A Shoulder to Cry On

"I wouldn't ask if we weren't getting attacked on all sides right now," he says.

The city is being sued by several people who are claiming Sergeant Texada planted evidence to get a conviction. I believe three of them. The Chief of Staff of the Mayor is arrested for solicitating prostitutes. Now a Saudi national is shot and killed by one of his officers.

"As much as we hate it, sometimes it is all about who you know," I say, and the Chief nods. "I'll ask Quin to give you a call."

"Thanks," Chief says and shakes my hand before I leave to find Lauren.

I pull my phone out of my pocket as I sit down in my car. Will had sent me a text about ten minutes ago saying Lauren was debriefed and was already heading home. I reply to Will, then send a text to Lauren asking if she went to my apartment or her own. The message is marked as 'read', and I see the dots indicating she is typing, but she does not send a reply until five minutes later. She says she is at her apartment and asks me to come over. I reply that I am on my way.

I have to park two blocks down to get street parking, but I find a space and jog to her building. At her door I press the button for her apartment, and the door buzzes open a few seconds later. Lauren is on the fourth floor, and her elevator has been out of service since she moved in three years ago, so I trot up her stairs at a fair pace.

Lauren must have heard me coming, because she opens her door before I even knock and grabs onto me in the hallway. She digs her head into the pocket of my shoulder, and I hold her while stroking her hair. She has already changed into shorts and a tank-top with no bra.

"You okay?" I ask.

"No," Lauren replies, then starts walking backward to drag me into her apartment. I shut the door, and she lets me go and walks toward her couch. She has a bottle of tequila on the coffee table with a shot glass. Next to the bottle is a thin plastic cutting board with a sliced lime. Her saltshaker is within arm's reach.

"What happened?" I ask.

"I killed someone, that's what happened," she replies and starts pouring herself a shot. "I shot someone."

"Was it a bad shoot?" I ask.

"Nope. It was a justified, my ass is in the clear, I didn't do nothing illegal kill," Lauren rambles before taking the shot and biting the lime.

"Forgot the salt," I say, and she shivers a little. I can literally smell her. "Maybe that's enough of the booze."

"How the fuck did you just go on like nothing happened?" Lauren asks, sinking into her sofa. "You shot a guy, and you just kept going. How did you get over it?"

"I didn't," I say. "You don't just, get over, something like this. Even when it's justified. I definitely didn't make alcohol my panacea."

"Panacea, fancy words Mr. Ivy League. Us state students can't handle your vocabulary," Lauren slurs and puts her head on my shoulder. "Just, get me through the night."

"It's morning already," I tease.

"Don't be a smartass," Lauren says and puts her hands on my waist band. "I don't want to hear shit about you being on a case right now. I am going to suck your dick, then you're going to raw dog me on this couch."

My policy of no sex during a murder case is again under attack. This is wrong in many ways, but I cannot think of a way saying no, will not make this worse. Lauren needs a distraction after her close call, but I do not believe alcohol and sex is the best things to alleviate what she is feeling. Because it prevents her from feeling it at all.

"Lauren, I think you need a little sleep and..."

"...shut up and take your pants off," she interrupts and undoes my button. "What I need is comfort, and for my boyfriend to get over whatever the hell happened to him. Chase, I'm not your ex-girlfriend who fucked you for an alibi. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel when you push me away, because of something she did to you?"

Lauren had never given any indication me not having sex while on a case bothered her so much. Or, maybe she has, and just like a man to be oblivious, I simply never noticed. I do not want Marlene to control me anymore, and only now do I realize she still is controlling me. No more.

Lauren pulls down my zipper, and I push my shoes off with the opposite foot. I pull my pants off my ankles, and Lauren finishing yanking them off with my boxers in tow.

I put my hand on the back of Lauren's head as her mouth engulfs my dick, and I release a moan in pleasure. It does not take long to get me fully hard. When I am good and firm, she cups her lips over the head and twirls her tongue around it. She then licks up the shaft twice before taking it all the way to her throat and then repeats.

"Touch me," she says when she comes up for air. Lauren is leaned over on the couch, so I slide the hand not on her head and caress her breasts. I had always been an ass man, but since day one Lauren had turned me into a tits man. That first night she rode me with my back against the headboard of her bed and pulled my face into her full and supple chest. My head vanished for a moment, and when I reemerged my mouth was on her nipples. The sounds she made and the feeling of her pulling my hair nearly made me prematurely nut.

Lauren is not satisfied with just her tits. She grabs my hand and directs it further south. I glide my hand into her shorts and I instantly noticed she is not wearing panties. Her slit is dripping, so drilling my fingers inside is smooth. When it is more than she can stand, she stops sucking and drops her shorts.

"Fuck me," she says, presenting herself for me to enter her from behind.

"Is there a condom?" I ask.

"I said I wanted you to raw dog me. Put it on my back," Lauren says. I kind of shrug and position myself, then push into her. "Fuck me."

I take her request to fuck her to its logical conclusion. I take a fistful of her hair. Her ass is my whipping post for the time being. My cock is slamming into her pussy so hard my balls swing up and slap against her pelvis. Lauren is thrusting her ass back toward me in perfect unison. We have never done it with so much aggression.

"I'm about to cum," I grunt out, then pull out and jerk myself onto her back. I am hunched over her, breathing deep as I keep dripping onto her.

"That was so fucking good," Lauren says, also out of breath.

"What if I told you to suck my dick clean so I can fuck you again?" I ask, and Lauren answers the questions by sucking my dick clean then riding my dick. She pulls her tank-top off her body and I bury my face into her tits. The sounds she makes reminds me of our first time again.

I carry her with my dick still inside and fall onto her bed. We begin a heavy make out session as I press my body into hers, until I say I am going to blow again.

"Do it inside, I got stuff," Lauren says, and I unleash inside of her. We keep kissing until I become limp.

Lauren places her head on my chest and falls asleep a few minutes after we finished. I manage to get a little bit of sleep before I have to go to work, but I leave her a note before I do.

–

Wednesday – March 11, 2026

-William Kaiser-

By ten in the morning the Chief is in a screaming match with some asshole from the State Department. Wasim Abdul Khan was here with a diplomatic passport, so had diplomatic immunity. Chief is not playing this political bullshit for a moment though. You pull a gun on one of his officers, as far as he's concerned, you've signed your own death warrant. Lauren will be fine in terms of her career, but if she's anything like her boyfriend, she'll be hiding a trembling hand for months. We've already handed that matter off to the Public Integrity Unit.

Laurel is still in lockup, and we're running out of time for the DA to charge her with something. How the hell is this taking so long? She bought the beads. She admitted she filled his protein. Her fingerprints are on the container.

Midge is reading over her phone records we got sometime during the night, but that is looking innocuous.

"Anything?" I ask after closing the preliminary lab report Jill sent us an hour ago from Lauren's incident last night.

"Nothing of interest before, nothing of interest after. Ex-boyfriend heard about it, and what a creep this guy is," Midge says, then reads a text from after the death. "If you need a shoulder to cry on, I'm right here."

"What's that guy's name again?" I ask.

"Joey Kristof. He's a comedian as well," Midge replies.

Midge's phone rings on her desk. "Homicide, Detective Appletree." Someone says something she doesn't like. "Are you shitting me!"

"What?" I ask.

"How much more do we need to give you?" Midge asks, and then ends the call with a slam. "DA isn't pursuing prosecution with Laurel."

"What?" I ask.

"Insufficient evidence," Midge says, and I can't believe it. "She's got a fuck of a lawyer."

"Fingerprints, she purchased the murder weapon," I say.

"I know, I know, but they're saying all of the evidence is circumstantial," Midge says, then leans into her seat in a huff. "We gotta find something else or let her go."

It takes everything I have not to throw my arm across the desk to clear everything off it in one sweep. I contain enough to only thump my desk with the bottom of a closed hand.

"What's up?" I hear Chase ask from the door. I can't even look at him I'm so mad.

"Laurel is walking," I say.

"Good," he says, and I stand up so fast my chair falls. "Before we start trading blows again, give me two minutes."

Chase is not smug or arrogant right now. He just looks confident in what he has to share.

"What do you have? Another suspect?" I ask, and he nods. "Who?"

"Ian Tyler," he says, and I cross my arms.

"Court documents make a very compelling case the restraining order was frivolous," I say.

"Two minutes, and you'll be calling the DA before we leave the building," Chase says, and I relent, picking up my chair to sit.

In one minute, Chase lays out an entire case of how Ian Tyler created the pretenses of their coincidental meetings and the paper trial to demonstrate it.

"You got my attention," I say.

"I talked to the owner of the gym Omar went to. Ian Tyler started a one-month trial membership, at the beginning of this month." Chase places down a form with membership enrollment. "He forwarded me footage of Omar entering the gym's locker room. There are no cameras in there, but the video of the hallway shows Omar entering the locker room with a bag over his shoulder, then exiting the locker room two minutes later." Next he places down pictures of Omar entering and leaving with the timestamps in yellow font in the lower left corners. "Forty seconds later, Ian Tyler entered the locker room, and left four minutes later. He never came back because he left the gym immediately." The pictures with timestamps follow. "Omar comes back to the locker room thirty minutes later, and exits with his gym bag over his shoulder, shaking his mix bottle as he walks out."

"Holy shit," Midge says, looking at the screen grabs. "Will."

"Midge, go with Graham and keep a car on Laurel, just in case. Chase and I need to have a conversation with Ian Tyler," I say, Chase smiling. "Ever heard of Diane Borchardt?"

"We'll know more after we talk to him," Chase says, collecting his files into the folder and placing them in my inbox for me to review later. "Let's go." There's the smug asshole I know.

–

Ian Tyler lives in a small standalone house in one of the shadier neighborhoods. Right on the cusp of where you transition from watching your wallet to gripping your conceal carry. One step porch, large front window with a small covered garage port. Brown, brittle grass that crunches under our feet as we walk up to the door.

"Car's gone," Chase says, looking at his watch. "Probably at work."

"Probably," I say.

I knock on the door, and we wait ten seconds before we knock again.

"Columbo?" Chase asks, and I shrug.

"Why not," I say, and we walk next door to knock on the door of his neighbor. A small women answers, overtly suspicious police are here. "Ma'am, is Ian Tyler home?"

"He's next door you fucking idiot," the woman says, pointing to the house we came from and closes the door. Works every time.

"Definitely his house," Chase says, descending the neighbor's stairs. "Head around back?"

"Don't be fucking around with warrantless searches," I warn. Chase holds the book close to his chest, but he might be more inclined to bend rules to help Laurel.

Chase and I look around the equally dead grass of his backyard. A crappy lawn chair is on his cracked concrete patio. Next to the chair is a coffee can filled with cigarette butts and an empty glass beer bottle. His chain link fence is uneven, the back corner of it completely collapsed. The blinds of the sliding glass door are pulled shut.

Near the back is a shed with the door left open. It's a cheap metal shed bolted onto a wooden platform. It has no windows but appears to have a makeshift vent. Even I get an uneasy feeling from the shed.

Chase pulls a pen from his pocket and uses it to pull open the door a little more. Most of it is shrouded, so I shine my flashlight inside. Son of a bitch.

The shed is a converted workbench. On the top is a vacuum to suck out fumes. There's a boiler plate with a beaker on it. On a shelf are three pots, each with the same plant. The one that grows the Rosary Pea. There are printed instructions from somewhere on how to extract Abrin. The part that makes my stomach sink, is a collage of pictures featuring Laurel, and a television playing a live feed of her apartment.

"Will, you smell that?" Chase asks, and I finally notice it as well. It smells like gasoline. A lot of gasoline. I look at the burner again and see what looks like a firework fuse attached to it. "It's on a timer," Chase says, moving the fuse away and unplugging the burner. "He planned on torching the place."

I reach to my waist and pull the radio off. "Dispatch, this is HD2...APB out for criminal suspect, Ian Tyler..." I spell it phonetically and give his home and work address. "White male, twenty-nine, six-foot, stocky build, short cropped brown hair."

"Will," Chase says, then points to the feed. Laurel is in her living room, and we see a figure at her fire escape open her window. He enters the apartment nearly unheard before she reacts, and he attacks her. "Fuck!"

I fumble my phone while watching the feed. The timer goes off, but the shed does not go up in flames because we disarmed it. "Midge, Laurel is getting attacked, get in there!" I say. "Don't ask how I know, fucking move!" Chase takes off running toward the car and I try to grab his arm to stop him. "Dammit."

I have the keys to the car, so I don't know where he thinks he's going. I jog to the car which is locked and doesn't open when he tries the handle.

"Open the door," Chase says.

"Stop and breathe for a moment..."

"...This is not the time for people to tell me to be calm," Chase says.

"Chase, the apartment is a twenty-minute drive from here. Midge and Graham will either catch him, or he flees. Where does he go if he flees?" I ask, and Chase seems to finally calm himself enough to think properly.

"He comes here," Chase says, and I nod.

–

Wednesday – March 11, 2026

-Laurel Smith-

Besides two visits to the bathroom, I've been in this interrogation room for nearly a full day. Maybe it has been a full day, my concept of time is screwy right now. I can literally smell my own body odor. My hair feels greasy, yet dry and frazzled to the sides.

It's been awhile since my lawyer Patricia Adams was here. When Omar and I got married, he introduced me to her. Patricia had been his lawyer for many years, so now she was mine. She said she was fighting the DA's office, and I haven't seen her for what feels like half a day.

After God knows how long, the door to the interrogation room opens, and an officer tells me I'm free to go. Patricia is in the hallway holding a bag with my belongings. She escorts me out of the police station and to her car.

"I need to warn you right off the bat," Patricia says after she closes her car door. "This is likely not over."

"Charges were dropped though, right?" I ask.

"No. No charges have been filed, but they could just be letting you out to start building a stronger case. Lot of circumstantial evidence. I need the truth to start countering them the best I can. Don't feel offended, I ask this of all my clients. Did you kill your husband?" Patricia asks.

"For the love of God, no," I say.

Patricia looks at me for a few seconds, before nodding and putting the car into reverse to leave the parking lot. I don't feel like talking, so after I answer a few of her questions, she gets the hint and shuts up.

I'm dropped off at my apartment building, and I know exactly what I want to do first. Finally getting to take a shower is liberating. I wipe the shampoo out of my eyes, and see my wedding ring, and I lose it. Like a little girl I sit on the floor with the shower running over me.

My husband is dead, and everyone seems to think I did it. We had just begun talking about starting our family. The paperwork to adopt his niece was basically complete, and I love Fatima. I'm ready to do that alone. For him.

I get myself together, and decide I'll just lounge around in pajamas, even though it's the early afternoon. My hair is raised up in a towel as I walk through the kitchen, looking for something to eat. After a moment, I remember how Omar died, and start to feel paranoid. I open the fridge and start trashing everything. I do the same to the cabinets. The bag is full in just a minute, and it tears open when I attempt to remove it from the trashcan. In anger I whip what's left into the fridge and scream. Now that my kitchen is trashed, literally, I have no idea what to do now.

The apartment feels like a black hole. What can I do to alleviate that feeling? Watch a movie? I see the couch and think of Omar and I curled up on it. Going into the office to work a little? I see Omar at his desk, working on his narration transition for his comedy. Go to sleep? The bed is cold. I can't live here anymore.

Just when I feel the deepest in this hole, I hear a footstep behind me. I turn and see my window is open and a man is in my apartment. After a moment of frozen fear, I run to the door. I get the door open, but the chain backfires on me. The man pins me between the door and himself.

"Get the fuck off me!" I say, pushing back, but he's very strong.

"I've been waiting for this moment for a long time," the man breathes in my ear. I know this voice, and this unsettling feeling it gives me. He turns me around and forces me to look into his possessive eyes. "You're all mine now."

"You killed my husband," I say, trying to push him back again, but he grabs my wrists with one hand and holds my throat with the other.

"He was in the way," he says, then forcefully kisses me, and I bite his lip. He jolts his head away, running his tongue over the wound. "You're gonna wish you hadn't done that." I'd spit on him if he wasn't holding my neck so hard.

I knee him in the groin and manage to push him off me. In that moment I try the chain again, but he grabs my hair and throttles my head against the door. Dazed, he throws me to my stomach onto the floor. I can feel the blood on my face as I try to crawl away. He grabs my ankles and in a swift moment spins me to my back and mounts me. In an attempt to defend myself, I start blindly slapping upwards, but he controls my arms the same way he did at the door.

Against my futile screams, he grabs my shirt and tears it down to reveal my breasts. Exposed, he begins touching me, then changes his attention to my lower extremities. I press my back to the ground as hard as I can, making him struggle to pull them down. He lets my hands go, and I snatch my waist band to keep them on. He slaps me across the face for the effort with his giant hand.