Jason looked skeptically at the man sitting across from him. “You really believe that?”
Hunter lifted and then dropped his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Hey, it’s good to have something to hang on to,” he told Jason with a grin.
“I guess,” Jason murmured. “It’s for damn sure that these cold cases certainly don’t fill that void,” Valdez said. “Sometimes I wonder why we keep beating our heads against that brick wall.”
Instead of a flippant remark the way he’d expected, his partner addressed his question seriously. “Because, every once in a while, there’s a crack in that wall and we get to give someone some closure about a loved one. That, my friend, in case you’ve forgotten, is a good feeling,” Hunter said.
Without thinking, he picked up the container Jason brought him and took a sip. Hunter made a face almost immediately, setting the container down again. This time he banished it to the far corner of his desk.
“I think the vending machine people have outdone themselves. This tastes like someone’s boiled socks,” Hunter declared in disgust.
“How would you know what boiled socks taste like?” Jason asked, apparently intrigued.
Hunter never hesitated. “I have a very vivid imagination,” he answered.
James Wilson, a prematurely balding, heavyset man, peered into the squad room. Spotting whom he was looking for, he crossed the floor over to Hunter.
By the time he reached Hunter’s desk, Wilson was breathing heavily, sucking in air noisily.
“You really should see a doctor, Wilson,” Hunter said. It seemed to him that each time he saw the detective, the man just got heavier and heavier. There had to be a cutoff point.
“Yeah, yeah, you and my wife,” Detective Wilson said dismissively. He made an annoyed face. “You want to hear this or not?”
“Sure,” Jason answered, speaking for both of them. “What brings you huffing and puffing into our corner of the world, Wilson?”
Wilson looked from one detective to the other, then answered with a single word. “Rain.”
“You’re a bit late, Wilson,” Jason told the other man. “It rained yesterday. Unseasonably so,” the detective added. “Ever notice how Californians drive in the rain? Like they’ve never seen the stuff before and just want to get home before they drown.”
“Don’t mind him, he’s a transplant from New Mexico,” Hunter told the detective. “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way over here to talk about the unusual shift in the weather.”
Wilson smiled, making Hunter think of a cat that had secretly swallowed a canary. “Indirectly, I am.”
While Hunter claimed that his evenings out had no effect on him, last night had been particularly taxing. He’d gotten all of three hours’ sleep, and it was beginning to catch up with him. Opening a drawer, he checked to see if he was out of aspirin. He was.
“Wilson,” he said, closing the drawer again, “I’ve got a headache building behind my eyes and I’m not in the mood for twenty questions. Now, is this belated weather report going somewhere or not?” he asked.
Instead of answering the question, Wilson asked one of his own. “Mind if I sit?”
Hunter played along and gestured toward the chair next to his desk. “Now, what did you come all this way to tell me?”
James Wilson worked on another floor for another division, but what would have seemed close to another man was like a trek through the Himalayas to the man now sitting beside his desk. It had to have taken a lot to bring Wilson here, Hunter reasoned.
“You know that cold case you keep coming back to?” Wilson asked. When Hunter didn’t respond, Wilson added, “That first one that you picked up?”
Hunter knew exactly which case the other detective was referring to. It was the one that really haunted him because he could never identify the victim for a very basic reason.
“You’re talking about the man who was missing his hands and head,” Hunter said.
Like a game show host, Wilson pointed toward Hunter, then touched the tip of his nose as if the other detective’s answer was dead-on. “That’s the one. You know that rain we had yesterday?” Wilson asked.
“The rain you led with?” Hunter asked. It was a rhetorical question. “What about it?”
Wilson enjoyed having other people listen to him and it was obvious that he was stretching this out. “Well, apparently it washed away some dirt.”
“It was a torrential downpour,” Jason recalled. “A lot of dirt was washed away.”
“Yeah, but this dirt was covering up what turned out to be a shallow grave.” Wilson paused, whether for dramatic effect or because he’d temporarily run out of breath wasn’t clear.
In either case, both Hunter and Jason cried out, almost in unison: “What was in the grave?”
“Hands and a head,” Wilson informed them almost smugly.
Hunter was on his feet immediately. “Where are those hands and that head now?” he asked.
“Where do you think? The ME’s got them,” Wilson answered.
Hunter started to hurry out of the squad room, then abruptly stopped. They were two men down today, bringing their total down to two. Jason and he couldn’t both leave the squad room at the same time. He looked back at his partner, a quizzical look on his face.
The latter waved him on. “You go, Brannigan. This was your baby to begin with. I’ll man the desk and answer the phones—not that they’ll ring,” Jason added.
“You sure?” It evolved into a joint case, although it was more his than Jason’s since he had taken the case over from the retiring homicide detective who hadn’t been able to close it.
“I’m sure.” Jason grinned, looking at his friend. “Looks like the color came back to your cheeks, Brannigan. Both of our names might be on the report, but this is your case. I wouldn’t deprive you of going down to see this latest piece of the puzzle,” he told Hunter.
That was all Hunter needed.
“How did you happen to find out about this, anyway?” Hunter asked the other detective. He slowed down in order to allow Wilson to catch up.
“Heard two detectives talking in the snack room. Thought of that cold case you had,” Wilson said with a touch of bravado. They got to the elevator and he pressed the down button. “What do you think are the odds that these hands and head are your cold case’s head and hands?” Wilson asked.
“Well, given that this isn’t a run-of-the-mill kind of kill,” Hunter speculated as the elevator car arrived, “I’d say the odds are better than fifty-fifty.”
Getting in and holding the door open for Wilson, he waited until the other detective got on, then pressed for the basement. Ordinarily, the medical examiner’s offices were housed in a different building. However, in the interest of efficiency, in the last few months the office had been moved to the building that housed the police department. It now occupied the same floor as the CSI lab and the computer tech department.
The elevator arrived in the basement, but as the doors opened, Wilson remained where he was. When Hunter glanced at him, Wilson said, “I’ll let you go the rest of the way yourself.”
“You don’t want to come with me?” Hunter asked.
He’d been surprised that the detective had accompanied him this far and had just assumed that Wilson would tag along to see if this was indeed connected to the cold case he’d taken over when he first came to the division.
However, Wilson looked