Cause of Death by Laura Dembowski (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📕

me the hole that will now be permanently inside my heart. I can’t stop crying. I can barely hear the officiant’s words, what with the rain and the sounds akin to puppies dying coming from Dave and me.

It’s all just as well. Nothing can be said to make anything better. Nothing can be said that can give us closure. This is the beginning of the rest of our lives, and I’m not sure I want to be a part of it at all.

Chapter 6

Ryan

Oh, good, it’s Monday again. Not that it really matters, since I worked all weekend.

The moment I walk into the station, I know it’s not going to be a good day. The air-conditioning is out. Did the air really have to break on the hottest, most humid day of the whole year?

I take off my jacket and hang it on the back of my chair before I turn on my computer.

“How was your weekend?” my partner Kate asks me.

“I was here, remember? While you were off at your brother’s wedding.”

“Right. How was working with Will?”

“He’s great. You’d better not take any more time off or he’ll be my new partner.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

We chat for a few minutes about the wedding, and then hit the paperwork.

No matter how many hours—or days—I work, there’s a never-ending pile of paperwork. It’s not my favorite part of the job, but I love being a detective so much that I don’t really mind. I take after my dad. He was a detective until he was killed in the line of duty. My mom didn’t speak to me for a year after I told her I was going to the academy, but we’re good now. I try to be careful, but you never know what’s going to happen. I could be killed in a car accident or a freak vending-machine accident, so I have to follow my heart.

“Did you get any breaks on that robbery last week?” Kate asks.

“Which one?”

“The jewelry store.”

“We talked to the witness again, but she doesn’t remember anything. One of those things. At least no one got hurt. Put it aside. Maybe something will come up one day; maybe not.”

Detective Kate Hutchinson hates when cases go unsolved. She actually used to think she could solve every case that came her way. She quickly figured out that that’s not how things work. I admire her dedication, though. I mean, I tease her about missing work, but she never uses all her vacation time, and she’s here pretty much every day when I leave, ready to work a couple more hours. I try to tell her to take some time off and enjoy life, but she has trouble leaving the job behind.

I don’t blame her. It’s hard. Sometimes I can’t get a case off my mind. I go over the evidence again and again. I talk to the witnesses until we’ve both lost our voices. I have dreams about cases, nightmares, too. That’s the worst. When I can’t even leave them behind to get a good night’s sleep. Those are the times I hate the job. Those are also the cases that teach me how to be a better detective, so I can solve the case the next time.

Jim—we all call him Sarge—walks over to our desks. I know the heat is getting to me even though I have the fan blasting on high and keep rubbing my forehead with an ice-cold bottle of water, but Sarge looks like he’s just run a marathon. His face is beet-red and sweat is dripping from it, soaking through his entire shirt. He looks like he just went swimming.

“I should have listened to Robin when she told me to go on a diet last year. I feel like I’m carrying another person on my back.”

“Robin says you never listen to her, Sarge,” I say, glad I have a friendly relationship with my boss.

“I’m not letting her come to any more station events. She tells you too many of my secrets.”

He throws a file on my desk. “Look into this,” he says.

I flip the folder open and turn to talk to him, but he’s already on the way back to his office.

“But this was a suicide,” I say, quickly catching up to him. “I saw it on the news. Terrible story.”

“We got a tip that maybe it wasn’t a suicide.”

“From who?”

“Whom?” Sarge says. He has this thing about grammar, and he’s always correcting mine. Some of the tips have stuck, but I swear I’ll go to the grave not knowing the difference between who and whom.

“From whom?” I ask with extra emphasis.

“An anonymous tip, so I can’t tell you. Just check out the damn case. I have a weird feeling about this one.”

I glance through the file. Cases that seem cut-and-dry rarely are.

“So you want us to poke around a little because you have a feeling?”

“Poke around and see what you get,” Sarge says. “Keep me posted.”

He walks into his office and shuts the door, which can only make it hotter in there, despite the three fans he has going.

I toss the file onto Kate’s desk.

“Why does he do this to us?” she says. “All these wild goose chases.”

“Got a tip, have to follow up.”

“Where do you want to start?” Kate asks, fanning herself with the file.

“Maybe we should talk to the parents.”

On any other day, maybe I would have looked at Sarge and told him it was just some crazy tip. We get crazy tips all the time. But I really want to get out of the station and into the car’s air-conditioning. It couldn’t hurt to talk with the parents for a while, maybe grab a bite to eat. It’s my turn to pick the place, and I’m in the mood for tacos.

The parents live in a typical suburban house. I don’t spend much time in these nice, upper-middle-class parts of town when it comes to investigations. Not that bad things don’t happen to people with money, but they