by Lisa Ladew
“Three days ago it – no four days ago, when I worked with her. When all this happened,” she spat out.
“And what was the nature of your relationship?”
“Nothing, we were friends, we worked together.”
“Did you ever see her outside of work?”
“No, never.”
“How long did you work with her?”
Katerina shook her head. “I don’t know, a few months. She only started a few months ago.”
“Did she have any identifying marks that you knew of?”
Katerina shook her head again, but then realized she was wrong. “She had a tattoo, a musical note, it was above her left breast.”
“Would you be willing to try to identify her body?”
Katerina buried her face in her hands and sobbed. After a few moments she pulled herself together and nodded. “I would, but can my friend come with me?”
“Who is your friend?”
“West Shepherd. He is a paramedic and firefighter.”
“I’ll let you know.”
Detective Gagne stood up and left the room. Katerina grabbed her phone and checked the text message that had come in. It was West. I’m here. Where are you?
Katerina pressed quick dial and held the phone to her ear. “West, oh God, it’s so bad. Pam is dead.”
“Who is Pam?”
“She was the receptionist at the massage clinic I worked at.” She heard West suck in a breath.
“They want me to identify her body. Will you go with me?”
“Yes, of course I will.”
The door opened and Detective Gagne returned. Katerina looked up at him, praying he would let West come. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies before, but none of them had been her friend, and none of them had been murdered because of her.
“Your friend can come with us, if he’s here within the next ten minutes.”
“He’s here now, West, where are you?”
“I’m in the lobby.”
Detective Gagne must’ve heard, because he said, “We will meet him there.”
***
A few minutes later, the three of them were in the elevator, heading down two floors to the medical examiner’s office. As the elevator opened, the sterile scent of heavy disinfectants greeted them. West took her hand and Katerina was immediately grateful.
They followed Detective Gagne through a pair of heavy double doors. The room was brightly lit and impeccably clean. Katerina glanced around. There were stainless steel tables and sinks everywhere. But she didn’t see any bodies. Thank goodness.
A plain man wearing a clean medical jumper sat at a table in the corner. When he saw them he stood and pulled on a pair of heavy-duty, blue, latex gloves. He looked pointedly at Detective Gagne.
“We’re here to see Troper,” Gagne told him.
“This way,” the man responded after a moment’s hesitation.
He led them through another set of double doors to a larger steel-lined room, this one chilly. The man approached a wall where several drawers were stacked on top of each other, like large filing cabinets. He went straight to the far right drawer, second from the bottom and pulled it open, then stepped back.
Katerina approached cautiously. There was a white towel over the face of the body in the drawer.
“We can’t show you her face,” Gagne said. “There’s nothing left there to identify. But could you look at the tattoo and the general shape of her body and tell us if you think this is her or not.”
Katerina nodded. The sheet covering the body was pulled down far enough that she could see the tattoo. “Yes, that definitely looks like Pam.”
West squeezed her hand hard and Katerina squeezed back, holding on like a lifeline.
***
When they made it back out into the hallway, Katerina asked, “What happened to her?”
“Gunshot, with her own gun.”
“Suicide?” Katerina whispered, feeling West clamp his hand around hers again.
“I doubt it,” Gagne said. “Most people who commit suicide don’t shoot themselves in the face.” He sniffed forcefully. “But there were no signs of forced entry and nothing was taken from her apartment. So we aren’t sure what we’re working with.”
Katerina blanched. “When did it happen?”
“As far as we can tell, yesterday evening between five and six.”
While we were talking about her, Katerina thought, biting the inside of her lip.
Yesterday, as horrible as finding the body had been, she had still had the luxury of thinking this would be simple. They would talk to Pam and then they would know who had placed all those bodies. All those bodies, that they had just found one of so far. But now Pam was dead too.
Back in the elevator, Gagne looked her straight in the eye. “I want you to stay available, in case I need you.” Katerina nodded mutely.
As she and West pushed their way out of the double doors of the lobby, she turned her face to the sun, and tried to ignore the crushing guilt that was now doubling over the general anxiety she had felt for so many days. She looked at her phone. “Almost time to go to work,” she said.
West turned to her. “I really think you should take a day off, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “I need to work. I need something to do. I can’t just sit in my apartment and think about these things. Besides, I feel better when I work.”
“But what if this guy is looking for you now?”
Katerina recoiled. She hadn’t thought of that. But of course he was. If he had gone after Pam, he would be coming after her next. Or maybe after everyone in the office.
“I have to make a phone call,” she said quickly, hoping she wasn’t already too late. She walked away from him and called Ironwood Massage.
The owner of the clinic answered and Katerina could hear shock in her voice.
“Tricia, it’s Katerina. I guess you know about Pam?”
“Oh Katerina, it’s horrible, she didn’t show up to work this morning and I was worried about her so I asked the police to check on her. They called me back and told me she was dead. They wanted me to come down and identify her body, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t handle seeing a dead person. Especially Pam.” The older woman broke off and Katerina could hear her sobbing.
“It’s okay, Tricia, I did it. It’s done. But that’s the reason I’m calling. The guy who did this might come after everyone there. He’s a murderer. And he got a massage there on my last day. I need to look up the records and find his name.”
“The police already came and took them, Katerina. There wasn’t anything. He just gave his name as Robert Smith. The officer as much as said that it must be a fake name. He asked us if we took I.D. and I had to tell them no. He wanted to know how the man paid and I said he paid in cash. He even gave Tammy a $10 tip.”
Katerina rubbed her forehead, a dull ache beginning to spread there. “What are you going to do Tricia?”
“What can we do? We’re going to shut down until he’s caught. It’s going to kill the girls.”
Katerina nodded to herself. She knew how that was. When you were working paycheck to paycheck you couldn’t afford to miss even a day. But then she registered what Tricia had said. It wouldn’t literally kill them and this guy would.
“I get paid in a couple of weeks. Tell them I can give them each a hundred dollars.” She knew that would be nothing for them, and she probably couldn’t afford it herself. But she was making more money now, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all her fault. She had to do something.
She hung up with Tricia and went back to West, filling him in. The grim lines of his face scared her even more than she already was, but what could she do? She had to work.
Chapter 15
At the end of a long, tense shift, they returned back to the ambulance bay. Katerina remembered her quick retreat yesterday. A part of her wanted to do the same thing today, but a bigger part of her didn’t want to go home at al
l. West apparently didn’t want her to go home either. He cornered her at the time clock and asked her if she would like to go home with him. The question speared an emotion in Katerina that had nothing to do with fear. She shook her head no before she even had a chance to think about it.
He cocked his head and looked at her closely. “Then I should come home with you.”
Katerina looked deep into his blue eyes and all she could think was that he had done way too much for her already. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not scared?”
An involuntary shiver ran through Katerina. “I am,” she admitted.
“Then why don’t you let me come home with you? I’ll sleep on the couch. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Katerina felt hot blood flood her face. She shook her head, hiding behind her hair. “It’s not that. You’ve already gone out of your way so much to help me. I would feel like I was taking advantage. Besides, I’ve got a gun.”
His eyebrows raised. “Would you be able to shoot someone?”
Katerina felt a spike in irritation at his question. “Of course I would. I’ve trained extensively on the gun. My mother and I used to go to the shooting range all the time. It was her gun, actually. But she made sure I knew how to use it. Her job left scars on her in many ways.”
West shook his head. “I didn’t mean if you were good with the gun, you don’t strike me as someone who would be careless about any sort of safety, especially gun safety, so I was certain that you knew how to use it. What I meant was, would you be able to pull the trigger and put a bullet through somebody’s body? I know paramedics frequently have problems with that kind of thing.”
“I would if he were trying to kill me.”
“What if he were just trying to kidnap you? What if he didn’t even have a weapon. Is the guy big?”
Katerina thought back to the moment when she had seen the man on the table. She winced. “Yeah, he’s big.”
West took her hand and looked imploringly into her eyes. “Let me stay. Two are safer than one.”
Katerina finally acquiesced, feeling relief spread through her body. She wanted him to stay, she wanted someone with her, she just felt bad at what she was putting everyone around her through.
West brightened immediately. “We should make a party of it. Let’s stop at a grocery store on the way back to your place and get some steaks or something.”
Katerina cringed inwardly. She didn’t have a dime. And when he saw her cabinets, he would know it. Maybe she should’ve accepted the offer to go to his house.
West pulled her out the door. “We should get food for breakfast too. We have a day off tomorrow. We can take as long as we want cooking and eating and just relaxing.”
Katerina laughed at his enthusiasm. “Do you cook?”
“Do I cook? Do I cook?” he asked in mock indignation.
“Do you? Do you?” she answered, giggling. He always seemed to make her feel better immediately.
He fake growled at her under heavy eyebrows. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
At the grocery store, Katerina protested almost constantly. West filled an entire cart. Finally, she gave up. Either they were going to get to the register and he was going to ask her to pay for half of it, and she would be forced to admit her shameful situation, or he already knew. Somehow, she guessed the latter. He wasn’t stupid.
At the register, like she had thought, he whipped out a credit card and made the bill disappear. Katerina swallowed her pride, and followed him to the parking lot, helping him load the bags into his truck. The list of things he did for her just kept growing longer and longer. She’d never be able to pay him back for everything.
On the way home, her phone buzzed. She glanced at it. Jordan. Oh God, she hadn’t talked to Jordan in days. But she didn’t want to talk to her now either. She didn’t want to tell her everything that had been going on. Jordan was a bit of a drama queen and would probably do something crazy, like try to get Katerina to move in with her. But then she would be putting Jordan in danger too. No way. She made a mental note to text back something innocuous when she arrived home, and put the phone away.
Once they were back at her apartment, Katerina grabbed three bags of groceries and headed up the stairs. She thought they would make a couple of trips, but when she had her door unlocked she turned around and saw West with every single bag of groceries hanging off his arms. She could see the bag straps biting into his skin. She laughed and rushed forward to help him.
They loaded all the groceries into the kitchen and Katerina tried to stifle the twinges of guilt as she put the food away in her cabinets. West pulled out her cookware and started right away on a from-scratch lasagna. Katerina watched him work, appreciating the way his body moved under his simple T-shirt and jeans.
Without turning to look at her, West started talking, almost to himself. “I think we should get more proactive.”
Katerina’s eyebrows furrowed together. “How?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this since this morning. I wonder what would’ve happened if you had touched Pam’s body?”
Katerina took a step backwards and sat down hard in a wooden chair next to the table. She hadn’t thought about this at all. But she could see where his line of thought was going. “You think I’m psychic?”
“Well no, not in the traditional way, if there’s a traditional way. But maybe you get an energy or something off of people. That must’ve been what made your mom so amazing too.”
“My mom?” Katerina sputtered. “You think my mom was psychic?”
West turned and looked at her. “Yeah, wasn’t she?”
“No! She wasn’t. You talk like this is just a normal thing. Like half the people in the world are psychic or something. You believe in this kind of thing?”
West fixed her with a long look. “Yeah, a little bit. After you’ve been a paramedic for as long as I have, things happen that defy explanation. And when you see enough things that defy explanation, you start to think there must be more than what science tells us there is. Do you believe in miracles?”
“Miracles?” Was all that Katerina could say, her mind swirling with this information. West just looked at her blankly, so she tried harder, and really thought about it. “No, I guess I don’t believe in miracles.”
“I’ve seen two.” He crossed the room and sat down next to Katerina. “Almost three years ago, we responded to a call. Me and my old partner. His name was Jay, and he was a big joker. Everything was funny. Nothing was ever serious to him. Until one day we got the call that nobody ever wants to get. A child drowned in the family swimming pool. We responded, and the child was laid out on the front porch when we got there. The family, mom, dad, and big sister were wailing over him. He was in his pajamas and they were soaking wet and dripping all over everyone. He had gotten up before the rest of the family had and had somehow made it through the safety gate to the pool. He was just under two years old and didn’t know how to swim yet. Nobody knew how long he was in the water. But from our best guesses, it had been upwards of twenty minutes already. The water was not cold enough to slow his metabolism and keep him alive when he fell in. It was an 80° day at ten in the morning already. So Jay and I are running up the walk, with our equipment, and we already know that this kid doesn’t have a chance. The family is falling all over themselves begging us to help him. The mom is screaming his name over and over and over again. Thomas! Thomas! Thomas! She’s actually scratching her own face in her grief. We grab the kid and take him into the back of the ambulance to see if there’s anything we can do. He’s in complete asystole, a flat line on the monitor. He was as dead as anybody I’ve ever seen. But there was no way we were just gonna call it on the scene. He was two for God’s sake. The fire engine wasn’t there yet but we wanted to do CPR and put in an IV on the way into the hospital so Jay stuck his head out of the ambulance and started asking if there was anyone there who could drive an ambulance. Obviously his mom and dad
were completely out of the question. And if we had picked somebody who didn’t have a clue how to drive an ambulance and they got into an accident, we were going to be in a lot of trouble. But we were frantic. That’s a bad way to be when you’re the paramedics, but if you’d seen this beautiful little boy and seen the way his parents were begging us to do something, you would’ve felt the same way. So Jay sticks his head out of the ambulance and calls over to the neighbors that are watching and asks if anybody knows how to drive an ambulance. This one guy, an older gentleman, but big and solid and obviously tough as nails, says that he used to drive ambulances in the war and he’s kept his CDL license up, so yeah he can drive the ambulance to the hospital for us. Jay says great and pulls him in through the back. He tells him to step over the top of me. I’m already working on the boy, but as he heads towards the front, he kisses his hand and touches it to the boy’s forehead. I heard the kiss on his hand and I saw the hand touch the boys forehead, and then he climbed through to the front and sat down in the driver seat, then started the ambulance up. I hadn’t done anything, except started CPR. I’m waiting for Jay to come and take over so I can start a line and a tube while we’re being driven to the hospital. But then I see a huge glut of water come out of the Thomas’ mouth. More than his lungs should’ve been able to even hold. I stopped and looked at him, and his eyes fluttered. At that exact moment, when I saw his eyes flutter, I heard a beep. I knew what I was going to see before I even looked over, a rhythm. His heart was beating. Mind you, we hadn’t done anything to make his heartbeat. At this point, I was feeling kind of flabbergasted. I had never seen an asystole spontaneously revert into a normal sinus rhythm. I yelled for the guy who was driving to stop. All I can think is I have to let his parents see that his heart is beating so they don’t crash on the way to the hospital. Jay gives me this look like I’m out of my mind. I tell him look at the monitor. He does, and then he gives me the same look like I’m feeling. And then, the kid’s eyes open. He looks at me and he tries to say something and more water comes out of his mouth. I turn him over, face down, and I clap him on the back. And then the kid starts wailing for his mother.”