by Amy Berg
Captain Decker ground his Nicorette gum between his molars as he studied Carter.
“We got a case?” Carter asked again, turning a palm up to accept one of the message slips.
Decker pursed his lips, then looked at the two slips of paper in his big paw.
“Suicide in NoMa,” he said as he handed a slip to Carter. “Find your partner. Check it out. Write it up.” Decker turned. He held up the remaining message slip and called over the bullpen, “Mancini! Anyone seen Mancini? Tell him he’s up.”
Carter watched Decker and the other case, almost surely a homicide, walk away. He slid his finger across the face of his phone and called Edison.
Forty minutes later they were in the car heading southeast to 4th Street toward NoMa. Edison apparently hadn’t seen the need to rush his dinner on account of a teen deciding to take a warm bath in her own blood. Carter clicked through the details on the car’s mobile data terminal. The girl, Angela Dunn, was in a foster care situation. The foster father found her, dragged her out of the tub, and called 911. EMTs pronounced her on the scene. Carter and Edison arrived shortly after 8PM to an already active scene.
As he slammed the unmarked sedan’s door, Carter cursed under his breath. A suicide. Mancini and his partner, Strucko, got the homicide. If Edison had been in the bullpen, Decker would’ve given them the murder. Carter just knew it. But no, they got the suicide.
Edison didn’t mind. But then, Edison never seemed to mind anything. His lined mahogany face was a map Carter couldn’t read. He couldn’t tell if Edison actually cared about their cases, much less the world. Carter knew this was only their third case together – the first a domestic dispute gone predictably sideways, the second a tweaker who’d punted his baby girl like a football. But Edison didn’t make it easy, like he didn’t want to get attached to a partner, like he was short-timing it. Or maybe Edison just didn’t like him. Carter studied his partner’s profile as they signed the crime scene entry log.
“How’s it looking, Radar?” Edison asked the uniformed police officer managing the entry log. The nameplate on the officer’s big uniform jacket read Mark Radon. He was mid-20s, fresh-faced in the cold air, yet comfortable in his own skin. Carter judged he’d been on the job for four years, maybe straight out of college.
“Cut and dried,” Radar said. “DB’s on the second floor. Family’s in the kitchen. Oh, and the VAC’s here.”
“VAC?” Carter asked.
“Victims Assistance Center,” Radar answered, looking at the log. “Oh, you’re Detective Hunt. Huh.”
Before Carter could answer, Edison interrupted, “Who’s here from the VAC?”
“Erika. I mean Dr. Harlow,” Radar said. Carter noticed Radar’s face flush. Even more telling, one of Edison’s eyebrows shot up.
“Come on,” Edison said, heading into the row house. This was the quickest Carter had seen Edison move. Edison’s knees crackled in protest as they mounted the front steps.
Outside, the red row house was squeezed between two other tall, skinny houses, each a thin cake slice of the expensive, gentrified block. Carter followed Edison into the Becketts’ house.
Inside, the long, narrow home had been completely remodeled with hardwood floors, sleek finishes, and an open staircase. The contemporary furnishings – all chrome, leather, and odd angles – seemed out of place to Carter. When he’d learned this was a foster care family, he imagined a more middle-class vibe.
Edison and Carter, still in suits and overcoats, grabbed Tyvek shoe covers and purple Nitrile gloves from cardboard dispensers. Carter bent smoothly and looped the shoe covers over his shiny, black duty boots.
“Who’s this Dr. Harlow?” Carter asked.
“Trouble,” Edison said, stooping to pull the shoe covers over his loafers.
“Trouble how?” Carter asked.
“She’s perceptive,” Edison said, in his cryptic manner. Carter wasn’t sure if that meant he himself wasn’t trouble and therefore not perceptive. Then he realized if he didn’t know, maybe he wasn’t all that swift on the uptake. His face burned with his private realization.
Edison climbed the stairs, careful to stay to the outer edge of the risers. He pointed out the water droplets still beaded on the wooden stairs and the smear of blood on the handrail.
As Carter mounted the top step, he looked down the length of a hallway. Rooms angled off to the right. Near the center of the hallway, light spilled from an open door. Like a movie set, crime scene techs had assembled portable scene lights that blasted light through the door onto the star of the scene – the body.
The extreme light on the room threw shadows down the hallway. A woman stood just outside the glow. She cradled her elbows as if hugging herself. Her head canted to one side, implying curiosity or deep thought. Her dark purple knit dress hugged her curves. Carter noticed she was leaning into her cocked hip, giving her posture a questioning air.
Her hair, a black mass of long, thick curls, cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. It looked irresistibly soft. Carter’s fingers flexed, craving to grasp a hank of her hair, to crush it in his palm, and release its scent like fresh grass or fall leaves.
This had to be Dr. Erika Harlow. Someone he would be working with, Carter reminded himself. Surprised by his reaction, he mentally shook himself from a fog of hormones, pheromones, and just plain moans. She was an unexpected being. He watched her silently. As if drawn to the lighted room, on the verge of a breakthrough, Erika stepped forward.
The beige carpet had a watery outline where overflow had soaked into it. Reflexively, she stepped back, looking at the floor.
Carter noticed the line of Erika’s calves as they ascended into the secret depths of her dress. She wore black leather shoes with a modest heel, just enough to give shape to her legs. Thin leather straps looped around her ankles like chokers. Carter couldn’t quite articulate why, but those straps were undeniably hot.
Ahead, Edison dodged the water trail and approached Dr. Harlow.
“I already see that look on your face,” Edison said. “Don’t make this any more complicated than it has to be.” He watched as Dr. Harlow turned. Her face matched the rest of her – delicate features framed with a strong jaw. Her lips quirked up, a hint of amusement.
“Detective Edison James, Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, so I know you don’t have a hot date tonight,” she said.
“You never know, I gotta stay one step ahead of Alma – that woman’s still got fire in her soul,” he said.
Another anomaly for Carter to consider: Edison was one of the few happily married homicide detectives in the D.C. Metro PD. Somehow, despite his cynicism, he’d dodged the hollow-point bullet of divorce. Carter vowed idly to himself that he’d never get cynical, and he would never get divorced.
“So where’d all your fire go?” she asked, catching Edison with her gaze. Carter stared. Her eyes were so dark they appeared to be nothing but dilated pupils. Carter felt he could tip over and fall into her bottomless eyes, swallowed whole by their dark depths. Then he realized she was smirking at him.
“Trouble in paradise?” she asked, raising her chin to indicate Carter. “Where’s Mancini?”
“Dr. Erika Harlow, this is Detective Carter Hunt,” Edison said. Carter slipped past Edison. He offered her his hand.
“Nice meeting you, Doctor,” Carter said, enveloping her small hand in his. He was careful not to squeeze it too tightly. Her eyes narrowed, really taking him in.
“Are you visiting from out of town?” she asked.
“Uh, no. Just got promoted. I’m his new partner,” Carter said, confused.
“No way, you and Mayberry here are going to be a regular thing,” she said, smiling past Carter to Edison.
“Apparently,” Edison said.
Still holding Carter’s hand, Erika gripped it more firmly. Still smiling, she stared up into his bewildered face.
“First, I know you’re a big strong man, but I’m not fucking fragile. And call me Erika. Death is
the great equalizer, don’t you think? We’ll be spending quite a bit of time around corpses,” she said, letting his hand slide out of hers. “And lastly, are you two going to investigate this murder, or are you just going to write it off as a suicide?”
Edison let out a groan.
“Murder?” Carter asked.
“Don’t listen to her,” Edison said. “We haven’t been on the scene for two seconds and she’s playing sleuth. Erika, let us do the investigating and you do the consoling.”
Erika’s sparkling, dark eyes remained on Carter. He was curious about her claim. What if this was a murder, not a suicide?
“Come here,” Erika said. She took Carter by the elbow and guided him to where she had been standing. From behind him, she directed him to look into the death room. A crime scene technician in a white Tyvek suit snapped photos of the tableau.
“What do you see?” Erika asked Carter. He felt her warmth at his back. He could swear he caught the briefest whiff of lavender over the metallic scent of blood. He pushed his thoughts of Erika down in his mind and focused on the scene.
It was a black-and-white tiled bathroom. The floor was awash with blood-tinged water. Beside the white claw-footed tub lay the body of a 16-year-old girl. Pink cotton sweater and dark leggings. The girl was drenched head to toe. Two deep T-incisions sliced her inner wrists. These incisions left red, gaping wounds like crosses set against pale skin. The bathtub was filled with bloody water. His gaze stopped on the X-Acto knife.
“Looks like she filled the tub, got in, slit her wrists with that X-Acto knife, and bled out,” he said.
“Look closer,” she said.
Edison stepped around to see. His shoes squished in the damp carpet, but he ignored it.
“Looks like she killed herself,” Edison said.
“Do you see it?” Erika asked Carter, her presence palpable. Carter felt compelled to look more carefully. Like a camera focusing, he saw connections.
“She’s clothed. Why run a bath and get in with your clothes on?” he said.
“Good,” she said. Edison moved closer.
“If she was being abused, she might not have wanted whoever found her to get off one last time,” Edison said, his voice quiet. “And it was the foster father who found her.”
“That’s true,” Erika agreed. “But look at her hands.”
Carter noticed her fingernails were painted in a particular way – clear with white tips. This wasn’t a little girl’s DIY paint job.
“She’s got a fancy manicure,” Carter said.
“Girls get manicures when they’re planning ahead. Some important event – a date, a dance, a recital, something to look forward to. What else?”
“No hesitation marks,” Edison said. And just like that they were all on the same page. For the first time, Carter and Edison were spitballing theories. They were in a rhythm, a flow, and it was all because of this woman.
“What’s on that prescription bottle?” Carter asked, noting a small, clear, yellow plastic bottle lying on the floor. The crime scene tech, absorbed in her work, didn’t hear him. Afraid of losing momentum, he tried snapping his fingers and pointing.
The tech swiveled her discerning glare on Carter. An eyebrow arched on her smooth, chestnut-brown face. Instantly, Carter wished he could take the whole finger-snapping, command-pointing posture back and re-record that past 15 seconds with a more tactful approach. Edison intervened.
“Ms. Finch, have you had time to shoot the scene?” he asked. She brightened at Edison’s deferential address.
“Just finishing. You want to enter, Detective?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said. She snapped a couple of extra shots, then she sloshed out of the bathroom, her Tyvek shoe covers soaked. As she stepped out of the bathroom, she slipped off the shoe covers and tossed them into a plastic bag. She stepped onto a disposable Chub pad laid out on the carpet to dry the bottoms of her shoes.
Finch eyeballed Carter. He nodded at her and offered a half smile in a vain attempt to smooth things over. Finch pursed her lips as she slipped past Erika and Carter. Finch’s womanly hips required a wider berth, forcing Erika and Carter closer together. As Erika’s body brushed Carter’s back, he decided the gaffe was completely worth it.
Pulling on his Nitrile gloves, Edison carefully stepped into the wet bathroom. He touched the pill bottle.
“Hydrocodone,” Edison said. “The prescription is made out to a Sarah Beckett.”
“The girl steals a bottle of Vicodin from her foster mom and decides to slit her wrists in a warm bath?” Erika asked. “That seems like overkill.”
“She could’ve wanted to dull the pain of the cut,” Edison said.
“I’d buy that if there were hesitation marks, testing her pain tolerance, but those cuts are serious,” Erika said. “They were made by someone who was committed.” Carter touched her arm. The knit fabric slipped easily beneath his fingertips. She looked up at him and he almost forgot what he was going to say.
“Does her toe look broken?” Carter asked. Erika turned back to the dead girl. The girl’s great toe on her right foot angled off to the left. Edison examined it. Carter noticed the girl’s toes matched her fingernails, a clear finish with precise white tips.
“Signs of a struggle,” Edison said. “Someone holds her down in the bathtub. Drugged and half drained of blood, she fights, clawing at the slick tile and kicking to get out. She kicks her foot into the faucet hard enough to break her toe.”
“She fought for her life – she fought like a girl,” Erika said with reverence. Carter knew women had a special reserve; they could dig deep when the going got tough. Still, he wondered how Erika could speak with such conviction. Was it all the things she saw in her work? Was it personal experience? Or both?
“Whoever held her down is gonna have scratches all over his arms,” Carter said. “Might get his DNA from under her fingernails.”
“Not necessarily; there’s something else,” Erika said.
Carter studied the scene. Edison fell quiet, too, as he looked over everything.
“Spill it, Erika,” Edison said. “What do you see?”
“There’s a message across from the toilet,” she said. The two detectives craned their necks to see an index card taped to the wall opposite the toilet. Carter remembered seeing Erika canting her head in this direction when he first saw her. She’d been looking at this card.
Edison read the card aloud: “Please put feminine hygiene products in the trash can. Only put toilet paper into the commode.”
The two detectives turned to Erika, who waited.
“I don’t get it,” Carter finally said.
“Clearly they have trouble with this toilet backing up,” Erika said.
“So?” Carter asked.
“Where’s the plunger?” she asked.
Erika Harlow, PhD – February 13, 9:30PM
Erika sensed the new detective’s outsider-looking-in nature. He was a backwoods Southerner in the District of Columbia’s court. Carter Hunt was tall, like legendary Tennessee Sheriff Buford T. Pusser. The sheriff had used a baseball bat-style walking stick to mete out justice against the Dixie Mafia. She imagined Carter could handle himself in a fight. Carter could also be surprisingly perceptive, though she suspected none of his peers would pick up on this trait.
She wondered what prompted Carter to move here. Why be a fish out of water when you could be a big fish in a little pond? She guessed daddy issues. Wasn’t that why all men left their homes, to escape the long shadow of their fathers?
She wondered whether father issues were at the crux of this case. Everything about it screamed abuse, and sexual abuse usually involved fathers. The detectives’ working theory was Angela Dunn had been sexually abused by her foster father, Reginald Beckett, and was threatening to spill her guts to protect her sister from the same fate.
Erika had made a call and learned that another girl, who was 15 at the time, had lived with the Becketts. Soon after she moved
in, she started acting out and was put back into a group home. Erika wondered if this other girl had been trying to get away from Reginald Beckett. Erika re-joined the detectives and shared the news.
Edison and Carter decided to conduct separate interviews. Erika would talk with the kids – 14-year-old Toby Beckett and 13-year-old Claire Dunn, Angela’s half-sister. They likely would need the most counseling. Carter, the rookie, would take Sarah Beckett, the foster mother, and press to get something on the foster father. Edison, the veteran, would try and break Reginald.
Erika sat across from Toby and Claire in the Becketts’ finished basement. Teary-eyed, Claire clung to Toby. Her resemblance to Angela was uncanny. She had the same delicate nose, fragile brow, and the full lips that bowed into a pout. She looked younger than her age, which was common for foster children. The neglect and emotional trauma in their young lives stunted their growth. Grim irony: Their stolen childhoods forced them to grow up faster than their more sheltered peers. This trauma – the death of a loved one – had young Claire grappling with feelings that many people struggle with even as adults.
Toby had an arm slung around Claire, who leaned into him for support. They sat on a turquoise couch arrayed with Nerf balls, stuffed animals, and game controllers. Entertainment Weekly magazines and remote controls littered the glass-and-chrome coffee table. Erika sat on a faux black-and-white cowhide ottoman with her back to a dark flat-screen TV. This was the kids’ rec room – a place where they came to kick back, play video games, and shoot Nerf balls at a plastic hoop that hung from the wall. It was a place where kids could be kids – until one of them got killed.
Erika was struck by Toby. He looked oddly familiar. His blond hair was cut in a popular sling-bangs haircut often sported by skateboarders and slackers. But he was a freshman at Gonzaga High School, a highly competitive Jesuit Catholic high school, so he couldn’t be a slacker. There had to be ambition behind his casual good looks. His hazel eyes picked up the colors around him. Right now, they were a striking violet from the turquoise couch and his purple Gonzaga sweater. He sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. Erika leaned toward them.