Big Guns Out of Uniform (24 page)

T
here was a knock on my door that evening. I had finished drying all the prints and had laid out the black-and-white shots of the crime scene on my kitchen table. They were well done, clear and even in color and tone. I'd taken the black-and-white photos because they often showed details that were overlooked in color, and I preferred them anyway.

I still hadn't figured out why the tattoo on the man's inner thigh seemed familiar. It was unusual, a clown face, divided down the center, half smiling, half frowning. I supposed I might have seen something like it during one of my trips to New York. I'd been in plenty of tattoo parlors looking for models for an assignment.

I went to answer the door wearing the clothes I'd had on earlier, apron and all. “Who is it?” I called out.

“Detective Scott,” a gravelly voice replied, though it was muted by the thickness of the heavy oak.

Oh, my.

I opened the door quickly, putting one hand to my hair in an automatic gesture. He was standing in the entryway at the top of the steps to my house, big. How is it that some men just seemed like men, and others, oh, others, could just seem so much more? My front porch was covered in plants, all blooming with color and life at this time of the summer. He stood in the middle of them like a lion in a jungle. I stood back to let him in, but deliberately brushed my breasts against his arm as he passed me.

I felt him stiffen, and thought I had my answer about last night. He definitely wasn't pleased with me.

“Well, this is a surprise,” I said mildly, and led the way into the kitchen. I felt him behind me down the short hallway, and I deliberately swayed my hips, hoping he was watching, the jerk.

“How'd you make out on presents?” I asked casually, wondering what he'd thought of the camera. I hadn't bought a huge mechanical camera, but I had gotten him a really expensive digital, a card reader, and extra memory. I had blown maybe a thousand dollars. Maybe he was here to tell me that it was an inappropriate gift or something. I knew it had been a dumb idea. I don't know what I was thinking; I had just wanted to please him. Stupid, I know, wanting to please a man.

“I don't know. They're still in Stevens's car, I think.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved and disappointed, pushing open the batwing doors that led into my kitchen.

I went immediately to the refrigerator. “Did you want something to drink?”

“A beer, if you have it.”

“I've got Guinness or Amstel Light.” Frankly I was shocked that he wanted to drink at all, though perhaps he hadn't been quite as inebriated as I had been. He didn't look as if he had a hangover.

“Guinness is fine,” he said distractedly, and ran a hand through his hair. He had taken one of the pictures in his hand and was looking at it carefully.

I got two heavy glass mugs out of my freezer and poured his Guinness into one with the expertise I had learned from a bartender in Ireland. He'd been eighteen, ruddy-cheeked, and convinced that American girls were easy. I'm afraid I didn't discourage that belief in any significant way.

I took a two-liter of Vanilla Coke out of the fridge for myself while the thick Guinness settled. I was trying to quit drinking soda, but hadn't quite managed it. Before the accident I had always struggled with my weight, and called myself an idiot for my addiction. I didn't worry so much about my weight anymore, now that I exercised daily, though I supposed that was a compulsion all its own.

“You surf ?” Scott said to my back. I turned around and he gestured to the surfboard I had propped up in the corner of the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I said sullenly, sounding for all the world like one of those white-trash girls in movies with ripped cutoffs and see-through shirts. I glanced down at myself automatically, feeling my nipples peak against the front of my tank and apron. He watched me do it, and for the first time I saw in his eyes the lust that I had seen demonstrated by his lower organs two days earlier.

“Do you surf?” I asked, suggestively, I admit.

He turned away, and picked up the photo again. I sighed and poured the rest of the Guinness into his glass, watching the foamy whitish brown head rise like bread dough. The man was driving me crazy. If he was anyone else, I would've just taken off my clothes and pushed him down into one of my kitchen chairs, but I had tried that once and he'd rejected me. I wasn't interested in a repeat of that little scene.

I handed him his drink, which he sipped absently, licking the foam off his lips. I sat quickly in one of the chairs and pretended a keen interest in one of the photos. It just happened to be a picture of the tattoo.

I turned the photo and heard him curse. “Do you do it on purpose?” His voice was harsh. I looked up quickly, blinking.

“Do I do what on purpose?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Nothing,” he muttered, and took the picture out of my hand.

“So who is this guy?”

“I can't tell you that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, I've been working with you guys long enough.”

“No, I mean we don't know who he is.” He didn't sound happy about it.

“No shit,” I asked, raising my eyebrows. He smiled a little at that and I felt my breath go. The man was truly beautiful when he smiled.

“No identification, clothing, or any other possessions that might belong to the victim were found at the scene. Preliminary forensics indicates that the body was probably dumped.”

I could've told him that. I worked with forensics a lot, shooting what they told me to shoot, touching only what they told me I could touch. I'd picked up a few things over the years, and one of them was that a bullet through the head left an awfully big mess, and the ground that would've been in the shot's trajectory had been clean, or at least free of blood and brain matter.

“You got nothing on his prints?” I asked, surprised. Just about everybody was listed somewhere. The DMV required a thumbprint scan in order to issue driver's licenses, and prints were required on gun permits. I'd had to have a complete set of my prints made before I could even work for the department.

“Nada.
And no one has called to claim him, though the news ran some gruesome shots on the eleven o'clock news that night.”

“Buzzards,” I muttered, and he shot me a wry look.

“Hey, I work for you. There's a big difference,” I argued defensively. He conceded that with another of those little smiles and sipped his Guinness again. I felt myself melting again watching him. He seemed massive sitting at my dainty little kitchen table, and dark somehow, as if I had let in a brewing storm.

“So,” he continued, flicking the photo onto the table. “It seems like this tattoo is the best we have to go on right now.”

I glanced at the picture again. “You know,” I muttered, picking it up again, “there is something familiar about it.”

“Really?” he asked, sounding interested, and a bit reluctant. I had gotten good at reading voices, since looking at the strange faces of those near and dear to me often left me feeling unsettled. His face was a pleasure to look at, though, and his handsomeness was always a surprise. I didn't know why he would be reluctant, but I imagined it had something to do with the thought that if I recognized the tattoo, then I had probably seen it in person. I wasn't discounting the idea. I'd seen too many dicks to remember them all; although I thought the tattoo was unusual enough that I would recall it.

“I don't think I've seen this particular tattoo,” I said, studying it intently, absently noting that the hair on the fuzzy ball sack in the frame was dark, and that the man had been extremely long, well over ten inches.
No, I wouldn't have forgotten seeing that.
“But I've seen one like it,” I finished, and handed it back to him.

He was looking at me. “Do you know that your eyes squint and your forehead wrinkles when you concentrate?”

“Yes,” I said shortly, and got up from the table.

“What did I say?” he drawled out, and the warmth in his tone had me half expecting him to add “honey” or “baby” to the end of his sentence.

“Nothing,” I said, flustered, and trying to hide it by opening the fridge and getting out some more Coke. An interesting side effect to my little disability was that in addition to not being able to recognize the faces of others, I could no longer recognize my own face. For a long time I refused to have a mirror anywhere near me, but once I started losing weight I surrounded myself with them. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors had covered the walls of the apartment I'd lived in before I'd gotten the house. My therapist said that my obsession with improving my body undoubtedly grew from a fear of losing my identity.

Well, duh.

It still bothered me a little when people commented on my face. I couldn't imagine what the detective had seen while watching me examine the photo, and that thought had me a little unnerved. I was reminded of a fantasy book I'd read once, where a present-day heroine was transported to a world where no one used mirrors, and was told all she needed to know about her presence and beauty could be read in the eyes of the men and women who looked back at her.

It didn't help me, though. There was only so much a person could understand by looking into a stranger's eyes, and in my little world, everyone was a stranger. Blanche Dubois, I was not.

“Where have you seen it?” he asked me then, and it took me a moment to recall what we were talking about.

“Oh…” I said, thinking of the tattoo. “I'm not sure. I'll have a look in my files. Maybe I've got it in there somewhere.”

“Can you let me know by tomorrow?” His voice was gruff.

I thought about the massive files in my office. There was no way. “I don't think so, Detective, not without help. You willing?”

I let just enough heat roll off with the words so that there was no mistaking my meaning. I watched his face as I said it, fascinated that behind that stranger's mask was someone I knew. I understood how mob wives felt when their husbands got plastic surgery.

I watched his eyes narrow. He stood and slowly stalked me back against my kitchen counter. Heat came off him in waves, and I put my hands against his chest in reflex. His muscles were hard and resilient against my fingers. I spread my palms wide, and ran them up and down his chest. Just once, but we both shuddered.

I felt a strange joy welling up in me, and I had trouble believing that he was actually there, touching me. I had imagined this for so long, imagined him, and now his gorgeous hands were reaching for my hips, pulling me against him.

The bulge beneath his jeans pressed into my belly and I pushed my hips forward.

“Oh, yes,” I said eagerly, rubbing my hips in circles against him.

He leaned forward and nipped my ear, his big body blocking most of the light and making me feel small and fragile.

“Do you want me?” he growled in my ear, sounding like deep-fried sin. He slid his hand across my hip and under the apron and the waistband of my stretchy pants, pausing when he realized I wasn't wearing underwear.

I held still, breathless with anticipation, as those large hands combed through the springy curls of my bush. I imagined those hands, the long fingers that I had seen developing only hours before.

“I want to come into this kitchen someday,” he said in my ear, still not touching me the way I wanted to be touched. “And I want to see you wearing nothing but this apron.” Both hands slid to my ass, one hot against my skin. He squeezed my cheeks, his fingers sinking deep into the crease where the curve of my bottom met my thighs. “I want this ass to be the first thing I see.”

I whimpered, my head falling back. He slid his hand up my back and caught it in the tangled mess of my hair. He kissed me then, his lips brushing gently before his tongue came out to taste my bottom lip. “You taste just like I remember,” he said, and kissed me again, his tongue probing deep. I kissed him back, sucking on his tongue, nipping his bottom lip when he withdrew.

He set me away from him and adjusted himself carefully while I watched. “I can't stay tonight, but I'll come by before work tomorrow and help you look.”

I heard the words, but I was still thinking that at any moment he would strip off his jeans and take me against the cabinets. He didn't do that. He went to the table while I stared at him incredulously. He took one of the 8-by-10 photos of the tattoo.

“I'm going to have Stevens check with the local tattoo parlors to see if any of them claim this particular design, or remember someone requesting it. What time do you surf in the morning?”

“Six
A.M.,
” I said numbly.

“I'll be here,” he said, gripping my chin and placing a quick kiss on my mouth. I leaned toward him eagerly, parting my lips, but he turned away like he didn't notice.

I was still standing shell-shocked in my kitchen when I heard the front door open and close. I ran after him, spilling down the porch steps just in time to see his truck driving away.