by Anne Frasier
At the nurses’ station David announced they were taking the patient for a lap around the floor and they’d be right back. Heads behind the counter nodded their okay and returned to computer screens and charts.
Like most hospitals, Candler had its own morgue. Overflow, questionable death, and homicides went to what they still called the new place, or what John called his place, on the edge of town. The rest went to Saint Joseph’s/Candler.
Downstairs the staff knew John, and Elise explained that they needed to view the body.
The young morgue assistant nodded. “She’s in number four.” He didn’t have to check the computer. “If I’d had some notice, I could have set the body up in a viewing area. Would you like me to do that? It’ll take a few minutes.”
“That’s okay.” John’s voice was emotionless. David wasn’t sure if he was feeling weak or removed.
With Elise beside him, David pushed John into the large room with stainless-steel refrigeration units lining one wall. Motion-sensitive lights followed their progress. Mara had been there awhile already. Even in a cooler, a dead body’s decomposition was inevitable.
They stopped in front of number four. Elise grabbed the handle. “Are you sure about this?”
John nodded and Elise opened the drawer.
David wheeled John closer, set the brake on the chair, and helped him to his feet while Elise unsnagged the IV line.
Ordinarily they’d leave the griever alone, but John was so fragile he could hardly stand. David stood beside him while Elise grasped the sheet and pulled it down, stopping just below Mara’s shoulders and the top of the Y incision made by the medical examiner.
She didn’t look bad. That almost made it worse. Her lips were an expected shade of blue, but someone had carefully arranged her shiny hair on each side of her face, parted in the center the way it should be.
She looked peaceful. She looked asleep.
Beneath his hands, David felt John shaking, the anguish building. They should have saved him from this, sheltered him. But how? As soon as they left the building he would have been down there on his own.
As David and Elise looked on, helpless, John collapsed over Mara’s body, sobbing uncontrollably. At a loss about what to do for his friend, David looked to Elise for help. She was crying too, silently, a hand pressed to her mouth. Her eyes pleaded with him, begging him to make it stop, fix it, help John.
John pulled back slightly, enough to hold his uninjured hand just above Mara’s nose. It took David a moment to realize what he was doing. Feeling for a breath. Because the dead didn’t always stay dead.
“I keep thinking about the time I was doing that autopsy and the body woke up,” John said. “Remember that?”
David and Elise nodded.
“So, I was thinking . . . maybe she’s not really dead, you know? But she is, isn’t she?” He examined her with his eyes and a brush of his fingertips. “I can see signs of decomposition. Maybe you can’t, but I can. Some skin slippage, some mottling, some sinking of the sockets. She’s been gone awhile. Mara, I mean. The person who inhabited this body. But I needed to be sure.”
David held him by the shoulders, gently tugging him away. “Come on.”
Upright, John continued to stare at his dead wife. “She liked dead bodies.” He cast a glance around, his gaze going from David to Elise, looking for the slightest bit of comfort. “Right?”
Elise sniffled. “She sure did.”
John completed his thought. “And now she is one.”
More nodding.
“She looks good,” John said. “She would have been happy about that.”
“She does,” Elise agreed. “Beautiful.” Her voice cracked on that last word, and she turned away.
Without taking his eyes off Mara’s face, John said, “I want to see the autopsy report.”
“I’ll make sure you get it.” David attempted to guide his friend back to the chair. “John.”
Blindly, John looked over, spotted David, registered his presence, and began sobbing all over again.
David pulled him into his arms and held him while Elise got control of herself. She gave Mara one final look, one final good-bye, pulled the sheet over her face, and closed the drawer, the sound of the latch echoing in the room.
As David arranged John in the chair, he felt Elise’s hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what that touch meant. Maybe she just wanted to make contact with another living person, or maybe she was trying to reassure him, reassure herself.
They filed out, leaving Mara alone in the drawer as the lights clicked off behind them.
Back in the hospital room, John wanted to be alone. The trip downstairs had exhausted him.
“Try to get some rest.” Elise smoothed his covers and made sure the bed control was within reach. She put a pillow under his injured hand while John pushed the button to lower his head. “Call if you need anything,” she told him. “I’ll check back first thing in the morning.”
John nodded and closed his eyes.
It was a little after nine when David and Elise left the room.
“What do we do with him?” Elise asked while they waited for the elevator.
“It could be a long time before he can live alone.” They had to face the reality of it.
“There’s my place,” Elise said. “I have the space, especially now that Sweet is gone. Main-floor bedroom and bathroom. He wouldn’t have to deal with stairs. But until we catch Remy my home isn’t safe.”
“We made a decent amount on that Chicago job.” David knew money couldn’t solve every problem, but it might help with this one. “He can stay at my place. I’ll pay for a caregiver if it comes down to that.”
“I’ll go half.”
“Deal.”
In the elevator, David surprised himself by reaching for her hand, taking it, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. She didn’t pull away, so he lifted her hand to his lips, kissed a few fingers, then let her go.
“What was that for?”
He wasn’t exactly sure. “I’m just glad you aren’t dead.”
The minute he said the words, he cringed inwardly. Would she take it to mean he’d be as devastated as John if anything happened to her?
But she laughed. She thought he was joking around, trying to lighten the mood, as if that were possible.
“And I’m glad you aren’t mad at me anymore,” he added.
“I never stay mad at you for long.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment of your revision, that’s not really the truth.”
“Something for me to work on, then. I’m sorry I got mad about the naked thing.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to keep it from you.”
She glanced at the changing numbers above the elevator door. Without looking at him, she said, “I went to see a shrink.”
“Wow. That’s a big step.” He was surprised. “Did it help?”
“Yeah.” She gave it more thought. “I think it did.” She smiled a secret kind of smile that made him feel excluded.
As they walked through the parking garage, and since they were confessing, he said, “My mother stopped by yesterday.”
“Stopped by? How does somebody stop by Savannah? Doesn’t she live in Ohio?”
“She flew.” He spotted their cars, parked side by side, and pointed. They shifted directions. “I took her out to eat on Tybee Island, then put her right back on a plane. This is the last place any relative of mine should be right now.”
“She just came to visit you? Out of the blue?”
“That, and she was trying to get me to move back to Ohio. Apparently there’s a job opening.”
Elise stopped and looked at him. “Are you thinking about it?”
He nodded. “I am.” Until that moment, he hadn’t realized it.
“And when were you going to tell me?”
He hit the unlock button. “Right now.”
“Is this like an ultimatum or something?”
His initial
reaction was to say of course not. But maybe it was an ultimatum. Maybe he was trying to force her hand.
Everything his mother said was true. About Savannah being his running away, about his unrequited relationship with Elise, about Christian’s grave.
Why had he brought up the job, now? When they were experiencing one of those brief moments of camaraderie?
Because she should know.
And his waiting for her was a sickness. His mother had been right about that. He could be married; he could have children. Life wasn’t over for him. But here? Here it was. Kind of. As long as he loved Elise from a distance, this would never feel like a real life.
And yet if she were to die, he would break. He would be just like John. Instead he was like Avery, moping around, making a fool out of himself.
Hands jammed in the pocket of his slacks, he felt the piece of paper the girl at Black Tupelo had given him. He’d call her. It would be good for him.
Even though it was a hundred degrees in the parking garage, he was aware of the chill coming off Elise.
“If you need a reference, put me down.” She broke eye contact and got in her car.
CHAPTER 32
Elise didn’t want to go back to the hotel. Not yet. Her mind should have been focusing on the case. Instead she was thinking about the blow David had just dealt her. A few days ago they were partners with their own business. The Chicago Tribune had called them a “homicide power couple,” and now he was talking about leaving. His mother’s visit seemed to have triggered it, but she suspected his response was compounded by the loss of Mara and the injury to John.
She couldn’t blame him. It was true that most of the time she and David kept their heads down, focusing on the task of catching killers, but what happened to Mara and John had them once again questioning what they were doing and where they were going. No amount of jogging or trying to have a life outside work would fix the loss of a friend and team member. The old Elise would have felt betrayed by today’s announcement, but David deserved a full life.
She didn’t go to the hotel. Without calling to announce her visit, she drove to Strata Luna’s. At the entrance to the property, Elise entered the code into the box, and the giant iron gates swung open, then closed behind her.
Her arrival must have alerted Javier, possibly by video or a silent alarm system. He opened the door before she could knock.
“Strata Luna told me you might be coming to stay,” he said.
“Not today. I just want to talk to her.”
“Sure?” Javier looked like a model and was another someone Strata Luna might or might not be having sex with. He’d been around awhile, so she must have a particular fondness for him. “I have a guest room prepared,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”
“Maybe another night.”
“Strata Luna’s in the courtyard near the fountain.”
“I know the way.”
She followed a hallway to a large room with a slowly turning ceiling fan. She was surprised to see her father sitting at a long polished table, a pistol in his hand, a box of ammunition near his elbow.
“You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but I rarely carried a weapon when I was a cop.” He gave her a quick glance as he tucked bullets into a magazine. “Looks like it’s time to arm myself again.” Finished loading the clip, he clicked it into a Smith & Wesson with the heel of his hand. “I heard what Javier said.” Sweet stood up. “You really should think about staying here.”
“I will.”
“How was John?”
“Doctors hope he’ll have close to a full recovery.”
With a clatter, he buckled the holster around his waist, slipped the gun inside, adjusted it, and tested the weight. “That’s good.”
“He knows about Mara.” She bit her lip, feeling weepy again. “He . . . ah, went to the morgue to see her.” She stopped talking. Enough talking.
Sweet approached her. Without looking her direction, he paused, gave her shoulder a squeeze, then left the room.
Elise found Strata Luna where Javier said she’d be. Sitting on the edge of the fountain, trailing a hand through the water, causing the reflection of the moon to fracture.
Elise sat down on the fountain wall several feet away. “Why do you keep pushing your girls at David?”
Strata Luna let out a snort. “To keep him out of trouble.”
“Are you sure it’s not to make me jealous?”
Strata Luna’s hand stopped moving, and she looked up. “What if it is?”
“You should stay out of it. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Doubt that’ll ever happen.”
They both laughed. Elise was surprised she was capable of laughing after the past hour.
“How’s our boy?”
Elise told her about the visit to see Mara’s body. And even expanded on it, delving into her own feelings about relationships. “I feel such grief for him, and I know it’s selfish, but at the same time it brought home the fact that I’ll never have what they have.”
“Honey, you already have that. Or you could have that. With David, if you want it with David.”
“No.” Elise shook her head. “I can’t.”
“That’s crazy talk. You’re young. You’re pretty. Like me, you can be a little aggressive and forward, but the right man will have no problem with that. He’ll want his woman strong.”
Then Elise told her the thing she hadn’t even gotten around to telling the psychologist. Maybe the thing that was the real reason for her visit to Strata Luna’s. “I can’t let a man see my body.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
“Are you talking about the video?”
“You looked fine, girl. Better than fine.”
Everyone thought she’d been upset about the nudity. Of course she had, but her concern had gone much deeper than that. “It was dark, too dark to see the things I’m worried about.”
“David won’t care how you look, hon. That man wouldn’t care if you had two vaginas.” It was something only Strata Luna would come up with.
“I’ve got scars left by Tremain,” Elise said. “So bad they’re bordering on deformities. I don’t want anybody to see them, especially someone I care about.”
Strata Luna got to her feet. “Let me see those scars, those deformities.” With one hand, she gestured up and down Elise’s body. “Show me.”
Elise let out a breath. Maybe it was a good idea. Let her see them. She looked around. “Here?” She glanced toward the house. There were cameras all around the property. “The last thing I need is to be caught on video again.”
“You’re such a prude. Okay, let’s go inside. To my room. There are no cameras there.”
Elise surprised herself by agreeing.
Inside the house, with the bedroom door closed, Strata Luna turned to Elise with hands on her hips. “Take off your clothes. I’ll look you over, give you some advice, maybe put together some rootwork that can erase scars, even deep ones.”
Elise stripped, her clothes dropping on top of her belt and gun and badge.
“All of it.”
Once Elise was naked, Strata Luna made a twirling motion with one finger.
Elise turned without looking at the woman’s face.
“Show me,” Strata Luna said.
Show her? Weren’t the scars obvious?
She pointed them out, one after the other, the disfigurements on her breasts, stomach, and pelvis obvious and impossible to miss, the ones on her back harder to spot because of the tattoo, also courtesy of Atticus Tremain. When she was done, she quickly dressed, head down, relieved to once again feel the weight of the gun on her hip and the clothing on her body.
Through it all, Strata Luna had said nothing. Strata Luna, the woman who had a strong opinion on everything.
When Elise finally looked up, she saw an expression on Strata Luna’s face she’d never seen before, an expression Elise read as revulsion mixed with pity. And then the Gullah wom
an finally spoke, her voice reflecting what Elise had read in her expression. “Oh, child. You poor child.”
That was it. That was the look. The look she didn’t want to see on any man’s face, especially David’s. Strata Luna had seen a lot of ugly in her life, which was why Elise suspected she surrounded herself with beauty and beautiful people. And now she knew Elise wasn’t even close to being one of those chosen few.
“I have to go,” Elise said.
“Wait. Honey.”
Elise moved toward the door, heard the rustle of Strata Luna’s gown, knew the woman was following her. Elise increased her pace. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Before returning to the dreaded hotel, she swung by the police department to see if any substantial leads had come in on the Remy composite.
She liked the police station at night. Not that she disliked it during the day, but the night crew was a different bunch, and the building had a hushed and soothing quality that didn’t exist during the day.
She checked the room set aside for the Remy case and was glad to see the young and capable Meg Cook, along with another officer, manning the phone lines, a cup of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich nearby. Meg smiled when she saw Elise.
“Anything new?” Elise asked.
“A lot of tips and possible sightings to wade through.” She handed Elise a legal tablet. “I haven’t entered these into the database yet. Also, no luck with the missing-persons search. Nobody in the county was reported missing around the time of the Remy burial. Also, I looked into prison records dealing with Remy’s death. Didn’t turn up anything unusual. I tracked down a guard who was working there at the time. His story was solid.”
“Either people are afraid to talk, or everybody thought Remy was a dead man.”
“I agree.”
Elise looked through Meg’s notes and spotted a couple of men worth checking out. She handed the tablet back. “Could you put together a long and short list of the most likely leads?”
“I’ll get right on that,” the young woman said. “Also, I just want to say I’m glad you and Detective Gould are back. Oh, a fax just came in you might want to see. I debated calling you tonight or saving it for tomorrow.” She shuffled through papers and handed Elise a cover sheet and document.