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I didn’t sleep a wink the night before starting at my new job. I gave it my best effort though. I let Aunt Nora guide me through a relaxing session of yoga, complete with incense for calming my nerves. I drank chamomile tea she made for me. I meditated before bed. To no avail. I spent the night lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, imagining everything that could go wrong in my new job—and some that probably couldn’t, but I wasn’t counting on it.
In all fairness to my attempts to relax, I was new to yoga and had tried it for the first time this week after moving to live with Aunt Nora. I was unable to let my mind and body relax when I had to concentrate on the positions and breathing. I hated the stench of incense and it gave me a headache. Chamomile tea tasted vile. And I’d never been able to meditate when I was stressing out.
My mind kept churning on the enormity of the change in my life, as if it had only now caught up with events that I’d put into motion two years ago. At 31, I, Noah Thorne, the second son of a very prominent Boston family and Harvard educated lawyer with a good job at the DA’s office in Boston had moved to Brooklyn, New York, to become a homicide detective.
I would start at my new job at the 70th Precinct today. It was a downwards move in every measuring tool Father used: money, prestige and advancement options. But I was already a disappointment to him on many levels, so what was one more. I’d ignored his threats of disowning me and done it anyway.
And for what? For a man who had dumped me and ghosted me two years ago. Pathetic.
At half past five, I gave up pretending I would get any sleep and got out of bed, to a great displeasure of Pricilla Queen of Desert, my aunt’s tabby Oriental shorthair who had taken to sleeping on my chest, whether I wanted her to or not. Closing my bedroom door didn’t help, because she’d learned to open it. The three other cats would follow her in, but luckily they didn’t want to share my bed, not all at the same time anyway. They were restless sleepers.
I pulled on running shorts with a bottom layer of tight compression shorts that had thigh pockets for phone and keys, and a looser upper layer to hide said items, both black and reaching to mid-thigh; black compression T-shirt, and good running shoes. I wasn’t much into yoga. I was a runner.
Prissy curled on my pillow, giving me a contemptuous look as I exited the room, then made an angry noise I interpreted as a command to switch off lights, which I did.
I had the second floor of my aunt’s townhouse to myself, if you excluded the cats, three bedrooms, mine with an en-suite bath, bathroom, and a lounge in the middle where I could entertain friends, should I make any in this new city. Everything was in the condition it had been when Aunt Nora inherited the house five years ago from her maternal grandmother, a mixture of late 19th century architecture, 80s wallpaper, and 90s furniture. At least the bathrooms and boiler had been redone sometime this century, though not in this decade.
An open window by the stairs brought in early morning air. It promised to be another sweltering day, courtesy of a July heatwave, even though it had thundered and rained last night from midnight to half past one. I knew; I’d been up listening to the sounds it made. But I was from Boston and used to humidity.
I took the narrow stairs downstairs where the kitchen, Aunt Nora’s bedroom, study, and living room-dining room were. She’d refurbished the kitchen, her en-suite bathroom, and the guest toilet. Otherwise, it was much as the upstairs was. The furniture was good quality though and had kept well.
I went to the fridge and took out a smoothie Aunt Nora had made using only organically grown ingredients for maximum health. I don’t know what it contained—not sugar—but it tasted fairly good and gave me enough energy to survive the morning jog.
All four cats, Prissy included, swarmed my legs. There were two Siamese, a seal point and a blue, and a platinum Burmese in addition to the Oriental shorthair. All these varieties were from the same genetic root, so they shared slim, long-legged bodies and pointy, regal heads with large ears and tilted almond eyes. And strong personalities. I ignored their demands—and the claws pricking my bare legs.
“Breakfast isn’t yet,” I told them sternly. Aunt Nora had a strict feeding schedule for them. They were delicate creatures and their digestive system didn’t handle changes well, so it was absolutely no snacks for them.
I filled a flat running bottle with water and put it into a pocket meant for it in the outer layer of the running shorts. Leaving the cats behind, I exited the apartment to a small foyer. A narrow, spiral staircase disappeared inside the wall, leading all the way to the attic with access to upper floors and the floor partly below ground. Aunt Nora owned the entire townhouse, but she’d rented the top floor apartment and the one below ground to outsiders. I’d yet to see the residents of either apartment.
The house was on 6th Street in Park Slope near the Prospect Park in western Brooklyn. It was a yellow brick at the end of a row of brownstones of different colors, four stories high including the below-ground floor, and three windows wide. It stood a little away from the sidewalk, the limestone front steps descending in two short flights to a small tiled yard lined with ornate limestone fence that contained the trashcans. It didn’t have enough space for a car, but that didn’t matter. The house came with an attached two car garage, which made the house pretty unique in the neighborhood. There was a terrace and a catio on its roof accessed from my floor—the latter through the open window. There was a small back garden too, where Aunt Nora grew flowers and herbs.
It wasn’t even six yet and the neighborhood was quiet. I headed to the Prospect Park at the end of the street. It was over 500 acres of manmade nature, complete with a 60-acre lake and grand posturing architecture like Brooklyn Museum, botanical garden, zoo, baseball fields, and other recreational areas.
The park was crisscrossed with paths, but I hadn’t had time to study them yet. I selected the only route I’d ran before that rounded the park along its outer edges and came to about five miles. I started my sports watch tracker and took off toward south to round the lake there, before turning north and running all the way to Flatbush Avenue that cut diagonally through the park.
It was calm, quiet and relatively cool between the trees, with puddles lingering after the rain. I was enjoying my jog, and for the first time since last evening when the nerves hit me, my mind calmed. I’d always loved running, all through school where I was part of the track team—not that I had managed even that to my father’s liking. I should’ve concentrated on flashier 100 meters, or 400 meters. Instead, I’d taken to 1500 and 5000 meters. I’d been good at them too; better with the longer distances, as it took me almost the first kilometer to get my body going. I had a suitable physique for it, slim with long legs, even if at five nine I wasn’t among the tallest long-distance runners.
I’d stopped competing after I started at the law school, but I hadn’t stopped running. And I actually enjoyed it more now that I could run for fun, although I had goals like qualifying for Boston marathon. Today though, I ran at a leisurely pace—for me—and paused for hydrating and to admire the park and the lake a few times.
The morning got gradually brighter, even if the sun was hiding behind the tall buildings and trees, and early birds were chirping. The move to New York started to seem like a good choice again. I had been unhappy in Boston already before my heart was broken. All my life, more or less.
My father’s expectations for me and my career that I always fell short of, his and my stepmother’s insistence that I hide I was gay—which I managed to bring up anyway, just by existing—and their demands that I fall in line and marry a woman for the prospect of the family.
When I turned thirty, the last demand had intensified. I had an older brother and sister, both of whom were married with children already, and two younger brothers from my father’s second marriage who by all indications were both straight and willing to do what Father demanded. They didn’t need me.
With no reason to stay in Boston anymore after the love of my life dumped me, I’d left my unhappy life and joined the other family pariah, Honora Thorne, Aunt Nora, in New York. For the first time since she’d moved here fifteen years ago and left me behind, I had an ally and a person who understood me, and I could breathe. I would likely face an uphill struggle and scorn at my new job. But whatever they threw at me, it couldn’t be worse than the atmosphere at home during family dinners. I’d survived that; I’d survive among cishet super-manly cops.
It had taken Oliver dumping me before I was finally able to change my life. I should probably thank him for it.
At the northern edge of the park, before the Grand Army Plaza that formed the northwest tip of the park, I paused to look around. I couldn’t quite see past the tall trees to the grand limestone edifice of Brooklyn Museum. I also couldn’t see the Turner Towers, a massive Art Deco apartment building from 1926 that stood across the Eastern Parkway from the museum.
Yet my eyes pulled toward it. Oliver lived there, and so it was like a magnet to me. But I wouldn’t go there. I wasn’t ready to face him yet. If ever.
I forced my legs to move and headed to the west side of the park and back south to my exit to the Prospect Park West. It was a relatively straight stretch, and I chose the outermost ring lined with shrubbery and old trees, making it seem like a thick forest. I was pleasurably tired and in a zone. The man running toward me, the first person I’d seen so far, seemed like a figment of my imagination.
He was tall and tightly muscled, the gorgeous form of his wide-shouldered body perfectly emphasized by his running shorts and compression T-shirt, biceps bulking as his hands pumped, his long legs closing the distance between us in an unhurried, economic pace. His black hair had an elegant cut and was long enough at the top that it had become mussed with sweat. Lean, handsome face with a long, straight nose, straight black brows and a firm mouth slightly ajar as he breathed through it. Sweat was running down his temple, and his jaw flexed as he strived to keep the rhythm.
Memory of that face with the same breathless, sweaty look in my bed, dark brown eyes intense and heated as he watched my reaction to his movements inside me flashed through my mind. I almost staggered with sudden arousal.
Then a realization hit that the man running toward me wasn’t a figment of my imagination. A heated flush electrified my body, making me breathless and nauseous. In panic, I jumped behind the shrubbery lining the path and rushed to the closest tree, ignoring the wet lawn that soaked my running shoes. I propped my hand against the tree and doubled over, heaving.
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to flee, and I wanted to return to the path and confront my ghost: Oliver Prescott, Assistant DA at the Homicide Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. My ex.
I did none of that. I waited for him to run past, and then straightened like an old man, all but moaning aloud. I took in my surroundings—and staggered back in horror.
A body of a young woman was leaning against a tree nearest to mine, unseeing eyes staring straight at me. She was seated on the lawn, her back against the tree and her legs straight in front of her, as if she’d only meant to rest for a moment. She wore a light pink cocktail dress with a fitted bodice, bare shoulders and wide skirt, and her blonde hair was in an updo. I stared at her, unable to fathom how I hadn’t seen her instantly. My eyes firmly on her, I retreated back to the path.
“What is it?” a voice of a man asked behind me.
I shrieked to my embarrassment, and swiveled around to see Oliver standing behind me, all five foot eleven of him too close to me, as he peered around the bush to detect what had spooked me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Then he recognized me and he pulled back, stunned. “Noah?”
I could only stare at him with my mouth hanging open. Of all the scenarios of our first meeting that had run through my head in endless loops ever since I moved to Brooklyn, none had featured me sweating like a pig over a dead body.
“Umm… Hi… What are you doing here?” I managed to ask. One of his straight black brows shot up.
“I live here. You don’t.”
“Actually,” I began, then caught myself. I lifted a hand to his face. “Never mind. There’s a dead body in the bushes. I need to call it in.”
I dug out my phone from the pocket of the compression shorts. Oliver took a step on the lawn, to peer behind the shrubbery himself, but I threw an arm in front of him, halting him. “Don’t contaminate the scene.”
“I’m an assistant DA at the homicide bureau. This isn’t my first crime scene.”
“I don’t care. It’s my crime scene. Stay on the path.”
I opened my contact list, and then hesitated. I could call 911 and have a patrol car here. But I didn’t want to do that. This was my body. I wanted to handle this. So I selected the number I’d been given by my new boss when I visited the precinct the previous day for paperwork and other necessary things like my badge. Which I hadn’t taken with me. I hadn’t thought I’d need it on a morning jog.
She answered at the first ring, so she hadn’t been sleeping. I took that as a good sign. “Captain Kelley? This is Detective Thorne. I’m sorry to call you at this hour.”
“That’s all right, I was already at my desk,” Captain Blair Kelley answered in her alto voice. She was a black woman in her early forties who had been made captain only last week, months early from the schedule, when the previous captain unexpectedly died. She’d made an impact on me during our short meeting with her no-nonsense attitude and her impeccable taste in suits.
“That’s a bit early…” It wasn’t even seven yet.
“I have a lot of catching up to do. How can I help you.”
I grimaced. “I found a dead body in Prospect Park.”
She was silent for a beat. “You do know you’re not supposed to go finding them yourself, right?”
I grinned, relieved. “Trust me, it wasn’t my intention. How do you want to handle it?”
“Stay there. I’ll call it in. And I’ll send your partner there too.”
I gave her the exact location as closely as I could, and finished the call. Then I couldn’t postpone dealing with Oliver anymore.
He was staring at me with his brows furrowed, the look so familiar it made my heart ache. “Since when have you been a homicide detective?”
I could’ve made something up, but if I indicated an earlier date, he might think I was here for him. Which I was, but he didn’t need to know. “Since this morning.”
He blinked. “Why?”
“The position opened earlier than anticipated. I was supposed to start next month.” I’d been looking forward to spending a month learning to find my way around here, only to get a call a day after I moved that I should start immediately.
“I meant, why are you a detective and why are you here of all places?”
I shrugged, pleased with how casual the gesture felt. “I wanted a career change, life change and a location change. Aunt Nora lives here, and there was an opening for a detective at the 70th. I applied and got the job.”
“Just like that?”
He wasn’t an assistant DA for nothing. I felt like I was being interrogated. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been questioned by him. Before he was my boyfriend, he was my superior at the DA’s office in Boston, and before that, my mentor at Harvard Law School.
“Obviously not. I have a decree in criminology and I’m qualified as a detective.”
“Since when?”
“You’ve been gone for two years,” I said, hiding the painful twist in my heart. “Many things have changed.”
“And why are you running in Prospect Park?”
He really needed to ask all the questions immediately. I gestured at the general direction of the 6th Street. “I live with my Aunt Nora.”
“She lives here? I don’t think I ever met her.”
He wouldn’t have, as she hadn’t been back home except for her parents’ funerals.
“She’s lived here ever since she went to Columbia to study criminal psychology.” The breach of Harvard tradition alone would’ve been enough to condemn her in the eyes of her father, my grandfather, but choosing something so wishy-washy as psychology was even worse.
He blinked. “Wait, Honora Thorne is your aunt?”
“That’s an incredible leap in logic, but yes. How do you know her?”
“We occasionally use her expertise in profiling criminals.”
“She is very good at that.”
He glanced around, looking suddenly at loss. “Do you want me to stay?”
Yes. “No, I can handle this. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
“Not really.” And even though I’d asked him not to, he walked around the shrubbery, grimacing as he got his running shoes wet too. He paused well before the body. “Definitely a dead body. Doesn’t look like a homicide though.”
“I never make that call until I have all the facts.”
He sneered. “Good for you.”
We returned to the path, just in time to see a patrol car slowly glide to us down the footpath. Showtime.
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