by M. J. Labeff
He dragged his hand through his hair and down his face. Damn. They were going to get into this and all he wanted to do was make love to her again. “I was curious about his ‘rice’ method. I started reading about that and I came across other things.”
“Other things? What kinds of other things, Derrick?” She spread her arms open and pushed at the air in disgust. Her citrusy scent drifted past his nose and stirred his desire for her.
Derrick dropped his head to his chest and then looked up at her. “I read an article that says he recommends deep meditation, yoga, and visualization to kids with borderline personality disorder. There was even a comment from a patient saying it works.”
“And because it works that’s what bothers you? I’m a highly trained yoga instructor. Do you think I’m committing some kind of crime by practicing yoga and meditation that transcends my mind and body?”
* * *
Her response to Derrick set a horrible thought in motion. She slumped down next to him on the sofa and dropped her head into her hands. He wrapped his arm around her, his big, strong hand resting on her shoulder.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
She shook her head. Until now, she hadn’t made the connection between her father’s interest in yoga and meditation and her own.
She appreciated the fact that Derrick allowed her a few minutes to collect her thoughts. They sat in silence, maybe because neither of them knew what to say next. Her curiosity regarding her father’s recommended yoga and meditation therapy mounted. She’d have never considered the powerful effects it could have on one’s mind, including her own.
The night Dana had died she had sat in a lotus pose and practiced a common Buddhist mantra. Dangerous, negative thoughts had entered her mind. She’d pushed them out. Black thoughts about Dana had replaced them. His hand had plucked petals from the potted plant she’d imagined herself. The white light had dimmed. She’d transported to his backyard, where he’d planned his suicide. She could have stopped him, but her mind coaxed him to his death. Ice-cold shivers ran down her spine.
“Dana,” she whispered.
Chapter 20
Only a few days had passed since the funeral. The reality of Dana’s death hadn’t set in with his brother, Tony Sargent. The Crystal Cove detective had witnessed numerous crime scenes, but he’d never imagined discovering the hideous suicide of his own brother.
He paused and looked at the tree where Dana had taken his life. Tony hated that in his mind’s eye he could still see Dana’s lifeless body hanging from the thick tree branch. He remembered how he’d rushed over to Dana, yelling, “God, no. No. No. No.” His hand had shaken uncontrollably when he dialed for backup and to report his brother’s death.
Sirens had wailed. He’d never forget the grim expressions on his colleagues’ faces. They solemnly approached him. Tony had hated for them to see his brother like this. Dana had defecated upon impact. Wet piss had dripped down his leg. If only Tony had been there sooner, maybe he could have stopped him.
He’d been minutes too late.
Paint still outlined the crime scene area. Tony wanted to look away from his brother’s lifeless body dangling from the tree, but he couldn’t. What had possessed Dana to end his life? The police had ruled his death a suicide, although they hadn’t discovered a note at the scene.
Dana had come so far. Tony shook his head. Maybe he didn’t want to believe his brother had problems. What was it Sparrow had said to him during Dana’s funeral? Something about not only city kids had problems. Had she known Dana’s state of mind? What made him so desperate that he took his own life?
He turned his back on the crime scene and twisted the key in the back door. He was not eager to start the awful process of going through his brother’s personal belongings. For the first time in his life, he was grateful his parents had died before their youngest son. Dana’s suicide would have killed them.
Alone in Dana’s bungalow, he reflected inside the small kitchen. His hands and back braced against the scratched laminate kitchen countertop. The strange way Sparrow had looked at him the day of Dana’s funeral bothered him. She had been distant. But there was something else. When he coaxed her to kneel in front of Dana’s casket, she’d appeared apprehensive. Then she had some sort of breakdown, gasping and falling back against his arm.
What he thought had been anguish in her gleaming eyes had been fear.
She’d acted more dazed than distraught. She’d shed a few tears, but her outward appearance of sadness had seemed contrived. His cop instincts told him Sparrow knew Dana better than anyone, and the odd awareness he’d come to know as a detective sizzled through his internal system, warning him she knew something.
He tapped his finger against the counter, thinking more about Sparrow’s behavior and her actions. He’d been devastated after planning Dana’s service, and during the funeral his emotions had been running high. Could he have misread Sparrow’s aloofness?
She’d been curt with him, suggesting he’d failed to recognize Dana’s problems. Had she been referring to Dana’s past history with drugs and his reputation for being a heartbreaker? His anger had surged when Derrick showed up, and Sparrow rushed off.
Derrick didn’t have the balls to come to Dana’s funeral. What did he have to hide? Did the guilt from his spoiled friendship with Dana eat at him? It was a shame Dr. Derrick Sloan didn’t have the decency to pay his respects. He and Dana had been nearly inseparable those years Derrick had spent in Crystal Cove.
Tony turned to face the laminate countertop, spreading his hands against the cool surface. He leaned forward to stretch his back and tried to release the tension creeping into his shoulders. His reflection caught in the front of the silver toaster, looking distorted but clear enough to project the strong resemblance he and his brother shared. They both had charcoal-black hair, and people had always commented on their ice-blue eyes framed in thick lashes.
He and Dana had both suffered through jealous girls playfully teasing them about the “natural curl” of their hair and lashes. He shook his head, thinking, What guy cares about hair and eyelashes? The family resemblance started with their faces but ended with their bodies. They had both inherited their dad’s height, but Dana had been long and lean where Tony was thick and bulging. Their muscle tone was like that of basketball player versus football player. Thinking about Dana brought a smile to his face. He smirked at the shadowed circles under his eyes and pushed away from the countertop, tired of looking at the hard angles of his serious face, brought on by years of being a cop. Dealing with Dana’s death had caused even more sleepless nights.
The toxicology report on Dana hadn’t come back from the lab. As a favor to Tony, the department placed a rush order, and he should have the results any day now. Then he’d have some answers. Tony wasn’t expecting to find drugs in his brother’s system. He’d been clean. At least that was what he’d told Tony.
How could he have not recognized the telltale signs of drug abuse? For God’s sake, he was a detective. It was his job to know these things. On a typical drug addict, he’d shine a light in a suspect’s eyes, and the size of the addict’s glassy and diluted pupils would give him away. Tony worried he was losing his edge. Why wouldn’t I see those signs in my brother? He’d answered his own question—Dana was his brother, not some suspect he’d dragged in for questioning.
How many times had Tony witnessed a suspect’s family, grief-stricken and shocked because they hadn’t recognized the villain before their eyes? And how many times had he said to them, “No one wants to see it in their own family.” His own words made his blood run cold.
Dana, what the hell was going on that was so bad you couldn’t even tell me?
He rolled his eyes up to heaven and shook his head, searching for an answer he hoped would fall from the sky.
A tingling sensation prickled his fingertips and spread quickly throughout his whole body. The odd sensation he’d felt earlier surged. Some cops referred to it as instinct that
had been developed, learned, and recognized over time, but the dread zapping Tony was a force to be reckoned with. It was setting sparks off around him, illuminating his mind, and asking he look further into his brother’s death.
Something about Dana’s suicide didn’t quite fit.
With a heightened sense of awareness, he walked through the kitchen, ignoring the living room and making a beeline for Dana’s bedroom. Inside the darkness of the room, the prickling sensation increased. He was getting closer to learning more about his brother’s death. He flipped on the light switch, but even in the dim light’s warm glow, the blackness lingered.
Something was in the room.
He scanned the area with laser eyes. Unease electrocuted his brain. The zipping and zapping shocked his system. Even though Dana wasn’t coming back, he hated disturbing his brother’s things, knowing this was how Dana had left the room.
Tears filled his eyes, a combination of guilt and sadness that he hadn’t been more aware of his brother’s problems.
His intense suspicion blew the fuse on his moment of grief. He swiped his eyes with the back of his hand and obeyed the warning. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and stretched them over his hands. If he found anything suspicious in the room, he didn’t want to risk contamination.
He yanked open the nightstand drawer beside Dana’s bed. It was empty. Void of pen and paper, tissues, books, condoms, nose spray, or any of the other common items he’d discovered inside strangers’ nightstands. He slammed the drawer shut.
It was the one place he’d hoped to find a note explaining his brother’s mood and providing some insight about his suicide.
“God, Dana why’d you do it?” he muttered. Tony contemplated his next move. His anger and sadness battled each other. Going through his brother’s personal things proved more difficult than he had imagined. He needed to separate himself from the situation. Treat this like any other investigation. Tony shoved his raging emotions aside and got back to work.
A large dresser stood against the adjacent wall. He started with the top drawer and worked his way down, feeling in and around Dana’s neatly stacked underwear, socks, T-shirts, and sweatshirts. He probed each drawer, searching for some buried clue.
The bolt of electricity zapped him again and made his skin crawl. His mounting frustration didn’t help. The urge to pull each drawer out and dump out the contents on the floor gnawed at him. He needed to get a handle on his elevating emotions. He wanted to treat his brother’s things with respect.
Something crinkled under his probing fingers, and he yanked out a folded magazine page.
… Many recovered patients agree a combination of yoga and chanting can bring the body, mind, and spirit into harmony. “The feeling of pervasive emptiness and the need to fill that void with some dangerous activity can be overcome with this kind of treatment and in my case psychotherapeutic drugs,” says a patient of Dr. Von Langley.
“This patient couldn’t regulate himself. I taught him how,” says Dr. Von Langley. “Other approaches I find helpful are called RICE and visualization therapy.”
He slumped down onto the bed and stared at the wall in front of him. Why in the hell had Dana kept this article? A faint seam in the plaster next to the large wardrobe closet caught his eye. He lurched forward and pressed two fingers against the crack. He yanked open the wardrobe closet doors and revealed a hollow interior with an entrance to a room on the other side. He stepped inside and moved deeper into the darkness of the secret chamber.
He’d visited his brother often, especially after their parents had passed away, but he had only seen Dana’s bedroom a handful of times. They usually hung out in the living room watching sports, unless they were in the kitchen filling their faces. He couldn’t recall thinking the architecture of the house didn’t match with the interior, or vice versa. How long had Dana had this hidden room?
The electric sensation pulsed. Tony took a deep breath and exhaled. He was getting closer to finding out a disturbing truth about Dana. He couldn’t turn back and ignore what he’d discovered, and for the first time in his life he wished he wasn’t a cop. Tony had the weird feeling that Dana had left the room for him to find.
But why?
Frustration joined the zipping and zapping sensation running through his system. He hated thinking Dana couldn’t come to him and tell him about whatever was going on, or why he needed this hidden room.
Standing in the darkness, Tony pulled out the flashlight pen clipped to his back pocket and illuminated the stuffy space.
Slowly he shined the light in front of him from the floor to the ceiling. The dark-painted wall nearly snuffed out the light. Tony walked over to the wall and touched it. He ran his fingers along the gritty surface but noted the wall was not textured. There was white residue left behind on his gloved hand. He raised his hand to his face but couldn’t smell anything but rubbery latex from the glove.
He tested the wall to his right, expecting to find the same white residue on his other gloved hand. When he examined his hand under the dim flashlight pen’s light and rubbed his thumb across his fingers, there was nothing there. He shined the light toward the ceiling and noticed something that looked like a rolled-up projection screen. He pulled it down and realized it was some sort of a backdrop in muted shades of gray.
He stepped back from the wall and shined the light down at his feet and along the floor. The finished burgundy and gold swirled cement floor shone. He hunched down and ran his hand along the smooth, cool concrete. His eyes followed the beam of light, scrutinizing all four walls’ corners and the floor. Specks of white residue caught his eye under the wall where he’d found the substance. He reached for an evidence bag crammed in his jacket pocket and carefully pushed the particles into the baggie with his index finger.
His knees cracked. He shined the light on the wall behind him. There was a plain four-legged desk with a center drawer, laptop computer, and a jar filled with something on the desk’s corner. He walked a few paces to the desk and picked up the jar. He squinted and wrinkled his nose, examining the jar’s contents. The jar was filled with rice.
Why in hell would Dana keep a jar of rice on his desk? Puzzled, Tony shook his head and set down the jar. He pulled the plastic baggie filled with the suspicious white powder from his pocket and shined the penlight on it. He looked from the crushed rice particulars in the baggie to the jar of rice on Dana’s desk. Tony didn’t know what to make of what he’d discovered, and at the moment he didn’t know how to proceed with the evidence he’d collected to further his investigation.
He slid back the leather desk chair and pulled open the center drawer, surprised to find photos of several women. His brow furrowed. Tony pulled the photos from the drawer and tossed them on top of desk. Shock split through him at what the photos revealed.
The women had posed suggestively. There were group shots of females seeming to enjoy the girl-on-girl contact, and single shots of women making love to the camera. Tony guessed Dana had been the photographer. Which meant a digital camera hid somewhere in the room.
Last time Tony checked, Dana had not been hired as a photographer for a men’s magazine.
He shot the slender light beam to the left, expecting to find the bed featured in several of the photos. He discovered a large bookcase filled with books. His gaze tore from the bookcase back to the photos. Many of the photos were taken against the muted gray screen. With his gloved hand, he separated the photos, in search of the woman he’d seen sprawled on the bed. He shined the light down on the photo and rushed to the bookcase.
Sure enough, it was a false wall, and down plopped a double bed. There was no mistaking the red satin sheets and fuzzy leopard blanket. A pink and red heart pillow fell to his feet. He picked up the pillow and tossed it back on to the bed.
“Shit, Dana, what were you up to?”
He shoved the faux bookcase back into place against the wall and went back to the desk and the photos. Categorizing the raunch
y images was not his idea of fun. He shined the beam of light down on the photos and separated the images. Seeing into his brother’s sexual fantasies made his stomach curl. He paused and looked away from the photos.
Dana’s computer rested inches away from him. Although fearful of what he might find, he flipped open the laptop and pressed the button to turn on the machine. The computer hummed to life. Tony searched his brain for Dana’s password. A password he did not know. Considering what he’d discovered in Dana’s secret room, he guessed his brother’s password could be anything from his favorite football team to something more fitting of Dana’s apparent interest.
He racked his brain for a logical password while he categorized the photos. He placed single shots of girls posing alone in one pile and girl-on-girl shots in another. And that was when he came across the photo of Sparrow.
Chapter 21
Derrick’s face heated with anger at the sound of her calling him Dana. He removed his arm from around her shoulder and tried to remain calm. He pushed himself up from the couch then yanked on his slacks.
“Sparrow, you called me Dana.” His voice sounded flat and emotionless. Good. He didn’t want his rising frustration getting the best of him by overreacting.
“I-I’m sorry. I was thinking about him, and, I mean, I wasn’t calling you him. It’s not what you think.”
“And how do you know what I think?” Again his monotone voice didn’t give way to his anger. The words I was thinking about him made his heart pound. Had she been fantasizing about Dana while she made love to him? That was worse than a woman faking an orgasm, and even more insulting. His blood pumped through his veins. He paced the floor to expend the unwanted energy.
Sparrow rushed to him. He reached for her shoulders, keeping an arm’s length of distance between them. Her pleading green eyes reached into his drumming heart, begging his forgiveness.