Read Online Charred by Kate Watterson - Free Book Online

out over the downtown skyline and the spectacular sunset. She said almost under her breath, “I believe I did say a party at the home of a dean who did his graduate work at Cambridge, England, and who was a Fulbright scholar.”
    “You said a party by the lake.” He looked down at his flip-flops. “And I dressed accordingly.”
    “God, Jason, you can be so—”
    “I spent part of my afternoon in the morgue discussing with the medical examiner the finer points of a murder victim’s anatomy,” he interrupted, not inclined to apologize. He had his faults, but being underdressed seemed like a minor matter to worry about when he thought about that blackened corpse. “I could always leave.”
    She sent him a withering look, but then relented. “No, of course not. I’m to blame. I forget sometimes how literal you are.”
    Somehow, and he wasn’t the one doing a doctorate in psychology, that made it still sound like his fault. He took a sip of wine, grimaced, because who the hell served white wine on the Fourth of July at a party, and said, “Yeah, well, my job deals with facts. The Milwaukee Police Department prefers that I’m literal. Please tell me there’s a beer here somewhere.”
    Kate was, essentially, a great girl. She laughed and took the wineglass from his hand and gestured with it toward a corner of the rooftop. “You are such a philistine. Over there. Go.”
    He did, still thinking about the case, even as he took out a dripping bottle of Bud Light—thankfully it was all on ice—and popped it open.
    A philistine. Yes, well, maybe. He could make a comment or two about her snobbish friends and their academic society gatherings. As for his background, she had no idea. He’d been suitably vague about his past … maybe mentioned that his parents had split when he was young—that meant his mother had walked out when he was five, leaving him with a bewildered father who worked about twelve hours a day at a blue-collar job and had very little patience with the turn of events. In the end they’d managed by virtue of a mutual truce. If Jason didn’t make trouble, he was fed, if peanut butter and jelly counted, and his father was content.
    However, when he got into high school the dynamics changed. He’d done it to himself, he knew it—he’d known it at the time. Started drinking, smoking a little weed, nothing big, but just enough to annoy the shit out of his old man.
    That had backfired in a big way. Looking back he thought it might have been a bid for some attention, but at the time he told himself he was just having a good time. Skipping so much school meant he was called in to the principal’s office one time too many, he graduated at the lower end of his class, and his father had kicked him out that very day.
    He’d learned a thing or two on the street, so the experience actually helped now that he was a police officer, but it had been a hard way to earn it.
    “So you’re Kate’s cop.”
    He was in the act of taking a long drink and he turned to see a man standing a few feet away. Young, late twenties maybe, dressed in a polo shirt, tailored slacks, and what looked like Italian loafers at a swift assessment, with brown hair swept back in a fashionable cut. Perfect teeth bared in a smile.
    Jason really despised people with perfect teeth. His past didn’t include braces, but luckily he only had one really crooked tooth and he’d been told it gave his face character. He replied, “I kind of like to think of her as mine rather than the other way around, but whatever. Yeah, I’m Detective Santiago. And you are?”
    “Not nearly as high on testosterone.” The guy extended his hand, the other one cradling a glass of wine. “Brian Wilfong. Just wanted to say hello. I’ve never met a homicide detective before. Kate talks about you all the time.”
    All right. He’d concede he came off a little aggressive. Jason said, with more effort at politeness, “I take it you work together?”
    “In the