“I think one of me in the world is enough.”
She lifted her glass of orange juice. “Well, we agree on one thing at least.”
He smiled and lifted his own glass. “It’s a start.”
Jack turned his attention back to his food and Carlotta puzzled over his comment. The start of what?
The phone pealed, sending her pulse into orbit. Was it her father? Her mother? A bill collector?
“Will the machine kick on?” he asked.
She nodded, almost nauseous by the fourth ring when her own voice sounded. “Leave a message for Carlotta or Wesley after the tone.” Then the sound of wailing filled the room.
“Wesley,” cried Hannah, “I just heard…tell me it’s not true. That sister of yours cannot be dead!”
Carlotta’s heart pinched at her friend’s mournful sobs. “Jack,” she pleaded.
But he only shook his head.
“I’ll try you on your cell,” Hannah sputtered. “If you get this message, call me and tell me what I’m going to do without her. How dare she kill herself, the bitch.” Then she disconnected the call.
At Hannah’s angry tone, Carlotta had to smile. Her friend did not emote well. Still, she felt miserable and teary for putting her through so much anguish.
“It’s only temporary,” Jack said. “The sooner your father shows, the sooner—”
The ringing of the doorbell cut him off. Carlotta gripped the edge of the table as Jack wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed to his feet. “Stay out of sight,” he ordered.
17
Wesley blinked as Coop snapped his fingers in front of his nose. “Earth to Wesley. We’re here.”
He looked around to see that they’d arrived at the address of their residential pickup. “Sorry, dude, I’m a little distracted.”
“Understandable. Are you sure you shouldn’t be at home today?”
“I’m sure.”
“Won’t people think it’s weird that you’re working if your sister is supposed to be dead?”
“Dude, if she’s dead, then it makes sense I’d be with you, right?”
“I guess so. But you need to take your anger down a notch or two.”
Wesley alighted and walked with Coop toward the front of the modest ranch home. A police car and one from the medical examiner’s office sat in the driveway. “It’s just, what gives them the right to do this to my family?”
“Your father broke the law, Wesley.”
“My father is innocent,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I meant when he skipped bail. He’s a fugitive, and the D.A. wants him brought to justice. Don’t you want to see him again?”
“Not like this. Not lured in like some kind of animal.”
Coop didn’t respond and Wesley had the feeling that his boss believed the lies about his father. His chest ached with frustration, and he was still smarting over the fact that both Detective Terry and Coop had been witness to his emotional meltdown when he’d thought that Carlotta was gone. But he knew one button to push to get Coop on his side.
“And it burns me up thinking about Detective Terry staying in the house with Carlotta.”
Just as he suspected, a muscle ticked in Coop’s jaw. “But she agreed to it.”
“I saw her face when he told her he was moving in. She wasn’t happy about it.”
Coop’s jaw relaxed. “She’ll be safe with Jack Terry.”
“That depends on your definition of safe,” Wesley muttered.
Coop rang the doorbell, waited a few seconds, then entered the house. It was unusually cold and instantly, the stench of death and decay filled Wesley’s nose. He fought the urge to gag. A police officer stepped into the hallway, holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.
“We’re here to take the body to the morgue,” Coop said, flashing identification.
“She’s in here.”
Wesley followed Coop into a small bedroom, swallowing past the dreaded anticipation of seeing yet another dead person—they were all so different, their manner of death as individual as they had been in life. Even the old geezers who stroked out at the nursing homes all had a different look about them, meeting death with unique expressions and positions.
Inside the small bedroom, his gaze immediately went to the ceiling fan, where the body of a young woman hung, one end of a colorful scarf wound around the base of the fan and the other end knotted around her neck. Other than the scarf, she was nude. Her head lolled to the side, her face swollen and almost purple. Her arms and legs hung limply—her body swaying oh, so slowly. Wesley covered his nose with his sleeve.
“Looks like a cut-and-dried suicide,” the masked M.E. said, filling out forms. His camera sat nearby. “I figure she’s been here maybe two days.”
“More like four.” Coop handed Wesley a mask to put on.
The M.E. frowned. “Did Abrams send you to check up on me, Coop?”
“No, he wouldn’t do that.”
The man sighed. “Okay, I give. Why do you say four days instead of two? What did I miss? Color of her fingernails, libidity?”
“The four days’ worth of newspapers on the stoop,” Coop said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “And with the air conditioner running so high, the decomp was slowed.” He turned to the cop. “Who found the body?”
“I did. She hasn’t been to work, so her boss called the police.”
“Was there a suicide note?”
The M.E. stood, his expression dry. “Do you want to take this one, Coop? Oh, no wait—you’re not an M.E. anymore, only a body mover.”
Wesley looked at Coop to see how he’d take the slight.
But if the man’s remark had affected Coop, he didn’t let on. “It’s all yours, Wells. Let us know when you’re ready to bring her down.” He looked at Wesley and nodded toward the hallway.
Wesley followed him out and pulled down his mask. “You don’t think it’s a suicide?”
“No, Wells is right—it looks like a cut-and-dried suicide.” Coop shoved his hands in his pockets.
“But?” Wesley probed.
“But it’s always nice to have a suicide note.”
“Do most people leave them?”
“No, but most women do.”
Wesley nodded, tucking away the tidbit of information. “What about last night’s jumper?”
Coop shook his head. “No note.”
“You still don’t know who it was?”
“That’s the coroner’s job.”
But Wesley could tell from the man’s body language that he was itching to look into the case himself. “So when are you going to tell me what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you lose your job as coroner?”
Coop looked away for several long seconds. “Because I was a drunk and I betrayed the trust of the people who believed in me.” He leveled his gaze on Wesley. “Once that happens, your life is never the same.”
Wesley blinked hard at Coop’s sincerity. “Did you get fired?”
“Oh, yeah. And rightfully so.”
“But you’re brilliant. I’ve seen the way that Abrams and the other M.E.s treat you—they respect your opinion.”
Coop laughed. “Far from it. I overstep my bounds way too often, but old habits are hard to break.”
“Hey, Coop,” the M.E. called from the doorway, his expression contrite. “Can you give me a hand?”
“Sure,” Coop said amiably.
Wesley put his mask back in place and followed Coop back down the hall to the woman’s bedroom. He helped bear the weight of the woman’s body so the cop could loosen the knot around the base of the fan. Shouldering the left side of her body, he had a sudden appreciation for the term dead weight. Even with the mask, the odor was overwhelming. He wondered if people who were suicidal would go through with it if they could only visualize the state in which they’d be found.
Or maybe it was her way of getting back at a world that had ignored her.
<
br /> Despite the swollen state of her face, it had pleasant-enough features. Her house was ordinary, her surroundings adequate. What could have happened in this woman’s life that could make her so desperate she would tie a red-and-yellow striped scarf around the ceiling fan and her neck and then jump off the bed?
Worse, what could drive someone to jump off the Seventeenth Street bridge to certain death on the congested highway below? Last night he hadn’t had room for any emotions other than the rollercoaster of believing it was his sister, then finding out it wasn’t. But now he felt a tug of compassion for the woman who obviously had felt as if she had no choice except to end her life in such a violent way.
After lowering the woman to the bed, he and Coop went to retrieve the gurney. Wesley’s cell phone vibrated and he pulled it out, wincing when he saw the display. “It’s Hannah, I’d better get this over with.”
“Make it quick,” Coop said.
He pushed the connect button, and held his mouth away from the mike so he would sound distant. “Hello?”
“Wesley,” Hannah wailed. “It’s me. What the fuck happened?”
No one could accuse Hannah of beating around the bush. “I guess you heard.”
“Yes, but I don’t believe it. I have to hear it from you. Is it true, Wesley? Is she really dead?” Her voice broke on a sob, reminding him of his own grief when he had thought his sister was dead.
“Hannah, I can’t—”
“Wesley, just tell me. Is Carlotta dead?”
He wanted to tell her the truth, but Coop was watching him out of the corner of his eye and he knew his boss’s sense of integrity would drive him to tell Jack Terry or the D.A. if Wesley reneged on Carlotta’s promise. Plus telling Hannah would be like shouting the truth from the top of the Bank of America building with a megaphone.
“She’s…gone,” was all he could manage to say.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” Hannah screamed, then burst into new tears.
Wesley held the phone away from his ear and winced.
“I knew she was depressed but I didn’t think she’d kill herself! Oh, fuck! Wesley, you must be out of your mind.”
For going along with this ruse. “Yeah,” he murmured. “But I really don’t want to talk right now.”
“I understand,” she said through her sobs. “But call if you need help with the…arrangements. God, I can’t believe we’re talking about Carlotta’s funeral.”
“I know—it’s surreal.”
She heaved a long, shuddering sigh. “I guess this means you’ll be taking some time off work. Tell Coop that I’ll be glad to fill in.”
Wesley bit back a smile. “I will.”
“And Wesley, there’s one thing you should know…your father called Carlotta Sunday.”
He nearly dropped the phone. “What?”
“At least she thought it was him. She wasn’t sure. Before she could say anything, she dropped her cell phone and broke it. Do you think that had something to do with her suicide?”
Wesley’s mind reeled. How could Carlotta keep something like that from him? “I can say for a certainty, Hannah, that it didn’t. I have to go. Bye.” He shoved his phone back in his pocket, feeling as if he might explode. Was that why Carlotta had gone along with this scam, because she thought their father was nearby?
“I’m sure Hannah’s all broken up,” Coop said.
“Yeah,” he managed, trying to act as if nothing were wrong, when everything was. “And she said she’d be glad to fill in for me if you need help.”
Coop grimaced. “Christ, I’m going to have to call her, aren’t I?”
“Sooner or later.” His lips moved, but his mind raced with the thought that his father had called Carlotta and he immediately wondered why he hadn’t heard from him. After a couple of minutes of near-panic, he realized he had to get a grip. He tried to calm himself with Hannah’s words that Carlotta hadn’t been sure it was their father.
His thoughts moved to how quickly Hannah had been willing to believe that Carlotta had killed herself simply because she’d been moping around lately. Indeed, the number of suicides he’d attended since starting this job only a few weeks ago was shocking—and here they were handling another one.
“Why do you think people kill themselves?” he asked Coop.
Coop shrugged. “It’s easier than facing their demons. Death can be very…alluring to someone who’s disenchanted with life.”
“Have you ever thought about it?” Wesley asked, then held his breath.
“No,” Coop said earnestly. “I’ve indulged in self-destructive behavior, but being surrounded by death has given me an appreciation for life. It’s taken me a while to realize it, but dammit, I want to be happy.” He gave Wesley a little smile. “After this run, what do you say we stop in and check on your sister?”
Wesley wondered briefly if Coop would make Carlotta happy. “I say that’s a good idea.”
After all, he had a bone to pick with his dear, departed sister.
18
Carlotta peeked out the slit in the curtain and exhaled. “It’s just our neighbor, Mrs. Winningham, the nosiest woman on the face of the earth.”
“Are you two close?” Jack asked.
“Hardly. She thinks that Wesley and I are dragging down the neighborhood.”
“What’s she holding?”
“Looks like a casserole. She probably came to get the scoop on my demise in exchange for potato salad.”
“Did your parents know her?”
“She was here when we moved here, yeah.”
“I guess I’m asking if there’s a chance that they know her well enough to approach her about delivering a message to you.”
Like her father had with Peter. “I don’t think so,” she said dryly. “My mother refused to talk to the neighbors because she was convinced that moving here was an illusion and we’d be back in our big house soon.”
Jack backed away from the window, apparently willing to let Mrs. Winningham believe that no one was home. “Tell me about your parents.”
She shrugged as she made her way back to the kitchen. Her appetite had vanished, but she was craving a cigarette and hoped a cup of coffee would quiet the urge. “You have the files on them.”
He settled back into his place at the table and resumed eating. “Tell me something that isn’t in the files.”
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
As she poured them each a cup, she mentally sifted through all the stored memories about her parents, conceding that the more recent bad memories had written over some previous good ones like a computer hard drive. She set his mug down next to his plate, then leaned against the counter. Her hands suddenly seemed very cold and cradling the hot coffee felt good. “They were a beautiful couple,” she said finally.
“I’ve seen pictures. You look like your mother.”
“She was much prettier.”
“That’s debatable.”
She let the compliment pass, uncomfortable with this sense of intimacy that had settled around them. “And Wesley looks like my father.”
“Were they good parents?”
She scoffed. “You mean before they abandoned us? I guess so. They weren’t mean to us and we were well provided for.”
“But?” he probed, his dark eyes searching.
“But my father worked all the time and my mother drank all the time.”
“Oh.”
Carlotta sipped from her cup. “I’ll bet your parents were the salt of the earth, weren’t they?”
He nodded. “Still are.”
“That’s nice.”
“I’m lucky.”
It was her turn to nod. “But I have Wesley, so that makes me lucky.”
“Despite the trouble he’s been in?”
“Yeah.”
“You love him like a mother.”
“I don’t know. I suppose. All I know is that he’s the only person in this world I truly care about.”
His
mouth lifted in a smile. “Then he’s the lucky one.”
She smiled back. “He’s good to me too. He cooks for me. And he bought me that monstrosity of a television in there.”
“That must have set him back a pretty penny.”
“He sold his motorcycle.”
“Is he still making payments to his loan sharks?”
She frowned and gave him a pointed look. “I’m going to stop talking. You know way too much about my family.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said, picking up their plates and setting them in the sink. “I need to get to work anyway.”
“Doing what?”
“Surveilling,” he said, mimicking her. “I’m going to set up some cameras so I can keep an eye on things outside. Mind if I look around?”
“As if I could stop you.” She pushed away from the counter to follow him.
He walked into the living room and checked the view from both windows without moving the curtains. To her consternation Carlotta found herself checking out the view of him from behind, how the expanse of his shoulders tapered to a narrow waist. She couldn’t remember when she’d been so physically aware of a man…but then again, when had she been in such close quarters with a man other than Wesley?
“What’s the story behind the Christmas tree?” he asked mildly.
She glanced over to the corner at the small aluminum tree that had lost much of its luster over the past ten years and had suffered much abuse. “My mother put it up before she…left.”
“And you didn’t want to take it down?”
“Wesley wouldn’t let me.”
“And the gifts underneath?”
“We never opened them.”
His eyes widened. “Never? Didn’t it cross your mind that they might have left a clue inside as to where they’d gone?”
“Yes, but I promised Wesley I wouldn’t open them. It meant a lot to him that we wait until our parents came home.”
“I’m surprised the police didn’t go through them when your parents first disappeared.”
“We hid them.”
Jack went over and picked up the small gifts, shaking them. “You could open them now, Carlotta, and this might all be over. Wesley wouldn’t have to know.”
She walked over and took a gift from him, this one wrapped in “Ho, Ho, Ho” red and green paper, the cellophane tape now yellowed and brittle. “Yes, he would. I’m not going back on my word to him.”
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