Excerpt
Blood Relay
1When Perry Antelope and Sophia Burns entered the victim’s garage, a lanky female officer with false eyelashes and rosy pink blush stepped forward. “Detectives,” she greeted, passing them the logbook. “Sign in, please.”
Tarps covered the floor and two layers of painter’s plastic hung from the ceiling with duct tape, protecting the otherwise orderly garage. The man—Perry checked her notes, Nathaniel McGee—sat slumped in a camping chair, its drink holder clutching a Coke whose ice hadn’t yet melted. Perry and her husband, Troy, owned half a dozen of those chairs. Nathaniel sat on a blue one, the exact color Perry had chosen when she and Troy had taken the kids camping last weekend.
Sophia sighed. “Suicide?”
“A regrettable resolution for a fixable problem,” Perry replied. “At least cleanup will be somewhat easy.”
Despite the man’s efforts to ensure a tidy death, Perry saw what looked like raw hamburger on the garage ceiling lightbulb and on the painter’s plastic that gently undulated in the breeze. Blood droplets and other particles dotted the iPhone that lay on the garage floor six feet from the body.
Sophia pushed her short, wavy hair behind her ears and exhaled.
“You can step out for a minute,” Perry said quietly.
When Sophia had been a patrol officer, she had seen a variety of grim injuries and corpses in various stages of decomposition, but Perry recalled that Sophia almost fainted at the first autopsy they attended together when they became partners six months ago. Sophia had turned white at the sight of their first call as a team—a woman had been found decapitated. She had stared without blinking for a full minute at the headless torso. Perry thought the six-foot, 175-pound former NCAA Division 1 shotput winner would falter, but after a minute, she was crouching over the woman for a closer look.
Sophia took two more deep breaths, then pulled herself together. “I’m good. I’ve seen worse.”
Perry patted her on the back.
A red Mercedes GLS SUV pulled up in front of the driveway, with 2 Shadows’s “Mad God” blasting so loud Perry could hear it through the car’s rolled-up windows. Perry knew of the Goth band because of her daughter, Olyve. How the heck did the chief medical examiner know about them?
“How’re you, Melinda?” Perry asked when the woman finally reached them.
“Was about to have second dessert with Milt.” Melinda smirked. After cake, if you know what I mean.”
Perry chuckled. “What do we have here?”
“You tell me.” Melinda gave the body a quick perusal. “Well. Did you inspect him?”
“I did,” Perry responded.
The two looked at each other, and Perry could tell Melinda was thinking the same thing she was.
“Thoughtful prep work,” Perry said. She brushed away stray hairs that had come loose from her bun and stuck to the sweat on her face.
Melinda nodded in agreement. “This style of offing helps a bit. That suicide a few years ago—you know, the woman who killed her fourteen cats then slit her wrists in the bathtub? The tub helped.”
“I do remember that.” Perry had been one of the first on the scene. Cleaning up the physical carnage was one thing—a specialized cleaning service could deal with the tissue and stains. The survivors’s emotional chaos would take much longer. Now, through the kitchen door, she could hear the man’s wife wailing.
“No suicide note,” Sophia said.
The rest of the forensics team pulled up in a white van. The crime scene supervisor, Sarita Bianchi, emerged from the driver’s side, followed by her three colleagues carrying bags of various sizes.
After the forensics team pulled on their gloves, Perry and Sophia rounded the corner of the house to find a distraught bald man standing with a trio of police officers. “I want to talk to him,” said Perry.
The bald man was dressed in loose-fitting black Adidas running pants and a T-shirt with a Gandalf figure wearing a robe and tall wizard hat and holding a football. The letters underneath read fantasy football. His head was down and he kept sniffing, like a man who was trying to hide the reality that he was crying. He refused a Kleenex.
She approached the sniffing man.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Detective Perry Antelope, Oklahoma City police. And your name?”
She moved the bottom of her black blazer to the side so he could see her shield attached to her belt. Perry knew the man was upset, but he could cry later at home.
“Jason Lyndon.”
“What is your connection to the deceased?”
She sensed rather than heard Sophia approach. The taller woman stood to her right, a step behind her. Perry did not acknowledge her.
The handsome man let out a shaky breath. “I’m his attorney.”
“How did you hear about his death?”
“He contacted me.”
Perry thought about that. If you were going to kill yourself, contacting your attorney would make sense if you had a will.
“May I see your phone?”
“Sure.” He scrolled to the message, then handed it to her.
J—I need you to make sure that Jahneen and the kids get everything. I have been depressed for some time now and don’t know what else to do. I trust you and thx. Nate.“Sir, do you mind if I take screenshots and send them to my phone?”
“No. Go right ahead.” He shuffled his feet, and when he dropped his gaze, Perry glanced at Sophia and gave a quick nod toward him.
While Perry’s thumbs flew over the screen, Sophia asked him, “Do you come over here often?”
“Yeah, we do barbecues and the kids play. I’ve known Nate a long time.”
Perry finished with his phone and handed it back. She asked, “What did you do after you got this message?”
“I immediately called the police. I had showered and was drying off when I got the text, so I read it, called the police, and hurried over.”
He motioned to his bright red 2024 BMW iX xDrive50. Perry could not remember every car model, but she prided herself on knowing most of them. This one probably cost Jason close to ninety thousand dollars.
“Where do you live?”
“Apple Valley.” The wealthy neighborhood was about fifteen minutes away. “I banged on the garage side door when I realized it was locked. Then I went to the front door. Was about to hop the fence when the police came and told me to stop. Then Jahneen and the kids drove up. I guess they were at their oldest kid’s soccer tournament. Jahneen opened the garage door with the remote.”
Sophia took out her phone.
Jason watched her as he kept talking. “I ran in first and found him, so I was able to keep Jahneen and the kids away.”
“Good for you.” Perry knew that seeing their father in this state would permanently traumatize the children.
He rubbed his hands over his face. “What else was I supposed to do?” He cried loudly.
She did not respond.
It seemed he expected an answer. He glared at Perry and clenched his fists. “It wasn’t my fault. Nate did it right after he texted me,” he said, his voice growing louder. “If I had known what he was going to do, I would have been here to stop it. I was
not a part of this.”
Perry stood straighter and twitched the fingers of her right hand. She felt the outline of her Glock in her holster. She glanced to Sophia, who also registered the man’s agitation.
Jason took a few deep breaths, then leaned back on his car. “Okay. Okay. I’m okay,” he repeated.
“All right.” She kept her eyes on Jason. “How did you arrive here before the police?”
The yard became silent. The only sounds were the muffled cries of Nathaniel’s wife and a dog barking in the distance.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Mr. Lyndon, according to Google Maps, your home is a seventeen-minute drive away from here. But the police station is right around the corner. It would take three minutes max for them to get here.”
Jason’s mouth stayed open but he said nothing.
“Answer the question.”
“Well, that can’t be right.”
“There was no soccer tournament today, but there is one tomorrow,” Sophia added. She had assumed her ready stance—legs apart and hands clasped in front of her. “I wonder why Mrs. McGee dressed up her son in a soccer uniform.”
The other officers took a step closer.
Jason Lyndon began to sweat.
Perry saw Melinda out of the corner of her left eye.
“Mr. McGee has a head wound,” Perry said.
“Of course he does!” Jason yelped. “He shot himself.”
