daylight hours and goes home. If you were going out last night, why didn’t you tell me? I could have gone with you.”
“You’d already put in nine hours, Detective. You were tired. You have a boyfriend waiting. There was no reason for you to hang around the back alleys at midnight asking about a dead hooker.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything? If you’re working, I should be working. You could have at least asked me,” she said.
“I work at odd hours. I doubt you’d be able to keep up,” Tori said lightly.
“Try me,” Samantha challenged. “You’re not going to run me off, Hunter. So unless you shoot me or push me out of a two-story building, I’m going to be here. I
want
to be here.”
God, did I just say that?
“Why do you think I’m trying to run you off?”
Samantha stared at her. “You’ve hardly been friendly. Hell, you’ve barely been tolerable. You don’t share shit with me. You go off on your own like some cowboy. Do you even know what the word partner means?”
“Look, this is my case. I’ve been on my own for two months since Kaplan… fell.” She nearly laughed. She could still picture him dangling from the railing, yelling for her to wait.
“Well, this is our case now and why the hell are you smiling?”
“Sorry. Thinking about Kaplan,” Tori said.
“He fell out of a two-story window. That makes you smile?”
“He was twenty pounds overweight. I told him to go down and take the stairs,” she said. “But he couldn’t let me win. Couldn’t let me catch the guy without him.”
“So he jumped?”
“Jumped? No, he tried to hang himself from the fire escape,” she said. “He was up there doing chin-ups, trying to climb back up.”
Samantha didn’t know Kaplan, but the visual she got made her smile.
“So, where are we going?”
“Central. Why don’t you call Fisk and get the address.”
Twenty minutes later, they were in the downtown warehouse district. Samantha recognized one of the uniformed men from her days at Central. Paul Stanton. He’d asked her out nearly once a week for the first year.
“Hey, Paul, how’s it going?”
“Samantha? What are you doing here? I thought you were with Assault.”
“I’m with Homicide now. Did you find her?”
“No. Someone called it in. By the time we got here, there was already a crowd. Got a woman over there that can identify her,” he said, pointing to an elderly lady talking to another officer.
“Thanks, Paul.”
Tori watched the exchange silently, noting the friendly smile Samantha gave Stanton. Well, they definitely had different methods. She nodded as Sam headed off. She went in the opposite direction, to the Dumpster.
“What do we have?” she asked as she peered inside.
“What you see is what you get, Hunter.”
Tori glanced up quickly, then took a step forward. “I see what I see. I asked what you had?” she said quietly, her piercing stare pinning him in place.
“Working girl, most likely. Teenager. Dumped last night, probably. The guy in the bookstore found her when he was taking out trash.”
“Why do you think she was dumped last night?”
He shrugged.
“Who’s here from the Medical Examiner?”
“Spencer.”
“Where is she?”
“Back in the van,” he said.
Tori walked over to the van and knocked once on the outside panel. The back door swung open and Rita Spencer stepped out. Their eyes met and there was an uncomfortable silence. There was always an uncomfortable silence, ever since the one night they’d spent together nearly a year ago. Tori shoved her hands in her pockets and waited for Rita to speak.
“Figured this was your case, Hunter. Sara said you’d been raising hell at the lab yesterday over the other one.”
Tori nodded. “How are you?”
“Great. You?”
“Wonderful,” Tori said dryly. “What you got?”
“Appears to be the same MO. The only bruising I can see is around the neck. We’ll have to wait until we open her up, of course.