Allison Brennan - Carnal Sin

In the bathroom, he locked the door. Though the police station never closed, it was midshift Saturday morning. Quiet. He’d seen something this morning in the mirror-thought he’d seen something-but in denial, he hadn’t paid much attention to it.

But he hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind.

He stripped off his shirt, hoping the mark was a figment of his imagination and lack of sleep. The bathroom had one long mirror above the sinks, and if he angled his body right he could look over his shoulder and see most of his back.

On his lower shoulder blade was the mark. He could lie to himself and say it wasn’t exactly like the odd tattoo-like marks on the two dead guys, but he didn’t. It was as close to being identical as he could remember. Red, like a port-wine-stain birthmark. The edges seemed to bleed into the surrounding skin, but there was a fine red line, like a blood vessel, that created an odd image.

He didn’t need to see more. He pulled his shirt back on and walked out.

How the hell had he gotten that thing on his back? It hadn’t been there yesterday morning. It didn’t hurt. The skin was slightly raised when he felt it, so slight that he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t seen it.

It was not possible-but it was there. He considered calling Moira O’Donnell, the cult expert. Psychic or not, that woman knew a hell of a lot more than what she’d told him.

He drove to the morgue while contemplating bringing in Moira O’Donnell to help. His head ached in spite of the milk, the coffee, and an untold number of aspirin. The bright sunlight burned his eyes and he fumbled for his sunglasses on the visor, nearly hitting a parked car. Though he had only drunk one beer last night, he felt hungover.

One beer. At Velocity. He could have been drugged. He’d gone home with Julie. He couldn’t imagine that Julie-whom he’d known for two years-would have done anything like drugging him or tattooing his back. But he’d been at her place, and his memory was spotty. Those dead men with the marks were all connected to Velocity, and so was he. Had he stumbled upon a criminal activity where someone would kill a cop to keep it secret? Was Julie part of a conspiracy?

A ghost of Julie’s image on the YouTube video of Nadine’s death seemed impossible, but right now Grant could almost believe she’d been there. Right now, all he knew was that something was wrong with him.

He flashed his badge to the guard at the morgue parking lot and called Moira O’Donnell.

“Hello, Detective, miss me?” she asked, exaggerating her Irish accent.

“Meet me at your hotel.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have questions.”

“Okay, when?”

He looked at his dashboard clock. It was nearing the lunch hour. He had the morgue, then needed time to cross town and find food somewhere, though the thought of eating made him ill. “Two o’clock. Your room.”

“We checked out-”

“I told you not to leave town!”

“It was a little pricey for me. We’ll meet you in the Palomar lobby.”

“Fine.”

“What’s going on-”

He hung up. Her voice was so damn unique, so seductive with that Irish lilt, his penis began to throb painfully and he reached down to adjust it. Grant had the overwhelming urge to jerk off. He was so hard that he was afraid someone would see, or that he’d have some sort of waking wet dream.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself as he got out of his car and walked in through the employee entrance, flashing his badge to the receptionist. He found the bathroom; there was no lock on the main door. Fortunately, no one was inside. He went into the stall, slid the lock in place, and pulled down his pants. His penis was large, red, and painful to the touch. Damn, this couldn’t be natural. Something was wrong.

What could he tell his doctor? That he had a perpetual hard-on all day? Maybe someone at the station spiked his coffee with Viagra or something. Some sick joke because he’d stepped on some asshole’s overly sensitive ego. Not Johnston-but there were a couple of cops who didn’t like Grant. He wanted to believe it was a prank, but he knew it wasn’t. More likely he’d been drugged at Velocity last night, and his rock-hard cock was a side effect.

He couldn’t live like this. He reached down and, embarrassed and angry and in pain, he jerked off. He pictured Julie last night and the things that he’d done to her, and he felt ashamed. He’d never been that callous before, that unconcerned about pleasing her. He closed his eyes and pictured himself fucking her, over and over, and then Moira O’Donnell’s face replaced Julie’s and Grant moaned, then bit his tongue so hard his mouth filled with blood as he spurted semen into the toilet.

He stood there, head down, flushed, ashamed at what he’d pictured, what he’d done, and what he wanted to do. He spat into the toilet, a bright red wad of saliva.

Still feeling ill, Grant washed his hands and face with icy water, then went to the main morgue level and asked the desk to page Fern Archer.

While he waited for Fern, he called Julie on her cell phone. No answer. He hoped she wasn’t angry with him about last night. She had every right to be. He wanted to make it up to her, but didn’t know how-or if he could. Fool. She’s the one who most likely drugged you. Have Johnston pick her up for questioning .

How could he do that to Julie?

How could he not? He was a cop first.

He called Jeff. “Hey, Johnston, I need you to track down Julie. I have some questions for her.”

“About what?”

He couldn’t very well tell Jeff the truth because he didn’t know what the truth was, and his theories were insane. Sure, tell his partner that he’d been drugged and assaulted last night. That he practically raped his girlfriend. That he was so sick he jerked off in the bathroom and was still hard and uncomfortable.

“Don’t tell her why, just find out where she’ll be this afternoon. Tell her we need to ask her some follow-up questions.”

“What are you thinking, Grant? I’m your partner-tell me what’s going on.”

Fern walked into the lobby. Grant used her as an excuse. “I’m at the morgue; I can’t talk now. It’s about Nadine and drugs,” he added to get his partner off his back.

“I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Grant hung up. “Hello, Fern.”

She smiled, her nose ring of yesterday now an emerald green stud. “Hey, Detective, what can I do for you?”

He glanced at the receptionist and said, “I wanted to ask you some questions about the woman who was brought in yesterday, as well as Erickson. And I need an older autopsy report.”

“Sure.” She hesitated. “I could have faxed you a report. You didn’t have to come all the way over here.”

“I wanted to take another look at the marks on the bodies.”

“Whatever floats your boat. Right this way.” Fern handed him disposable cloth booties for his shoes and he slipped them on. “We finished the suicide yesterday.”

“She was a suspect in the death of George Erickson.”

“Yeah, I saw the video on YouTube.”

“Shit, who hasn’t seen it?”

“No one in L.A., that’s for sure. It’s rare that you get such a fabulous, public confession.”

“What did the autopsy reveal?”

“She died from massive internal bleeding-a no-brainer since a bus ran over her. She didn’t live through it, which I suppose is lucky for her. She obviously was suffering enough before she went over the edge. Her ribs were crushed. A mess, really.”

Grant didn’t need to know the details. “Blood tests?”

“Not back yet. We ran a few in-house-no alcohol in her system-but the biggies won’t be back until the end of next week. We’ve been sending more than our usual number of blood tests to the lab, and they’ve been complaining, damn lab bureaucrats.” She shook her head. “We have a pool going here among the pathologists. PCP is leading, though without the alcohol chaser I don’t see it having the effect I saw on the video. She was paranoid and panicked. I think it’s a newly engineered LSD, probably made in some kid’s basement, and she tripped. She was lucid and disoriented at the same time. She spoke clearly, but she sure wasn’t acting sane. She was also dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours.”