Walk Into Silence

by Susan McBride

  But her digging did unearth something else.

  Caught in the leather corner of the partially buried blotter was a photograph, and Jo pushed aside a fistful of mail in order to remove it.

  Her heart leapt.

  The ill-focused shot showed a woman with inky curls tossed wildly around her face, head thrown back, and grin wide with delight. Her skin browned by the sun, she wore cutoff shorts and a red bikini top. Her lean arms were extended, her hands busy with the reel of a fishing rod. In the bottom-right corner was the silver glimmer of a striped bass caught on the hook, flipping out of the water.

  Jo could still feel the heat of the day on her back and shoulders, could hear the water lapping at the boat and Adam laughing as she’d reeled in the fish. “Hold it a minute,” she remembered him crying. “Where the heck’s my phone so I can get a picture of this?”

  That was four years ago.

  She couldn’t believe he’d kept the picture.

  They hadn’t been involved for long, maybe a few months, when he’d taken her camping on Lake Granbury for a weekend. They’d spent the second night at a bed-and-breakfast, a beautiful old Victorian that sat right on the water. She’d lost herself in him, had let her guard down, and he’d whispered in her ear after making love how good he felt when he was with her, how she made his heart race. He’d even put her hand against his chest to feel it, murmuring as he did: “See what you do to me?”

  And she had given in to her emotions, forgetting until they packed up the next morning to go home that he wasn’t hers.

  For the next few years, Jo had accepted his married state because it gave her what she needed: an excuse to be with him without the commitment. Avoiding intimacy was a pattern. Vulnerability only brought pain. Until she’d realized she wanted more of him—all of him—and he belonged to someone else.

  Jo had pulled up her emotional drawbridge, but it was too late. People who knew them—in the Dallas PD and at the ME’s office—had started to talk, and it got too uncomfortable. Jo had left Dallas not long after.

  Adam had accused her of running, of being afraid of her emotions, and she let him believe he was right. If he left his wife, she wanted it to be his choice, not because she pressured him or because they got caught. Jo had figured that after she moved to Plainfield, Adam would forget about her. Only he hadn’t, had he? Adam and his wife had split, and he had ultimately chosen to be with her. The only thing hanging between them now was her past, and Jo would deal with that, too.

  She tucked the photograph back into the corner of the blotter and smothered it with papers, wishing her pulse would slow down.

  Letting out a held breath, she sank into his worn leather chair, its contours molded to the shape of his body. It even held his scent, a musky maleness mixed with subtle lime-tinged aftershave. She ran a hand over the crackles in the armrest as she settled in, feeling uncharacteristically dainty in its overstuffed confines. Her feet barely touched the floor. She wasn’t a shrimp by any means, but Adam was half a foot taller.

  She thought of the driver’s seat in Jenny’s Nissan, how Emma had suggested it had been adjusted to accommodate a taller person, and adrenaline rushed through her.

  A taller person.

  There had been someone else in the car. They would find whoever it was. Jenny deserved that.

  Jo set the baggie with the stained and wrinkled page in front of her and simply stared at it for a good long while, studying the slightly smeared handwriting and imagining Jenny scribbling down her deepest emotions, sipping coffee as she paused between thoughts.

  She felt almost guilty for looking.

  I see Finn in my dreams.

  In the best ones, his laughter fills my head, and I am whole again. In the worst, he’s afraid and calling for me, but I can’t reach him in time.

  She swallowed hard, feeling horribly intrusive. Even in those first spare sentences, Jenny’s pain washed through her, sharp as a knife.

  He feels so close to me that my heart bangs with hope that I’ll open my eyes, and he’ll be there. But he isn’t and won’t ever be.

  She was more certain now than ever that this woman, whom everyone had found to be unobtrusive and quiet, had harbored so much more inside than they would ever know.

  I wake up aching for him. And I can’t stop crying.

  Tears slid down Jo’s cheeks, and she used the cuff of her coat to wipe at her face, the wool rough against her skin.

  I know I’ll never see him again, not as long as I’m here.

  She thought of Jenny’s eyes in the photograph, how haunted they’d seemed, like she had seen things she’d never forget but wished she could. Jo understood the truth all too clearly then, so that she felt sick to her stomach at what that meant.

  Jenny Dielman hadn’t killed herself.

  She just hadn’t wanted to live.

  Had whoever helped her cross that line realized the difference? Had it made it easier to pull the trigger? Like her killer was doing her a favor in the end, releasing her to someplace sweeter than the bleakness that had tormented her on Earth?

  Jo’s pager went off—she was still short a cell phone—and she started at the sound, swiping sleeve to runny nose before grabbing the thing from her belt, fingers trembling.

  She used Adam’s phone to dial Dispatch. “Yeah, Susie, what’s up?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Detective, but I’ve got a lady on hold. She’s called several times already this morning. She really wants to talk to you.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name’s Kimberly Parker. Said she’s the sister of the woman you found in the quarry.”

  Jo’s pulse picked up a notch. “Patch her through, okay?”

  “Give me a sec.”

  She heard a series of clicks before Susie said, “Go ahead,” and then a hesitant voice came on the line.

  “Detective Larsen?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” She settled on the very edge of the chair, leaning against Adam’s desk. “You’ve been trying to reach me?”

  “I need to talk to you, about my sister.”

  “First, let me say how sorry I am.”

  “Thank you.” It was softly uttered, almost dismissive, like that was all the sympathy she could handle. “I’m flying down for her funeral on Friday, but I had to tell you something. I don’t know if it’ll mean anything to you or not.”

  “Go on.” Jo held the handset to her ear and waited.

  “Jenny had been calling me lately, in the morning when she was on break at the library. She said she couldn’t talk freely when Patrick was around, that there were things she didn’t want him to hear. He treated her like a child. It would’ve driven me crazy, but I think she liked having her husband pay attention. Kevin was the opposite. He didn’t give a damn what she did.”

  “Kevin Harrison,” Jo said.

  “Yes, the good doctor,” Kimberly remarked sourly. “He mostly ignored Jenny, which I don’t think was bad, all things considered.”

  Jo gave her room to continue.

  “The past few weeks, I don’t know . . .” Jenny’s sister sighed, sounding agitated. “Something was up, and she wouldn’t tell me what exactly. I do know it had to do with Finn and trying to make sense of why he died. She wouldn’t let it go.”

  Jo knew that much already.

  “Last week, she sent me a shoe box that she wanted me to hold on to, just in case. It’s like she knew something was going to happen. I wish she would’ve told me what had her so nervous.”

  Jo took a stab. “Was her journal in the box?”

  “It wasn’t a journal. It’s a yellow T-shirt and a pair of eyeglasses. The shirt’s a size six, and the glasses are smallish. I’m pretty sure they were Finn’s.”

  A T-shirt and glasses?

  “Was there a note?” Jo asked.

  “Just the letter that told me to take the box to the police if anything went wrong,” Kimberly said and sighed again. “I thought she was being melodramatic, you know, to get my attention. J
enny was pretty overloaded on emotion.”

  “Will you bring the box with you when you come?”

  “I will.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about it?”

  “No,” Kimberly said, her voice turning edgy. “I didn’t tell Patrick anything. I figure that’s who you mean.”

  Yes, Jo thought, but didn’t say.

  “Look, I’ll fly down as soon as I can work things out with my babysitter. You can have the box. If it has anything to do with Jenny’s death, then I sure don’t want it. I’ll call when I get a flight to Dallas. I’ve got to take care of a few things with my family here first.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Divorced with two kids,” she said with a sad laugh. “It’s a wonder Jenny or I could stand to be married at all, what with our folks as an example.”

  “Oh?”

  “If Patrick didn’t fill you in, then maybe Jenny didn’t clue him in either.” Kimberly sniffed. “Our father was the only GP in the Iowa town where we grew up.”

  “He was a general practitioner?” Jo tried to clarify.

  “Jenny used to say it stood for gutless prick. He wasn’t a nice man, Detective. When he had a bad day, which was pretty near every day, he picked on my mother. And when she wasn’t around or he got tired of her, he’d pick on Jen.” Jo heard the slow intake of her breath. “He knew how to hit in all the places that wouldn’t show, so no one at school would ask questions. But mostly, he yelled and put us down, just to keep us in our places.”

  Jo understood it now, that faraway look in Jenny’s eyes in the photograph. She knew it all too well. “Did he sexually abuse her?”

  “I don’t think so.” Kimberly paused. “I was six years younger. She kept him away from me, took the brunt of it herself. God”—she hesitated, drawing in a breath—“I don’t know how she survived as long as she did, but I owe her for it.”

  Jo swallowed hard. It was no surprise to learn that Jenny had been victimized as a child. That explained her failed marriage, clinging to her dead son, letting Patrick hold all the cards in their relationship. It all fit.

  “It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Jenny’s sister continued. “That she went to work at a hospital and married a doctor. You would’ve figured she’d stay away from men who thought they were God, after our daddy. Jen never said it outright, but I think Kevin pushed her around. She did tell me once that she caught him screaming at Finn, and it freaked her out enough to threaten to take Finn and leave.”

  Kevin Harrison pushed her around?

  “He cheated on her, for sure, with that rich bitch he married. Jenny knew it was going on, but she let it slide because she loved Finn more, if that makes sense. People don’t learn, do they? My therapist says it’s a cycle, and those of us who’ve been burned keep sticking our fingers in the fire, over and over again.”

  Over and over and over.

  Jo rubbed her eyes.

  “You’ll get him, won’t you?” The voice that asked sounded so small, the hopeful tone of a little sister.

  “We’ll get him,” Jo said, wondering if the thought had crossed Kimberly’s mind that him might be someone Jenny had known very well, had perhaps even loved.

  Gently, she put the handset back into the cradle. Then she returned her focus to the slip of paper captured in the evidence bag. She read the words Jenny had written until they felt burned into her brain.

  And I can’t stop crying. I know I’ll never see him again, not as long as I’m here.

  “Must be some letter.”

  Jo jerked her head up at the voice, something melting inside her.

  Adam stood across the room, watching her. She hadn’t even heard him enter.

  He approached the desk, coming around behind her, trying to get a peek at what she was reading. “I’ve never seen anyone so thoroughly engrossed. What’ve you got there?”

  “Just a page from the diary of a lost soul,” she said quietly. She felt as though she’d lost her equilibrium and needed to find it again.

  “The woman from the quarry?”

  “Jenny, yes.”

  “Wow.” He removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses on his scrub shirt, squinting at her until he replaced them. “Where’d it turn up?”

  “Emma found it after they’d impounded the car. It was shoved under the driver’s seat. We still haven’t tracked down the journal.”

  “You’ll find it, Jo.”

  She dropped her head.

  He nudged her with the toe of his Puma. “You okay, Rocky?”

  She self-consciously fingered the scratch at her jawline as she lifted her chin. “I’m scabbing up rather nicely, don’t you think?”

  “How’s the clipped wing?”

  She bent her left arm and gingerly raised it, grimacing when she approached shoulder level. “Better every minute.”

  “Don’t push it,” he warned.

  “I won’t if you won’t.”

  “Funny.” He leaned a hip against the desk and folded his arms across his chest. His green scrubs looked fresh, and no booties obscured the black shoes. He must’ve cleaned up after a postmortem. She wondered if he’d seen the victims from the multicar pileup, but didn’t ask.

  She shifted in the chair, which emitted mournful creaks. “You wouldn’t know what’s happening—”

  “With your vic on Baldwin’s table?” He watched her closely, thick eyebrows cinched, adding, as if to show he’d paid attention, “Jenny.”

  “You didn’t poke your head in, perchance?”

  “Perchance?” he echoed and smiled his crooked smile, eyes crinkling. “Matter of fact, I bumped into your partner in the hallway outside the autopsy suite. It seems he needed a breath of fresh air.”

  Mr. Been-Here-Too-Many-Times-It’s-A-Piece-Of-Cake? Ha!

  “Hank needed air?”

  Adam rubbed his jaw. “He said he had a bug.”

  More like a Wendy’s double cheeseburger and acid reflux. She kept a straight face, but it was tough. “Did he say how much longer it’d take?”

  “He mentioned sticking around to see the skull cracked.”

  “Any idea when that’ll be?”

  “From the sounds of it, Baldwin had the bone saw running.” Adam glanced at the clock on the wall, drawing Jo’s eyes there as well. “Give him another hour, more or less.”

  God, she hated waiting.

  She blew out a slow breath, already impatient to get back to the station, to tell Captain Morris what she’d learned from Emma Slater, to type up her notes before their interview with Dr. Kevin Harrison at seven.

  “It really sucks, you know,” she said.

  “What? Phelps getting sick?”

  “No.” She met Adam’s eyes. He was still keeping a distance, leaning against the corner of his desk, barely near enough to touch. “All the ways people hurt each other.”

  “You can’t fix the world, Jo,” he said.

  “Of course I can’t.”

  “But you want to, which is why you’re so good at what you do. I love that about you. You’re so passionate, so intense.”

  There was no guile in his face, nothing but affection. He was so well meaning. He made her feel like a liar sometimes, even when she hadn’t lied except by omission.

  “Thanks for that.”

  His brown hair stuck out in unruly tufts, and she wanted to smooth them over, to touch the grooves at the sides of his mouth, the lines on his brow, creased with concern. He worried so much about her.

  She wished she could pour out her heart. Tell him everything.

  But she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready.

  Instead, she stuck to what was foremost on her mind.

  “I’m sitting here, reading her thoughts, and I want to weep for her. I can’t imagine how painful her days were. She was racked with guilt about Finn’s death, taking meds to cope, but never getting over him. You should see the closet she kept with all of his—”

  Adam snapped his fingers, and she stopped in midsentence
.

  “Finnegan Harrison,” he said, and his eyes went wide behind his preppy glasses. “You just reminded me.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah.” He pushed away from the desk and turned to shuffle through the mess that buried the blotter. “I found that file you asked me to track down. Here we go.” He shuffled papers and photos and charts so that it appeared he was only making things worse. Then he magically extracted a manila envelope from amid the chaos and handed it to her.

  She set the bag with the journal page behind her back and fumbled with the clasp to open the envelope. Carefully, she emptied its contents into her lap.

  Inside were several pages of records from Presbyterian Hospital. “Did you look already?” Jo asked him.

  Adam crossed his arms, nodding. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Apparently, the kid’s neck snapped when he fell from a tree.”

  “Nothing suspicious?”

  “Not on paper.”

  Jo flipped to the copy of Finn’s death certificate. Then she read the emergency room record, which basically reiterated what Adam had just told her: the child had suffered broken vertebrae after he’d toppled from his tree house, dropping fifteen feet onto his head. Minor abrasions and bruises were noted on palms, knees, and elbows. There was a note listing the clothing he’d worn: a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans. He had on shoes but no socks.

  Was that the T-shirt Jenny had mailed to her sister with Finn’s glasses? Jo wasn’t surprised that Jenny had saved it, not after seeing the closet filled with Finn’s clothes. But why would Jenny send those items to her sister and tell Kimberly to take them to the police “if anything went wrong”?

  Jo blew out a breath and read on.

  The certificate of death showed the TOD as 8:11 p.m., precisely three years ago next Friday. The certifying physician’s name was Howard Shue.

  “Who’s Shue?” she asked.

  “He was an attending ER physician when the boy was brought in.” Adam scratched the side of his nose. “He may still be at Presbyterian. You want to talk to him?”

  “I don’t know.” She shuffled through the few remaining papers. There were notes from the paramedics who’d transported Finn to the hospital. He was unresponsive and not breathing on his own. They’d intubated him, working on him all the way to the ER. Skin was blue-gray, limbs were flaccid, pupils dilated, no pulse. Continued attempts to resuscitate in the ER were futile, and he was pronounced dead a half hour later.