Page 13 of No Cap

We got out.

Arriving at the door, I nodded at the other two cops who had arrived before us.

I didn’t know their names, because I wasn’t in their department usually, but they looked familiar.

“What do we have?” I asked calmly.

Inside, though, I was a mess.

If there was one single call I hated going on, it was suicide calls.

I hated dealing with distraught people at the best of times, but dealing with family of the people who killed themselves was somehow even worse.

The confusion and the knowledge that something had happened to their loved ones, that they’d somehow missed? It was torture to see.

“Female, twenty-seven,” the cop closest to the door said. “Took a bottle of pills and locked herself in her room. Mom went in to check on her and found her dead.”

I nodded and walked in the door, finding the mom at the table with bloodshot eyes and a look of utter defeat on her face.

“Ma’am,” I said, “I’m detective Quincy Carter with DPD.”

The woman stood and offered me her hand. “Denita Jones. My daughter, Keda…”

Killed herself.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.

Though the signs for the suicide were there—suicide note, motive, etc.—I wouldn’t treat this like a suicide until I was one hundred percent sure.

Consequently, I listened to her tell me about Keda. She told me about the awful accident that she’d suffered from a year and a half ago. She told me about the struggles Keda had since then. Then she told me about the previous night when she had gone to a comedy show and I cursed the comedian who’d unwittingly played a part in the woman’s final straw.

People just didn’t know.

They had no clue what other people were going through.

Yet, they still acted like assholes, and didn’t care about anyone but themselves.

This comedian had just ruined someone’s life with just a few short, teasing words.

What a waste.

“Thank you,” I nodded at the woman. “Let me take a look around?”

It was over an hour later that I was once again heading toward my car, talking to my own superior officer.

“Definitely a suicide,” I said. “She left a note. She had the history. No signs of forced entry. Mother is for sure on board with her daughter doing this. There’s history.”

“Okay,” Bradley Cooper, my superior, said. “Thanks for running out there.”

After hanging up with him, I gestured at Hans. “Can you go get the cruiser and bring it closer?”

Earlier there’d been too many firefighter, ambulances, and other police vehicles to park close by.

“Sure thing,” Hans said as he walked away, looking a whole lot less chipper about being here.

Suicides were hard.

And he’d just witnessed firsthand why.