It took Maris Garcia a moment to realize her partner was talking to her.

"Are you going to stay in your own head," he said, snapping his fingers, "or can we pretend for a moment that we both want the same thing here?"

She stared at the scribbles on her clipboard. "Just working out a few scenarios in my mind. I didn't mean to space out on you."

Ryan leaned back in his chair. The precinct had not only made them partners but desk buddies, as though they were first graders. This meant Ryan's meticulously organized desk abutted her nearly as tidy workspace. That was one thing they had in common—a sense of order, the importance of maintaining structure. A place for everything and everything in its place, like her grandfather had taught her when he demonstrated where all his tools were to be kept. She and Ryan agreed on organization, but not on a whole lot else.

"What was going on back there?"

She wiggled her pen between her fingers, watching as the movement made the illusion that it was bending—another trick her granddad had shown her.

"What do you mean?" She knew what he meant and so she asked the question with a gruffness she hadn't intended. She'd been bad cop. She hated the good cop bad cop dichotomy, yet she'd fallen right into it and now couldn't muster up the energy to feel guilty about it.

"Tam Martin. You were two minutes away from demanding she tell you the truth or you'd curse her firstborn with the head of a turkey."

"That's an exaggeration."

"Is it though?" He took a disinfecting wipe out of a canister that sat atop the narrow crevice formed between their two desks. She made a mental note to grab more from the supply closet as he began wiping down his keyboard.

"You're usually so collected during an interview," He said. "Detached. Not this time. Something's eating you about this case, and I gotta ask—don't get mad—is it because she's a celebrity? You don't strike me as a Goldie Girl." He tossed the wipe into the wastepaper basket they also shared. "You watching makeup tutorials on your off time?"

"You know me better than that." Too well, maybe. But he was wrong about her motivations regarding Goldie. "Yes, you're right. Something is getting to me. Something doesn't add up and an innocent woman is dead."

"Is she innocent though? I mean, I'm not saying she deserved to be pushed off a ledge, but it doesn't mean she wasn't involved in something shady. Something that may have led to her demise. By the looks of it, she had at least one enemy."

"Or the opposite of an enemy. An obsessed fan?"

"Both are angles that we'll need to explore."

"Fine. But here's the thing, Ryan. While you're accusing me of going at this witness hot, you had your own weird take."

"How's that?"

"You made her question if we were viewing this as a suicide," she said. "Forensics already ruled that out."

"I wanted to see how she'd react. I'm learning her tell."

"What tell is that exactly, that she gets pissed off when we lie to her?"

"She hid her hands the whole time. Why do you think that is?"

"So she wouldn't be tempted to flip us off?"

"She was trying to hide her nerves."

"See? She's keeping something from us."

"Maybe." He scrolled through something on his phone, then shut it off. "But it's normal to feel nervous after your boss is murdered and you spend the night at a police station getting grilled. You increased her anxiety. That's not normal. Normally you put people at ease and milk the truth from them."

"And normally you don't feed them false information. She walked out of here with the impression that we're too stupid to determine whether Goldie jumped or was thrown. How does that help?"

"I made her angry, and her fear abated."

"Yet, we still got no answers."

"Give her time. Fear will make her hide. Anger will make her want to justify herself, in one form or another. It will bring her out in the open."

"Not sure if I agree with your logic here, Ryan."

He leaned over his desk. "You're trying to rush this. You've already decided she's guilty."

If he could only see it from her perspective. If she could only share that perspective with him. Her gut twisted and turned as this Tam woman's guilt ate away at her. She'd probably never sleep again until Tam Martin was secured in a cell. "Haven't you?"

"She was there. Goldie had been drinking. If she was intoxicated and Tam surprised her with an assault, she's got a couple inches on Goldie. She's young, strong. Physically, it's possible. But possible isn't proof. She's a person of interest. No more until we have the evidence we need. Your passion is going to bungle this, so keep it in check."

The back of her neck tingled. "Maybe keep your tone in check instead." Gruff again. Ryan stared at her like he was figuring out how to avoid one of his kids' epic tantrums. She was the two-year-old in this case. "We've met Goldie Finch before, you remember. We know her. That makes it personal to me."

"Of course, I remember. We interviewed her on another case, what... ten months ago?"

"Eight."

"We probably spent a half hour with her in total. Not sure that qualifies as us knowing her. Why do you even bring that up? Do you think there's a connection between this case and that one?"

"I didn't say that." She'd been mulling over another, older case, another connection altogether. The homicide at the convention hadn't even crossed her mind until this very moment. A Goldie Girl had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend during a meet and greet Goldie was doing at a convention. That guy was in prison, though. Aside from witnessing the event, Goldie had nothing to do with it. It seemed unlikely that that perpetrator had motive or means to plot out the murder of an internet celebrity. Maris stood up and pushed her chair in. "I'm going out for a breather."

"Not a bad idea." He got up as well and she bristled at the idea that he was planning on joining her. Instead, he veered in the opposite direction. "I'll be in the break room if you need me."

Outside the back entrance, Maris leaned against the concrete wall, one knee raised, foot pressed against the building's stone exterior. Her fingers twitched as she brought them to her back pocket where she used to keep her cigs. She cursed under her breath and folded her arms in front of her instead. She'd quit smoking over two years ago. It had been ages since she'd instinctively went for the pack. A sign her stress levels were high.

Maris closed her eyes, listening to the low hum of traffic from the street off to her side, past the police vehicle lot. The constant noise steadied her nerves. After yesterday's shit show, now this. The tautness around her eyes blurred her vision. She gave herself a minute, sixty seconds where the world appeared in abstract, where death wasn't clinical, where she could feel it, feel a life come into being, form, and then break away. Depart. She let grief wash over her for that blurry minute. Alone with the cop cars and the honking horns and a gull calling out its own grievances from the far end of the yard.

When her allotted time had passed, she smoothed down her hair, ran her fingers along her cheeks and wiped them on her pants. Reentering the station, she found Ryan munching on a pasta salad in the break room.

"Your wife make that?" She slid into the seat opposite him.

"Nope. It's leftover from dinner and it was my turn to cook. It's hard to believe, but this is made with a kale pesto and the boys devoured it like it was mac and cheese."

The boys were his two-year-old twins. "That is hard to believe. Look, I'm sorry, okay? I... had a bad day yesterday and the all-nighter didn't help my mood. Plus, let's not forget that this is a high-profile case. Something like this could make or break it for us."

She didn't care about that, personally, but career advancement was Ryan's bag. He perked up. "I take every case seriously, high-profile or not. I only want the truth."

Maris nodded. "Then let's find it. Here's where we're at. The mother and stepfather will be in soon. The mother is distraught, as you can imagine. Let's split up. You take the stepfather. I'll talk to the mom."

"Normally, I'd agree, but not if you're going to take the same approach you did with Tam Martin."

"I'll go easy on her."

"If you say so."

The tension eased, at least so far as it ever did between the two of them. Ryan was Ryan and he'd probably always drive her out to the parking lot for breathers, but he was also loyal and hardworking and good. A better person than she was.

She relaxed back into their partnership but the strain behind her temples remained. That was a tension that wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. It took all her energy to remained composed for the rest of the morning.

-----

Detective Maris Garcia has entered the chat. I would  love your thoughts on her. Is she the right person to solve this crime?

This chapter was a bit long so I've divided it into two parts. We'll still be with the detective for Chapter 11 part 2, which I'll post tomorrow...