by Malone, Cara
“A lot of phone lines are down around the city right now,” a nearby cop interjected. “And the cell towers are jammed because everybody’s trying to call their loved ones.”
“Elizabeth and Noah are okay,” Simone told the man. She practically had to tackle him to keep him from running into the half-destroyed home. “What’s your name?”
He looked annoyed at the diversion, but spit his name out on autopilot. “Cal. Calvin Thomas.”
“Cal, your son was injured and he needs stitches and probably a transfusion, but he’ll be fine,” Simone assured him. “Your wife is unharmed. She’s with your son on the way to the hospital now.”
“I’m a universal donor, I can help,” he was saying, but then he got distracted when his eyes fell on the three bodies that had been pulled from his house. “Oh my God.”
Simone was grateful that her probies had at least done as she said and covered the bodies. “A couple of your son’s friends didn’t make it,” she said, softening her voice. She looked to Amelia for help, but it wasn’t like either of them spent a lot of their time comforting survivors.
Dr. Trace stepped forward. She put a hand on the man’s shoulder in a comforting gesture and said, “Sir, the police may have questions for your wife and son, and maybe you too.”
“Questions?” Cal asked, bewildered.
“But for right now, you should just go be with them,” Amelia told him. “They didn’t leave long before you arrived—if you go now, you might catch up before they get to the hospital.”
“Just be careful of debris,” Simone added.
Cal Thomas headed back toward his car, and Amelia asked, “Do you think he’s okay to drive?”
“I hope so,” Simone said. “We don’t need any more emergencies right now.” She looked back to the bodies not far from them. “You didn’t want to show him the girl, see if he could identify her, Dr. Trace?”
“Call me Amelia,” she said, a smile forming momentarily on her lips. Then she shook her head. “He’s got enough on his plate right now, and so do we. Plus, that’s a job for the police.”
They watched as a big white eighteen-wheeler crunched its way slowly into the neighborhood, then let out the air brake.
“Refrigerated truck’s here,” Amelia said.
“Oh God,” Simone breathed. She’d been picturing something so much smaller, like one of those little U-Hauls people rented when they didn’t actually have that much stuff to move. This was just grim.
“I know,” Amelia said, reading her mind. Then she put her hand on Simone’s shoulder. It was the same comforting gesture she’d used on Cal Thomas a few minutes ago, but this time she lingered for a moment. It felt more personal, less clinical. And Simone was ashamed to admit it turned her on a little, even out here in this macabre setting. “We’ll get through this.”
“Do you want help?” she asked when Amelia’s hand trailed away. “Moving the bodies, I mean?”
“Only if you’re not busy,” she said. “I still need to photograph them first.”
“I don’t mind,” Simone said. “I’m yours as long as nobody on my crew needs me.”
It took more than an hour to photograph the bodies—Amelia did it right there in the grass since it wasn’t possible to document them where they were found. Then Simone helped her tag them, and at last they were ready to be zipped into body bags and moved to the refrigerated truck.
Or trailer, more accurately.
These three were the first to go in, and Simone prayed she wouldn’t have to see what it looked like when the trailer was full.
When they got to the girl, they laid a body bag out beside her and Simone lifted her feet. Amelia went to the girl’s head, but she didn’t lift her. “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, Amelia looked around for her investigation kit. She found it and pulled out a pair of tweezers and a small plastic evidence bag. Then she knelt in front of the body, scrutinizing the girl’s upper arm.
“What is it?” Simone asked, looking over her shoulder.
“There’s a wound here, and I think I saw a glint of metal,” Amelia said, deep in concentration. She set the evidence bag down on top of the body bag, then probed a wound in the girl’s upper arm with the tweezers. A little bit of dark, coagulating blood oozed out, and then Amelia produced the snub-nosed slug of a small-caliber bullet.
Simone grabbed the evidence bag and held it open for Amelia. “She was shot?”
“I assumed this was a puncture wound when I first saw it,” she explained. “Not at all uncommon when there’s flying debris everywhere. I wouldn’t have discovered the bullet until X-rays were done if it hadn’t caught the light just right.”
She and Simone both looked into the sky. That light almost had to be some kind of divine intervention because it was still overcast, the clouds heavy with rain. The sun was peeking through a small break in the cloud cover, but it wouldn’t last long.
“So what does this mean?” Simone asked. “Homicide?”
“I don’t know,” Amelia said. “A bullet wound in that location probably isn’t the cause of death, but it does raise a lot more questions. Based on the amount of blood, I’d say she was shot very near the time of death, and yet nobody in that house knew she was there. None of them heard a gunshot?”
“Tornados can be pretty loud,” Simone pointed out.
“True,” Amelia answered. “Come on, help me finish this up—looks like it’s going to rain again any minute and I don’t want any evidence to get washed away.”
They worked together to lift the girl into the body bag, and then Amelia tucked the small evidence bag inside it too. Then they carried her to the refrigerated truck.
As they went, Amelia looked lost in thought. They laid the girl down with the others, then walked back down the ramp to the ground.
“One thing’s for certain,” Amelia said at last. “We’re going to have to investigate that house much more thoroughly.”
“Today?” Simone asked, concern rippling through her at the idea of Amelia going inside that death trap. “It’s not safe—”
“Hey, look out!”
Somebody shouted and everyone within earshot reflexively crouched, covering their heads. Simone heard the distinctive crack of lumber splitting, something she’d heard hundreds of times on the job, and she looked around to see which house was giving up the ghost.
“Oh no!” Amelia said, and Simone knew.
They stood there at the opening to the refrigerated truck, cold air at their backs and rain droplets beginning to wet their hair. And they watched Elizabeth and Noah’s house crumble further.
One of the remaining exterior walls crumbled, the bricks at the bottom nearly disintegrating as they fell into the yard right where the bodies had been laid. Right where Amelia and Simone had been working just a few minutes ago.
“Oh shit,” Simone said, grabbing Amelia’s hand and pulling her around the side of the truck just to be safe. They stepped behind it as a big plume of dirt and dust billowed out of the wreckage, and after everything settled, they hazarded a peek.
The danger seemed to have passed, and Simone stepped out from behind the trailer, asking into her radio, “Everybody okay?”
There was a volley of responses from her firefighters, all checking in with her. Then she turned back to Amelia.
“You okay?”
“Well, the investigation just got a bit more complicated,” she said. “Do you think it’ll collapse any further?”
“Probably,” Simone said. She was no building engineer, but she’d never seen a house missing two walls where the roof didn’t also come down. “You can’t go in there again today, but I’ll see what my crew can do about making it safe.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad I ran into you today.”
Simone gave her a wry smile. “Me too.”
“In any case, there’s nothing left that can go wrong today,” Amelia said.
And with th
at, a crack of lightning lit up the sky.
5
Amelia
The sky opened up as if a dam had been breached. Amelia and Simone were drenched within seconds, and everyone around them was running for cover.
Amelia didn’t have that luxury, though. As soon as she found that bullet wound in her Jane Doe, the house where she’d been discovered had become a crime scene. One that had, unfortunately, just partially collapsed… but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still evidence to be found there.
Evidence that could easily wash away in a downpour like this.
She took off at a mad dash toward the white Medical Examiner’s van parked at the other end of the neighborhood. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for—some tarps to cover what she could, or maybe just Kelsey, an extra set of experienced hands. This wasn’t a typical death scene, and everything they did today was guesswork.
When she got to the van, Kelsey was nowhere in sight. She was probably sheltering from the rain like everyone else.
Amelia flung open the back doors and hopped in, and she nearly screamed when somebody jumped in after her. Then she noticed it was Simone.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She practically had to shout over the sound of the rain pelting the metal roof of the van.
“I’ve been asking you the same thing!” Simone shouted back. “I was calling your name but you didn’t stop.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Amelia explained. “I’m trying to find something to cover the crime scene, help preserve evidence.”
There were cabinets on both walls of the van, filled with all kinds of supplies for pretty much any eventuality. Anything except a house torn in half by a tornado. Still, she opened a few, looked around—just in case.
“Do you have a tarp big enough to cover a two-story house?” Simone shouted over the storm.
Amelia stopped looking. It was a pretty ridiculous thing to expect to find in the ME van, and even if she did find one, was she going to scale one of the remaining walls to cover the house? Hell no.
She sat down on the steel gurney taking up the center of the van, the one they used to transport the deceased under normal circumstances. “Okay, I see your point.”
Suddenly, she was feeling red in the face. What was the chief medical examiner doing freaking out and losing her senses? She was supposed to be cool, calm and collected—her team needed that from her.
Simone sat down beside her and nodded at the rain beyond the van doors. “We might as well take a breather. There’s nothing we can do right now.”
Amelia nodded, and Simone used her radio to let her crew know where she was in case they needed her. There was a moment of silence once she finished, and it actually felt peaceful for the first time all morning.
The steady drum of the rain reminded Amelia of quiet summer nights, lying in bed with a window above her head, listening to rain tapping the glass. It reminded her of one particular night a long time ago, when she was in middle school.
Her best friend, Sam, was sleeping over, and they’d decided to share Amelia’s bed. Frannie was just a few feet away in a bed on the other side of the room, and Amelia’s heart was pounding so hard because she’d dreamed about curling up with Sam for so long. Rain pattered on the window above her headboard and she was sure she wouldn’t get any sleep at all that night. And then, Sam’s hand had found hers beneath the covers.
Rain had always been romantic to Amelia, ever since that night.
And now she was sitting on a gurney used to transport the dead, inside a van in the middle of a disaster area, with a woman she just met. This should have been the least romantic setting ever conceived, and yet Amelia found her hand itching to reach out to Simone’s.
Instead, she decided to go the self-deprecation route.
“Sorry I freaked out and made you chase me through the rain,” she said. “I know I’m supposed to be in control, being the boss and all. But this is my first mass disaster and it’s stressful.”
Simone was a fire lieutenant. She probably never panicked. She probably had nerves of steel, which only made Amelia feel worse about her irrational dash through the rain.
“I hope it’s your only mass disaster,” Simone said, then gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s my first too.”
“And yet you’re weathering it so much better,” Amelia said, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. Or maybe it was the humidity quickly building in the van thanks to the rain.
“I wouldn’t say that,” she answered. “Did you see me cursing out my recruits for going into a house that hadn’t been cleared?”
Amelia smiled. “No, I missed that.”
“Good, it wasn’t pretty,” Simone answered. She smiled broadly, openly. She had perfect teeth and exact symmetry in her features, but what was even more attractive to Amelia was the way she wore her heart on her sleeve and how she seemed completely comfortable around Amelia right from the start.
“I’m sure it was,” Amelia said, surprising herself. Was she flirting on the job? On the most critical day of her career thus far? Who was this person inhabiting her body?
“Everybody needs to let off steam once in a while,” Simone continued. “You apparently needed to run through the rain.”
Amelia smiled, slicking back her hair when she felt a trickle starting on her forehead. “I really am soaking wet. So are you… sorry.”
“I’d never ask a pretty lady to apologize for making me wet,” Simone said.
Oh holy shit… well, that removed all doubt about those looks Simone had been giving her, her motivations for following Amelia through the rain, what they were doing on this gurney together. For a second, Amelia couldn’t breathe. For a second, she considered kissing Simone right then and there.
And then the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. It was so fast that the absence of drumming on the roof was almost a sound of its own.
They both looked toward the open van doors and Simone said, “I hope this isn’t the eye of the storm.”
Then someone opened the driver door behind them and Amelia nearly screamed again. Guilt at what she’d just been thinking washed over her. She swallowed it down and turned. “Kelsey.”
“Oh, Dr. Trace,” she said, looking equally surprised to see the two of them. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Just getting in from the rain,” Simone said, then reached between the seats to introduce herself. “Lieutenant Olivier.”
“Kelsey Granger,” she answered. “I was thinking it’d be nice to move the van closer to the refrigerated truck in case we need supplies. Is that okay, Dr. Trace?”
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s just pull the doors closed or we’ll lose everything on the way over.”
She and Simone did so, then sat back down on the gurney. The trip was bumpy because the most recent rain storm had brought down even more branches and blown house debris across the road again. Amelia gripped the edge of the gurney to stabilize herself, and her pinky finger curled over Simone’s.
“Sorry,” she said softly, quickly pulling her hand away.
“Don’t be,” Simone answered.
Then Kelsey asked from the front seat, “How’s it going for you, Dr. Trace? I’ve been so busy I’ve hardly seen you.”
Amelia switched back into boss mode, forcefully shutting down any feelings that had been rising to the surface when it came to Simone. She gave Kelsey a run-down of the three victims the firefighters had pulled from the Thomas house, and the bullet wound she’d discovered in Jane Doe.
“Cause of death?” Kelsey asked.
“No,” Amelia said. “Quite possibly perimortem, though.” That meant it had occurred at the time of death, or shortly before.
“Interesting,” Kelsey said, pondering the case as she parked the van next to the eighteen-wheeler.
“Agreed,” Amelia answered, still mulling over what she knew so far. It wasn’t much, but it definitely didn’t add up to a natural death.
“I’m a
vailable to help you now,” Kelsey said. “Some of the firefighters and I canvassed the neighborhood and we’re confident there are no more victims.”
“How many have there been?” Simone asked.
“The team I was working with found three,” Kelsey said.
“So that makes six total, just on this street,” Simone said, shaking her head.
“Sounds like we have our work cut out for us,” Amelia said. “Come on, Kelsey, you can help me investigate the Thomas house… or what’s left of it.”
“I’ll keep you both safe,” Simone said. “Or, as safe as possible.”
Amelia opened the back door and jumped out, aware that Simone was following on her heels. She liked having her around, but at the same time, she didn’t trust herself to act entirely professional now that Kelsey was around to observe them.
There was just something about Simone that made all her hard-won professionalism go right out the proverbial window.
6
Simone
Simone pulled in a couple of her seasoned crew members to help secure the remaining structure of the house. While they worked, Amelia kept her distance, photographing the exterior and avoiding Simone’s eye.
Was she imagining it, or was Amelia ignoring her like a kid with a crush who couldn’t trust her emotions in the presence of an audience? It was sort of cute.
Simone tried to focus—what she was doing was important to make sure no one else got hurt—but her mind kept drifting back to being alone in the ME van with Amelia. Things had gotten steamy, literally and figuratively, and she wondered if something good could come of this awful day. Maybe before it was all done, she could get Amelia’s number, take her out to dinner and see what she was like when she wasn’t drenched, wearing PPE and moving bodies around.
She’d have to be hotter by at least a factor of ten, right? And she was already one of the most stunning women Simone had ever encountered.
Simone guessed they had an age difference of about a decade, and she always did have a thing for older women. With her thick-framed glasses and her blonde hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, Amelia had a sort of mature Gillian Anderson vibe going on. And that just so happened to be a vibe Simone was powerless to resist.