Sinful Fantasy (A Mayet Justice Book Book 9), page 1
SINFUL FANTASY
A MAYET JUSTICE BOOK
EMILIA FINN
Copyright © 2023 Emilia Finn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below:
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ISBN: (Paperback)
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Front cover photography by: Eric McKinney
Front cover models: Jon S and Nadica S
Cover design: Amy Queue - Q Design
Editing: Bird’s Eye Editing
First printing edition 2023.
Beelieve Publishing, Pty Ltd
PO Box 407,
Woy Woy, NSW, 2256
Australia
www.emiliafinn.com
EMILIA FINN, the ROLLERS logo, the CHECKMATE SECURITY logo, STACKED DECK logo, and INAMORATA are all trade marks of Beelieve Publishing, Pty Ltd
CONTENTS
Also by Emilia Finn
Looking To Connect?
Author’s Note
Minka
Archer
Minka
Archer
Minka
Archer
Minka
Archer
Archer
Fletch
Minka
Archer
Minka
Archer
Archer
Minka
Also by EMILIA FINN
ALSO BY EMILIA FINN
(in reading order)
The Rollin On Series
Finding Home
Finding Victory
Finding Forever
Finding Peace
Finding Redemption
Finding Hope
The Survivor Series
Because of You
Surviving You
Without You
Rewriting You
Always You
Take A Chance On Me
The Checkmate Series
Pawns In The Bishop’s Game
Till The Sun Dies
Castling The Rook
Playing For Keeps
Rise Of The King
Sacrifice The Knight
Winner Takes All
Checkmate
Stacked Deck - Rollin On Next Gen
Wildcard
Reshuffle
Game of Hearts
Full House
No Limits
Bluff
Seven Card Stud
Crazy Eights
Eleusis
Dynamite
Busted
Gilded Knights (Rosa Brothers)
Redeeming The Rose
Chasing Fire
Animal Instincts
Pure Chemistry
Battle Scars
Safe Haven
Inamorata
The Fiera Princess
The Fiera Ruins
The Fiera Reign
Mayet Justice
Sinful Justice
Sinful Deed
Sinful Truth
Sinful Desire
Sinful Deceit
Sinful Chaos
Sinful Promise
Sinful Surrender
Sinful Fantasy
Sinful Memory
Sinful Obsession
Lost Boys
MISTAKE
REGRET
Crash & Burn
JUMP
JINXED
Rollin On Novellas
(Do not read before finishing the Rollin On Series)
Begin Again – A Short Story
Written in the Stars – A Short Story
Full Circle – A Short Story
Worth Fighting For – A Bobby & Kit Novella
LOOKING TO CONNECT?
Website
Newsletter
The Crew
Did you know you can get a FREE book? Go to emiliafinn.com/signup to get your free copy sent direct to your inbox.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Sinful Fantasy is intended for an 18+ audience and contains graphic scenes that may be disturbing to some readers.
MINKA
“It’s Saturday, May twenty-first, two thousand and twenty-two. I’m Chief Medical Examiner, Minka Mayet, reporting as lead M.E.” Coming to a stop beneath the Copeland City Bay bridge, I slip a pair of gloves over my hands, more careful with the second one when my still-healing shoulder smarts and a bolt of pain shoots through my veins.
It’s not that bad, really. Just a little pinch. A moment of unease—which is legions better than how I felt last month, after its entire reconstruction.
“Doctor Aubree Emeri is assisting,” I continue. “Reporting from the George Stanley, Copeland City.”
I make my introductions for the record and take care not to interrupt the crime scene. My shoes are wrapped in protective booties, and when we’re done here, they’ll go to the lab for analysis along with everything else I collect today.
“Doctor Emeri.” I drop my recorder in the pocket of my thin coat, perfect for a windy May day, and look to my second in charge. My best friend. The second most important person in my life.
The first, of course, being my husband. Detective Archer Malone.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“Torture.” Aubree stands at barely five and a half feet tall, with blonde hair, but purple and pink streaks throughout for extra emphasis on her bubbly personality. She studies our vic with sharp blue eyes and a line digging between her brows. “I see missing digits, Chief.”
Leaning closer, she hums under her breath and takes the lead, just like I hoped she would. “Male, Caucasian. Forty to fifty years old. Somewhat overweight, though not morbidly. Approximately two hundred and thirty pounds. Established facial hair. Beard. But well-kept and short.”
She inches closer to the body strapped to an ornate dining chair, his wrists and ankles bound. His head, drooping lifelessly to the side. Worse, his body is bloated, his clothes, soaked and dripping after his tussle with the Copeland River.
He was dumped, chair and all. But unluckily for his killers, a witness saw the drop and called in the police. Which is how Archer and his partner, Charlie Fletcher, became lead detectives in a brand-new homicide case.
“He’s already bloated,” Aubree parrots my thoughts. “I’ll test for time of death in a moment, but my guess is he’d been held for a few days already. Undergone prolonged torture. It’s possible he died prior to today, perhaps yesterday, but was dumped only recently.”
At the sound of shoes crunching along gravel and pebbled rocks, I glance to my right and catch Archer’s approach. His six feet, three inches of muscle and determination to solve a case. Green eyes that see all—including the grimace on my lips when my shoulder aches—and guns strapped to his body. One on his thigh. Another on his hip.
“You need a minute, Doctor Mayet?” Arch’s soft tone is an attempt, I assume, to not have his question register on the recording I’ll have stored away for eternity. But his enquiry has nothing to do with the corpse eight feet in front of me, and everything to do with the arm I hold in a sling.
Doctor’s orders.
“We can take a break,” he mumbles. “Sit down.”
“I’m completely fine, Detective.” I pat his hand ever so discreetly, as our crime scene populates with patrol cars and looky-loos. Even the media, who will do just about anything to break a story first. “Aubree’s got this. I’m only supervising.”
“And yet,” he rumbles, while in front of us, Aubree slices into our victim’s abdomen and inserts a thermometer. “You’re on record as lead. Don’t make me put you down, Chief.”
An amused smile rolls across my lips as I step away and leave him to stew in his worry.
It’s what he does, after all. He long ago set aside concern for himself, and instead, obsesses on my mortality.
It’s both sweet and tiring. Especially these last few weeks since surgery, when I want nothing more than for things to go back to normal.
“I suggest you canvass the area.” I pass by Fletch, and grin when he looks down at me and winks. “Focus more on finding our bad guy, and less on stressing about me.”
“It’s what he does, Delicious.”
I cringe at the nickname Fletch long ago assigned to me. My reaction is not because of the name specifically, but because it’s now on record for anyone who might need to look into this case.
“Doctor Emeri.” Shaking my head, I continue closer to our vic, but I step carefully and make sure I don’t contaminate her scene. “What do you know that I don’t?”
She pulls the thermometer from our John Doe’s body when it beeps, then she checks the screen and calculates in her head that way we all learned how to do way back in medical school. “I know time of death is tricky to gauge,” she teases. “I know that the water changed things for us. However…” she sets the thermometer back in her bag and takes out a pen and paper instead. Writing numbers down in a fast, sloping scrawl I’m forced to tilt my head to decipher, she does a little bit of old school math, wanting nothing more than to impress me on the job. “He was in the water for approximately five minutes, according to our witness. So setting the water temp aside for a moment, and paying attention to rigor—he’s cold, but no longer stiff—I estimate time of death at approximately thirty-six hours ago.”
“Thirty-six?” Archer moves closer and stops on my crime scene. His shoes, un-bootied. His arm, touching my good shoulder because of his proximity. “They kept him for a day before dumping him?”
“Looks that way, Detective.”
Aubree chews on the inside of her lip and continues her observations, crouching to get a look at the vic’s lower section. She peels his pants back an inch and peeks inside.
“Excuse you, Doctor Emeri!” Fletcher’s eyes pop wide in stunned shock. “You don’t think the dude deserves a little modesty?”
Humored, she releases the waistband of the man’s pants and puts it back in place. “I think he wants us to solve his murder, Detective. As do you. Sometimes, that means we must look at his private regions. Hypostasis,” she glances across at me. “Blood is pooling in his buttocks and…” She pulls up the legs of his pants to reveal not only bloodied and torn ankles, but the same pooling there.
Gravity did her thing.
“Did he die in this chair, Doctor?”
“Yes, he did.” She pushes up with a gentle grunt and wipes her hands on her pants—though she hasn’t picked up any grime to clear away. “He was tortured in this chair. Left to die in this chair. And approximately thirty-six hours after that death, he was scheduled for a trip to the bottom of the river… in this chair.”
“It’s a nice chair, too.” Fletch leans around my colleague and looks closer at the ornate woodwork, with scrolling etchings and delicate patterns. The seat is cushioned—small luxury for a dying man, I suppose—and the legs are clawfoot-esque. “This can’t be a common design.”
“We’ll chase it up.” Archer makes a note in his little book.
For all the technology available to us these days, for all the smart devices and pocket personal assistants, it always makes me smile to see my team come back to pen and paper.
“Four fingers have been removed,” Aubree reports. “Three on his left hand, including the pinkie, ring finger, and pointer. One on his right: ring.”
Archer’s jaw grits with sympathy. “Ouch.”
“Three missing teeth.” Aubree glimpses inside the victim’s mouth and counts the damage. “He was missing two already, removed professionally and long ago healed. But three are fresh, and if I had to guess, removed with a common garage tool. His tongue was sliced, too.”
“Off?” Curious, I come up on the vic’s other side and look inside his open mouth.
“Nuh-uh.” She flashes a penlight inside to study the bloodied, butchered mess. “In half. Forked. Kinda like how some of the hipsters do these days. He could probably still talk.”
“Would’ve stung, though.” Fletch rolls his own tongue inside his mouth as though to make sure it’s still there and safe. “ID?”
“None so far.” Aubree reaches between the man’s backside and his padded seat, searching for a back pocket, but shakes her head quickly. “No wallet. No jewelry. No visible tattoos.”
While she runs through her checklist, I crouch on the vic’s left and lift his remaining fingers to study the underside.
“No prints,” I murmur, frowning.
While the rest of my colleagues fall silent and watch me, I lean closer and use my bad arm to lift a penlight.
The movement makes my stomach roll. Pain, slicing through my blood. But I clamp it down and do the job.
“It’s interesting, don’t you think?” I release the man’s hand so it rests back on the arm of the chair, then I push up to stand and offer a small smile to Archer when he sets his palm beneath my good arm and helps me up.
“A man has been tortured,” I tell them all, finding balance and dragging my eyes away from my husband. While we’re working, he’s a cop and I’m an M.E. That’s our role. “Tongue. And fingers,” I summarize.
“Uh… and eyes,” Aubree adds, lifting an eyelid and revealing the empty, mutilated socket beneath. She draws a deep breath and fills her cheeks with the excess. “Took them both.”
“Eyes,” I repeat with a shake of my head and a slash of nerves beating through my stomach. “Lacerations all over. He was beaten before he was sliced up, and sliced up before he was amputated.”
“Those are solid steps up,” Fletch rumbles. “A beating. Then little cuts. Then worse.”
“Then a bath in the river,” Aubree finishes.
“So, why?” I ask. “What did his captors want to know? Why didn’t he give up the info after the first beating? And why would they dump him in the river, where there were witnesses, when they could have been far more discreet and kept the crime less obvious?”
“Those are good questions.” Archer folds his arms and studies our victim. “We need to know who he is. Hopefully, we can fill in the rest from there.”
“Then I guess we know what you’re doing for the rest of today.” I flash a playful grin when he looks my way. “Doctor Emeri and I will transport the body back to the George Stanley for an official autopsy. We’ll find COD and a more exact time of death. We’ll turn his insides out and find everything there is to know.” I look to Aubree, but already, she has her gloves off and her phone in her hand.
Transport.
She knows this job just as well as I do. And she knows me, perhaps even better.
“He’s not a regular guy.” I bring my gaze back to the detective duo. “Torture is usually the MO of organized crime bosses, not your standard murderer. Detective Malone?” I step away from the body while Aubree calls in transport, then I grab the recorder from my pocket and switch it off. “Can I speak with you before we part ways?”
“Of course.”
He has his own recorder. His own process for documenting a crime scene. So he hands the small device to Fletch, slips his notebook into his back pocket, and his pen in his breast pocket. Then, setting his hands on his hips, he falls into step beside me.
But he doesn’t touch. He doesn’t give anything away, since, fifty feet ahead of us, every news station in the city films our every step.
“You’re in pain, Doctor Mayet. You need to set this one down, go home, and catch some rest.”
“I need to be out of the apartment before I go insane,” I respond, my lips hardly moving, lest a lip reader is watching the news right now.
Coming to a stop about twenty feet from Aubree and Fletch, I turn on my heels and look up into my husband’s perfect emerald stare. “His eyes are missing, Detective.”
“I know.” His brows pull in tight in concentration. “I saw.”
“No,” I grit out. “I mean, his eyes are missing, Detective Malone. This was a professional hit, from entities well-practiced in their art. The killer isn’t afraid of leaving behind a clue… a tell, if you will. And we’re both painfully aware that the Malones of New York are both organized, and collectors of eyes.”
“Wasn’t them.” He shakes his head instantly, without even a moment of hesitation. “It’s not their style.”
“Are you sure? Because the Malones have ties to missing fingers, too. There’s a connection there, Archer. And Felix isn’t here for me to supervise right now.”
“Felix is in Cuba,” he chuckles, like talk of his murderous, mafioso brother is something to laugh about. “And like I said, it’s not his style. Malones are known to take eyes,” he concedes, lowering his voice. “But none of the rest fits. The tooth extraction is wrong, the chair is wrong, the fingers don’t fit, and no Malone would toss a body off a bridge in broad daylight like a chump. They especially wouldn’t do it in Copeland, where they know you and I might land the case.”
