Truly Dead

by Anne Frasier

  “Elise, think about it,” David said. “If we don’t sign up in an official capacity, we won’t have access to the databases and assistance we’re going to need. We won’t be able to make an arrest. You know how it was in Chicago.”

  As welcoming as Chicago had been, they’d experienced frustration when their investigation was blocked and they had to rely on other people to get information to them. And if those people didn’t want to share . . .

  Elise gave him a hard look, silently signaling her disapproval of his position on the situation. Why hadn’t she said anything before they’d stepped into the room? Had she suspected he’d try to talk her out of it?

  She frowned, the harshness of her expression one she hadn’t aimed at him in a while. “You want to go back to work for the people who fired us?” she asked, as if the mayor wasn’t in the room.

  “No.”

  “Did you forget about us? Gould and Sandburg Investigations?”

  “Sandburg and Gould is fine.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Did you think I was going to say no too?” David asked.

  “Yes.”

  He motioned toward the door. “Let’s step out a minute.”

  “I don’t have much time,” the mayor reminded them.

  A knock sounded, and the mayor’s assistant stuck her head inside the room. “I have the paperwork and my notary seal.”

  The detectives moved into the corridor, out of earshot of the two cops. “Elise. I know you’re thinking about Audrey . . .”

  “I’ll never get her back this way.”

  “You will. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You don’t know that. The only chance I have is to settle down. Be a normal mother. Be home. Not put my daughter in danger.” She leaned her back against the wall, shoulders sagging, eyes suddenly red-rimmed and glistening. “Damn it. Why didn’t you support me in there?” She pressed a hand to her mouth, and to his horror, she let out a sob. She suddenly seemed fragile, not the Elise he knew.

  He reached for her, grasping her gently by both arms, bending to look into her eyes. “You okay?”

  She nodded, pulling herself together. He could see she was embarrassed. He straightened and let her go.

  She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, more like a kid than an adult. She was shaking again. Not very much. Probably nothing anybody else would notice, but David caught it. And yet hours earlier she’d pulled her gun and fired with precision.

  Was her protest just about Audrey? Or was there more going on? She’d been remarkably cool since the Tremain incident. Maybe too cool. Her breaking down like this, her shaking, her never seeming to have dealt with Tremain, had the hallmarks of PTSD.

  “This sounds crazy, but what if this was all orchestrated?” she asked. “What if we’re doing exactly what the shooter or shooters want us to do?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it. We just got back to town. Maybe the shot that killed Lamont wasn’t as random as it seemed. And maybe Avery and the mayor were also targets. And now the mayor wants us to come back. A logical progression of events.”

  “That’s paranoid.”

  “Is it?”

  He stared at her, thinking. “Maybe not.” Damn, it could make sense. He didn’t want it to, but he had to remain open to the possibility. No sense stepping into the middle of a trap. No sense putting their lives in danger. He’d had enough of that for a while.

  They’d both seen what had transpired in the cemetery and knew what the perpetrators were capable of. It could have been a slaughter.

  “So we tell him no,” David said, decision made. “We tell him no, and we take the next job offer we get, hopefully somewhere other than here, hopefully looking for some rich widow’s estranged son who went off to join a commune but doesn’t know his mother is dying and wants to leave him her estate and her five yappy dogs.”

  Elise pulled in a breath. “I’d be happy with any kind of cold case as long as it doesn’t involve Savannah, my father, and serial murders.”

  “Let’s go break the news to the mayor.” He spun on his heel, stopped when he felt her hand on his arm. Not a grip, but a gesture that said, Wait. She rarely touched him. If she did, it was almost always an accident. If any touching was done, it was done by him. Friendly, reassuring—hold the longing.

  She looked into his eyes, driving her resolve home. “We go back in and take the position.”

  What the hell? “But—” He gave his head a shake that felt cartoony. Even though he disagreed, he was supporting her. That’s what she’d said she wanted. “The danger. The possible plot to drag us back to Savannah PD—”

  “We take it.”

  She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have to. He got it. Refusing, standing on the sidelines while at the same time knowing they could help . . . It wasn’t them. He let out a resigned sigh and nodded.

  Her hand dropped away, but he could still feel the imprint of it on his skin. He imagined taking a marker and drawing a line around the sensation, wondered if it would look like a hand.

  She straightened and squared her shoulders. “Just for now. Just for this case.”

  But he could sense her defeat. He felt it too. How could it be so hard to set your life on a new track? He envied those people who somehow pulled it off. “Let’s do it.”

  Back in the privacy of the hospital room, the mayor told them to raise their right hands; then he recited the oath. They answered in the affirmative, papers were signed, and it was done. “Press conference is scheduled for later today.” Mayor Chesterfield sank into his pillow and closed his eyes. “Talk to Avery about it,” he whispered hoarsely. “I want both of you there, especially since you were in the cemetery when it went down. And honestly”—he opened his pain-edged eyes—“Avery isn’t the best when it comes to dealing with the press.”

  And so here they were. As though they’d never left.

  The assistant pulled out two familiar leather cases. She passed them to the detectives. Elise opened the case and gave her old badge a glance. With a flip of her wrist, she slapped the case closed and looked at the mayor. “This is temporary. I want you to know that.”

  He gave her a slow blink, but who really knew what the guy was thinking? He’d fired them without remorse. He could probably find some loophole to keep them breaking rocks for him until they were old and arthritic and blind.

  “We’ll get a composite artist to age Remy,” Elise said. “Then get the image to media outlets. The body from the cemetery should have arrived at the morgue by now. I’m hoping the autopsy will lead to an ID.” Elise, the pro, confident and on top of her game.

  “We’ll talk to the prison,” she said. “We’ll talk to the mortuary where the body was processed. See if we can figure out how and when the switch took place.”

  The door opened, and the mayor’s wife appeared. “He needs to go to the pre-op area.”

  Two nurses came in and began readying the bed in order to wheel the mayor from the room.

  Chesterfield looked from Elise to David. “Thanks.” He meant thanks for coming back even though he’d treated them so poorly. “I can go into surgery knowing Savannah is in good hands.”

  “Good luck,” David said.

  The bed was wheeled away.

  They were leaving the building when Elise reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She checked the screen and answered the muted device while they walked through the parking garage. “I’m sorry,” she told the caller. “We’re not going to be able to take the case.” That was followed by a few suggestions and names; then she disconnected and looked at David. “A parent in Portland wanted us to investigate her daughter’s cold case.”

  The perfect job. A cold case would have been something that wasn’t dangerous. It would have been something with regular hours. And Portland wasn’t that far from Audrey and Seattle.

  Neither of them mentioned any of that.

  Instead they got in the car and
headed to the outskirts of Savannah and the morgue. Hopefully John Casper would be ready to examine the corpse with no name.

  CHAPTER 11

  The morgue was on the outskirts of Savannah, away from the curious and the morbid, the nondescript flat-roofed building made impenetrable with cement block walls. A big plus: it was blessed with a generous parking lot. Selfishly, Elise often wished it were closer to downtown and the heart of the action. That was never going to happen. There was a strong push to eventually relocate the police department to the suburbs, where they could all do their part in perpetuating urban sprawl.

  The morgue might have been city property, but it wasn’t a place that welcomed the casual citizen, especially since it protected evidence every bit as important as that in the evidence room at the Savannah PD.

  Mara Casper answered the buzzer and let Elise and David in the back door. “I’m so glad to see you both.”

  Kind words, but Elise noticed Mara wasn’t her typical happy self. She had worry lines between her eyes, and she seemed distracted as the detectives stepped inside. They knew the way, but with heels clicking on the white linoleum floor, Mara escorted them beneath rows of fluorescent lights to the prep room adjacent to the autopsy suites. “John and Detective Avery are already with the body.”

  Mara normally either suited up in order to assist or returned to her office. This time, for some reason Elise hoped would soon be revealed, she remained in the prep room, hovering nervously while repeatedly tucking a strand of straight dark hair behind her ear, even going so far as to bring that hair to her mouth for a couple of chews before realizing what she was doing.

  David noticed too, and Elise could see he was forming a comment, possibly something about her vegan diet.

  “I never thought of this job as dangerous,” Mara finally blurted out. “We deal with the aftermath of crime, not the crime itself. Not the criminals.”

  Ah, there it was.

  “I love my job,” Mara said. “I love working with the dead, discovering their secrets, but John could have been killed today.”

  A lot for a new bride to deal with. A husband caught in the middle of what could have been a massacre. Elise attempted to reassure her, knowing the truth of her words wouldn’t bring as much comfort as simply the passage of time. “What happened today was highly unusual.”

  “It might have been unusual, but he’s always at crime scenes. He’s the one processing the dead body.” She looked from Elise to David. “I don’t know how you do it. How you put your lives in danger every day. And when we hang out, you act like it’s just a normal day.” She fake laughed. “It is a normal day for you.”

  “You get used to it.” David pressed one finger against Elise’s shoulder, silently urging her to turn around so he could tie her disposable yellow gown. When he was done, she did the same for him while he snapped on blue gloves.

  “I’ll never get used to it.” Mara shook her head and stared at something in her own mind, a look of horror on her face. “I don’t want to get used to it. Right now all I want is for John to come out of that autopsy suite so I can hold him. Just hold him.”

  As she tied the last bow on David’s gown, Elise considered offering a different reassurance, yet she knew it wasn’t unheard of for a medical examiner to end up dead due to a case. It was rare, but it happened. The ME wasn’t out there pounding the streets or knocking down doors, but he dealt directly with evidence that could convict the perpetrator. So to say John wasn’t in danger would be a lie. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s hard.” Pathetic words.

  The snap of David’s gloves seemed to punctuate the scene, drawing attention away from Mara’s plight. “See you inside.” He gave Elise a look of commiseration. With his surgical mask still around his neck, he opened the door to the autopsy suite. Her back turned to Mara, Elise mouthed the word Chicken to David, meaning his escape into the suite.

  He nodded agreement before spinning away. Once the door slammed, Mara asked, “What if it had been David? What if David had been hit today?”

  “He wasn’t. John wasn’t,” Elise said. “I don’t allow my mind to go to the what-ifs. It serves no helpful purpose to worry about something that’ll probably never happen. And if I allowed myself to dwell on those possibilities, I’d be unable to function. Cops can’t obsess about those things. The very act of cluttering up my head with such thoughts puts lives in danger.” Harsh words, but Mara needed to hear them. And Elise doubted John would lay it out for her.

  “You can’t be serious when you say it’ll probably never happen.” Her voice rose. “That’s denial.”

  “Call it what you want. I do what I have to do.” Elise’s sympathy was fading fast.

  “You and David have both been shot. You’ve been kidnapped, raped.” Mara’s eyes got big, and she put a hand to her mouth, realizing she’d just revealed something she’d been told in confidence. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. John told me. And I think David told him. You know what good friends they are. They tell each other things.”

  Elise was surprised to hear anybody knew such details about her ordeal. She’d not shared them with anybody, not even the department psychologist. Somehow David must have figured it out, filled in the blanks.

  “It’s over,” Elise said. “Done. That door is closed. I don’t look back.” Damn David, but at the same time nobody would assume she’d been treated to sweet tea and scones during those three days spent with Tremain. The shock of their return to Savannah had Elise finally admitting that she’d been blocking what had happened, and now she was worried that it was coming back to haunt her. A person could only ignore that kind of thing so long.

  “So you never think about it?”

  “Not unless someone brings it up.” She managed to hide her annoyance this time and instead said it with a gentle humor. But it wasn’t enough to stop Mara from continuing to press her.

  “Not even in your sleep?”

  “No,” Elise lied.

  “You know what I think? If anything happened to David—I think you’d break.”

  The words made Elise’s heart slam and her mouth go dry. And then she blocked those thoughts, abruptly excused herself, and joined David, Avery, and John in the autopsy suite, relieved to be standing over a dead body instead of hanging out in the prep room.

  David glanced at her, his white mask now in place. “You okay?”

  Avery and John were on the opposite side of the stainless-steel table, the exhumed body between them, exhaust fan on high to keep dangerous formaldehyde fumes to a minimum. It was uncommon to see a fully embalmed body in an autopsy suite.

  “You’ve seemed a little off since we were at the cemetery,” David said. She knew he was talking about her shaking hands and the uncharacteristic tears at the hospital.

  “It’s the heat.”

  “I heard we’re supposed to hit over a hundred tomorrow,” John said. “And with this humidity . . . It’s already brutal out there.”

  It was probably sixty-five degrees in the autopsy suite, the temperature low due to the bodies.

  “Congratulations on your return to Homicide.” Avery was blissfully oblivious to how Elise and David might feel about being back.

  David straightened him out. “I’m thinking your heartfelt sympathy might be more appropriate.”

  Avery laughed, and Elise glared at him above her surgical mask. “You forgot to mention that your new girlfriend is a reporter for the Savannah Morning News.”

  “Okay.” John clicked off the recorder with his foot pedal. “I’ll just wait for the chitchat to wind down. No need to have a record of this.”

  “I know how you feel about reporters,” Avery said, shifting uncomfortably. “I was hoping to bring that up under better circumstances.”

  “I doubt there would have been better circumstances.”

  “Does that mean we’re no longer invited to your house?”

  She wanted to say Avery was, Lucille wasn’t. Instead she asked, “What about that officer at t
he crime scene this morning? The blonde?”

  “Palmer? What about her?”

  God, he could be thick sometimes. “Never mind.”

  “Hey, look at me! I’m a medical examiner!” John raised his doubled-gloved hands in the air, then flexed his arms—visual cues to get them back on track. When no one protested his interruption, he moved forward with the autopsy, turning the recorder back on. Easy to see why Mara was so crazy about him.

  “Okay.” John exhaled. “As you can see, I’ve already removed his burial garb and laid it out over there.” He pointed to a table covered with a suit, dress shirt, shoes, underwear. “It came off pretty easily because funeral directors often cut the back of the clothing to get it on the body. So for anybody who’s thinking they’re going to run around in the afterlife in a snazzy suit—they’d have to stitch the back side closed first.”

  Unlike Mara, John didn’t appear upset by what had happened at the cemetery. As always, he seemed like a kid who’d consumed too much sugar, although he was a little more amped than usual. Not uncommon following a close call. Adrenaline was high, and the people who survived often felt superhuman until they came down.

  Elise had been in on a few exhumations, but none involving bodies that had been in the ground this long. The nameless corpse didn’t look too bad considering decades had passed since the burial. The skin was leathery, the body somewhat shrunken, with evidence of actual decay to the fingers and toes. But the clean-shaven face wasn’t too skeletal, and the lips and cheeks still revealed rouge applied in the mortuary.

  Astounding.

  David must have been thinking along the same lines. “Well pickled.”

  “You’d think Remy would have opted for cremation just to make sure this day never came,” Avery said.

  Elise agreed. “It is odd.”

  When you really thought about it, embalming was an unnatural process, draining the corpse of blood and bodily fluids to replace those fluids with a preservative that could keep someone looking pretty much the way he’d looked when lowered into the ground. Elise, for one, would prefer to rot. “In this case, embalming worked in our favor. An embalmed body might still give up clues.”