About
He saw Cory kneeling at the end of the alley, beside a dark lump of clothing. Cory wasn't moving. He skidded to a stop and knelt beside him. The alley was dark and stank of rotting food that was spilling out of two dumpsters. “What is it, Cory?” Cory looked over at him and shook his head; his blue eyes were filled with dread and pain. They were looking at a body of a young man. There was something familiar about it? He was wearing a sweatshirt. The hood had twisted and flopped forward and was partially covering the face but not the back of the head. Blood had flowed down his neck and pooled on the ground. His buzz-cut, brown hair was matted with congealed blood. He had been an athletic young man in his twenties. Cory still wasn't moving or saying anything. A blue baseball cap had fallen off and lay in some malodorous, oily gunk that was leaking from the nearer dumpster. He reached out. Cory grabbed his arm, but not before he pulled the hood away. Cory made a strangled sound and hugged him. “It's not him, Gabe.” The police officers were standing behind them. “Not who, Cory?” Cory let go of him. “Not Matt.” And then his synapses processed the similar body type and buzzed brown hair. And the protuberant ears. He closed his eyes and tried not to shudder. Cory reached out and felt for a pulse that wasn't there and never would be again. Before the discovery of the body, Special Agent Cory Poirier had promised that he, Gabriel Henri Bergeron, could help on a case, and wonder of wonders, his FBI overlords had agreed, but Cory kept saying things like “let's wait until I need your help with a really weird one. Gabe.” Which seemed to imply that he was suited to weirdness? He was not weird or even weird-adjacent. And Cory wouldn't share anything about his current case except that he and Bornheimer had it well in hand. This was obviously not true since they had been undercover for weeks and seemed frustrated and grouchy and generally no fun at all. Plus no bad guys had been arrested and no booty recovered. Not that he actually had time to help since a decree had gone out from Jennifer Garst Boltukaev, his boss and czarina of the accounting firm of Garst, Bauer & Hartmann that he needed to complete the credits for his CPA license renewal. And he wasn't to do anything else until he did. So he had labored into the night. Well it was 6 pm, but it was dark outside since it was October. But he was heading for his yellow Jeep, and if the parking garage was deserted, he was unafraid. What could happen?
Publication
(2021), 385 pages