The Darkly Stewart Mysteries: The Woman Who Tasted Death

by DG Wood

  “Constable. Mr. and Mrs. Schilling.”

  Darkly’s parents stood up, and Darkly herself made to get out of bed. This was the first moment she noticed the pain, and her hand shot to her side.

  “Please don’t get up. That’s an order,” Vincetti said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did you catch any more of the bastards? Or are they all dead?” William asked.

  Darkly gave her sergeant a look of empathy for the drilling he was about to receive from her father.

  “What’s the next step?”

  “You served in the arctic, didn’t you, sir? Brought in that serial killer in 1979? The one feeding Inuit children to his dogs?”

  Elizabeth winced. Vincetti was going to butter her husband up with gruesome recollections.

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Schilling. You wear bluntness like a tie in my line of work.”

  William glossed over the younger man’s lack of tact.

  “That was me, sergeant, and without the satellites or mobile phone records to guide me. Not like today. Just witness accounts and tracks in the snow.”

  William drifted off deeper into the past.

  “When he finally realized he couldn’t shake me, he took off all his clothes and went to sleep in the snow. Figured he’d let the cold take him before he faced a court of law. He was still alive when I found him. I put the cuffs on him, then dragged him into a bed roll with me. I was butt naked, and I damn well raised his body temperature.”

  “William, he doesn’t want to hear all about that.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Schilling, I do. But, another time. Over a pint maybe.”

  William shut up, nodded his head, and Vincetti turned his full attention to Darkly.

  “We ran the prints on both men. Both had criminal records as long as Christmas. That led us to several addresses. At a suburban home, at six-thirty this morning, we found one of the missing girls.”

  Darkly held her breath.

  “Alive,” Vincetti continued after the suspenseful pause. “We’ll find the rest.”

  Darkly breathed again.

  Sergeant Vincetti put on his Stetson to leave.

  “Please report to my office at nine in the morning for debriefing, Constable. I’ll require a written report, as well.”

  “Yes, sir. What did you find out about the woman?”

  “Nothing. No ID. Her prints and DNA led us nowhere. It’s like she doesn’t exist. But, we’ll keep looking. I’m sorry about Lawrence. He was a good officer. A good man. I’m going to pay my respects to his family now.”

  “I’d like to be there, sir.”

  Darkly stood up, as Vincetti opened the door to the room.

  “That’s not a good idea. Not yet.”

  Vincetti gave Darkly a half smile and closed the door behind him.

  Darkly rode in silence in the back seat of her parents’ car on the way back to her apartment. They tried to convince her to stay with them at a downtown hotel. But, it wouldn’t have done her any good. So, she agreed to meet them for breakfast at seven-thirty, when she hoped she could convince them to drive back home and stop worrying about her.

  Then again, maybe time with her parents was just what she needed. She had felt herself becoming distant, as she dived deeper into her cover. It was like her real life had become the fantasy, and her cover reality.

  Elizabeth gave Darkly a big hug, kissed her daughter, and then wiped lipstick off her cheek.

  “I’m your mother. You know I won’t stop worrying about you, and I’ll always be here. I’m just a phone call away.”

  “I know, mum.”

  “Okay then.”

  Elizabeth teared up a little and got back in the car. William saluted his daughter from behind the wheel.

  “Constable.”

  Darkly saluted him back. She unlocked her front door and collapsed onto the futon bed moments after walking inside. She didn’t wake up until ten that night.

  Darkly reached out of the shower for her cup of coffee and took a sip. Drops from the shower head watered down the coffee. She took a final sip and dumped the rest down the drain. She then got out, dried off and dressed in a navy blue sweat suit, tucking her damp hair under the hood. She still had to write her report, but how could she write a full report if half of it didn’t make sense?

  Who was that woman? Why the hell did she have the same condition as Darkly? And if Marielle had a silver allergy too, why did she call Darkly a heretic? In that case, wouldn’t Marielle be a heretic, as well? What was the heresy they had both committed? And the most important question of all, why did she try to kill Darkly? Darkly had to start finding answers now. Unfortunately, she was about to be handed a series of more peculiar questions.

  Darkly grabbed a slice of pizza at the place on the corner, then hopped on the streetcar back down to the hospital. She was willing to bet the body hadn’t been moved to the RCMP’s forensics lab yet. She needed a little more girl time with Marielle, and this time she was bringing her gun.

  Darkly had been leaning against the wall for two hours when she finally caught a break. A couple of times, a nurse had opened the back door to the loading dock and stood in the doorway for a smoke. This despite the No Smoking sign.

  Each time, when the cigarette was finished, he slammed the door shut behind him. But, this time, a janitor opened the door to let in a Cintas delivery man. He carried a pile of pink surgical smocks wrapped tightly in cellophane. The janitor propped the door open and left the delivery man to it.

  Darkly timed the delivery man three times. Each visit inside took two minutes and change. The fourth time, Darkly walked quickly from the dumpster to the loading dock. She jumped into the back of the Cintas truck and grabbed a box labeled talcum powder. Once out of the truck, she looked around the corner of the door frame. The coast was clear.

  She slipped inside the hospital and made her way down a hallway off the boiler room and incinerator. At a T-junction, she could see the delivery man emerging from a supply room empty-handed. She made a left and walked with a sense of purpose.

  She decided to hum. People who hum are where they are supposed to be, right? So, while humming Fly Me To The Moon, Darkly found herself at another junction, where a sign on the wall pointed to Admittance, Emergency Room, and Morgue.

  After another right and a left, she found herself standing in front of two swinging doors. Behind her, she heard someone else whistling the same tune she’d just stopped humming. It was contagious. She pushed her way into the dark room and waited until the whistling grew quiet.

  To her left was the medical examiner’s office and lab. Beyond that, were four empty examination tables with drains that led to pipes that emptied into grates in the floor. Beyond the tables, were storage coolers that could accommodate twenty-four bodies.

  Darkly put the box down on one of the tables and pulled a penlight from her back pocket. She shone the light on the name plates on the refrigerator doors. She scanned several, until finding Lawrence Aragon. She touched the piece of paper that said his name. Should she pray?

  There really was no time for sentimentality. She kept walking past several other names, among which she assumed were the occupants of last night’s white van. She reached a plate that read “Jane Doe.” This had to be it. Though Darkly had informed Vincetti of Marielle’s name, without any documentation to back that up, it was assumed to be an alias. Darkly had convinced Vincetti there was no point in searching for Marielle’s one-night stand from the toilet. At least, it shouldn’t be a priority. She was convinced he was absolutely innocent.

  Darkly opened the door to the refrigerated body storage unit and pulled out the shelf that held a body bag matching Marielle’s size. She put the penlight in her mouth and unzipped the bag, revealing Marielle’s face. The girl looked as though she could just be sleeping. Her cheeks even looked ruddy. D
arkly unzipped the entire bag. Marielle was still dressed, and her clothing was stained with her own blood.

  Darkly waved the light over the upper chest. The blue of the spider veins was as vibrant in death as it had been in life. She brushed her fingertips over the veins and moved down Marielle’s shirt to the dried blood over her abdomen. She lifted the t-shirt up to reveal the bullet wound. Remarkably, the hole was tiny, as though it had almost healed. The skin around the wound had a purplish bruising.

  Darkly let the shirt fall and reached for one of Marielle’s hands. She knew the fingernails continued to grow after death, but this was ridiculous. The nails were a couple inches in length, and the back of her hand was covered in a light down of prickly hairs. Darkly looked down at her own nails and the shaved back of her hand.

  As a child, she would bite her nails down to the quick, tearing them out of the skin, leaving painful and bloody corners that would be filled with new growth hours later. She filed them once in the morning and once at night in order to keep them at a manageable length. And she could forget nail polish. That would only bring attention to the bizarre condition.

  Darkly unlaced one of Marielle’s shoes, which were name brand knock-offs she had probably picked up for a few bucks. Darkly pulled off the dirty sock and found the same condition on Marielle’s foot.

  “Well, you had no problem getting a date last night. I guess there’s hope for me.”

  Darkly zipped the bag back up and slid the tray back into storage. The door clicked shut. As she took two steps away, towards the swinging doors, an almighty clang rang out. Darkly just about jumped out of her skin. She turned to look behind her. Again, another clang, and the door to Marielle’s unit shook. Marielle was alive and kicking the door? Impossible!

  With the next clang, the handle to the door strained against its latch, stretching the metal. Darkly’s eyes went to the box of talcum, and her father’s words about footprints in the snow leapt to mind. She tore the box open and emptied a container of powder onto the floor.

  Seconds later, Darkly was in the medical examiner’s office, with the door shut, and hiding under the desk. Another massive bang, and she heard the handle to the refrigerator unit door catapult across the room, hit the glass of the office wall, and land on the floor. Marielle was out.

  “Shit,” Darkly whispered to herself, then covered her own mouth.

  Above her head, there was a small table lamp. The on-off was a pedal switch, and she’d just turned it on by accidentally sitting on it. She quickly turned it off, just as she heard Marielle’s body slump to the floor.

  There was absolute quiet for a few moments, but then a click-clack on the floor as Marielle walked towards the office. It sounded like nails on tile floor. Of course! She hadn’t put Marielle’s shoe back on. The girl’s long nails were scraping against the floor.

  Darkly sank deeper under the desk, as Marielle walked up to the office door and stopped. Darkly quietly removed the standard-issue revolver from her shoulder holster and glued her eyes to the doorknob on the office door. Surely, Marielle was going to open it. But, then, the click-clacking resumed, and Darkly heard the doors to the morgue swing open. Once again, all was quiet.

  It must have been ten minutes before Darkly could work up the nerve to crawl out from under the desk and open the door.

  Back in the morgue, she shone her penlight on Marielle’s refrigerator unit. Empty, except for Marielle’s clothes ripped to pieces. On the floor, where she expected to find footprints, she observed not human prints in the powder, but large animal paw prints. These paw prints guided Darkly to the door and out into the hallway.

  With her gun held at the ready, Darkly burst through the swinging doors. No Marielle in sight, but the white powder prints were easy to follow.

  As she turned the last corner back to the loading dock, Darkly heard a man scream out in terror and pain. She ran the rest of the way to the loading dock, slammed up against the door frame, and took the safety off her revolver. She counted to three and bolted through the open door.

  She found the delivery man rolling in agony. He gripped the side of his torso, which looked like a shark had bitten him. A chunk was missing, and he was bleeding profusely. Darkly holstered her gun and bent down to apply pressure to the man’s wound.

  She caught movement in the corner of her eye, looked up, and saw the hindquarters of an animal disappear over a concrete wall behind the dumpster.

  Darkly turned her attention back to the delivery man.

  “What did you see? What was it?”

  He just shook his head and passed out from the pain. Once more, all Darkly could do now was yell for help.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sergeant Vincetti never blinked. It was the strangest thing. Darkly once entertained the thought her superior had inner transparent eyelids, like an amphibian, that made his outer ones merely cosmetic. Or did he practice for hours in the mirror in order to intimidate young constables with his authority?

  “Tell me again. What were you hoping to find at the morgue?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. You can ask me as many times as you like.”

  “I will ask you as many times as it takes to get an answer I’m satisfied with, Constable. Why did you feel the need to examine the body of Jane Doe?”

  Vincetti liked Darkly, and he had great respect for her father, but he was losing his patience. In a couple of hours, he would need to explain to his superiors what the hell happened last night. And so far, Darkly was only muddying the waters.

  “I had a hunch that—”

  “That?”

  Here it was. The moment of truth.

  “You’ve always told me to follow my gut. Well, I had a hunch that Jane Doe and I are related.”

  “You mean you’ve seen her before? Family reunions, photographs?”

  “No. We have the same birthmark.”

  “And what do you think that means?”

  “She wasn’t connected to the undercover investigation. And I could see in her eyes, when she was holding the knife, that killing me was something she felt she had to do. Should do.”

  Vincetti just sat there for a moment in silence, not knowing what to make of any of it.

  Finally, he answered, “Okay, what’s next?”

  “I’ll find her.”

  “Do you know where to look?”

  Vincetti was fishing, even though he knew the fish would be too small.

  “I have a hunch.”

  “Another hunch. You are officially on paid leave for thirty days, Constable.”

  Vincetti actually blinked. Darkly understood. She was on her own, without support.

  “What are you going to say in your report, sir?”

  “A man was attacked by a wild dog. You saved him from bleeding to death.”

  Darkly did not tell the tale quite as it had happened. In the official version, Marielle had walked out, as a wild, rabid dog had walked in. With the choice between saving a life and chasing a criminal, Darkly chose the life.

  “And what about Jane Doe, sir?”

  “God knows how many drugs that girl had racing through her veins. People have been mistaken for being dead before. You’re dismissed, Constable.”

  Darkly tried to relax. She and her mother went for walks during the day, and she watched cop shows on the TV at night with her father.

  It was a guilty pleasure to identify the massive holes in procedural dramas with William. Each opening scene seemed to involve a plain-clothes detective whispering, squinting, and drinking a cup of coffee, while examining some corpse’s mouth for parasites.

  But, three nights into her enforced sabbatical, Darkly was finding it harder and harder to scratch her itch with quality family time.

  After seeing an image of Darkly on the television in full-dress uniform at Lawrence’s funeral, William finally grabbed hold o
f the tusks of the elephant in the room.

  “You blame yourself for your partner’s death.”

  “Dad, I don’t want–”

  “You should.”

  “What?”

  Was he using reverse psychology on her? She didn’t appreciate the tough love. What was wrong with just sitting in front of the TV and pretending everything was normal?

  “You weren’t carrying a firearm.”

  “I was ordered not to. If it had been discovered while I was undercover–”

  “With a firearm, you could have apprehended the suspects before the situation escalated. Shot out the tires of the van before it had the opportunity to run down your partner.”

  “Dad, I was ordered not to carry a firearm.”

  Did he not know what Darkly had been through? She held her partner dead in her arms. She was the last person to hear him breathe instead of a son or daughter at the end of a very long life.

  “A good officer knows what orders to disobey.”

  William turned the TV off and got out of his recliner.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “We may have lost control of the situation, but there were unexpected variables.”

  She was sounding guilty to herself now.

  “You were never in control of the situation, Darkly.”

  That was the nail in the coffin, and Darkly could no longer bring herself to respond.

  William softened. “You made a mistake. Own it. You’ll sleep better.”

  Neither father nor daughter had anything further to say that night.

  The next morning, William made himself scarce, and Darkly sat staring at a breakfast she couldn’t stomach. Her mother ate everything on her plate. She always did, even when she was sick. The secret to good health, Elizabeth loved to say, was to stick to a proven pattern and not to deviate. It’s the multiple shocks of a thousand deviations building up inside you that kills.