[color=gray][h3][sup][sup]They walked in sudden silence. Stepping across small ponds of light that emerged from the concrete floor beneath them. Darkness veiled the edges of the parking garage, masking the decay that she tasted in the air. Flickering canopy lights shrouded the paltry tomb that drew her closer. The empty spots stacked like crumbled tombstones. Connie was quiet. His usual sauntering, swaggering bravado had faded, replaced by a stiffness she might have once attributed to shame in the big man.

“Sheesh. For a second there I thought he might actually do it this time,” he said, breaking the silence, voice laced with a humor she knew was supposed to disarm her.

Teresa shot him a sideways glance, letting the words shatter, her eyes narrowing into slits.

“What?”

“Isn’t this the part where you apologize?” she said—”pretend like you don’t do this every god damn time?”

He hesitated like he knew he was kicking a beehive. “... Gets us past the tape, don’t it?”

“God, you’re such a [i]fucking[/i] prick,” she snarled, gesturing at him, the creases tightening around her eyes. She kicked a discarded can in his direction, willing him to flinch. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”

Connie threw up his hands; hiss-whispering so the cops didn’t overhear. “Oh, I’m sorry. [i]I’m so sorry[/i] that I have a hammer and every problem named McGlinn around here is a damn nail.”

“Look,” she said, leaning, leering, matching his contemptible tone,  ”see if I care when you go and get yourself ashed. Whatever bakes your cake, right? Just do it far away from me.”

“Yeah, sure, because you’re Ms. Strictly Business, right? Bitching at me is getting this case solved faster, right, T? [i]Jesus.[/i]” Connie reached into his jacket; buried whatever insult he’d lined up next; must’ve decided better of it, but Teresa saw it there, primed upon his tongue, loaded like a shell into a torpedo tube. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Placing one in his mouth and lighting it with what resembled a miniature gold bar, the butane flame hissing sharp and see-through-blue. He stopped some three feet away from the body, letting out a puff of acrid smoke. He only smoked the cheap shit. Lucky Strikes, on a good day. “So. Another one already.”

“Five bodies in five days. Not very careful. Not very smart. [i]Almost reminds me of someone.[/i]” Teresa held out her hand expectantly.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, obliging anyway: clicking the flame back to life, kissing it to the other end of the cigarette as she slotted the filter between her lips. “They’re icing guys almost faster than we can mop ‘em up. Addicted to the hunt?”

“Or they’re burning through vitae like hummingbirds with sugar-water.”

Connie shrugged. Taking out a battered flip-phone, he snapped a few shots of the body. Tiny and grainy but indispensable. Then he began to frisk. A wallet first, dredged from cargo short pockets; unfolding it, a driver’s license.

“Curtis Prince DeWayne. Twentyyyyyyyy—” a moment’s mental math—”[i]nine[/i] years old. Washington Square, no endorsements, blah, blah, blah, yadda yadda. No cash, no......hmm.”

“Cards?”

“Debit. And an EBT.”

“Food Stamps,” Teresa exclaimed.

“Yeah. Hardly the Strip’s favorite whale.” Connie had restored the wallet’s contents to its folds and tossed it aside; was examining the hands then, pale and tepid. The exsanguination couldn’t hide it: there were tan lines where the man had habitually worn a large ring; maybe a class or community college football memento. The wrist, likewise, had once hosted a large, gaudy watch. “But by the looks of it, neither are they.”

“Yeah,” she huffed, the exhale visible: milky with smoke. “So, they only took cash and pawnables.”

“They couldn’t take the cards because they can’t get past the PINs.”

“Yes, none of this screams a well-thought-out plan. What else?“

“Dunno,” Connie said. “The question is whether they’re out to make this look like a robbery, or actually need the dough.”

“Strip ain’t cheap. Assuming that’s where they’ve holed up.”

“So far I’d bet on it.”

She let the silence settle, waited until it grew heavy. “Yeah?”

Connie sighed. “First they were attacking randoms, right? White, black, female, shemale. Anyone they could get their claws in. But enough incidents like that, safety alerts start going out; tourists stay in their hotel rooms after dark; it’s bad for business, and what’s bad for business gets [i]handled,[/i] yeah? So they’re starting to figure it out: keep it on the D.L. Hunt away from the nest, especially north, toward Sunset Manor and downtown. Don’t shit where they eat. Profile the kinds of people who like to go missing anyway. Overdosers. Bums freezing to death beneath the overpass. Gangbangers.”

He looked over his shoulder, clocking where the cops were standing; where their attention lied. His voice dropped. “He’s also, you know, not a pile of tatters like the last one. There’s some of him left. [i]They’re Frenzying less than before.[/i] I know you hate giving credit where it’s due—least of all to anyone who’s not you—but they [i]are[/i] getting smarter.”

“Barely,” Teresa retorted. She prodded the body with the toe of a boot, permitting herself a faint smile. “At this rate they might even last the week.”

“Alright, Columbo, why haven’t you caught ‘em, then?”

“I told you already, [i]tarado[/i]: you can’t rush these things. Maybe if you weren’t so busy rolling in the mud with the local pigs we’d have more bodies to examine.”

“I’ll rush my foot in your ass if you don’t can it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the map, [i]vato.[/i] Where does this one fit into your little doodles?”

“What, you forgot already?” he replied, unfolding a map from his suit jacket’s Napoleon. Gesturing to each circle or X, penned in thick marker, as he rambled it off. “Look, every attack is further than the last. John Doe, Naked City. Breanna Webb, Maryland and Laguna. Graciela Gomez, the Walmart by the airport. Here’s Glen Bell. Oh, and just so it’s on the record, [i]here’s[/i]—” he pointed to an unmarked spot, way out in the tan elevation lines of the Mojave Desert—”where I’m going to bury the next beaner bitch who tries to nag me to death.”

She laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and shaking her head, “Someone has to keep an idiot like you on task.”

“If you’re nice to me I’ll even bury a few more assholes on top of you. Should keep you good and cozy, you corpse-licker.”

“Always the charmer, aren’t you, Connie? How many of your ex-wives did you bury out there first?”

“Wanna find out? There’s plenty of room in that grave for the lot of you.”

“Might as well. Those girls and I all have something in common: we’ve all dealt with your bullshit.“

“Good, good. Plenty to talk about.”

“Hey, assholes,” McGlinn interjected, his outcry bouncing off the bare concrete walls of the parking garage. “Is this a crime scene or a teenaged sleepover? Cut the chitchat.”

Connie shot him a scowl. “We’re working on it.”

“Psssh. Go work the damn poles if this is the best you can manage.”

Connie didn’t budge. He wasn’t rattled. He seemed, all said, just about ready to let it go. Still knelt beside the body, returning his attention to it, he didn’t rise to the provocations, drowning them out with some other internal noise. (A cuckoo clock. A jack-in-the-box. Circus music. She had all kinds of theories.) He was so close. Teresa was almost proud.

Then Austin McGlinn, determined to tempt fate, resolved to tease the caged tiger, stuck his hand one inch too far between the bars.

“Hey,” he oozed, “Beauclerc family trade, am I right? Maybe your sister can give you some pointers.”

Teresa froze in place, willing stiff blood to her muscles. Too far. McGlinn had gone too far. He’d crossed an invisible line. A line that had always been there whether he knew it or not. Connie’s chest rumbled with the kind of groan that could only mean calamity. A cauldron boiling over and wildfire licking up between the trees. The last of his patience curling and blackening. Fists balled together. He burst to his feet, turned towards the beat cop.

Springing from her crouch, Teresa swung without waiting. Her knuckles smashed into Connie’s flank, driving upwards into his kidney. He stumbled forward from the blow, taking a single heavy step, stale air shoved from his lungs.

In the time he realized he’d been struck she’d placed the same hand—gentler then—to his shoulder. His face was contorted with fury. No more jokes. No more laughs. Just rage. She didn’t bother to look at the cops. They weren’t important. Weren’t the danger. She mouthed a single breathless word to him: [i]don’t.[/i]

And then she let go. She didn’t wait for the reply; didn’t need it. Instead she turned her attention back to the body. Kneeling down to resume her investigation. Acting as if she hadn’t just assaulted him. Ignoring that they had almost ended up in another gunfight. Death had called for her. That was what intrigued her. 

She pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from inside her trenchcoat. Connie didn’t move. But she knew he was staring. Eyes searing into McGlinn. Hatred still pumping to fists which could hit like buckshot.

“I’m gonna go...... uh, terrorize the parking attendant or something,” he finally said. 

“Shit, he even listens to the pants in the relationship? I should upgrade; put a ring on it; eh, Cole?” McGlinn quipped.

“Shut the fuck up, Oz,” his partner snarled.[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]