They had been seated in the living room, clinging to each other. He’d promised he’d be in touch when he reached Jared and when there was any word about Kaelen or Naadiya. It was clear from their stoic expressions, Phyllis’s ghostly complexion, and Ben’s stunned stare that the Johnsons had experienced heartache.
It was also clear that they knew they were in for more.
As Hal left, he’d pressed his card into Ben’s free hand. “Please call me if you think of anything that might help.”
Phyllis’s mouth had opened and closed several times, as though she were trying to release words bottled in her chest. She would have plenty of questions. But he excused himself before she asked.
Hal watched Schwartzman work Aleena Laughlin’s jaw, which stubbornly refused to open. He was supposed to notify next of kin before he told Phyllis and Ben about Aleena’s death. Even if next of kin was halfway across the world. He’d broken protocol, but he couldn’t leave the Johnsons in suspense. Not for that kind of news.
He palmed the phone in his pocket, urging it to ring. He needed to talk to Jared Laughlin. Soon. In the meantime, he had to try to follow Aleena Laughlin’s movements on the days before her death. His first call on the trip back to the morgue had been to Bessie Carmichael Elementary School. But the call had only confirmed his fears. Kaelen Laughlin had been absent from school today.
The victim’s skin had begun to take on a greenish undertone, which played oddly against the scarlet lips. She’d been found facedown hours ago, and her lipstick still appeared freshly painted. “Are her lips tattooed?” he asked.
“It’s liquid lipstick,” Schwartzman said, her hands still working the jaw. “They make it so that it dries like paint and stays like that.”
“How do you get it off?” he asked.
“It comes off with makeup remover or soap. And it wears off over the course of a day—eating and that sort of thing.” Schwartzman stopped massaging. “It appears that it was applied shortly before her death.”
Which implied she hadn’t had sexual relations after she’d applied the lipstick. Surely, it would have come off then. Or at least been smeared.
“But I’m guessing she wore that kind of lipstick regularly—unless someone did it for her.”
Hal studied the lips. “Why do you say that?”
Schwartzman lifted the victim’s left hand and showed Hal the fingers. Then she displayed the right hand. “That stuff stains. If it was new for her, I’d expect to find it on her fingertips.”
A slight yellow tinge on the skin of her right hand caught his eye.
“I suspect that’s from turmeric,” Schwartzman said, answering his unasked question. “I’ll take a sample and have it tested, but it’s a common spice in dishes from the Middle East and Asia. It stains everything yellow.”
Hal’s hand bumped Schwartzman’s as he studied the victim’s fingers. “So no red stain means . . . ?”
“She was practiced with the lipstick. Or someone else applied it.”
Schwartzman had said she was wearing a burqa. Why hide those lips under a burqa? But what reason would a killer have to apply lipstick after her death?
Hal decided to stay another ten minutes, then he’d check in with the army officer to see if they’d had any luck contacting Aleena Laughlin’s husband. He hadn’t reached Parveen Yasmin, the woman who cared for Naadiya either. Ben and Phyllis Johnson had only a home number for Parveen, and she wasn’t answering. Hal had sent a patrol officer to the mosque Aleena attended to try to get Parveen’s home address or a cell phone number. According to the officer, the mosque’s imam was being helpful, so Hal hoped they would find her soon.
More than that, he hoped she had the children.
The victim’s jaw finally relented under Schwartzman’s touch. The teeth knocked as the jaw shifted, and Schwartzman worked a gloved finger between them to pry the teeth apart.
A dull buzzing hummed in the room. At first, it sounded like his phone. He pressed his hand against his pocket, but the phone was still. Schwartzman’s phone lay on the metal counter, also silent.
The noise was muffled, like it came from one of the other rooms. A distant saw or the buzzing from an out-of-whack halogen light.
Schwartzman stopped working, shifting her ear toward the wall.
“What is that?” he asked.
She lowered her ear to the woman’s face. She dropped her hands. “It’s coming from her.”
Hal leaned in. The buzzing stopped.
Schwartzman placed her hands back on the woman’s face. They stayed silent, listening.
“Are you sure?” Hal asked.
“Positive. I felt the vibration against her teeth.” She crossed to a cabinet and brought back a resealable plastic bag used for evidence. It was the largest size—normally used to hold a victim’s clothing.
“What are you expecting to come out of there?” he asked, eyeing the huge bag. “A rabbit?”
She handed him the bag. “Hold it over her mouth while I work open the jaw.”
He’d had plenty of experience with bugs on victims, but they rarely made it into the victim’s closed mouth. But what else could be making that noise?
“You ready?” Schwartzman asked.
“Ready.”
“On three. One, two . . . three.” She popped open the victim’s jaw, and a burst of red flew past her lips.
Schwartzman let out a little cry, and Hal jumped.
A hummingbird.
The thing flew into the bag and then bounced back against the victim’s face. Startled, Hal had moved, and the red flash burst out of the bag and dove through the air.
Hal leaped after it, trying to use the bag to capture it. But it was too fast. With perfect agility, it shifted its course in midair and took off in the opposite direction. It buzzed around his head, and he ducked. “Christ, it’s like a damn missile.”
“It’s a dragonfly.”
“It’s a hummingbird,” Hal said. “Isn’t it?” He watched as the red shape swirled through the lab and came to a rest on the top corner of the stainless metal wall of body drawers. There, it transitioned from a blur into an insect. It dipped and bowed its backside, pressed its wings together above its body.
Schwartzman was right. It was a dragonfly, the biggest one he’d ever seen.
She crossed the room. “Look at the colors.”
Hal moved closer. The dragonfly’s long body was actually a brilliant pink. The head, like two round jellybeans stuck together, as well as the fine mesh of wings, were both red—the same red as the victim’s lips.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
Hal wouldn’t go that far. Birds were one thing, but he’d never been a fan of bugs, even in bright colors. He glanced back at the victim. “Surprised it didn’t suffocate in there.”
“I’m more interested in how it got inside her mouth,” she said.
“Someone put it there.” Of this, Hal was certain.
Schwartzman looked away from the dragonfly as though that didn’t answer the question. “I sort of assumed that part, but why?”
“Some sort of message.”
“Maybe there’s some symbolism,” Schwartzman said. “What does the dragonfly represent?”
“That’s a question for Roger. He’s got an entomologist up at Davis and another guy down the peninsula who’s into mythology and that sort of thing. He’ll probably loop in a few folks on this one.” The truth was, Roger would go nuts over the bug. He loved evidence—the stranger, the better. And this was definitely the strangest they’d had in a long while.
“Okay then,” Schwartzman said, handing him the bag he’d dropped in all the commotion. “You’d better catch it.”
9
Before booking her plane ticket or talking to Tucker, Bitty had planned it out. Planned it out like she hadn’t planned since those days in Berkeley, when life was a series of semester-long projects that required dozens of steps.
Life in Perry, Oklahoma, rarely required thinking more
than two steps ahead. Grocery store, then dinner. That was about as complicated as things got.
Bitty had written down exactly what it would take.
Step one, get to California.
Done.
Step two, reunite and decide what to do.
They had been good together, Bitty and Aleena. Despite their backgrounds and appearances, their religions and cultures, despite all of it, the roommates had become close. On her end, Bitty had been shocked that her roommate found her interesting at all. She’d thought it would be a short-lived thing, the behavior of someone new to a place simply desperate to have a friend, any friend. But the relationship wasn’t fleeting. It had stuck.
But the planned reunion was where it had gone wrong. No. It was before the reunion.
Bitty had underestimated the terror of being back. The paralysis had set in even as she’d gazed down at the darkened city from the safety of the air. She had been the last off the plane—stayed until they told her the plane had to be cleaned for the next flight. “Back to Oklahoma City?”
“No, ma’am. We’re going to New York.”
She had hurried off then, stumbled out through security, and locked herself in the bathroom, where she’d called Aleena to say she was going home. This had been a mistake.
So many people. And not normal people like in Oklahoma City. They were weird-looking, dangerous, and that was just the airport.
“You can’t, Bitty,” Aleena had said in a hushed voice. Her son was in karate class. Somewhere in the background, children grunted and shouted out kiais as the instructor called out moves.
“I can’t do it,” Bitty repeated, every kiai making her jump in her skin.
“I’m coming to get you,” Aleena said, her voice forceful, determined. In minutes, Aleena had pulled her son out of his class, and they were in the car, heading toward the freeway to the airport. Bitty had come too far to turn back. They would have closure. They just needed to see each other.
As Bitty had drawn slow breaths, seated on the toilet, head in her hands, Aleena had talked through the plan out loud. “Kaelen is staying at a friend’s tonight and tomorrow, but they’re not home until nine. The daughter has violin.”
“What?”
“I’m just thinking. I’ll bring Kaelen and come get you. Go out to the curb, Bitty. Wait for me there.”
And somehow, she’d made it outside, sucking in lungfuls of air, wet but warm in comparison to Oklahoma. The rain tasted cool in her mouth. And then she was in a cab. She had gotten herself in a cab and called Aleena to tell her. “I’ll come to you,” Bitty said.
Aleena told her to give her phone to the driver. She was going to drop a pin. Bitty had no idea what that meant, but the cab driver did. He found the spot in Golden Gate Park. There was no one, Aleena had promised. It would be quiet. Bitty could see the stars, breathe. Aleena had described her car—the older-model Jeep, the bumper sticker that said Coexist, each letter a religious symbol. The sight of that purple sticker on the fender made the terror eke out of her.
They would do this. They would be okay.
Aleena would be lying in the grass, the way they had when they were young. This was the place they had come to from Berkeley, when they needed to get away from the pressures of school, from the other students who always seemed happier, better, smarter.
The park had been the wrong choice.
The trip had been the wrong choice.
The reunion was not the one she had imagined. Not at all. Things had gone sideways from there.
Aleena still had those red lips, that same beautiful, thick hair Bitty had always coveted. The blonde tips were a surprise, but Aleena could pull that off. Fourteen years had gone by, and her roommate was every bit as beautiful as she had been that first day at UC Berkeley.
The same was not true for Bitty. Where she’d once been narrow-hipped and flat-chested, her middle now bulged, and her breasts fell flat against her chest like socks partially filled with sand. She had stopped wearing makeup long ago, and her cheeks had a splotchy red texture that suggested too much time in the sun and wind. Not that Tucker cared. A woman was supposed to change with childbirth. Both physically and mentally.
As was expected, Bitty’s priorities had shifted. To the children, naturally.
But she was not supposed to be out in California. To her husband, she might as well have been in India.
Tucker didn’t object. When she’d told him she was going to California, he had folded the newspaper in half and tapped it lightly on his knee, the silence taut in the room. His mouth puckered and stayed like that, as if he were holding a question—something sour—right on the tip of his tongue. But she’d waited it out, and whatever he had wanted to say or ask had dissolved in his mouth like so much sugar.
“My freshman roommate is dying,” she’d told him.
The words seemed to fly around her husband’s head like a pesky fly, never quite settling for a bite. Tucker had not attended college. From high school, he had worked with his father and brother on the farm. And his brother-in-law. College was a waste. Not that he was ever mean about it. There was nothing mean about Tucker Wilson. Not one mean bone.
Used to make her furious, all that niceness bundled under thick ropy muscles.
Not that she ever showed her anger.
She’d learned her lesson.
Being invisible meant being calm. Easygoing. Maybe a little dense. She could do all that. She’d had to.
It was safer.
Then she had left in such a hurry—for the first time in their marriage. She had never left before, not for ten years. They’d gone to Arrowhead State Park for their honeymoon—a three-hour drive. Tucker had never been on a plane. Her Berkeley days were long behind her.
It was impossible to imagine Tucker here. Or the boys. The filth in the street, the homeless—she had forgotten about the homeless. As she was returning to her motel room this morning in the rain, a man and woman were fighting over the doorstep of a building under construction. The woman screamed and tossed cardboard into the street, wet from the rain, which had stopped temporarily. “I got here first!” she shouted. “You find yourself somewhere else.”
The man mumbled under his breath as he shuffled to the sidewalk and retrieved his cardboard. He folded the worn strips as carefully as you might a beautiful coverlet. Then he tucked the bundle under his arm and shuffled down the sidewalk, mumbling slightly louder. “Crazy . . . ass . . . bitch.”
Bitty stole a glance backward at the woman. Grinning triumphantly, she walked out to the curb and squatted, releasing a heavy stream of urine onto the wet concrete. Revulsion coursed through Bitty as she hurried back into the hotel, avoiding a large puddle of unknown origin in the cracked and broken sidewalk outside the door.
She imagined the city as her parents would view it. Or Tucker. There were no homeless people in Perry, Oklahoma. A few drunks, but they were well known to the small police department. Even in their most inebriated state, they had never urinated on the sidewalks of Perry.
There had been plenty of homeless people in Berkeley when she was there. Men with cutoff gloves and worn jackets, sitting outside Togo’s Sandwiches or the Cactus Records store. Shaking a cup. Sometimes she’d notice a tattered book lying beside them. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been the literary companion for one fellow named Steve.
After a time, seeing the men—and for some reason, they were all men in her memory—was like running into a classmate or an acquaintance. She’d make an effort to bring a little food as well as some change. Occasionally, she’d ask Steve about the book. More often than not, he would reply with a headshake and two words. “Damn McMurphy.”
Yesterday was the day they were supposed to make a plan, figure out how to confront him. But then Aleena . . . It didn’t matter now.
Bitty had come back to the motel and spent the day there, watching cable TV and eating the two granola bars she kept in her purse for the boys. Huddled in the bed, she waited for someone to poun
d on her door and drag her away.
No one came.
When she woke this morning, she’d missed a call from home. She called back and spoke to the boys first. They were distracted, and the call was mercifully short. Then Tucker came on and asked when she’d be coming home. It had been two days. She experienced a measure of satisfaction, hearing the boys making a racket on the other end, roughhousing or fighting. Those boys drove her crazy some days. When she snapped at them to be quiet when she was on the phone or trying to read—or have one damn moment to think—Tucker always said, “Oh, come on, Bitty. Ease up on them. They’re just being boys.”
“You need to stay on? Surely, she’s got some family or someone who can help,” Tucker said, an edge to his voice.
He never remembered Aleena’s name.
“I miss you boys,” she said instead of answering. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’ve got to go.”
She ended the call, but not before catching a fraction of the sigh Tucker blew into the phone.
Would she go back?
Could she?
After what she’d done?
The images flooded her head as she stripped down, laying her clothes across the sheets so they didn’t touch the filthy comforter.
Twisting the rusted shower lever all the way to hot, she scoured her body with the thin slice of hotel soap and dressed in her nicest clothes. She took the time to blow-dry her hair—something she hadn’t done in a decade—and then caught a ten-dollar cab to the conference hotel to avoid getting soaked in the rain.
His speech would start in just over an hour. Plenty of time to get a seat before that asshole stepped onto the stage.
The hotel lobby teemed with people wearing name tags on red lanyards. A line stretched out from the long check-in table beside the ballroom door. She wasn’t registered. She halted, and a man nearly ran her down. The front of his dress shoe dug sharply into her heel. She yanked her foot up and jumped awkwardly.
Expose (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 3) Page 5