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​I have read or listened to an excessive amount of LGBTQ+ books. This one is by far one of my favorites. The author brings a depth to the characters that is atypical of the genre. This is not just a coming of age story but a mixture of true crime and character growth. 10/10 would highly recommend.

Spicer's murder mystery brings to the forefront an intricate web of characters, a suspenseful mystery, and a tangible view of an atypical family dynamic. Although this novel provides a fresh perspective on breakthrough lesbian fiction, it is notably engaging for all readers.

Zoe killed Vincent Gibson so many times, but not once did she do it correctly. Sighing at the window where the sun had long set, she admonished herself for having lost track of time. The downtown lights of Phoenix cast a yellowish glow on the city below the seventh-floor prosecutor’s office.

With a deep breath, Zoe closed her eyes and tried to kill the prison guard correctly.

She pictures Gibson with his back to her. 

He stands motionless near a small table, waiting for her to hit play on the scene in her mind. Her stomach twists.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.

She scans the kitchen, cataloging the pans piled up in the sink and surrounding counter. A fly crawls around the edge of one filled with molding water. Her tongue scrapes against her teeth at the idea of the stench. 

Mail is thrown over the table with the envelopes sliced along the tops. The knife lay on the table. She steps from the back door to the knife and picks it up. Only four inches, but it would get the job done. 

Zoe exhales slowly, and Vincent Gibson comes to life. He doesn’t know she’s there, and the laminate floor doesn’t make a sound as she closes the distance between them.

She raises her arm, bringing it down on the top of his shoulder.  

“Shit!” she said.

The blade hit the wrong place on his back. 

She’d imagined it wrong, again. She’d forgotten to consider she was bigger than the girl that had stabbed Gibson. 

The kitchen vanished as Zoe’s eyes popped open. She held her breath, adjusting to reality. The tension faded as she relaxed into the leather office chair, and her toes rubbed against the familiar rough carpet below her desk. She scanned the wall of legal texts across the room until she separated herself from the murderous teenager she’d been impersonating. 

Zoe knew she had to go back to the kitchen for what felt like the one thousandth time. She knew if she tried to go home now, Gibson would show up in her dreams covered in blood. Just like he had every night since she’d been assigned this case. But it didn’t matter how many times it took; Zoe wouldn’t be able to sleep until she got it right.

She closed her eyes again.

The off-white walls and yellow floor are waiting for her. She stands by the back door silently with the knife already in her hand when Vincent Gibson appears. She imagines him taller, then wider. She focuses on getting him right this time— cropped hair balding from the guard’s cap, sweaty white shirt still tucked into his work issued khakis, and a cell phone in his hand. 

She raises her arm again, bringing it down through his shoulder. First through the left trapezius, then slices the levator scapulae. The blade knicks the C6 vertebrae, and he falls into the table. Zoe hears Gibson's patellas crack, fracturing under his weight. He cries out.

Zoe retreats a step towards the grotesque sink to continue this time as a spectator, instead of the murderer. The oily haired teenager, Olivia Moore pulls the blade from Gibson’s flesh. His white shirt turns red with blood flowing from the first strike as she delivers another blow. This time into the top of his shoulder, stopping at the clavicle. Four inches isn’t enough, or the teenager doesn’t have the force to do that much damage here. 

His phone falls to the floor. He can’t call for help. 

Moore thrusts the knife into his back for the third time.

All strikes to the left side.

Gibson tries to push himself up from the table, but the fractured patella stops him from being able to get up.

Zoe pauses the characters in her head. She moves to the other side of the room, where both the victim and the murder face her. Moore’s cold green eyes glare in fury; her teeth bare like a feral cat. Gibson’s scared face looks out the kitchen window.
Comfortable with all the details, Zoe breathes them back to life. Moore pulls the knife out of Gibson’s back. Gibson again pushes at the table with the one good hand, trying to get up from the floor. Moore steps around him. 

As soon as she’s in front of him, Gibson goes for the knife. His body is his only advantage, and without the ability to just get up, he launches his body into the girl. The imaginary bodies travel through Zoe, leaving a blood trail that isn’t in any of the crime scene photos.  

Zoe opened her eyes again. Her hands come up, pulling at the roots of her hair. She pulled until the real pain stifled the boiling in her veins.

The white board across from her only reminded her how long she’d been sitting there. She’d arranged the photos of the kitchen to show the entire room earlier, when the sun had been up, and the other Phoenix prosecutors were still working in their offices. With the halls eerily quiet, the people in the photos haunted her office.

She let out a huff of breath that turned into a yawn. 

“Just get it right so you can go to bed,” she told herself.  

Closing her eyes, she started again. 

Three strikes before Moore comes around to the front of him. He pleads with her to stop, so she kicks him back. 
“Still doesn’t make sense.” Zoe hit her hand to the desk. “Even with one arm, he would have had the ability to block her kick. Stop making them do the same thing.” 

But she couldn’t think of another way to explain the final blow.

Zoe’s head rolled against the back of the chair, followed by another yawn. This time her whole body expelled the minimal energy she had left.

Her eyes drooped. She tried to keep them open, but her chin fell with her eyelids. That’s all it took for Gibson to stand in front of her, the crotch and leg of his khakis red with the blood from the final blow Zoe can’t explain. 

The disgusting kitchen so real immediately dissipates until only Olivia Moore stands in the back doorway of Gibson’s kitchen, looking down at what she’d done. Her mouth moves, telling Zoe what she needs to know, but no sounds come out.

“I can’t hear you,” Zoe tells the girl.

Olivia’s mouth closes as she looks once more at the man covered in blood. She turns from them both. Her fingers leaving a trail of blood across the back door as she turns and walks away. 

Zoe sat up. The fifteen-year-old with brown hair plastered to the sides of her face and vacant eyes stared at her from the mug shot on Zoe’s desk. The girl wasn’t sad, angry, or even smiling for what she had done. She couldn’t find anything in the girl’s face that felt familiar. She wondered where Moore’s mother was. If the girl had any brothers or sisters. Someone that noticed she was gone. 

Zoe tried to imagine the shadowed path of the girl’s life before she picked up the knife. She searched the downtown alley crevices and along the dumpsters for the answer to the questions. So many questions.

How did the child end up in the dilapidated apartment? How many drugs did the girl have to take before she forgot killing a person was wrong? Or when did Moore stop caring about anything at all?

“Nothing justifies murdering another person,” Zoe reminded herself. 

She closed her eyes once more. 

The kitchen is exactly the way it had been every time before.  Gibson leans against the table with three wounds on his back. Moore comes to the front with the knife because she’s not afraid of him. She kicks him as he tries to get up. He’s down, but Moore doesn’t leave. She kneels over him, twisting the blade into his groin. 

“You’re still here,” the very real voice in the very real office said.  

Zoe jumped in her chair. Her eyes shot to Nia Williams standing in the doorway with jacket and purse in hand. 

Zoe’s feet immediately slid back into the Jimmy Choo heels under her desk. They pinched her toes, but she couldn’t handle the idea of Nia Williams considering her unprofessional. She’d known the woman practically her whole life, but working under her sharp eye and quick tongue left Zoe constantly worried she’d lose the woman’s favor.

“Ms. William. I was... walking through the specifics. Jury selection is in two weeks.” 

Nia’s authority pulled Zoe to her feet. She fumbled with the files, sliding Olivia’s picture within one.  Zoe picked up the files and returned them to the white box on the table in front of the window. 

Nia walked to the white board and analyzed the crime scene photos. “I heard Judge Miller released the girl to Greyson Academy.”

Zoe rolled her eyes in annoyance at the mention of Judge Miller. “He felt she didn’t pose a threat there. Tiny blonde woman named Dilynn showed up to plead the girl’s case. Miller took one look at her and signed the papers to release her.”

“That was Dilynn Greyson.”  Nia turned to Zoe, shaking her head. “Myopic Miller is an old fool. He only has his seat thanks to Dilynn Greyson’s money, and that school for delinquents is just her newest project to pad their family’s bank account. That family has their hands in everything.”

Zoe hadn’t considered Dilynn Greyson as a threat to her case. The tiny blonde in her bulky cardigan and off-brand ballet slippers looked like a social worker, not someone with the type of money capable of buying cases. 

“I was having dinner with the mayor when they arrested the girl,” Nia explained. “It surprised me Greyson intervened since Moore broke her daughter’s nose trying to resist arrest.”

Zoe held up a hand. “Wait, her daughter is a cop? The woman looked barely older than me.”

“Yes. The girl was adopted when Greyson was in her twenties. I think there’s maybe ten years between the two. Come to think of it, she has three. All adopted as teenagers. Care to guess who was the judge for each of those adoptions?”

Zoe narrowed her eyes at the yellow pad of witnesses on her desk. “Miller.” 

She hadn’t thought about the arresting officer, and it irked her that she’d failed to connect Officer Everleigh Greyson with the woman that came to court to speak on Moore’s behalf. 

Nia dismissively waved her hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter honestly. This is not juvenile court, so Miller’s opinion holds minimal influence on the jury.” 

“Landon Woods has convinced Moore to plead not guilty due to self-defense.”

“Did he put Greyson’s daughter on the witness list?” Nia asked.

Zoe flipped to the defense’s witness list. She ran her finger down the list until it landed on Everleigh Greyson. “He did.”

“Figures.”

“Why?”

“On Monday, I will send you over the file I’ve kept on the Greysons since the woman started collecting violent offenders. Just know when I say that family has their hands in everything, I am not joking. Woods is Greyson’s personal attorney, and…” Nia lauded dramatically. “Her daughter’s high school sweetheart. Then, there’s another daughter that is a state’s prosecutor for family court, and the third works with the Department of Child Services.”

Zoe rubbed her hand over her eyes. She was too tired to process all the ways this whole thing had to breach some form of ethical code. It didn’t stop her mind from trying though. 

“So, what’s the motive?” Nia asked, pulling Zoe back to the bigger problem in her hands. 

Nia set her purse and jacket down before lowering herself into a leather armchair. Zoe recognized this as an opportunity to work with the woman she’d hoped to replace one day. The only problem was Zoe’s inability to effectively participate in these sorts of situations. 

Just act human, she told herself. But she wasn’t even sure what she meant. 

Zoe gripped the edge of the table and supported her weight to alleviate some of the pressure on her feet. She tried to appear relaxed, but her heart drumming in her ears made it difficult to come up with anything that seemed halfway intelligent. 
She could feel Nia studying her until Zoe confessed, “I can’t figure it out, and without any statement from Moore, I am just playing it over and over again in my head trying to find a reason this happened.”

“What do you know?” 

“Police found evidence she had been staying in the apartment over Gibson’s garage. Last name she gave hasn’t turned up any hits. No police reports about her as a runaway. Couldn’t get her to say what school she went to. It’s like this girl dropped to Phoenix from the sky.” Zoe explained. “My best guess is homeless.” 

Nia looked over the photograph of the dilapidated apartment above Gibson’s garage. The only thing there was a mat made from old couch cushions with a tattered blanket. A bucket filled with urine and feces. And scratched into the wall, the words: Olivia was here.

“So, she’s living on the street and finds the apartment vacant. Gibson finds her squatting on his property. He tells her he is going to call the cops. She is a runaway, under the influence, and she snaps. Kills him so she doesn’t get locked up.”
Zoe holds up her hand, “Except she killed him in the kitchen of the house.”

“So, she followed him to the house. Maybe tried to bargain with him. She’s high and he doesn’t want to deal with her. He deals with scum all day long; he shouldn’t have to do it in his own home. She snaps.” Nia snapped her fingers, emphasizing the breaking point. 

Nia made the whole event sound so simple. Zoe went back to the scene, but this time started in the apartment. There’s the confrontation. She tried to reason with him, but he won’t listen. Gibson left to call the police and Moore followed him. She fixed Moore’s face with one of paranoia and then stood her in front of Gibson. She can’t get arrested, so she picks up the knife from the table and the murder took place again. 

Zoe huffed, “Here’s what I don’t get. Moore’s small. A rear attack would be safer. But she comes at him from the front, and he doesn’t defend himself. You said it, he worked with prisoners all day. But he couldn’t take on a fourteen-year-old girl half his size?”

Nia clicked her tongue and waved her index finger back and forth. “Not something you should dwell on.”

“But-”

Nia smiled wickedly. Her red lipstick had smeared across her front of her teeth, making her appear like a Twilight casting call reject. “You have a drugged-out teenage girl found in the victim’s blood. You have her blood on the victim. He fought back enough to cut her. She is a troubled kid. Thanks to CSI, this is an easy conviction.”

Zoe tried to swallow the honey coming from Nia’s fly trap of a mouth, but a part of her was sickened at how easy Nia made it all sound. That convicting a fifteen-year-old girl in criminal court as an adult was acceptable and necessary. 

Heineken bottle green eyes stared back at Zoe from a photo on the evidence board. Olivia Moore.

Nia stood up and headed to the door before commanding, “Go home, Zoe. Get some rest.” 

The green eyes challenged Zoe to figure out what was missing as Nia’s presence lingered in the office. She kicked her shoes off and slouched into the leather armchair that still smelled of her boss. 

Vincent Gibson in his prison guard uniform stared at the camera for his ID photo. He didn’t smile, and the photo had the same emptiness as Moore’s. When Zoe had pinned his photo alongside Moore’s, she’d meant it to help her recreate the scene. But together, their lack of emotion made everything blurry.  

Zoe got up and moved Gibson to the other side of the board.  He was a murder victim. Olivia Moore had murdered him in his home. No matter the reason, she’d stabbed the victim three times and even when he fought back, she didn’t stop. She stabbed him again and left him lying in a pool of his own blood.  

If she wanted to replace Nia someday, Zoe would have to start acting like her. Whatever happened to Moore to make her lose her sense of right and wrong didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter because a man was dead.

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