John looked down at the officer’s face. Her skin reminded him of expensive milk chocolate. Pulled back into a short ponytail, her dark hair fell barely below her collar. Her espresso brown eyes regarded him coolly.
Her questions were the basic ones—and she made it clear that she was all business. John could not find it within himself to muster up even an attempt at a charming smile. He doubted that it would have made a difference. For a brief moment, John wondered if she might like girls instead, but she did not seem the type.
“Don’t leave,” she instructed him, lowering her tablet. “The sergeant might still want to talk to you.”
“Right.” John answered her flatly.
This earned him a narrow-eyed glare from the female officer before she turned away. Aware, but not watching her, as she headed toward the back of the office, John stepped further out of the way, finding a vacant space near the front windows, watching as the coroner’s team arrived.
John stared out into the night as they worked, having had enough with looking at corpses. He squinted and blinked against the strobing pulses of white, red, blue, and amber lights coming from the small parking lot.
Shit, he thought dully. I can’t believe this is happening. Again.
He felt strangely numb, almost detached. It was not simply fatigue, he knew, but an odd sense of disassociation from the events taking place around him. It was how he thought an out-of-body experience might feel like: being a detached observer of the events without feeling like he was actually a part of them.
The sensation lasted only a few moments, but it still left him with a chilled, hollow feeling. He nearly shivered, but did not know why. It reminded him of the fever chills he had experienced during a particularly bad case of the flu last winter. His father has stayed home from work for most of a week to take care and watch over him.
Dad. John let out a renewed sigh that was focused more inward than it was a heavy breath. How the hell am I going to explain this to him again?
He considered simply not mentioning it, but knew he would not keep the secret long. His father had a way of asking the right questions, almost as if he knew things that there was no way that he should. It was not mystical or anything—just unsettling and, occasionally, awkward.
Hearing footsteps approaching, John looked up, knowing who he would find there. The sergeant stared at him. The officer’s gaze was like steel, his expression nearly unreadable.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be here for another two hours,” John blurted out. “I—”
He stopped, unable to think of anything else to that might explain his presence there—at the scene of yet another death.
“Did you find a box?”
The sergeant nodded twice, breaking his hold on John’s gaze.
“In the back,” he told John. “Near the coffee maker and office supplies.”
“No snake?” John did not like how his voice wavered as he asked that.
For a moment, John thought he saw the faintest glint of amusement in the sergeant’s obsidian pupils.
“No snake.” The older officer glanced toward where the coroner’s team lifted the dead man’s body onto a transport stretcher. “In fact,” he said. “We’re not sure what caused it yet.”
His eyes fixed on John’s again.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea.”
It was not so much a question as a statement. Apparently, the sergeant already knew the answer.
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