Honestly, I was only half-interested in the dead body. I could see the basic shape of the crime from twenty paces away — looked like a robbery gone sour, definitely something more complicated than that — but I was much more interested in the detective standing near the body. It’d been a long time since I’d seen anyone like him, too damnably long. He had a shine to him, a glow that came from the center of him, white and pure, crackling on the edges. I’d seen a lot of people in my time, but not enough like him — and definitely not enough cops.

I got close enough to the scene of the crime to see him more than just his light, focusing my eyes past the layers of the world I was so bloody blessed to see to get a look at his regular face, and my, oh my, he was a special one. Having an innate core of goodness, oh, that was lovely, of course, but that face? I’d have to ask Chief Martinez if there’d been a change in hiring quotas, some city-wide push to get more incredibly handsome fucks on the force. A good plan, definitely — I was already feeling a heightened enthusiasm for murder-solving.