Early that next week I had packed a suitcase and moved into Norrah’s. Jay Davis the committed partner, pleased to meet you. It was far too premature to do such a thing, but we didn’t care. Sometime’s you just have to say screw it to conventional wisdom—that being that we were moving to fast. We were unhappy apart, happy together, so why shouldn’t we have moved in together? Our relationship still had that new car scent and I suspected the scent would last quite a while. I wouldn’t put my home up for sale for another year or so probably. I’d wait till we were at least engaged. As you’d imagine, Aaron wasn’t pleased with us moving in together, living in sin. We had been having sex out of wedlock, too. Oh well, we never claimed to be saints.
It was Wednesday evening when Fred Guthrie the fat ass cop called me at home, which was Norrah’s home.
“Forensics test came back, man,” Fred opened up with.
“What forensics test?”
“The drop of blood, what else?”
“Oh yeah. Were they able to match it?”
“Yep. It belonged to one of the missing twenty-three. They took cotton-swab tests of each of them upon their release from your girlfriend’s last Sunday. The DNA was an exact match to a girl’s.”
“Black Cat?” I asked. “I mean, Brittney Hayes?”
“How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
“The lab geeks think it was drop of menstrual blood.”
“Nah, it isn’t. She wasn’t menstruating. There are several eye-witnesses who could attest to that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. But it isn’t menstrual blood. That’s interesting, Fred.”
“You know something I don’t?”
“Plenty, probably.” I chuckled. “The drop was high up on the bed, and she was lying down. The blood was from her neck, I bet. A symbolic drop of blood, that’s all. Thanks for calling, I’m going to let you go. Norrah and I were going to do some reading together.”
“Aww, how cute,” Fred mocked, then giggled like an adolescent. “Romeo O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Here I am, babe! Let’s do the naked Mamba, I brought some rubbers.”
“Laugh it up, fatty. I’m glad it amuses you. Take care, bud.”