Lapse chapters 1-2

 
Chapter 1
The One Night Stand

As soon as I opened my eyes that morning I had a feeling it was going to be one of those days. One of those dreadful -have to go to work with an agonizing hangover; I’ll be lucky if I don’t vomit on my desk- kind of days. I was sure that the bedroom ceiling had detached from the walls while I slept because as I laid flat on my back, totally unmoving, that deviant ceiling began to spin. As I watched it make its fourth woozy rotation, I felt the first lurch of nausea. I instantly slapped my hand over my mouth, absolutely refusing to throw up on my brand new Egyptian cotton sheets. I didn’t have many luxuries and I damn sure wasn’t going to lose this one. I had to close my eyes to stop the spinning and regain my composure. When I had a good strong grip on my vomit reflex I granted myself an attempt to sit up. As soon as I began to move, I felt something shift beside me in the bed and I froze. Before I looked, I tried to force myself to remember what had happened last night. Since I was mostly coming up blank there was a good possibility that I was not going to like what I saw there. I braced myself and slowly turned my head allowing just a peek through one half closed eye, as though I were about to watch the hero get stabbed to death in a slasher movie.
         If there hadn’t previously been a way to pleasantly surprised when you wake up with a stranger in your bed then I somehow had made it possible. All the way at the other side of the bed, was a tan, and lean muscled body that was barely covered by my sheets. He was facing away from me and all I could see of his head was a mess of thick, sandy blond hair. I am ashamed to say I was a little proud of myself for taking home a trophy like this, though the sight of him also brought an onslaught of curiosity. I tried to remember but my memory was swirled in fog of liquor. I pressed back, trying to wade through but all I could remember was that I had been at a bar celebrating my twenty-fourth birthday with my best friend and some of the girls from work. I was suddenly hit with the reality of a hangover as my head began to pound with a pain that can only be truly understood by someone that has suffered it. I’m sure it is some deity’s form of punishment for overindulgence, and as I glanced at the guy, I thought that this time it was a well worth the suffering.
Suddenly the lights on my phone started blinking and I held my breath waiting for the ear splitting ring that would send daggers through my head and wake the stranger next to me. No ring came. I must have put my phone on silent at some point in the night. I could see the lights flashing as though they were neon bright to my inebriated eyes, and when it went to voice mail, my phone lit up once more reading ‘8 missed calls’. Before I had time to wonder who might be trying to reach me at five in the morning, I felt a lot of movement from the other side of the bed. I turned to see if he had woken up but then I felt a strong arm wrap around my waist, locking us face to face. He was still sleeping and I knew instantly that his face was not the face of a stranger; it was a one I had seen five days a week for nearly four years. I stared at his gorgeous scruffy features in shock. He was gently breathing in my face and I realized his breath still smelled vaguely of toothpaste, and then I noticed that there was not even the slightest hint of alcohol there. Was he even at the bar last night? Frustration started to seep in and I tried once more to make myself remember but all I could recall was a fuzzy image of tequila shots. I sighed and gave up. Well at least the shots explained the memory loss. I knew I never did well with tequila and those hours would probably be lost forever.
         I decided to take this opportunity, to enjoy the view, and for the first time in four years, I let myself really look at Evan Flynn. His chronically messy hair was sweaty and wild, matted to his forehead. His face was peaceful and perfectly tan. His five o’clock shadow gave him a rugged and untamable look that had girls at the department swooning in his path. I knew that behind his closed lids were deepest and most intense green eyes that had ever existed. I truly hated to be drunk and use this simile but they were the exact color as the glass of a Heineken bottle. Unfortunately he didn’t leave me enough time to examine his body. I saw his lids slowly opening and I tried to put on my I-just-woke-up-but-I’m-still-sexy face.
“Good Morning.” He said quietly, “How’s your head?”
Well, this was good. He, obviously, wasn’t having a drunken lapse of judgment in sleeping with me. “Pounding honestly.” I whispered, cringing at the dry sound of my voice.
“Hung over looks good on you.” Evan said smoothing my messy hair with a little chuckle. I reluctantly glanced over at the mirror across the room and recoiled in horror. My long black hair was knotted and snarled in the worst case of bed head I had ever had. My normally tan skin was sickly white with black circles under my blue eyes. Eyes which I had to say, on a good day were a pretty arctic blue, but today they looked dull and bloodshot. I realized to my revulsion that the dark crescents were not even from lack of sleep, which I could have lived with; it was a smeared and smudged combination of eye liner and mascara. I could have died of embarrassment right then and there. I scrunched my nose in disgust and moved my hands over my face. Quickly I tried to gather myself back together. As soon as I thought he wasn’t looking, I rubbed my fingers desperately under my eyes trying to clear away the smudgy mess. I had no idea how well it worked because I couldn’t bear another look in the mirror.
“We’re not married are we?” I chuckled nervously as I quickly searched myself for tattoos.
“We’re not married.” He said with a little smirk, flashing me his ring-less right hand. He slid easily out the bed letting the sheet fall in a silky pile at his feet.
“Wow.” The word was out before my intoxicated internal editing system could stop it. I gave myself a little leeway; it wasn’t like I often had naked men standing in my room, and certainly not naked men that looked like him, so I hoped he’d taken it as a compliment and not as desperation, though both were true.
He looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was joking and whatever he saw in my expression made him laugh. “Nice?” He still looked wildly amused.
“Very nice.” I said appraisingly. I felt like I was talking about a new toaster.
He winked. “Shower?”
I nodded.
He lifted a gym bag off the floor and walked toward my bathroom. It was plain to see why many of the guys we worked with hated him secretly for his looks but there were so many other more important things to be jealous of. For example he was a brilliant sergeant with MIPD and even though he was only twenty-eight he was quickly on his way to a huge promotion as soon as our aging lieutenant retired. None of those things were what I liked best though. I loved that Evan exuded relaxation and self-assurance. It was in everything about him, his style, his hair, the way he carried himself, it told the story of a man who walked through life as though it were effortless. Calm, cool, and confident, that was Evan. And to someone like me, who frequently manages to knot themselves into a tangled mess of nerves and anxiety, being with Evan was like getting second hand high. You’re not quite as mellow as the person smoking but the difference is noticeable.
I got out of the bed, wrapped the sheet securely around myself, and walked toward the open bathroom door, trying again, uselessly, to wipe away the makeup under my eyes. Stupid waterproof mascara!
When the steam flowing from the door hit me, my stomach dropped and I went down to my knees with an overwhelming bout of nausea. So no, the shower was out, if I couldn’t even stand still then there was no way I was going to . . . I dropped the thought. “Flynn,” I called up through my cotton-mouth, “I’m gonna—eat.” The lie was terrible, and obviously a lie but what else was I going to say- I’m sorry I can’t have sex with you because I’ll probably paint you in vomit… and I just wasn’t going to say that out loud.
         “I hope that we have first name status after yesterday, Lex.” He shouted over the sound of the water.
         That was, indeed, the very first time he had ever used my very informal abbreviated first name . . . at least that I could remember.
         I sat there on the floor until the worst had subsided and then got shakily to my feet. Then it was as if the house became alive with noise. I heard my fax machine start up, a strange ringtone was emanating from my bedroom, which I could only assume was Evan’s phone, and my house phone all started ringing at once. As I ran to get the phone, the room started spinning again and once again I was sure I was going to lose the dinner I couldn’t remember eating. When I finally crawled to the phone and pulled it down to me, I heard a voice yelling before I even got it to my ear.
         “What are you doing Mason?! Why aren’t you answering your cell?”
         “I’m sorry lieutenant; is everything ok? You never call on Sunday’s so my phone was on silent.”
         “Sunday?” She asked dubiously. “What kind of weekend did you have?”
         There was a heavy implication in her voice that was flying right over my head. I honest to God had no idea what she was talking about. “My weekend was . . .” I struggled to find a word, “fine.” At least the bits I could remember.
         “It’s Monday! My God, what it is to be young these days.” She said in a frustrated flurry, “Be here in twenty minutes.” And with that Vivian Watson hung up.
Monday! What happened to Sunday! I frantically flipped through my few memories over and over, ignoring the ache in my skull. I had been ok when I’d thought I lost a few hours to tequila but now I was scared. Had I hit my head? I actually checked for bumps or tender spots but there were none. I couldn’t think of another scenario that could possibly explain the total loss of a twenty-four hour period. I began to feel myself hyperventilating. Where did Evan fit into this whole thing? How long was I with him? I was immediately swarming with questions.          “Stop.” I actually whispered the word aloud to myself. I couldn’t cry and I couldn’t start to lose it; I had to get to work. I regulated my breathing until I was calm again and then I promptly shoved my missing day into a dark corner of my mind where it would wait for a better time to be dealt with.
I could hear that Evan was ending a conversation with Watson on his cell in my room.
         “Hurry up and get ready.” Evan came toward me with a towel around his waist. “Where do you keep your pain pills?” he asked seeing the frazzled and sickly state I was in.
         I weakly pointed to a cabinet above my head. He shook two pills out of the Excedrin bottle and handed me a glass of water. After I swallowed the pills he lifted me off the floor and laid me down in the bathtub. “I can take it from here.” I mumbled feeling extraordinarily confused. Evan just smiled, shaking his head at me and left to go get dressed.
         As soon as he was gone I quickly stripped out of the sheet and turned the cold water on. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that I wasn’t still passed out and drooling on my couch. As soon as the freezing water hit my skin it felt like a million knives stabbing me. It was very unpleasant but it did confirm that I was indeed awake. Bit by bit, I added hot water to the ice cold water, making it more tolerable and I got to my feet. As fast as my sore muscles would allow, I shampooed my hair, and soaped and rinsed the drunken sex smell off me.
With the little time I had, I did the best I could with my hair and makeup. I looked at myself in the mirror and audibly groaned. I’m not the type to normally say things like this, but for all the problems I had, and there were many, looks was not one of them. I was in excellent shape; a runner and a swimmer, and for all the activity I hadn’t lost my boobs and ass. Not to mention that black hair and blue eyes is a quite a nice combo. However, for all of that, none of it was obvious today. My straight, black, mid-back length, hair was still wet and hanging limply around my face, accentuating the dark circles under my eyes, which were now just the same manageable faded blue color that years of less than sufficient sleep had left me with. My eyes were still bloodshot and glassy and somehow even their blue looked darker than usual. Even liquid foundation had not managed to hide the strange tinge of green the tequila had added to my face. There was nothing more I could do. I threw my hair up in a ponytail, knowing the humidity and its wetness would equal frizz at some point during the day. Meekly, and with a bit less self-esteem then when I entered, I wondered out of the bathroom and into my room.
         “We have exactly ten minutes to get out of here and get down to the station. You should hurry.” He paused and looked at me for a moment. “What’s the deal with that scowl?”
         “Confusion.” I had more questions than could be answered in the time available. I grabbed the first thing I could find in my closet and gave up the towel to started changing. He had already seen everything there was to see. I was just glad that I had remembered to shave for my birthday. He made no effort to look away for my privacy, and I wondered again what had brought us to this point. I snapped the thought off. I didn’t have time.
         “I wonder what’s so important that Watson had to call us in early.” Evan said clipping his holster inside his pants.
         “I wonder a lot of things myself.” I said sounding more aggravated than he deserved. I grabbed my phone, keys, and gun and we scurried out the door.
         We took separate cars and I took the moment of privacy to look at my phone for the first time to see what all the missed calls were about; hoping that one of them had some answers. Four of them, the most recent ones, were from Lieutenant Watson. Three were from my best friend on the force, Alyssa Carter or less formally Ally, and the last one was from Evan. I quickly dialed my voice mail as I sped toward the station. It began with the most recent messages from Watson so I skipped ahead to Ally’s first message, the last message she left.
         “Alexandria Mason, you pick up this phone right now! I cannot believe you! You better call me or else I will assume that you have been date raped, murdered and dumped in some back ally!” She was freaking out, and I didn’t blame her. If she had disappeared for a whole day I would have been panicked for her too.
         That message was a less then helpful as far as me learning what had happened during my blackout. I waited for the next message to begin.
         “Lexi, it was just a joke, I swear we never thought he would really show up. I’m so sorry! I can’t believe that you went with him though! Call me as soon as you get this message!” She was drunk and laughing and there was lots of background noise so I knew she was calling from the bar.
         I guessed that Ally must have invited Evan as a joke to the bar and I must have been wasted and just left with him. So did that mean that I was with him the whole time? That didn’t seem likely. I had been avoiding so much as eye contact with Evan since I started at Miami PD, only because I didn’t want to be another one of the flock of girls that gawked after him. Ally must have thought she was doing me a favor. In a way she sort of did do me a favor I just couldn’t remember it. I’d been dreaming of it long enough and now I’d finally gotten to have him and I couldn’t remember a single second of it. I sighed and pulled into the first open space I could find. In a rush, I glanced at my phone; it had been twenty minutes exactly. I broke into a run and sprinted into the office to find Evan already seated comfortably in a chair in conference room 3. I took the only seat available and waited for the projector to turn on while I attempted to catch my breath.
         The poster child for professionalism, Evan just gave me a friendly coworker nod when I entered.
         “Attention!” There was no ignoring that voice, it emanated authority. The room fell silent. “All of you are here because we have a very labor intensive case on our hands and I’m telling you right now that it’s going to be more work than any of you have ever done before, so if anyone here has a problem with coming in early and staying late I can have someone in here to replace you in a minute.” Watson said looking as severe as I have ever seen her, which is saying quite a bit for a woman who generally looks awfully severe. She clicked to the first slide of a hastily made PowerPoint presentation. “This is something like I have never seen before in my career.”
The scene before us was horrendous. Blood covered the walls, soaked through the bed, and carpet. Tall water glasses of it sat on the dresser. A pile of hair to the knee sat fluffy on the blood stained carpet, it appeared that there had been another pile of about the same size that had been perhaps kicked and sending huge clumps to rest around the entire room. She clicked to the next slide.
         “Is that what it looks like?” Someone gasped from the back of the room.
         “Yes, that’s semen.” Watson answered shaking her head regretfully.
         “But there is so much of it. That’s impossible.”
         “Forensics is working on it now, but we’re thinking that it is from at least fifteen people.” Watson said quietly as she clicked to the next slide. Florida driver’s licenses sat in three thick stacks, each about twenty high.
         The next slide was the bathroom. It was just as gruesome as the living room. Blood spattered the walls and floor. It looked like a Wes Craven movie gone awry. The tiles on the walls surrounding the tub were tinged with black soot. The next slide was a downward shot into the tub. A freshly charred human skeleton was lying with its head on the drain.
         “How are we ever going to make progress with all of this evidence? The hair alone could be from a hundred people.” I whispered to myself.
         “How could we ever sort through that mess enough to get a conviction on anyone? Any jury is just gonna assume we made mistakes.” Evan said looking truly worried for the first time since I met him.
         “The Mayor called me a few minutes before this meeting and he told me that if we can’t get this solved before tourist season and tourists think there is some murderous ritualistic cult running around Miami and revenue falls then it’s my ass. I’m telling you that if it’s my ass, then it’s all your asses too, so keep that in mind.” Watson said clicking off the computer and flicking on the lights. “I’m going to assign team leaders and they’ll choose their teams. There is lots of work to do here so I’m not expecting things to move too quickly but I do want progress. The four team leaders are Owens for the blood, Garcia for the semen, Flynn for the hair, and Carpenter for the IDs.” She said just before she left the room.
         Before anyone spoke Evan stood up, looking grave, “Four teams with four members each will divide us evenly.”
         Within a few seconds Jessica Owens had already assembled her team and they were going over crime scene photos. I suddenly found myself praying to not get chosen by Garcia and the sperm team. Before I had time to think about it enough to get disgusted, Evan had his hand around my wrist and was pulling me toward a table. “Carter! Adams!” Evan called loudly.
I saw a flash of thick blond curls from across the room, following closely behind Ally was Cameron, standing a nearly full foot taller than her meager 5’4”. They were making their way slowly toward us.
         “Why are you doing this?” I asked him in a stunned whisper. “You’ve never worked with me before. You’ve never picked me for anything before. Now you’re picking me and my friends to be on your team. If this is about what happened . . . I promise I won’t tell anyone. You don’t have to feel obligated or anything.”
         “I don’t feel obligated.” His eyes said he was being honest.
         I wanted to respond, but before I could, Ally and Cameron were beside us. Ally was short and quite resembled a blonder Shirley Temple, that being said, she was not to be underestimated. She was very smart and an interesting blend of personality traits. She could be as bubbly as a sorority girl and mean as . . . well as mean as a sorority girl and she had a hairpin trigger. For the most part I thought it was pretty entertaining to watch Ally turn from beautiful, blond, bubbly, bombshell into Mr. Hyde, just not when was directed at me.
         “Thanks man, this is really cool of you . . . although we probably have more work ahead of us then all the rest of them combined.” Cam’s face looked a bit distressed at the thought of such copious amounts of work. Cameron Adams was somewhat of a goofball. He was handsome in a very youthful way, he had hazel eyes that were usually slate gray and though striking they didn’t seem to match the rest of the Hispanic features of his face. It took a lot for him to be serious so I was shocked that Evan would choose him because Evan had a very matter of fact style when he was working on a case, or so I’d heard. Ally had always had a thing for Cam but he had no idea, so she spent most of her time with him trying to drop not so subtle hints but he remained blissfully oblivious. Since the three of us spent so much time together Evan must have noticed and chose us, trying to be nice so that I would feel compelled to keep my mouth shut because of his niceness. Or maybe he picked them so that he can keep an eye on us to make sure that I don’t tell them what happened.
         Ally’s mouth was unabashedly hanging wide open as she looked at Evan. “Uh — hi Flynn. How was your day?” She said to him but still looking at me with bright brown eyes that to me had always looked roughly the golden brown of a fresh cinnamon stick.
         “Good.” He answered simply. His voice made no implications about his scandalous night nor did he flinch at her apparent knowledge of it.
         “It’s nice to finally get to work with you.” Ally said, still unable to wipe the utter shock from her face. I was more than a little insulted at the connotation of her expression, like it was so impossible that I’d landed Evan; like it was so shocking.
         “I figured it was about time we all got to know each other.” Evan said casually. “I think that we should probably go down to the crime scene.”
 
Chapter 2
Bloodbath. . .  Yeah Literally

“Was it just me, or was that a very awkward car ride?” Cam said looking confused. “I get the feeling that I’m missing something.”
“Me too.” I said, glowering. As the morning wore on I was feeling more and more frustrated at my lack of spare time to have all my questions answered.
The four of us looked a little bit nervous as we ducked below the crime scene tape and walked toward the house. I had been a cop for four years but only the last six months were spent as a detective, and during that time I had seen some pretty disgusting things but nothing could compare to what was waiting inside that house. Evan walked in first, putting on his best although-disgusted-I’m-still-professional face and the rest of us tried to copy it.
It was horrible in the photos but in person it was crushingly lurid. The thick coppery scent of blood was nauseating. I tried to reign in my expression; not wanting them to think I was weak but as I looked at the other three faces there with me, they all seemed to have developed a peaked greenish tint that somewhat matched my own.
“How many people were killed in here?” Evan asked in the direction of one of the very tired looking forensics guys that was picking up pieces of hair with tweezers and putting them into evidence bags. His pile of bags had to be at least a foot high.
“I would guess this massive amount of blood is probably about fifty quarts, maybe ten or eleven people give or take since we don’t know yet how much soaked into the carpet.” He responded still plucking hair from the bloody heap.
It felt like the four of us stood there in the tiny living room for hours, each one of us taking our own sets of detailed notes. Evan, Cam, and I were all scribbling furiously, trying to get in all of our observations while Ally whispered into a slim cell phone sized audio recorder. As I massaged a cramp out of my right hand I cursed my debaucherous weekend, and my tequila addled mind for forgetting my recorder in my desk. My brain managed to get one question passed the defenses before I could stop it. How could I possibly still be hung over more than twenty-four hours after my party? Now was not the time to get distracted or become emotional. I just had to wait until I could be alone with either Evan or Ally. Have some patience. I told myself reassuringly. All the answers I needed were only a few hours away and they probably were not going to be nearly as dramatic as I was blowing them up to be. Focus. I can’t speak for the others but when I was done with my notes I had four pages back and front. We carefully scrutinized every room, the long back patio and even the yard but the rest of the house seemed untouched, with the exception of the bathroom where the victim’s body was found.
We went into the bathroom last; I think we were all secretly dreading it. The burned smell was still heavy in the air. A raised plank had been laid across the floor for investigators to walk on without disturbing the blood. The four of us crossed the plank cautiously. It appeared that another small bag of hair had been dumped in the tub on top of the bones along with another pint of blood. All of us were quiet as we looked at the skeleton. There were no teeth, hands, or feet.
Cam looked nervous before he even started talking, “I know that those specific parts were chosen so we can’t get an ID. I know that . . .” he was definitely trying to convince himself, “but I can’t shake the possibility that maybe it was for something else.” He ended on an ominous note.
“Like what?” Ally was losing the grip on her game face; her little nose wrinkled and I could see that she was taking shallower breaths through her mouth to keep out the smell of burned body.
“Look around.” He said quietly and we all did, “This place is fucking creepy.” Apparently Cam had abandoned his attempt at being stoic, “Now, my rational side knows that feet, hands, and teeth aren’t just random parts, those parts, those particular parts, can only be taken for one reason, but the part of me that is just a little grossed out by all this isn’t totally convinced that they aren’t all mounted on a plaque in someone’s garage.”
Evan tried to laugh to dismiss the unsettling idea but the truth was, even before Cam said it, we’d all thought it.
The mood had suddenly changed. The pretense of business aplomb was gone and we all looked openly uneasy. For a moment we stood there on that creaky plank in total silence and for a rare instant our youth showed. None of us, not even Evan, were prepared for this. I felt too young, too inexperienced, to grasp the depth of what had happened here. Right where I’m standing someone had their hands and feet sawed off and every tooth pried from their mouth. With that thought I found resolve. I needed to solve this; something so awful could not go without punishment because I was scared, and so I pushed forward. Normally we looked for tiny droplets of blood, a fragment of a clue, a footprint, a fingerprint, something out of place but the bathroom was so overwhelmed with evidence that I couldn’t think of even one possible scenario for what had happened.
Before long the other teams began to arrive and the small house was getting crowded so we decided to discuss our theories back at the station. Word must have leaked out about what had happened here because a crowd was beginning to form around the crime scene tape. Curious neighbors and loud reporters were yelling questions at us as we walked outside with a forensics guy.
“Let us know as soon as you start getting matches on the hair samples.” Evan said giving him a firm handshake.
“As soon as I get back to the lab I should start getting results within twelve hours. I have no idea how long it will take to get it all done though. It could take months.”
“Just call me when you get the first match.” Evan said. We all followed him back out to the car, trying our best to ignore the reporters yelling for our attention. When we were all seated, Evan began driving us back to the station. For a long time we were all quiet, trying to think about what we had just seen, doing our best to come up with logical theories.
“What do you guys think?” I asked.
“I think this is going to be a long fucking week.” Cam stopped and thought for a moment, “It’s gotta be some sort of devil worshiping cult right?"
“That definitely makes the most sense. I can’t imagine our regular old run-of-the-mill murderer doing all that.” Evan said.
“There were no bodies. All that blood and no bodies…” I said trying to think. The hangover still had me working at less than full capacity. The smell of smoke and copper still filled my nose and I was trying not to let on how sick I really felt. Any normal day I would have been much more involved in the investigation but today I just wanted to crawl into bed with a bottle of aspirin.
“Does it make sense that maybe the blood is from the cult members?” Ally asked still deep in thought.
Cam nodded. “Some of it could be if the guy in the bath tub fought back at all then yeah it’s likely that some of the blood is theirs.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Ally said gently. The only person she ever used that sweet gentle tone of voice with was Cam. “If there aren’t any bodies and there is so much blood” Ally paled at that memory of the horror house, “then does it stand to reason that maybe they took the blood from themselves to use in whatever crazy ritual they had planned?”
Evan shrugged and acknowledged the possibility and I shamefully wished that I had come up with the idea. “That actually makes some sense because we would have noticed if that many people had gone missing, right? So maybe there are no bodies because no one died . . .” Evan trailed off clearly following some internal line of thought.
“And they just freely gave us their DNA?” I asked.
“Not a fool-proof theory, but its more than you came up with.” Ally said. Though she was sitting in the front seat and I was in the back, I could still practically see her rolling her eyes.
When we arrived back at the station we began to discuss how we would divide the work. Evan’s plan was to first see how many people the hair had come from. When we knew how many suspects we had, we would split up in groups of two and track down each person.
Lieutenant Watson wanted each person brought down and spoken to. She told each group that we were not to cut any corners because with that much evidence and consequently that much more chance of a mistake, no precaution was an unnecessary precaution. Evan was a little upset by this and told her that we needed more detectives to look into the hair but she had too much to think about to care about his complaints. We spent the morning working with the other groups and organizing schedules to for the interrogation rooms.
“I need a bathroom break.” I stood and stretched; I had spent the last four hours hunched over a table in the conference room with my team. I walked as slow as I could without looking like there was something wrong with me. I needed to stretch out the break until Ally caught on that I needed her to come after me. She didn’t disappoint. Before I had the stall door locked, I heard the rapid click of high-heeled footsteps on the ugly white tiles. It was just a few seconds before I recognized Ally’s shoes.
“You’re trapped now, Lexi, I hope you realize that.” She was happy that she had cornered me and was eager to hear the gossip.
“I don’t remember anything.” I sighed.
“What the hell do you mean you don’t remember anything? You left with Flynn and now all of a sudden he picks the three of us for a huge case. Something happened and you’re going to tell me everything.”
“No, Ally, I really don’t remember anything. All of Sunday is gone. I remember I was in South Beach at Deuces with you and that’s it. When I woke up this morning I thought it was Sunday morning.” I couldn’t keep the tears from welling in my eyes. I didn’t realize how helpless I felt until I said all of that out loud.
Ally was silent for a while, I knew she heard my voice cracking and she was now trying to decide the best course of action. “Lexi,” Another long pause, “come out of the stall.” There was no more impatient curiosity in her voice, just concern.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t like people to see me cry, not even Ally, but I had to come out soon because if I waited too long I wouldn’t put it passed her to find a way in. I had to laugh at a mental image of Ally standing on the toilet in the next stall and attempting to hop over the wall. As soon as I unlatched the door Ally was pulling me into a hug. For all the bitch she could be sometimes, whenever I needed her she was always there. She pulled me to a little upholstered bench in the corner by the sinks and forced me to sit.
“Tell me everything.” I could tell she was nervous for me because that was the only time I could detect her accent. English was her second language, and though she spoke it so well most people didn’t even know she was born in Russia, occasionally when she was under a lot of emotional stress, her accent became obvious. Ally pulled a few paper towels down from their metal holder on the wall and came to sit beside me. She took one and gently dabbed my cheek and placed the rest in my lap.
I told her what little I could remember.
She began her part of the story. “I called Flynn that night because I know how much you like him and I thought it would be a cute birthday surprise if he came.” She waited to see if I would get angry and when I didn’t she continued. “When he got there, you had already had those shots and you know how you get when you’re drunk.”
I hated to think about how it must have gone that night. I knew exactly what kind of drunk I was and that was precisely why I only drank when I had other girls around to keep me in check. Alcohol had a combination effect on me, I got very giggly socially with the girls but when it came to guys I got extremely brazen. If I saw a guy that I thought was hot, I was going to go up to him and tell him so. Men, being what they are, generally try to get a girl home after that and that’s why I needed Ally there to keep me safely inside my pants. If I saw Evan after a few shots I would have eagerly left with him and Ally wouldn’t have stopped me because she knew how long I’d wanted that.
“I didn’t let you embarrass yourself or anything.” I guess she could tell I was nervous. “It went really fast. Flynn came up to us at our table and said hello. You were flirting with him and after about twenty minutes you asked him to drive you home. That’s all, I promise.”
I was glad to hear that there hadn’t been a lot of public making out. A lot of cops hung out at Blue Deuces and I really didn’t want anyone else to know about me and Flynn. As long as we walked out quietly we probably didn’t draw any attention.
“So now I just have to get Evan alone to ask him about what happened on Sunday.” I said out loud but to myself.
“So now you call him Evan?” A hint of excitement crept into her voice again.
“He asked me to call him by his first name.” I had to smile; Evan was way too good looking to not smile when you thought about him.
“So things couldn’t have gone too bad. Maybe you just drank way too much.” Ally said. By the look on her face I could practically see her overly romanticized thoughts; her with Cam, and me with Evan, really pretty little kids running around.
“I still have a huge chunk of memory missing so let’s not get ahead of ourselves ok?” I asked trying make her snap out of the dreamy stare. “We have to get back.” Who knows what Cam and Evan thought happened by now. I stood and went to the mirror. I still looked ok. There had been a few tears but not enough to mess up my makeup. When we got back, Evan and Cam looked curious about what had taken so long though neither asked.
It seemed as though lunch time would never come. When one o’clock finally rolled around, my stomach was growling angrily at me but at least it felt like my hangover was finally waning. Ally wasn’t the world’s best actress and I could see that she was having a hard time pretending that she didn’t know anything. Just before one she sent me a text message and since we were sitting at the same table it couldn’t have been more obvious, as soon as she stopped texting my phone started buzzing loudly, so it was clear then that we were hiding something. Evan looked like he was going to laugh at our poorly kept secret. With a deep sigh and a shake of my head I looked at my phone.
I’m gonna try to go lunch with Cam so you can be alone with Evan.
I didn’t respond.
As soon as the clock struck one, Ally turned to Cam and very sweetly, almost seductively, asked him to lunch.
“Maybe we should all go together so we can keep working.” Evan suggested.
Ally’s expression was barely masked disappointment.
“We usually go to this really good Cuban sandwich place that’s like three blocks away.” Cam offered with hopeful eyes.
Evan shrugged amiably and stood. From the corner of my eye I could see his usual lunch buddies walking toward us. Most of them were nice but I didn’t want them coming with us. I had to hope that at some point Ally would be able to drag Cam away so Evan and I could talk, that certainly wasn’t going to happen with his friends hanging around.
“Got work to do today.” Evan said with a regretful glance in the direction of the four men behind him.
“Yeah, I bet you do.” One of them said raising an eyebrow at me.
I hoped that the shock on my face was not as apparent as it felt. Do they know?
Evan chuckled playing along and then he turned his face down slightly to gather the scattered documents on the table; he looked at me inconspicuously, almost unnoticeably, and shook his head once.
         Well, if they were just messing with him hopefully my expression didn’t tip them off. I wondered why they would make a remark like that, even if they were just playing around; I hardly knew them.
         I only made it through half my lunch before the tequila had me gagging again. It had to be tequila, I told myself, even if it should be long out of my system by now, it felt way too much like a hangover to be anything else. Cam was riveted to his sandwich like one of those algae suckers to the side of a fish tank, no matter what Ally said he would not be moved from the table. So on top of feeling sick, I also didn’t get a chance to ask Evan any questions.
When we got back to the station I unplugged the camera in interrogation room two and sat in the dark for twenty minutes until the dry heaves subsided and I could stand the sunlight again. After a little mental preparation I finally ventured out and looked for my team but after a quick search I realized that they were nowhere to be found. I rechecked the break the room, even though I knew it wouldn’t make sense for them to be in there because we just came back from lunch, and just as I thought they were not there. I had to fight the desire to go back to the nice dark interrogation room.
         “Mason, what are you still doing out here?”
         “I don’t know.” I said before I even turned to see who I was talking to.
         “You’re name was called, you were supposed to go to the conference room.”
         “Thanks, umm . . .” Her name wasn’t coming to me.
         “Mason, I’m Kimberly Harrison. You’ve met me like five times.”
         “Sorry . . . um . . . thanks again.” I shouted over my shoulder as I raced off toward the conference room. I thought I heard her mumble ‘last time I help you bitch.’ When I looked again she was walking the other way so I tried to pretend I didn’t hear it.
         “What were you doing?” Watson said with a stoic face. “Now I have to assume you were having someone urinate for you.” Her voice was even but the anger was just below the surface.
         The purpose of the meeting struck me and I felt all the air get sucked from my lungs. I was standing in the waiting area for the employees that had been randomly selected for drug testing. Being late to the meeting clearly made even the most responsible of us look very suspicious. I tried to think of what to say but nothing really could have made anything any better. I looked helplessly at Ally who, in return, gave me a nervous shrug and mouthed the words ‘I had no time.’
         “You realize this means that you’re going to have to be searched before you’re allowed to take the test.” Watson’s face got pinched in distaste.
         “Yes, ma’am, I have nothing to hide. I wasn’t feeling well and I stepped out for moment. I must have missed the announcement. I’m very sorry.” My heart sank; I had never been in trouble before. I knew that the drug testing rules were not delegated by the department but by the state, so there was little Watson could do even if she wanted to . . . and her face said she didn’t want to. So today I was not only severely hung over, I had had a one night stand with a coworker, I was working on a terrible and complicated case, and now I was going to have to submit to a cavity search.
         “Be that as it may, today I am not in a position to give you the benefit of the doubt. As soon as the lab crew gets back with the bunch that’s in the bathroom right now, one of them will have to check you out.”
         With every ounce of strength in my body I fought back a sea of tears. I took a seat and waited for my fate. No one in the room spoke and I just looked at my hands until I heard the door knob turning. A man and a woman in medical scrubs walked in. I looked at the woman and the urge to cry nearly overtook me. She was short and plump in her teal scrubs and soon she would know me as only five men and my gyno knew me.
         In hushed tones Watson explained the situation to the woman and I could see her nodding. “Come with me, honey.” The woman said in a much friendlier tone then I had expected. I got up and followed the woman to the door and just before I walked out I looked longingly over my shoulder, already missing the comfort of the waiting area, and I saw Evan looking back at me with pity in his eyes.
         “I know you just have to do your job but I really don’t have anything on me.” I said knowing it wouldn’t help my case any. She probably had to hear the same speech from every person that really did have a balloon full of a strangers pee on them, but even though I knew it wouldn’t help, I did feel that it needed to be said.
         “It’s just protocol.”
         When we arrived at the bathroom I felt my stomach flipping in nervousness. “What do you need me to do?” My voice cracked.
         “I have to pat you down and then I just need to watch you fill up this cup.” She pushed a small plastic cup into my hands.
         “That’s it?” I tried not to get my hopes up and didn’t yet throw out the horrible visions of being violated.
         “What were you thinking?” She said with a raised eyebrow.
         I wanted to cry again but now from relief, “I don’t know . . . I heard my lieutenant say that I needed to be searched because I was late to the holding room. I just thought the worst. . .” I started laughing at my own idiotic imagination as I removed my suit jacket and raised my arms for the pat down. I have to admit that having another woman actually watch you urinate into a cup is quite an indignity, but I was still happy that it was lesser indignity then what I had originally thought.
         “Since you were late, your urine is going to be run though a much more thorough set of tests then we usually use, just in case you were trying to hide something.” She handed me a thin tipped black Sharpie to initial the seal on the cup.
“Unless you start testing for liquor then I’m really not worried.” I washed my hands and walked off toward my desk to wait for my team. I wanted to be furious at them for not getting me but the high of relief still hadn’t worn off. I debated for a while about whether or not to exaggerate the story to make them feel bad but I decided against that.
It wasn’t the first time I had been randomly selected for drug testing and I knew the rules. The lab team came in on days that were only known to our captain and when they arrived, they rounded up everyone on their lists individually. There were usually three of them, sometimes more depending on how many people were being tested, always at least one man and woman and then one other person to stay with the cart of samples. When your name was on their list they were not allowed to let you out of their sight until your sample was collected. If someone was not at their desk an announcement was made for them to report to the conference room, an announcement heard everywhere with the exception of interrogation rooms because as long as your name was written on the log, your test was postponed. Since I was clearly not logged in for my nap, there was no way they could have gotten me and I guess I couldn’t hold that against them. So instead of being furious I decided to just be mad.