A Deeper Darkness

by J. T. Ellison

  Inside the chain-link fence, two miniature schnauzers showed off, frolicking in the dewy grass. The family was up. Fletcher wondered if they were missing their patriarch yet, if they had a sense that things were wrong. Or whether he was about to blindside yet another family.

  God, sometimes he really hated this job.

  They parked and went to the door. The bell wasn’t working, so Fletcher knocked. Knocked again. A woman answered, small, brown-eyed, dressed in scrubs, briskly rubbing her wet hair with a towel.

  “Oh. I appreciate you coming by, but we have our own religion.” She smiled sweetly and started to close the door. Fletcher put his foot in the crack to stop her and held out his badge.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry. Detective Fletcher, D.C. Homicide. My partner, Detective Hart. May we come in?”

  She stared at him, the look he’d grown so accustomed to. Denial, fear, hate, worry, all crowded into a single glance. He could see her mind whirling.

  “Is it Hal?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes, ma’am. Please, can we come in?”

  She swallowed audibly and nodded. Dropped the towel at her feet, opened the door all the way for them.

  “Living room,” she managed, pointing. “I’ll be there in a second. I must… The baby.”

  She disappeared around the corner. Fletcher nodded at Hart, who followed her, saying, “Ma’am? Mrs. Croswell? Let me help you.”

  Fletcher heard the woman stumble, curse and fall, was glad Hart was there to catch her. Denial. The first step down the tumbling path called grief. She’d tried to run away from the news, as if not talking to them would make it all just go away.

  Hart led her back into the living room, got her seated on the couch. “Kids aren’t up yet,” he said to Fletcher.

  “Ma’am, we need to ask you some questions. But first, is there anyone we can call to be with you?”

  She was mumbling, whispering almost to herself, and Fletcher heard, “Sister. Number. Refrigerator.”

  Hart took off for the kitchen, and Fletcher got Mrs. Croswell to focus on him. She was slipping into shock—too upset even to cry.

  “Ma’am, when was the last time you heard from your husband? Where was he supposed to be last night?”

  She was having a hard time focusing. “Denver. But you’re with Metro. Was it a heart attack? Before he got on the plane? He texted me that he was getting on the plane, would call in the morning. I go to bed early.”

  “No, ma’am. It wasn’t a heart attack. He was found in Georgetown. I’m sorry to say he’d been shot. Do you have any idea why he would be there? Why he would lie about where he was supposed to be?”

  “He never lied. Hal never lied to me. We always told the truth.”

  Obviously not. Fletcher scratched his forehead, rubbing at the headache that was trying to take hold. Hart came back in the living room.

  “Sister’s on her way.”

  Croswell’s wife was starting to grasp the situation, and her lips were trembling. Hart had brought water back from the kitchen with him. He handed the glass to Mrs. Croswell.

  She drank, greedily, then set the glass on a coaster. Neat and tidy. Her eyes grew vacant.

  “Mrs. Croswell?”

  She snapped back to Fletcher, the words spilling out, frantic to be heard.

  “Betty. My name is Betty.”

  “Betty, do you or your husband know anyone by the name of Emerson? George or Tina Emerson?”

  Her eyes were still blank. “No. Hal went to Denver for a conference yesterday. A reunion. His old army buddies were getting together at some aerospace thing. A few of them work for Lockheed Martin now, they were trying to get Hal in front of their bosses. He’s been in and out of work since he got back from his last tour of Iraq. He mustered out two years ago. He had a rough time over there.”

  “Was he injured?”

  “Not on the outside, nothing that wasn’t healable. It was…”

  She broke off, and Fletcher knew immediately. They’d seen this on the force, with the soldiers who’d returned to their jobs.

  “PTSD?” he asked.

  She bit her lip as if not wanting to betray a secret, then it all came out in a flood of words and tears.

  “Yes. Flashbacks, and insomnia. Rage. He gets angry with me for no reason. But he’s been so much better this past year. He’s on medication. He’s been seeing a counselor, one outside Veterans Affairs. She’s really helping him. He’s getting so much better.”

  Present tense. That always killed Fletcher. At what point was it acceptable to start thinking about your husband, wife, son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father in past tense? Never, and that’s when the guilt started its all-consuming fury.

  It was also a valuable tool he used to divine relationships to homicide victims. The loved ones who immediately went to past tense needed a closer look. They almost always were involved. Their minds had already made the leap to a world that didn’t have the person in it anymore.

  He moved Mrs. Croswell to the bottom of his suspect list and, with a sigh, started prying into her never again safe and quiet life.

  Chapter Eleven

  McLean, Virginia

  Susan Donovan

  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God Bless Mommy, and Grammy, and Uncle Tim, and Fluffy… . Mommy?”

  “Yes, sugar bean?” Susan was used to Ally’s questions during bedtime prayers. Ally was her little philosopher. Vicky, on the other hand, merely said the words and closed her eyes contentedly, drifting off to sleep before Susan could ever get through a page of a bedtime story. Then again, she was younger, and quieter. Ally was just like Susan, but Vicky had Eddie’s personality—quiet, contained, simmering. And sleepy, even at her early bedtime. Eddie was a morning person. As long as she’d known him, he’d gone to bed early and gotten up with the dawn. He blamed it on too many years being dragged out of his rack by commanding officers in combat zones.

  Eddie’s voice echoed in her ear. “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!”

  She shut her eyes for a moment, savoring the memory.

  Ally was the night owl. She always found some pressing topic to discuss just as she was going to bed, something to turn over in her head as sleep approached.

  “Mommy, is it okay to bless Daddy? If he’s in heaven, will he know? Will he hear me?”

  Susan opened her eyes and swallowed the rising gorge that threatened to gush all over her daughter’s pink Hello Kitty sheets.

  “Of course he will, sweetie. You can talk to him in heaven any time you want. He may not answer, but he hears you.”

  “Like God? And baby Jesus?”

  “Like God and baby Jesus. Exactly like that.”

  “Good. God bless Daddy.” She snuggled deeper into her sheets. Susan pulled the blanket higher, tucking it under Ally’s arms. It was silent for a moment, peaceful, with nothing but Vicky’s quiet, breathy snores coming from the bedroom next door.

  “Yes, sugar bean. God bless Daddy. Now go to sleep. Mommy has to make a phone call.”

  “Night, Mommy.” Ally settled into her pillows, her eyes still wide. Susan knew her little girl would lie there for at least another thirty minutes, but tonight she wasn’t going to nag at her. She kissed her on the forehead and turned on the night-light, pulled the door nearly closed behind her.

  She went down the too-quiet stairs and poured a glass of chardonnay. Took a big gulp and called the number Eleanor had given her this afternoon.

  The voice on the other end of the line was soft and mildly surprised.

  “Susan?”

  “Hello, Dr. Owens.”

  “Is everything okay?”

 
“No. Nothing’s okay. I want you to find out what happened to him. You have my permission to conduct the second autopsy.”

  There was a whoosh of breath on the other end of the line.

  “Thank you, Susan. I’ll do my best.”

  “Am I really in danger?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I’d take precautions if I were you. Just in case.”

  “Dr. Owens?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through this, too. Good night.”

  Susan hung up the phone, drank some more of her wine. When the glass was empty, she crossed the kitchen to Donovan’s office. It was time to get some answers.

  Georgetown

  Dr. Samantha Owens

  Sam felt her breath hitch in her throat.

  Eleanor had fixed up the guest room for her. It felt so strange to be sleeping under this roof again, after all these years. And there was no way the woman could have known that Sam and Donovan had made love for the first time in this very bed, with its hearty scrolled wrought-iron headboard, when Eleanor and Jack Donovan were out of town.

  Do beds have memories? Can they recognize the feel of a body that’s been in them before? She’d shied away from lying down, but finally gave that up as foolishness and settled in on the downy white comforter.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have had that last bit of scotch.

  She sat up and peered into the glass. There was a minuscule drop left over. She upended it and let the musky iodine scent fill her nostrils.

  Maybe she should have another.

  She slid off the edge of the bed and went to the door. Eleanor was in the other wing, on the other side of the house. She wouldn’t know, much less mind. Though Sam doubted Eleanor dulled her pain with scotch and hand washing.

  It was just… She knew it was irrational, but she was afraid that she would infect others with her bad fortune. It seemed to be happening all around her.

  It was humiliating. Embarrassing. At work she could easily cover it up—after all, she dealt in blood and flesh and ran a clean shop, so no one blinked twice unless she became frantic about it.

  But out here, in the real world, people noticed. Eleanor had watched her like a hawk since she arrived, weighing, assessing. Worrying silently.

  Sam needed to get back to Nashville, back to Forensic Medical, where her quirks could be chalked up to legitimate hand cleaning, and the people around her knew when to avert their eyes.

  She felt the sweat pop out on her forehead. She had to do it. She had to do it now.

  She set the glass on the bureau and went into the bathroom, turned on the water in the sink. It was as if she’d summoned the urge. Summoned it right into her room, into her body.

  She scrubbed, and hated herself a little more. She’d have to take the pills soon. Her willpower wasn’t enough when she was out of her routine, out of her element. It was pointless, anyway. The empirical part of her mind knew that. She couldn’t bring them back. Nothing she did would change that.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four.

  She stopped counting at forty. Her breathing was back to normal. The ball of pain in her chest eased a bit. Their faces weren’t crowding her eyes.

  She turned off the water and dried her hands.

  Susan Donovan’s call brought mixed emotions. Overwhelming relief, to start. Then a strange kind of guilt, the pervasive revulsion for her job that had been circling her lately. As obsessed as she’d been with the man’s inner feelings for her, she never thought she’d find herself actually looking inside Donovan.

  She grabbed a robe from the bottom of the bed, shrugged into it. She definitely needed another drink.

  Chapter Twelve

  Washington, D.C.

  Dr. Samantha Owens

  It was a morgue. That’s about as much as Sam could say about the OCME. It wasn’t shiny and flashy like her office back home, with its beveled skylights, pristine, landscaped acreage and views of downtown Nashville. This morgue was old and dingy, housed in the basement of a redbrick building that had been a part of D.C. General Hospital for years. And, strangely, only a few blocks from where Donovan had been killed.

  She was met at the front desk by an extremely tall man with a hitch in his gait. She figured he had some sort of osteoarthritis or a minor congenital dysplasia, something that could be fixed by a total hip arthroplasty, or perhaps even the lesser hemiarthroplasty if one had the time and inclination to be off your feet and away from work for a while. This man didn’t strike her as the sitting-around type.

  “Dr. Owens, I presume? I am Amado Nocek, assistant chief medical examiner. It is truly my pleasure to meet you.”

  “And you, as well. Italian?” she asked.

  His face lit up, making his homeliness more appealing. “Hungarian on my paternal side, Italian on my maternal. You have a good ear for languages, I presume?”

  Sam smiled and shook his hand. “Not really. I knew an Amado once. He was from Naples.”

  “A beautiful area. The land of the Sirens.” He put a large, bony hand to his chest. “‘Winged maidens, virgin daughters of Gaia, the Seirenes, may you come to my mourning with Libyan flute or pipe or lyre, tears to match my plaintive woes; grief for grief and mournful chant for chant, may Persephone send choirs of death in harmony with my lamentation, so that she may receive as thanks from me, in addition to my tears, a paean for the departed dead beneath her gloomy roof.’”

  Sam looked at him in surprise. “Euripides?”

  Nocek gave her a wide smile. “Very good, Dr. Owens. Most around here would not understand such things.”

  “We read Helen in school. She was always a favorite of mine.”

  “As she is of mine. Her words are fitting, I think, for a day like today.” He gestured to a door and she followed him through, the familiar scents of cold and chemicals and death meeting her. She immediately relaxed. Home. She felt more at home among complete strangers dead than she did in her own house.

  Nocek began to gather familiar blue-and-white garb. “Why do you wish to repeat the postmortem examination on this particular shooting victim, may I ask?”

  “You may. The victim’s mother is a personal friend. She isn’t convinced the shooting was random.”

  He glanced at her, as if assessing how proper it was for her to be the one running this secondary protocol, but instead of saying anything, smiled sadly. “Ah. If only that were the case. We try to find understanding in that which is not understandable. It is human nature.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, then. We have prepared the body for your arrival. Will you require assistance? I personally would be happy to lend my expertise.”

  “Thank you. I would like a second set of eyes. Did you do the initial post?” Sam asked, setting her purse down on the counter. She washed her hands—one Mississippi, two—trying hard not to count aloud, then dried off and took the proffered gear from Nocek’s bony grip. Booties, mask, hair cover, gloves. She got the pieces in place quickly, actions born of repetition.

  She hated every minute of this.

  “It was not my day to work. I will not be influenced by the previous autopsy.”

  “Excellent.” Sam would be. She’d see the incisions, the already dissected organs in their plastic shroud, the crusted blood that dried upon contact with the air. She’d look at the body of a homicide victim, and do everything in her power not to see Donovan. Her Donovan.

  She took a deep breath, ignored the interested look Nocek gave her and nodded briskly. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Nocek was already dressed for the autopsy suite: he simply slipped a new mask around his neck and pulled gloves from the box above the stainless-steel sink. Without speaking, he held the door for her.
>
  Blessed Mary, full of grace. Give me strength.

  She bit her tongue to contravene the overwhelming compulsion to get her hands under running water.

  The body was on the first table, nearest the door. There was a buzz of activity—unlike the Nashville office, D.C. didn’t have the luxury of finishing up the day’s four or five posts at noon. There were so many more deaths, so many more murders, that the machine churned all day long and well into the night.

  The staff was more extensive, as well. Nocek murmured names to her as they passed, each person finding a reason to swing by and see the pathologist who’d been called in to question, or affirm, their work.

  Sam nodded and half smiled a few times, but her mind was captivated by Donovan.

  The moment she saw him, she had to force back the tears that sprang into her eyes. He was so…dead. She saw death on a daily basis, but this, this ripped out her heart.

  She swallowed, surprised to feel her stomach roiling.

  She shouldn’t have come. She didn’t want her last memory of him to be this. This abomination of him. Of them. He wasn’t supposed to die like this.

  Breathe, Sam. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three…

  She shut her eyes. Disassociated. She could do this. She owed it to him.

  Her heart rate dropped, and her clinical mind took over at last. She looked on Donovan as objectively as she could.

  It was him, and yet it wasn’t. Her Donovan had never looked so slack, so pale and insubstantial. Her Donovan didn’t have wide black stitches holding his tender flesh together, one on each side of his chest, another above his groin, tied in the middle, nor the quickly apparent scars on his torso and arms. Shiny, knotted, tightly stretched flesh. Burns. No one told her he’d been burned in Iraq. Or shot, for that matter.