Page 4 of Signed, I'm Yours!
“Ah, just give it up already. You know he never leaves any traces behind. We just have to accept we’ll never find this guy.”
“Or girl,” I remind him. “Women can be murderers too.”
“Fine. We’ll never find them,” he says pointedly. “Happy?”
I shrug.
“I wouldn’t say happy, but you know I’m always in a good mood.”
He rolls his eyes and gags, although whether from the fumes or his disgust at my disposition, I’m not so sure.
“I know.”
“So why do you ask?” I ask.
“Oh, shut up, Lewis. You know what I’m saying. We’ve had over twenty of Pulverizer’s victims this year, alone. If we were going to find them, we would have by now. April has even had monitoring and registration increased to help us. But nothing. SPAM records still show no supes that can make people”—he waves a hand at the exploded man beside me—“blow up from the inside out.”
“Well, usually, when something is blown up, it is from the inside out,” I point out, and he growls at me in typical Bob fashion.
He turns his back to me and shakes his head.
“Bob, I know, man. I know you want to get the Pulverizer before your retirement, but that attitude won’t help, will it? We can ask April to give us more SPAM resources. Maybe there’s someone, somewhere in SPAM, who can help us find them.”
The photographer lowers his camera and tilts his head. “What the hell is SPAM? The canned meat?”
I smile at him when Bob spins around and barks at the poor guy. “Mind your own business. You’re here to take pictures, not ask questions.”
The guy literally jumps on the spot and gets back to work with shaky hands.
I get up and approach my partner with my best attempt at a frown, only it’s still me, and I can’t do that. Which is why my next words come out playful rather than disappointed. “Did you have to be short with the guy?”
“Well, I can’t be tall with him, can I?”
I glance back at the photographer, who’s closer to five foot than six, and shake my head.
“That’s mean.”
Bob bites his lip and has a minor tantrum as if he wants to give me some colorful expletives but is holding back before he composes himself.
“He’s asking questions, and we can’t have people asking questions.”
I roll my eyes at him. Why does he always have to be like this? I’ve always wondered if he’s been like this from the start or if grinding away in this job has chipped away at any positivity he may have had.
Or if he’s just a mean old man, which wouldn’t surprise me, considering he’s been like this since my first day.
“Yeah, I know, Bob! But he’s an innocent guy. We could have told him SPAM was a fucking satellite, and he’d believe it.”
“Whatever.” Bob huffs and walks out the door. I follow him close behind him. “We’re never going to find this guy. He’s as elusive as…as the fucking clitoris.”
I stop and choke. Bob glances at me, frowning.
“What?”
I stare into my partner’s bright-blue eyes and whisper, “You can’t find your wife’s clit? Do you need help?”
He goes so red that if he turned into a raging monster before my eyes, I would have shrugged and said, “Knew it.”
“Haaaappyyyy!” he growls.
