking to anyone for more than a week, at least, if she didn't slip into a comma.

What she didn't know was that Kemp Simmons was so close to Tom Blake. Tom Blake was a medic in Afghanistan. Was there a connection between Tom and Kemp's left leg? That would explain why Kemp would follow Tom into a horror show like this at the risk of his reputation in the security world. Something to think about and follow up on, certainly.

Baker walked over to the table, with the lights and tables around it. On the tables were all kinds of knives, saws and other chromed instruments of medical association. Why leave these here? As far as she knew the only tools the perp needed was a scalpel and the electric bone saw. Maybe a set of gloves to keep the blood from getting on his hands. Why all this extra equipment, and why leave it here?

Baker looked across the warehouse area at the back door. It was the kind with the press bar exit on the inside. Did Blake actually interrupt the perp? Was he that close? Charlie Davis was still alive when he got here. Perhaps he did arrive just in the nick of time. She decided that yes, there were a few questions she would need answers to from Tom Blake.

The lights were the kind used by construction crews. Tall, painted hazard-yellow with halogen bulbs. The kind that seconded as heaters. There were two of them.

Charlie Davis -- shit. She was a witness to the crime, the only witness and she was dead to the world right now. That fucking close and still -- fuck.

After looking around for another fifteen minutes hoping something would jump out at her, she left the building and talked to the officers who arrived at the scene, and the Sheriff's Detective who was in charge of the scene. They exchanged cards and told each other how much they didn't know about what the fuck happened here, while sharing a cup of coffee. After that, Baker wanted to be on the road going some where. The hangover from last night was still behind her eyes.

Can't believe that I boffed Roads last night. Jesus Christ what was I thinking? Probably that it was more than a year since anyone touched me like a woman and I needed it.

She shook the thoughts from her head. They had been plaguing her all morning. And all morning she chose to ignore them. But now, she needed to call Roads, or go over to his house and get Blake's number from him. She knew he had it, and it wasn't in any of the reports she had read so far. Fuck again.

Calling was the coward's way out. She had to work with the man, if he actually made it through thirty-days of sobriety and got his shield back. That was a big 'if', but anything was possible. She would hate to see him leave the force in that manner. He could retire, he had the years in, but what would he do then? He looked so lost last night.

So, alright, she cared about the asshole, hell he was a damn hero to her when she first joined homicide. And it wasn't until he accepted her as a detective in the unit that she really felt like she had made it into the ranks. When she found out that Roads was observing every interrogation she performed, at least the ones he could, it made her mad with joy.

Then, like everyone else in the unit, she found out what a mean asshole the man could be. That he drank on the job, often. That he was a hot-mess to work with. That he hated women, or at the very least saw them as sex puppets and that was all. He was a sorry example of a human being. But as a detective, he never missed a trick, and solved cases that were cold and hopeless to the eyes of every other detective in the unit -- hell in the county.

So now what does he think of me?

This more than anything, bothered her. She was an equal in his eyes before, even as a black woman, one of the team. What was she now, just a sex puppet?

Fuck -- why did it have to be Roads?