What's a Little Blood Between Friends?

TW: Death and really, really sad themes

“It smells good in here.”

“You say that every time,” the taller one spoke, resting her long slender arms on the table in front of her. “You ever gonna come up with something original?”

The smaller one flushed with embarrassment. “Well- I-” She tripped over her words for several long seconds before going silent for a moment. “It does smell good in here…”

The other laughed, smile lines carefully framing her face. “You’re right. It does smell good. Now,” she cracked her neck out of habit and looked around, “what are you gonna get?”

Her opposite shrugged. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Really?” The woman frowned. “I thought you said you had been to every one in the city.”

“Well I was wrong,” the redhead mumbled at her shoes, “I’ve been busy, Bo…”

Bo laughed lightly, placing a hand on her friend’s. “Relax. I’m not making fun of you, I know you’re busy.” She smiled mischievously. “Trust me, Ira. I know.”

Ira laughed, her spirits lifting. “I know you know. I did have a question, though.” Ira watched as someone else walked in and went straight to the counter. “You heard about that breakout, right? Were you…?”

Bo stared confusedly for a moment before a spark of realization ignited. She shook her head. “No, no, no, definitely not.” She looked around to see if anyone was listening before leaning in and lowering her voice. “You think I’d break some ugly motherfucker like that out? Think again. Besides,” she sat up straight, faking a smug look, “I’m a married woman.”

“Only by law,” Ira spoke into her drink, smirking. “He’s probably moved onto someone else already.”

Bo scoffed. “Please. That man was addicted to me. Like a drug. Need I remind you, I left him.” A subtle silence fell over the pair as the quiet bustle around them grew with businessmen coming in for their morning fix. Both women knew why she was no longer with her “only-by-law” husband. And neither of them wanted to think about it.

Ira cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Anyway.”

“Anyway,” Bo repeated quietly.

“Should we…?”

“Should we what?”

“Get something.”

“Oh.” Bo turned to look at the counter, thinking. “If you want to, I guess.” They sat in silence again, neither of them moving. What was supposed to be a lively meetup before Ira started her shift turned out to be a reverent silence, thinking about what was. Ira sighed.

“It’s cold in here.”

“You say that everytime.” Bo smiled. “Bring a jacket.”

Ira sat, not responding. When she started talking again, she changed the subject. “Three bodies.”

“Hm?”

Ira looked at her friend. “I have to record three new bodies today.”

Bo grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Why?”

Bo tilted her head. “Why what?”

“Why do you do it?” Ira sniffed, looking out the window. “You clearly don’t like it. And you only started doing it because Victor started doing it.”

“That’s not true.” Her brow furrowed, glaring at Ira. “That’s not true and you know it. I do this because I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes you do.” Ira’s expression was completely blank. “Everyone has a choice. Change career paths. Work in a restaurant, open a flower shop.” Ira looked at her friend. “The problem isn’t the number of bodies. The problem is they’re done by your hand.”

Bo avoided the woman’s stare, her face growing pale. “You know I can’t do that-”

“Leave town.”

“What?!” Eyes wide, Bo looked at her. “Absolutely not!”

Ira blinked then began to smile. “You still love him.”

“No.”

“Maybe not romantically, but you still love him.”

“Stop.”

“You care about him-”

“Stop it!”

“You don’t want to leave him behind-”

“Shut up!!”

Everything went silent and every eye was on Bo. She took a deep breath, choking back tears. She stood up and slapped a twenty dollar bill on the table. “Get whatever you want. Sorry for dragging you out here.” And with a twinkle of a bell, she was gone, walking down the street with long, angry strides. Ira sighed as she watched after her friend.

“Oh, Bernadine…” Ira picked up the twenty and pocketed it, standing to leave as well. “Those streets are going to eat her alive.”

“I don’t understand.” Ira stared at the wreckage. “I was just here this morning… Everything seemed fine.”

The man beside her patted her on the shoulder. “That’s how this works.”

“No, I mean..” Ira gazed over to where she and Bo had sat just hours before. She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The man shrugged, stepping further into the crime scene. “What doesn’t make sense is why you’re surprised.” He turned to Ira, hands in his pockets. “Shit like this happens every week. I thought someone like you would be used to it by now.”

“Someone like me?”

“You work in forensics. You deal with crime scenes all the time.”

“I work with dead bodies,” Ira corrected, “CSI deals with crime scenes.”

“Then why are you here?”

Ira gestured around them, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. “The dead bodies. Everywhere. The place was robbed, Harvey. There are going to be dead people.” She moved to start examining the damage, seeing exactly who died and how.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Harvey began, falling into step with Ira, “is why someone would rob a place like this. I mean, I understand a bank. But this?”

“You should take that up with Psych. But between us,” Ira knelt down to examine a poor, unsuspecting artist now turned into swiss cheese, “I think it was personal. You grew up here, right? You know what things are like.”

“Sure, but still. Who had grievances with poor old…” Harvey paused, “Whatever the owner’s name was. All they wanted to do was earn a little money and make some good-”

“Wait,” Ira interrupted, holding a hand up to him. She leaned in closer, staring at the bullet wounds. Ballistics wasn’t her expertise, but she’d dealt with enough tissue to know that something wasn’t right.

The bullets were removed.

This wasn’t Bo’s doing, it couldn’t have been. She wouldn’t have wasted time at the scene to remove each bullet, one by one. Who would? Unless- She poked the body lightly with her finger and was met with an odd amount of resistance. Flesh wasn’t this hard. She examined the face and turned their head side to side. The skin on their neck twisted strangely and irregularly. When she let go, the head practically bounced back into place. This wasn’t a dead body.

Ira stood, attempting to ease her shaking, and turned to the confused detective now staring at her like she had grown a third eye. “It’s fake. Made of rubber.”

Harvey looked down at the body, considering it, before kicking it with his foot. “Yeah, that’s rubber alright.”

“Harvey!”

“What?”

“You can’t just-” Ira grumbled, stepping over the body to go check the others. “You can’t do that. This is a crime scene. Now your trace is on the body and could fuck with DNA’s results.”

“It’s not a real body-”

“Yes, but obviously whoever did this touched the body- mannequin- whatever!” Ira threw her hands up in irritation. “Just don’t touch anything,” she mumbled as she left the scene to get some air.

Standing outside on the bitterly cold street (despite it being August), Ira found herself running her and Bo’s conversation through her head. Had she been too harsh? Too… forward? Ira couldn’t lose a friend like Bo.

Maybe I should apologize, she thought. But why? Everything she said was true. In some capacity, Bo did still love her husband. Besides, the two worked so well together. He did the planning and she did the executing (of both the plan and other people). The only complication was Ira working side-by-side with law enforcement. Too many times Ira had to make sure fingers were pointed elsewhere and that Bo kept her reputation as the city’s best assassin. Assassin was a strong word. Ira preferred “garbage man”, because everytime two goons in a movie are about to kill the protagonist, they say something like “Let’s take out the trash”. Silly things like that made Ira laugh. Bo, however, didn’t like the term garbage man. In fact, she didn’t like talking about it at all.

“Lilte?” Ira turned, snapping out of her daze. Harvey waved her over. “We found something you might wanna see.”

Bo stared out at the horizon, a lit cigarette dangling from her fingers as she leaned over the balcony. Man, this town was a shithole.

She was currently mulling over everything Ira had said to her before Bo stormed out. Did she really still love him? No, that’s impossible. He-who-shall-not-be-named-or-mentioned-ever-in-the-history-of-forever was a criminal. Filthy, lying, cheating, terrible-

But wasn’t Bo the same way?

That’s ridiculous, she thought. The people she killed did bad things. He just killed because he could. And he didn’t even do it himself, the coward! He made everyone else do his dirty work while kissing the ground that Bo walked on.

Yet, people still thought that she was upset.

It was thoughts like these that kept Bo from acknowledging the truth. Somewhere, deep in her heart, she knew she cared for her ex-husband. She wanted to believe so badly that this wasn’t him. He wasn’t a bad person. But she knew that was a lie and refused to admit it. Bo snuffed out her cigarette on the railing of the balcony and turned to go back inside. She had work to do, after all.

After leaving her criminal husband, Bo decided to become a PI. And in this city, there was plenty of business. Women wanting to know if their husbands were cheating, crooked politicians wanting the inside information of their rivals, this one guy that just wanted to know if his neighbor hated him. Real sweet guy, Bo recalled. Just as she got settled, Bo received a call. From Ira? Speak of the devil.

“Bo.” Ira sounded panicked and out of breath.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?”

“I need your help. Meet me on the docks.”

Ira sat in her car, nervously fidgeting with the zipper of her jacket. The distance between the docks and Bo’s office was 20 minutes. Ira called at 2:50. It was now 3:13. She was 3 minutes late. Maybe she wasn’t going to show up?

That’s ridiculous, of course she’ll show up!

What if she knows what’s going to happen-

Ira jumped when the passenger’s side door opened. Bo leaned in.

“Anyone sitting here?” With a nervous laugh, Ira shook her head. Bo climbed in and shut the door, sighing heavily. It’d been a long day for the both of ‘em. “So, what’s up? You said you needed my help?”

Ira swallowed, her throat now incredibly dry. When she spoke, it was shaky and rough. “Do you… remember when we first met?”

“At the station?” Ira nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Then,” Ira paused to clear her throat. “Do you remember the first thing your husband said to me?”

“What, that you were small? I don’t remember that much detail, Ira, I’m sor-”

“‘Anyone touch her and I’ll skin you alive.’ That’s what he said.” Ira sniffled, shaking. Luckily, it was cold, which perfectly disguised her emotion. “And then he looked at me… and it was like he knew. Like he knew…”

Bo stared at her friend. “Knew what?”

Ira shook her head, looking down to head the tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Bo…”

“For what?”

Ira reached into her jacket. “I have to…”

Bo didn’t remember the seagulls being this loud. Nor did she remember how she got here. She moved her hand. Something felt sticky. She looked down and it all came flooding back to her. Sitting in the car, hearing the click of Ira turning the safety off. Then she remembered how Ira mumbled her apologies as she dragged Bo out toward the sea, dumping her where she wouldn’t be found. She couldn’t quite make out what Ira said, but caught bits and pieces. Something about mannequins and scary notes. What did the note say?

She felt her breathing grow shallow and looked out at the setting sun. So, this was it, huh? The great Bernadine Sanders dies because her best friend was threatened. Was it a threat? No.

No, it was something written by someone Bo knew.

As waves crashed against rocks, water sprayed Bo’s weakening body. Who hated Bo? Wanted her dead? Then it hit her like the bullet in her side.

She wrote the note. That was her handwriting, Ira had said. So long ago, when she did anything her husband asked. He had her write it in case things went wrong. She knew too much. And he didn’t want anything getting out. But why Ira?

Because Ira was the only one she trusted.

Because Ira knew she was the only one who would give her a dignified death.

Bo drew her final breath of salty sea air as four last words graced her lips.

“Damn that coffee shop.”