“Well, this sucks,” Dee said, staring across the building site to where the medical examiner was attempting to determine time of death of a body found half buried in a pile of builder’s sand, which was itself half buried in snow and ice. The construction workers had discovered the deceased on their return to work after the holidays, and guess who’d been lucky enough to be lumbered with the case? Yeah. Happy New Year. “We always get the weird ones. What’s with that?”

Ryo shrugged. “We’re good at thinking outside the box.”

“The sandbox, in this case. That guy could’a been planted there a couple weeks ago, for all we know, and with the snow a few days ago…” He shook his head. “Any trace evidence there might’a been has gotta be long gone. We’re not even gonna be able to tell if this is the original crime scene, or a body dump.”

“More likely the latter.” Ryo wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck and pulled his hat lower over his ears. A sharp drop in temperature overnight had halted the thaw; right now, it was barely above freezing. He stamped his feet on the frozen ground in a vain attempt to get some feeling back into them.

“You’d think murderers could at least take the holidays off.”

“Not everybody celebrates, Dee. There’s a lot of loneliness around the festive season. For some people, Christmas is the worst time of the year.”

“It was for this guy. Y’know, just because someone’s havin’ a tough time don’t mean they gotta go out and murder somebody. That’s not the way to deal with loneliness or depression.”

“It’s too soon to speculate, Dee; we don’t know the motive behind the crime, we don’t have a cause of death, we don’t even have an ID on the victim. No wallet or anything.”

“Which means it could’a been a robbery that went wrong. Victim dropped dead, mugger tried to hide the body.”

“Could just as easily be a Mob hit. There’s no shortage of possibilities. He didn’t kill himself though.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he wouldn’t be buried if he had.” Dee shivered, hunching his shoulders against a gust of icy wind. “We should emigrate.”

“What? Why?” Ryo frowned at his lover, then added, “Where?”

“Dunno. Somewhere the winters are warm and sunny. The Caribbean, or Australia.”

“Australia still has winter, just in what we think of as the summer months.”

“Is that the whole country though, or just parts of it?”

“I’m not sure. Never really thought much about it,” Ryo admitted. “Hadn’t planned on ever going there, so it didn’t seem important.”

“Well, we could find someplace that don’t get snow, go there to live, be cops on a tropical island, somewhere with sandy beaches, blue oceans, wall-to-wall sunshine. Somewhere that don’t get gangland murders that we gotta investigate, and bodies buried on buildin’ sites in the middle of winter.”

“I thought you said this was probably a robbery gone wrong.”

“It still could be. You’re one suggested it might be a Mob hit.”

“We should just be thankful the murderer didn’t do a good job of burying this guy. If the weather hadn’t been so cold, they might’ve buried him under the foundations, and then he might never have been discovered.”

“And that would be a bad thing?” Dee’s eyebrows vanished beneath the edge of his beanie.

“Of course!” Ryo sounded shocked. “Whoever he was, he might have family! They deserve to know what happened to him, why he didn’t come home.”

Dee sighed. “Yeah, I guess.” He scuffed one boot against the frosty ground. “Just wish this case hadn’t landed on our desks. Then it’d be someone else’s problem and we wouldn’t be out here, freezin’ our asses off.”

“This is New York in winter, Dee. If we weren’t here getting half frozen, we’d likely be at some other crime scene doing the same thing.”

“Well yeah, but we wouldn’t necessarily be outside in the snow and ice and this frickin’ arctic wind. Could be indoors, dealin’ with a burglary, or a home invasion. So whaddaya think?”

“About what?” Dee had a bad habit of wandering off topic in the middle of a conversation. Or maybe it was just a case of Ryo losing track. It happened. Dee didn’t call him an airhead for nothing.

“Emigratin’, of course, leavin’ cold and snowy New York for a life fightin’ crime somewhere hot and sunny, where we could hit the beach at the end of the workday for a beer and some relaxation. Ooh, how ‘bout Hawaii? Cops in paradise, now THAT would be the life. Sun, sand, and sea, and a complete absence of snow. Yeah, I could get behind that.”

“You know if we moved somewhere else, we’d have to re-train completely, we wouldn’t just be able to start over elsewhere as detectives.”

Dee stared at his lover in surprise. “Seriously?”

“Yes. I was talking with JJ one day about what he’d had to go through when he moved back here from L.A., all the recertification rigmarole. Most states have their own laws and procedures, they’re not interchangeable. He went to the academy here so he already knew a lot of it, just needed to refresh his memory and get up to speed on any changes, but he couldn’t just step straight into being a New York detective.”

“Damn! I’d never thought about that.”

“It would be harder for us because we’d pretty much have to start over, mike take a couple of years before we could re-take the detectives exam, and even then, we’d have to wait for a spot to open up. And there’d be no guarantee we could work at the same precinct. We’d most likely be assigned other partners as well.”

“Suddenly the idea of emigratin’ doesn’t sound so temptin’. As much as I might like to live somewhere warmer, I don’t wanna go back in uniform, and I definitely don’t wanna be stuck with some random guy as my partner, tellin’ me how to do a job I’ve been doin’ for more than ten years! Guess that’s the end of my dreams of tropical livin’.” Dee glared balefully around the building site, with its frozen mud and patches of ice and snow, the pile of builder’s sand with the body sticking out of it, and gave a resigned sigh. “So much for sun, sea, and sand.”

“Maybe when we get home tonight, we could see what beach vacations are available, and affordable.”

“Doesn’t even haveta be Hawaii, or a tropical paradise. Hell, even a week in Florida would be better than nothin’. Just a chance to get away from the snow and ice for a bit.”

“We’d still have to come back to a New York winter,” Ryo warned.

“I know, but it would be so good to be somewhere we’re not freezin’ out nuts off. No work, no worries…”

“Except for sunburn, and sand in uncomfortable places.” Ryo grinned at his partner.

“I’ll take that over this any day of the week.”

“Come on, let’s go see what the M.E.’s got for us.”

“Yeah, sooner we solve this case, sooner we can maybe leave winter behind. But when we retire from the force, we’re emigratin’, okay?”

Ryo laughed. “We’ll see.”


The End