Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  She imagined the day’s sweat smell, the ripe scent of death in her clothes and hair. She needed a shower and time to start a load of laundry. “Why don’t you give me an hour? I’ll meet you at my house?”

  “An hour?”

  “Make it an hour and a half. Might take a while to get the smell off.”

  “I used to be on animal control, remember? I’ve been sprayed by skunks enough times that I think the smell’s in my DNA.”

  “Ninety minutes,” she said again.

  “You sure you don’t need help?”

  “Positive.”

  Schwartzman returned to the small scrub room to gather the rest of her things. On the floor was the black overnight bag she kept in the back of the car with fresh scrubs and clean street clothes. The navy Crocs she wore to crime scenes sat in a plastic bag on top. She shoved them down and reached for the plastic sack on the counter. As she grabbed hold of it, the dirty scrubs dropped to the floor. She could have sworn she’d tied it up. She looked at the edges of the bag. Wrinkled. The knot must have come loose.

  When she stooped to retrieve the scrubs from the floor, there was only one piece. She shook it out—the top. No bottoms. Nothing on the floor. Nothing on the countertops.

  She checked the trash.

  Had they ended up in her kit? She couldn’t see how.

  “Doc?”

  Wally stood in the hallway.

  “I think we’ve got it all,” he said. In his arms was a plastic tub filled with the bagged equipment for disinfection. No sign of her scrubs.

  She scanned the hallway and noticed he was alone.

  “You need anything else?” he asked.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  She returned the top to the bag and shoved it all into her duffel. Hurrying, she caught up with Wally down the hall. When they reached the end of the corridor, he headed straight toward the service entrance. Schwartzman turned down the main hallway toward the emergency room entrance, where her car was parked.

  The pants would show up, she thought. And they were just scrubs. She had ten more pairs like them at the morgue.

  It was a relief to step outside. The air was warm, Indian summer in San Francisco—a good evening to be outside. In the night air, her nausea abated. With all the focus on the new case and the autopsy, she had forgotten how miserable she normally felt the day after chemotherapy. But today her tongue, rather than constantly seeking out the sores on her gums, rested calmly in her mouth. The one thing she felt consistently with each chemo treatment was exhaustion.

  It was like a weight in the center of her bones, pulling down on her. The heaviness was accompanied by a chill as though she was coming down with a cold. There was no wind, but she sensed something like a breeze on her neck. Something cooler than the outside air.

  She shivered unexpectedly and glanced around. Again, the weird sensation.

  Maybe fifty yards from where she stood was the morgue van. Standing at the rear was Roy. Arms crossed, back leaning against the van, he watched her. The sleeves of his jersey were pushed up to his elbows. From the distance, she couldn’t make out any of the words or designs—just the faint blue of his tattoos.

  He held her gaze, and she held his. What did he want? Was he trying to unnerve her, or was it simply awkwardness that shone through like malice?

  Or perhaps it was her own imagination at play. After Spencer, would she always imagine a dark shadow lurking behind every interaction?

  “Roy,” Wally called. “Let’s go.”

  Roy pushed off the back of the van and walked to the passenger-side door. As he walked, he pulled his sleeves back down over his tattoos.

  Schwartzman got into her car and locked the doors behind her. She started the engine, turned the heat up, and punched on the seat heater. As the air grew warmer, she aimed the vent toward her. Already she could smell death in the car.

  The brake lights on the morgue van were visible in the rearview mirror as it drove out of the lot. A last glance at the service entrance where the van had been parked. No one. She was tired. Maybe it was a bad idea to see Ken tonight. Maybe what she really needed was a shower and a good night’s sleep.

  She wasn’t the least bit hungry.

  Go home.

  As she reached up to shift the car into reverse, she noticed a white envelope tucked under her windshield wiper. She had been so unnerved by Roy that she hadn’t seen it before. She thought again about the new morgue attendant. Was it from him? Was all his strange behavior his way of trying to get her attention? She scanned the parking lot and stepped out of the car to reach for the envelope.

  Back inside she relocked the doors and turned the envelope over in her hands. Her name was typed across the front. No address. No return sender. Just “Dr. A. Schwartzman.”

  Spencer?

  She dropped the envelope into her lap as if it were on fire. She shouldn’t have touched it. There might be prints. But whose? Certainly not Spencer’s. Not from South Carolina. Not from jail.

  She didn’t want to destroy evidence, but another part of her needed to know what was inside.

  Using her fingernails, she tore off one corner of the envelope, then used a pen to tear open one of the short ends. Holding it from the opposite corner, she shook the envelope until the letter fell into her lap. Using two pens like chopsticks, she opened the letter.

  Immediately she recognized the design of the vital records document. A death certificate. She had signed hundreds like it in Washington and California. But this one didn’t appear to be from either place. California’s vital records were bordered in blue, the background pink. This page was white, rimmed in green. At first she thought it might be a problem with the ink, a failed color print, but then she read the top of the page.

  Her mouth uttered an almost silent gasp. State of South Carolina. Standard Certificate of Death.

  Her father came to mind first. Then Ava. Each had an identical document. They were both in sealed envelopes she had never opened. Both locked in a safe-deposit box at her bank. Had someone sent her a copy of her father’s death certificate? Or Ava’s?

  But under “Name of the Deceased,” this document read Joseph W. Strom. The date of death was recorded as February 17, 2003. She sifted through her memories for the name Strom and came up empty. Fourteen years ago.

  Why would someone send her a stranger’s death certificate from fourteen years ago?

  Her phone buzzed on the seat beside her, sending her heartbeat into a sprint. Suddenly hot, she shut off the heat and answered the call. “Schwartzman.”

  “It’s Hal.”

  She stared at the unfamiliar number. “Where are you?”

  “Spent the day in Posner’s office. My phone died about two hours ago. You home?”

  “No. Heading there now. I was about to leave the hospital—” She stopped talking and glanced at the death certificate.

  “Schwartzman?”

  “Someone left a death certificate on my windshield. I just opened it. It’s from South Carolina,” she said before he could ask. “Deceased’s name is Joseph Strom. He died fourteen years ago.”

  “Fourteen years,” Hal repeated.

  “February of 2003.”

  “I’m three blocks away. I’m coming.”

  “You don’t need to,” she said. “I can put it in a plastic bag and bring it in tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. Where are you?”

  “Parked.” She took another look back at the hospital entrance, where Roy had stood against the morgue van only ten minutes earlier. “West side of the building, third row north of the emergency entrance.”

  “Give me ten.” He hung up without saying more.

  His reaction was not a comfort. He was worried there was a connection to Spencer. But what connection? And why?

  She studied the document in her lap. Midway down the page was a line that read, The disease or condition directly related to death. There the coroner had typed, Hemothorax and hemoperito
neum.

  Hemothorax meant blood had filled Joseph Strom’s thoracic or chest cavity. The danger of hemothorax was that if blood continued to collect in the chest cavity, the pressure would eventually constrict the lungs, leading to respiratory failure. Unable to draw air into the lungs, the victim suffocated.

  Hemoperitoneum was essentially the same thing—except in the abdomen.

  Blood had filled Joseph Strom’s chest and abdomen. Whoever Strom was, he had died of massive internal bleeding.

  On the next line, under Antecedent Causes, the document read, (a) crushed chest and abdomen from (b) auto accident.

  Farther down was the date of burial: February 23.

  The dates meant nothing to her, but the cemetery did. Joseph Strom had been buried at Richland Cemetery. In Greenville.

  She squinted to decipher the names of the officials who had signed at the bottom—the coroner, Dr. Marshall Camden, and the clerk at the office of vital records, Jeffrey Resdette or maybe Rossdale? The signature was little more than a scrawl.

  Neither name was familiar, and why would it be? She’d had no interaction with the coroner’s office in South Carolina. Not in the past decade since she’d started her pathology training, and certainly not before.

  Using the pen in her right hand, Schwartzman flipped the certificate over, searching for some additional information. Surely if this was a message, whoever sent it wanted her to glean something from it. But what? The back of the document was blank. The imprint of the state seal showed on the bottom corner. Not a color photocopy. This was an official copy of the death certificate.

  Not unusual. For ten dollars you could get an official copy from the vital statistics office.

  She scanned the page again, reading every line. Strom died in a car accident. He was fifty-seven at the time of his death.

  The air in the car grew stale, and she cracked a window to breathe. It had to mean something. It was too late to call her mother although she owed her a phone call. They had been talking more lately. The conversations were awkward as the two had little in common, but Schwartzman appreciated her mother’s effort. She would call tomorrow, ask about Joseph Strom. Greenville had been experiencing a lot of growth over the past decade, but it had been a small town when she was growing up there. People tended to know one another—if not directly, then by minimal degrees of separation.

  Which brought her to Spencer.

  She did not want to think about Spencer. That was in the past.

  Still manipulating the page with the two pens, she batted the death certificate onto the passenger seat as if she might be rid of it that easily. Her gaze was drawn back. She read the bottom of the page again, noting the date.

  Her breath froze in her throat.

  Her father had also died in 2003—May 20.

  Was that the connection? But her father had died of a stroke. He hadn’t been in a car accident. He’d been buried in a different cemetery.

  She thought about her mother and Ava. They wouldn’t lie. No. She’d seen his body. She would have known if he’d been in a car accident. And that made no sense. The deaths weren’t the same night. They were almost three months apart. What connection could there possibly be?

  Pressure on her arm. She reached to adjust her seat belt and felt a hand. Touched flesh. Not her own. A scream rose in her throat.

  “Anna,” he said.

  Schwartzman shouted. Twisting in her seat, she raised her hands to fight.

  9

  Windows down to let in the warm fall air, Hal heard Schwartzman before he saw her. A scream. Her voice. He swerved into the first row of parking and scanned the cars. “Schwartzman!”

  He listened for her response. The percussion of his pulse, the squeal of the timing belt on the department sedan. He didn’t hear her. Where was her car? What was her car? Not the old Saab. She had something new. Big and American. Some suburban mom car.

  There. One row over. The black one. He raced to the end of the parking row and came screaming into the next one. He threw it in park at an angle and had the door open before the car came to a full stop.

  “Step away from her!” Hal shouted, his hand on his service weapon.

  “It’s me,” the man said, hands raised.

  Hal squinted at the form standing beside Schwartzman’s car. His headlights created a shadow across the man’s head, concealing his features.

  “Dr. Fraser?” Schwartzman’s voice.

  “Yes.” Norman Fraser stepped toward Hal’s car, coming out of the shadows until he stood in the full beam of the headlights. He wore the same button-down shirt as earlier. A tweed blazer had replaced his doctor’s coat. His hair was disheveled, his eyes frantic. His hands were raised above his hand.

  In one of them was a dark object.

  The pulsing energy of adrenaline pushed Hal’s fingers to unfasten the lock on his holster. The urge to draw his gun seared across his chest, throbbed in his palm. This was how it happened. In these frantic seconds. Adrenaline, a possible weapon, an unknown suspect. But this was a doctor. “What’s in your hand?”

  “It’s his phone,” Schwartzman shouted. “I’m getting out of my car.”

  Hal stepped closer. “Don’t, Schwartzman. Stay there.”

  But Schwartzman appeared beside Dr. Fraser, who held his hands in the air. She reached up, took the phone from his hand, and walked it to Hal.

  “You should’ve waited,” he said.

  She handed him the iPhone.

  Hal fastened his holster down around the gun again and drew a deep breath. Touched the moisture on the back of his neck. “What the hell are you doing out here, Dr. Fraser?”

  “I was at the hospital checking on a patient who was admitted for dehydration.” He turned to address Schwartzman. “It’s a fairly common side effect of the chemotherapy. They’re keeping her overnight to watch her fluid levels.”

  Doctor talk. Hal wanted to cut to the chase. It had been a long day.

  Fraser’s gaze returned to Hal as he motioned back to the building. “I can tell you her name, and you can confirm it. I was just in her room. Her husband is there, too. I talked to both of them.”

  “Fine. You were checking on a patient.” He could buy that much. “Then what? You happened to see Dr. Schwartzman in the parking lot?”

  “No.” His attention shifted momentarily to Schwartzman and then back again. “I called the morgue, and they told me Anna was here.”

  Anna?

  Schwartzman’s brow pulled together and then released. He knew it bothered her—being called by her first name. Something to do with Spencer, he guessed, not that he’d ever asked her. But it was obvious from the way the tension mounted in her shoulders, the pull in her face.

  “So you came down and looked for her?” Hal pressed.

  “The gentleman at the morgue told me she drove a new black Chevy Equinox.” Fraser motioned to the parking lot, hands still partially lifted.

  Schwartzman’s mouth tightened. Her eyebrows drew in and down. He couldn’t read the reaction. What was she thinking? Hal caught her eye, but she shook her head. Hal handed the phone back to Fraser. “You can lower your hands.”

  Fraser exhaled. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “I could say the same,” Hal said.

  “Me, too,” Schwartzman added.

  “I’m sorry,” Fraser said. “I called your name twice, but you were focused on something in the car.”

  Hal’s bet was she’d been looking at the death certificate. Had Fraser left it on her car? But he said he’d just come from a patient’s room. And what connection would an oncologist in San Francisco have with South Carolina?

  “What can I do for you, Dr. Fraser?” Schwartzman asked.

  Fraser glanced down at his phone, back at Schwartzman, and finally at Hal. The darting gaze. He’d done something. Killed Posner? Why come forward now? The calm Hal had seen earlier had been genuine. Hal guessed it was something else.

  Maybe something Fraser had just realized.
Or been told. Whatever it was, it scared him.

  Schwartzman eased closer. “Dr. Fraser, why did you come to talk to me? Is it about my treatment?”

  “No,” Fraser said quickly, standing upright again. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  Hal exhaled. He hadn’t considered that Fraser’s visit might be personal. He’d assumed it was about Posner. How had he forgotten Fraser was her doctor?

  That was rare lately. It was always in his head. The cancer. Her.

  Hal took another step forward, putting himself close enough to invade Fraser’s personal space. A guy his size had a tendency to make people a little jumpy, a little less careful about what they said. “If you’ve got information on Todd Posner’s death—”

  “I don’t.” Fraser stepped backward. Then he hunched over and drew a couple of deep breaths, like someone at the end of a sprint. “Oh, hell. I came to talk to you because I didn’t know what else to do, who else to go to.”

  “We’re here now,” Hal said. “Tell us what’s going on, Dr. Fraser.”

  Fraser looked at Schwartzman, who nodded. “If anyone can help you, it’s Inspector Harris,” she said.

  Fraser seemed resigned. He raised his phone, pointed to it as though the answers were inside. “It’s my son. Patrick. He’s twenty-four, in the middle of applications to Stanford medical school.”

  “Has something happened to him?”

  “Posner,” Fraser hissed. His lips drew back across his teeth, his mouth twisting in anger. The first molar on the lower left side of his jaw was gold, and it gleamed in the beams of Hal’s headlights. “Posner fucking happened to him.”

  Schwartzman shivered beside him.

  “Patrick—my son—is applying to medical school.”

  “You said that,” Hal replied.

  Fraser blinked, clearly rattled.

  “How does that relate to Dr. Posner?” Hal asked. How did it relate to Schwartzman? Why seek her out?

  “Patrick’s had a few missteps, but he’s on track. He’s got a strong GPA and test scores. References. Great volunteer experience in Africa. The whole package. He could really be in the running—for Stanford, I mean.”