Page 20 of Claimed By the Deputies

“Fair enough,” I say before glancing at the stacks of brown, black, and white boxes behind her—seemingly countless shelves in a seemingly endless room. “I need the evidence box from Tanya Burrow’s murder case, if you don’t mind.”

Tassia stares at me for a second. Damn, I wish I could read her mind, to figure her out, to understand what really makes her click. “Which one? There are five.”

“How do you know?”

“Hello. Do you see where I work?” she chuckles dryly.

“I can see you, Tassia. I’m just wondering how you’re able to remember how many boxes, specifically. You’ve got quite the daily workload to deal with.”

She lowers her eyes. “I’ve also got a pretty good memory. Anyway.” She shoots out of her chair and offers me a polite smile. “Five boxes. What are you looking for, specifically?”

“Just let me in and I’ll take a look at all five down here. I don’t need any of it upstairs. I just want to go over it again in light of today’s new case.”

Tassia presses the buzzer that opens the metal gate separating her evidence room from the rest of my station’s generously lit basement. I go in, feeling as though I’m trespassing into her territory—Tassia has a way of commanding any room she’s in, though I doubt she’s aware of the strength she exudes.

“Thank you,” I say as I follow her through a maze of shelves.

“Right over here,” she points as we reach the end of a corridor. “Let me take them out for you.”

“I can help.”

“No need. There’s nothing heavy,” she insists, checking the side labels before pulling the first box from its shelf and placing it on a nearby wooden table.

I watch her do the same with two other boxes before I’m compelled to intervene and help. Tassia watches me with amused curiosity.

I wink at her. “A gentleman’s nature, I’m afraid.”

“I can’t say that I mind,” she replies as I stack the last two on top of one another and carry them over to the examination table.

“Alright, let’s see.”

“That one has the items recovered from and around the body,” Tassia points to the first box. “Jewelry, broken glass, her clothes. It’s all bagged and tagged accordingly.”

“And I assume already fingerprinted and checked for trace evidence.”

“Yes, sir. DNA, gunpowder residue, any drug paraphernalia, etc.”

Yet none of that yielded a suspect. The people we questioned all had solid alibis and the few folks we did consider as potential suspects had no motive to kill Tanya.

“This has felt like a dead-end since day one,” I mutter.

Tassia takes the top off the first box, and I let my gaze wander over everything inside. I recognize most of it, taking in every detail when I was mere feet away from Tanya’s lifeless, bloodied body.

“Heavy smoker,” Tassia says, holding up a glass jar with plenty of cigarette butts and ashes sealed inside. “This was just one ashtray. She had three more scattered throughout the house.”

“The focus of that crime scene was her bedroom and her bathroom where the struggle and the actual murder took place.” I pause, taking out a transparent plastic bag filled with the remnants of a charm bracelet. “I remember this.”

Tassia stares at the bag for a moment. “Her charm bracelet. Likely ripped off during the struggle.”

“No trace DNA on it other than Tanya’s, though.” I frown. “Hold on,” I say as I open the bag and empty its contents on the table.

A broken chain falls out, followed by a dozen tiny charms made of silver and semi-precious stones. All blues and greens with marine motifs. A dolphin, a sea turtle, starfish, mermaid, palm tree, and a swordfish.

“What is it?” Tassia asks.

“There was another piece here. Another charm. I saw it clearly when Gary plucked it up with his tweezers and dropped it into this very bag.”

She thinks about it for a second, her brow furrowed in concentration. “What did it look like? I never miss any of the items I log.”

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