This one is for Matrice,

who has been waiting for it for a long, long time :)

FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 8:34 A.M.

“Walker, Holliday, you’re up. Homicide in Ballard, probably domestic violence. Be there yesterday.” A set of sedan keys flew across the room at my head. I caught them painlessly, only because I’d just come in the door and hadn’t yet taken my gloves off. The guy who’d thrown them at me—our lieutenant, Braxton, who was decent, hardworking, and who never impinged on my consciousness for a single moment beyond those I spent following his direct commands—jerked his jaw at the door, indicating we should already be gone. I did a quick dance of shedding my coat, shrugging on my duty weapon—an item which, like Braxton, lay outside my realm of active awareness except when I was actually at work—and pulling the coat back on before my partner made it to the door.

Because my desk was three steps from the door, I got there first, and that meant I won: I got to drive. After nine months of that game, I wasn’t sure why we bothered, be cause neither of us pretended Billy was the better driver. Not that he was a bad driver, mind you. It’s just that it was the only class at the academy I’d been too proud to come in anything but first.

He caught up to me and muttered, “I hate domestic cases,” as we headed out the door.

“I know.” Nobody liked them, which was part of why Billy and I were up on this one. Braxton tried to rotate the DV cases through the whole Homicide team, because under the best of circumstances, they were emotionally messy, and under the worst—which was more usual—cops ended up the bad guys no matter what they did. “Could be worse. At least a murder means there won’t be an outraged spouse trying to beat us off because her partner didn’t really do anything wrong.”