by Anne Frasier
“Maybe.” It seemed as if he wanted to say something else but changed his mind and went another direction. “I started thinking if I vanished again and if you stopped looking too closely, let Lamont handle it, maybe Remy’s attention would be diverted. Instead everything was amplified. The way I see it, Remy is now dealing with two issues. Trying to keep you from tracking him down, and trying to stick with his original plan of revenge.”
He leaned into his chair. “I don’t know how the morgue fits into this, or if it’s even connected. But let’s assume it is. I wasn’t good friends with Casper or Mara, but I did go to their wedding. Going by the Novak kidnapping timeline, Remy would have already been in Savannah at that point. He might have been tailing me, saw me at the wedding. Hell, I could see him face-to-face and not recognize him. He might have served me a tea or beer somewhere. It’s been thirty-seven years. He’d look like a different person.”
“I’m not sure he was after Mara and John because of you.” Elise curled back into the couch, tugging the afghan free and covering her legs, sticking her arms underneath. She couldn’t get warm. “The evidence room was ransacked. They must have forced Mara or John to open it. And then the fire, and the sprinkler system . . . It’s going to be hard to determine what they were after, or what’s gone and what was lost. Georgia Bureau of Investigation is sending specialists down from Atlanta. They’ll begin processing the scene in depth first thing in the morning. Bottom line is, the perpetrators didn’t want that body identified.”
“Had John completed the autopsy? Was everything loaded into the database?”
“Basic information was entered during the autopsy. Height, weight, sex. But he hadn’t yet uploaded anything beyond the basics. We might never know everything he found in the autopsy, but they were definitely trying to destroy evidence. And they succeeded.”
“What kind of evidence does a body that’s been buried decades contain?”
She told him about the face and hands. “They didn’t want the John Doe identified.”
He was silent, as if trying to make sense of it. She could see he wasn’t fully convinced that covering up the corpse’s identity was the main motive. “It might have been a smoke screen, something to divert your attention.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. What about the Novak kid? Did John do that autopsy?”
“Yes, but John would have entered Novak into the database by then.”
“What about evidence?”
“It depends. Physical evidence eventually ends up downtown, but the timeline for final processing and storing isn’t that rigid. There might have been evidence at the morgue.”
“The possibility he was looking for Novak evidence is something to keep in mind. Because when it comes to Remy, there’s no direct line. No A leads to B leads to C.”
“Thanks for the input.” Nothing sarcastic about her reply.
“I’m sorry about Mara,” he said. “She was a sweet kid. And John. Both of them.”
The sympathy got to her. She wasn’t ready to see sympathy in Sweet’s eyes, on his face, in his voice. And damn, if she didn’t begin crying. It had been bad enough to cry in front of David, but her father? It wasn’t a window to her emotions she’d ever wanted him to see. He didn’t deserve that much of her.
Unlike her breakdown in the restroom, she managed to get herself under control pretty quickly this time.
“Have you eaten anything?” he asked, seeming to understand that emotions were closer to the surface when a person was hungry and exhausted.
She pressed the back of her hand against her nose and sniffed. Had she? A food table with sandwiches, coffee, and water had appeared at the crime scene. But had she eaten anything? “I don’t know.”
“That’s never a good sign.”
He left the room, and she heard him rummaging around in the kitchen. He returned to place a plate in front of her. At that point she expected him to leave. Instead he watched her eat two slices of cheese and half an apple before slapping his knees and getting to his feet. “I’m off. Lock the door, and set the alarm behind me. And get some sleep.” He eyed the couch. “Maybe in a bed.”
CHAPTER 20
After Sweet left, Elise sat on the couch absorbing their conversation; then she decided to take his advice and sleep in her own bed, even if just for a couple of hours. But when she stood up, she was overcome by a strange and yet oddly familiar sensation.
Her legs and arms felt weighted. The room tilted. She reached blindly for the couch, steadied herself, then aimed for the front door and managed to lock it. But when she turned to punch in the alarm code, she couldn’t make out the numbers on the box. She blinked, squinted, then collapsed to the floor. Rolling to her back, she patted herself down, searching for her phone to call 911. Couldn’t find it.
Her skin was on fire.
Like a transforming werewolf, she ripped off clothes, tossing piece after piece aside until she was naked. Panting, she got her knees under her, pushed herself upright, lurched to the kitchen, and jerked the refrigerator door open, letting the cold air move across her hot skin. She was beyond thinking, beyond trying to analyze what was happening. She was just reacting, trying to make it stop.
The heat moved deeper, into her organs, through her veins, to her brain. The light in the refrigerator was too bright, like staring at the sun.
She turned away and lunged for the counter, feeling for the portable phone, touching it, knocking it to the floor, beyond her reach. Gripping the counter, she followed the granite to the sink, groped for the faucet, turned on the cold full blast. She ducked her head under the stream of frigid water, her only objective to stop the heat in her brain. At some point she inhaled, choked, straightened. Still burning up.
Without shutting off the water, she shuffled away from the sink, stiff legged. By pure instinct, she found the back door, opened it, and stood in the threshold. The cool relief she’d hoped for didn’t come. Down the steps until she felt smooth live-oak leaves and the sharp edges of patio brick under her feet.
A patio John and Mara helped build.
She looked up at the swirling stars. From a far-off window, a violin played a sad song. With a hand pressed to her stomach, she rounded the house, moving fast across the shifting ground. She spotted a streetlight and headed for it.
CHAPTER 21
David’s cell phone rang. In bed but not asleep, cat on his chest, he answered, hoping for but dreading news about John. It ended up being a direct call from a patrol officer who introduced himself as Ryan Freeman.
“We’ve got a bit of a situation here.” The Freeman name didn’t ring a bell, and the voice was young, hesitant. “Nine-one-one got a few calls about a naked woman wandering around town. Last report came from high school kids who spotted her in Laurel Grove Cemetery. I’m the responding officer.”
“Did she kill somebody? Because I’m Homicide. I don’t deal with meth heads.”
“Well . . .” Freeman hesitated. “The reason I’m calling is ’cause I’m pretty sure this is something you’ll want to keep from reporters, something you might not want on record. Because I’m pretty sure the woman in the cemetery is Detective Sandburg.”
David dropped back against his pillow. Prank call, but who and why? “How’d you get this number?”
“This is no hoax.” He rattled off his badge number.
David sat up, the abrupt movement causing Isobel to let out a protest and jump clear. A prank caller wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to share a badge number.
“She’s on the grave,” the officer said. “The grave. The one where she was left as a baby. I’m from Savannah. My friends and I used to go there when we were in high school. Everybody knew that grave. And I know Detective Sandburg when I see her.”
“Is she injured?” David asked, in high-alert mode now.
“Not that I could tell. I think she’s just really high.”
“Elise doesn’t do drugs.” David got out of bed. With the phone
wedged between his shoulder and ear, he pulled on his jeans, released and caught the phone, and began moving for the door, grabbing a dress shirt from the back of a chair as he went. “Where are you?”
“I’m near the main entrance of Laurel Grove, north of Highway 204. I decided to park and walk in so I didn’t scare her off.”
“Be there in five minutes.”
He made it in just under and located Freeman, who was standing near one of the pillars that marked the entry to the cemetery. Now David recognized him. Freeman was one of the department’s newer hires. He didn’t look much out of high school but was probably at least twenty-two.
David pulled up behind the patrol car, cut the engine, got out.
“I tried to engage her in conversation,” Freeman said as they fell into step beside each other, “but she was unresponsive.”
The only light source was the small Maglite the officer aimed at their feet as they walked the dirt path toward the grave site. It didn’t take long to get there, probably because David was jogging, the young officer trying to keep up, weighted down by his forty-pound belt. Once they had a visual, that visual being the stone altar and a dark shape on top of it, the young officer trained the light on the ground, possibly out of respect for Elise’s modesty. If it was indeed her. Too damn dark to tell.
Exasperated by the cop’s prudish behavior, David grabbed the light and aimed it at the person lying on the altar stone like a human sacrifice, surrounded by unlit candles and the offerings people left behind.
It took only a moment to confirm that it really was a naked woman. And not much longer to confirm that the woman really was Elise. The light blinded her, and she flinched, raised an arm to her face, and turned away.
What. The. Hell?
David redirected the beam to the ground and passed the flashlight back to Freeman.
“Maybe it’s some sort of ritual,” the cop whispered.
“No,” David said. That was the last thing Elise would be involved in.
“I always thought . . . always heard—”
David suddenly realized what was going on. “You’re afraid of her.”
“Who isn’t?” No hesitation, no shame. “I know about her. And I know Jackson Sweet is her dad. She hangs around with Strata Luna.” Shrug in his voice. “So yeah, I’m afraid of her.”
David shook his head and approached the altar stone, the officer and flashlight trailing behind. How hard had Freeman tried to engage her? The situation would have been awkward as hell for anybody, especially a rookie.
David spoke calmly to Elise. When she didn’t react, he picked up her wrist, felt her pulse. Her heart was beating fast. “Are you hurt?” he asked, unbuttoning his shirt. He repeated his question, louder, closer. This time he got a response.
“Hot.” It seemed impossible, but that one simple syllable bordered on garbled. “I’m hot.”
“I usually just crank up the AC when I’m hot, but okay.”
The cop let out a snort, and David felt annoyed with himself. He hadn’t been going for comic relief, but the wiseass in him couldn’t shut up, not even now.
It took some coaxing, but he was able to cajole Elise off the altar stone. Once she was upright, he slipped his shirt on her and buttoned the buttons while she stood there, arms dangling. It was unnerving to see the normally volatile Elise so docile, and it made him feel better to think she’d probably kick his ass later.
The cop’s shoulder radio squawked, and the dispatcher’s voice reported a robbery nearby.
“I’ll take it from here,” David told him. “Thanks for calling me.”
Once Freeman was gone, David pressed a palm to Elise’s forehead. She felt warm, but not feverish. A high fever would have explained a lot. “Your hair is wet.”
“Had to cool off my brain.” Speech still slurred.
At his car, he tucked her into the passenger seat, closed the door, circled, and got behind the wheel. Under the dome light he noted that her eyes were glassy, her pupils huge.
“Did you take anything?” He made sure to speak clearly and directly. “Any drugs? Medication?”
Earlier on the phone he’d been adamant about Elise not using drugs, but now he wondered if the young cop had been right. At the hospital during John’s surgery she’d been upset, more upset than he’d ever seen her. She’d cried. Really cried. He’d witnessed that kind of breakdown from her only one other time, and that had been Audrey’s abduction.
If she’d taken something, then maybe she’d mixed that something with alcohol. Maybe what he was looking at was a bad reaction. “Did you take anything to help you sleep?” Prescription sleep aids were notorious for causing odd behavior the patient didn’t even remember the next day.
If she could come up with a plausible explanation, then maybe he wouldn’t have to take her to the hospital. Freeman was right. The fewer people who knew about this, the better.
She ignored him, or maybe she hadn’t heard his question. Instead she hit him with one of her own. “I need to ask you something.” She stared at him with curiosity combined with the sudden intensity of a sharpshooter.
“Ask away,” he said.
She was visually examining his hair, his eyes, his mouth, and for a brief moment he wondered if he spotted some clarity of thought in her face. Maybe she was coming down. But then she hit him with her question.
“Who are you?”
Holy hell. He latched her seat belt, hit the door locks, and took off in the direction of the hospital.
CHAPTER 22
Less than twenty-four hours earlier David had mentioned renting a room in Candler because he was there so much. Now here he was again, this time waking up in a chair in Elise’s room. His neck was stiff; the shirt he’d given Elise in the cemetery was wrinkled and back on his body.
He needed coffee and his beard itched.
Nearby Elise was lying in bed, covered by a print hospital gown, IV in her arm. They’d sedated her upon her arrival. She hadn’t been out of control, but she’d been agitated and confused when David pulled up to the ER doors. Thankfully restraints hadn’t been necessary, but just in case she got worse or woke up confused, David had slept in a hellishly uncomfortable chair, keeping one ear tuned for any sound of movement. At some point in the early-morning hours, she’d awakened briefly. And that time she recognized him.
“You’ve had an episode,” he’d told her in response to her questions of how and why. Of course being Elise, she’d tried to get up and leave, only to fall back against the pillow.
Right now she was awake again, her pupils only slightly dilated. Tests had been run, but so far the doctors had nothing. Whatever was going on, she seemed on the mend.
David pushed himself out of his chair to perch on the edge of her bed. “You done with this?” He indicated the food tray someone had brought in at an ungodly hour. This wasn’t boot camp. They shouldn’t be waking patients at the buttcrack of dawn.
She nodded. He picked up a slice of toast and took a bite. “You up for questions?” The toast was cold and soggy. He finished it off and wished for coffee. “What about these eggs? You should eat these eggs.”
She shook her head and looked away, unmistakably queasy. He covered the tray.
“I don’t know much,” she told him.
“Let’s start with what you do know. Where did you go after you left headquarters?”
“I drove straight home. Fell asleep on the couch. And then Sweet came by.”
“Sweet?”
“He didn’t stay long. We talked a little; then he left. I don’t remember anything else until waking up here.”
Good and bad. Maybe she could be spared the embarrassment of last night. “You don’t have a memory of being in Laurel Grove Cemetery?”
She concentrated, trying to dredge up something. “No.”
“That’s where you were found.”
“The last thing I remember is Sweet leaving my place. He told me to lock the door, but I’m drawing a blank after that.”
David and Officer Freeman were the only two people who knew the full story, the only people who knew the identity of the person lying bare-ass naked on a grave. He let out a sigh. This was good.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Because I’m worried about you.”
She put a hand to her head. “I feel hungover.”
“Did you take anything last night?”
“You mean drugs?” She had enough energy to bristle.
“I’m not accusing you of Schedule 1 narcotic use. I’m talking about medication you might have reacted negatively to. I’ve had a few binges that resulted in my waking up in a puddle of my own piss, so I know things happen.”
She looked at him in horror. Had he revealed too much?
“My God, David.”
“What? I’m just sharing. And that was a long time ago.”
“When you were a teenager?” she asked hopefully. “Or a two-year-old?”
He’d been trying to make a point. Embarrassing things happen when you’re wasted. But no way was he going to tell her it was just a few years ago. Not now, when she was looking at him like that.
She gave his original question more thought. “I don’t think I have anything like that in the house other than antidepressants I’ve never taken.”
“How about drinking? Just drinking? Because after yesterday nobody would fault you. I have to confess to seriously fighting the urge myself when I got home.”
“Maybe I had a stroke.” She felt her face for signs of paralysis. “Or an aneurism. People my age have aneurisms.”
“The tests they ran last night were negative for anything of that nature. We’re waiting on bloodwork now.”
“Care to take a guess?”
“I’d say you were drugged.”
“Like roofied?”
He pulled out his phone and called Jackson Sweet. Somewhat of a surprise that he answered, but then he’d never dropped out of contact with David like he had Elise. At first David was evasive with his questions. “Just following up on some events from last night.” When Jackson had no information to supply, David pressed him for more details, especially details about Sweet’s visit to Elise’s and what had transpired during that visit.