Then he watched it again.
Finally he deleted the video files for the past four nights, cleared them from his trash, and forced an update of the folder to the cloud. They weren’t gone. Things were never gone these days, but it would slow the police. That was all he needed.
As the cloud updated, the clock icon circled on his screen. Watching it with one eye, he lifted the phone off the desk. He had to see her, find out what she knew, what she was after.
Once again he admitted that life would be easier if Trent weren’t around.
If Trent had died.
If Trent disappeared . . .
How much easier everything would be.
11
Schwartzman left Hal and Dr. Fraser. They were meeting Patrick at the station for questioning, and when she had offered to join them, they’d told her she needed her rest. If she hadn’t been so totally exhausted, she might have fought them on principle. But she was that tired.
She’d seen a quote once, although she couldn’t remember its author. “All the women in me are tired.” She felt that same, profound exhaustion, as though all the times she’d been tired before were only a preface to today. She drove home slowly, carefully, letting the air from the open sunroof blow in softly from above.
Her thoughts swirled with the air, hovering on the death certificate she’d found on the windshield. Hal had bagged it as evidence. Of what, she didn’t know. South Carolina would lead them to Spencer, but he was in prison. In. Prison.
But that didn’t mean she was safe. He had gotten a woman in San Francisco murdered without ever leaving South Carolina.
At home Schwartzman took a long, hot shower in an effort to rid her skin of the smell of death. Although the stench would remain in her nose, at least Ken wouldn’t have to suffer it. She was looking forward to seeing him. She’d almost called him and begged off, but in the end she’d realized she needed the distraction. And sitting in her house, alone, would mean thinking about Spencer. Worrying about him. Spencer wouldn’t come up with Ken. They would talk about work, about food, about movies and books, about his family. And not about her ex-husband.
She lingered under the water, washing her hair twice and using De-Fishing Soap before the regular one.
With Spencer in jail, a long shower had become a new luxury. Before, the shower had always felt like the most vulnerable place. Spencer had made a habit of startling her there when they were married. After leaving him, she had taken efficient showers, not long ones. If she wanted to linger in the water, she took a bath.
As Schwartzman waited for Ken to come up from the lobby, she realized it was the first time he’d been to her place since the night he was attacked. They’d been out three—no, four—times since she had returned from South Carolina, but they had never come here. Was that because he hadn’t wanted to? Why had he offered to leave the soup with the front desk? She hadn’t thought to ask him how he felt about it.
They barely talked about that night.
He was parked behind a desk because of that night—because of her. No. Not her. He was behind a desk because of Spencer. And he was okay. He was getting better. Stronger. He’d said so himself.
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Ken emerged, carrying a brown sack and wearing a smile.
“You didn’t have to bring anything.”
“Oh, but I did. You’ll love this.”
He paused at the door. She hesitated, too. A moment passed between them. She smiled uneasily. “You okay?”
“Great.”
She put a hand out, and Ken stepped inside. “Okay if I borrow your stove top?” he asked.
“Sure. Kitchen’s right through here.”
“You sit,” he said. “I’m going to find what I need.”
She followed him into the kitchen and took a seat at the small breakfast table. “You don’t want help?”
“Nope.” He set a container down on the counter and faced the cupboards. “If I was a soup pot, I’d be—”
“Bottom right beside the oven.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s exactly where I’d be.” He pulled out the pot, put it on the stove, and did a little three-step dance across the kitchen. “And a ladle.”
“Drawer on the left.”
“Seriously, I’ve got this,” he joked, taking a wide stance as if he were going to tackle the oven.
Laughing, she raised her hands. “Okay.”
“Bowls.” He put a hand out. “Don’t tell me.” He opened the cabinet that held her glasses and closed it again. He made his way past her spices and plates before he found the bowls in the farthest cabinet from the sink.
Ken poured a yellow noodle soup from the container into the soup pot and lit the burner. She smelled ginger and something like curry.
While it warmed, he sat across from her and caught her up on his days in records. Anyone else and it might have sounded like complaining, but Ken’s antics made her smile. When the soup had heated to a rolling boil, Ken shut off the burner and poured them each a bowl. The first day after chemo, most smells nauseated her, so she usually ended up surviving on toast with butter or peanut butter and an occasional yogurt.
“You don’t have to eat it,” he said.
She dipped her spoon and took a tentative taste. The ginger was strong without being overpowering; the chicken and noodles took the bite out of it. “It’s really good.”
“Thank you.”
They dined in a comfortable silence, and she ate more than she’d anticipated. When they were done, Ken insisted on doing the dishes.
After a little food and an entire day on her feet, she was starting to feel sleepy. Time to curl into a ball and watch a movie.
“Bringing Up Baby?” Ken asked.
It was her favorite. “You remembered.”
“I told you I’ve never seen it,” he said.
Something light sounded perfect, and that movie was one of the first she remembered watching with her father. How she’d begged to own a leopard afterward.
Ken made them tea and brought steaming mugs into the living room, placing them on the coffee table before sinking into the corner of the couch. She took a sip and settled in beside him. Like an old married couple.
He put an arm around her, and she shifted closer. As she leaned into him, he moaned and sat up quickly, clutching his side. The stab wounds. She’d pressed right into them.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He rubbed his chest tenderly. “Your shoulder just hit a tender spot.”
“Oh, God, Ken. I’m so sorry. Let me see.” She reached for his shirt, but he caught her hand.
“I’m fine.” When she didn’t let go, he said, “I promise.”
She wanted to see the scars. All she could recall from that night was blood—on her hands, on the sheets. It had been like a live organism, a virus, spreading across them while she fought to contain it. There had been no time to take stock of the injuries. She’d been so frantic to slow the bleeding, to take his blood and prove that they’d been drugged that night.
Eighteen stab wounds.
So often in the morgue she saw the wounds open, their rubbery edges eternally parted. The doctor in her wanted to see the scars, measure their healing. Touch the dense masses of granulation tissue that stitched the skin so it was whole again.
Ken still had hold of her hand. With his other, he pointed the remote control at the television. Then he set the remote down and tucked one of her small square throw pillows against the side of his chest. “Here,” he said, patting the pillow. “Lean against this.”
Schwartzman slowly lowered herself into the pillow, and Ken didn’t flinch as she settled her weight in against him once more. He draped an arm across her shoulders, and she felt the comfort of his presence. Safety. Perhaps a future.
How long had it been since she had imagined that kind of freedom? And now she had it. Now she could relax.
On the screen Cary Grant stalked up the eighteenth fairway
behind Katharine Hepburn, trying to explain that she was playing with his ball while she talked over and around him.
Schwartzman closed her eyes and thought of her father. Heard his laugh, the way it filled their den when they had watched this movie. How many times? Dozens at least. She felt her father’s arm around her shoulder when she was a little girl, the way she had settled in against him, the way she was with Ken now.
Safe, content.
12
Spencer MacDonald spent a little extra time in front of the dull stainless steel prison mirror. His transformation was complete. Even he was shocked and, to be honest, mildly disgusted. If he weren’t behind bars, he might be convinced he was addicted to something nasty. Like heroin nasty.
Of course, he would never be that weak.
In the time he’d been unjustly imprisoned, he’d managed to completely change his appearance. From handsome, polished businessman to a broken man. There was the right amount of sallowness in his cheeks. Thirty-six days of eating three bites of each meal. One bite of meat, wash that down with one bite of vegetables, and one bite of starch. Set the fork down and walk away from the table.
He was not a man who denied himself. And he wasn’t accustomed to physical hunger. Not of the food variety anyway.
He caught his reflection in the glass again, and he tilted his head down to test the way the angle changed the shadows of his face beneath the industrial lighting. Down was good. It emphasized the gray-blue shade beneath his eyes.
A useful lesson from prison. How to look half-dead.
First, draw a small shape on a piece of paper with a pencil, applying heavy pressure. Fill it in deeply. Then use a fingertip to apply the gray under the eyes.
Looking half-dead was a good defense in here.
Second, add a few lesions. Use the corner of a razor, slicing from one single point until you have an almost circular wound the size of a dime. Then repeat the cutting process in uneven spaces on the neck and hands.
Third, put one on the face for good measure.
Diseased. That was the way it made him look. Even in prison, nobody wanted to touch a man who was dying of something. People gave a wide berth to the guy who had killed the bitch who’d given him AIDS. So far the story had stuck.
Now it was time to see if looking half-dead worked as well for offense. He took a last glance. He was ready.
The buzzer sawed in his ears, sounding very much like the electric chair. That was what he thought of every time the outer door opened into the visiting area.
The crowd was exactly what he’d hoped for. Mostly black men. The few white men were tattooed monoliths. She would not feel comfortable here.
The top of her head appeared over the barriers, the blonde gray of her carefully styled cut. She moved slowly. These people would terrify her. What if she left? He watched until he was sure she wouldn’t stop. Then he posed, facedown, hands clasped. Like he was praying.
When he looked up, he gave her a few seconds to absorb his thin face, the blue-gray circles under his eyes. The wounds were gone. He had been careful not to create new ones before she came. She would find open sores revolting, and that would not serve his cause.
She had to want to help him.
Her mouth dropped, and she pressed her hand to her lips, as if she might cry. Thrill seared his stomach and moved downward—the first sexual excitement he’d felt since he was arrested.
He offered her a brave smile, raising his chin the way Southern men had always done in the face of adversity. She held her purse strap in two hands, the light-pink bag hanging below. The purse he had bought her for Christmas last year. He squinted his eyes in an effort to soften the focus on her face.
Imagining for a moment that she was her daughter.
The two women had the same wide-set blue eyes, but Bella was taller than her mother and considerably thinner. Where her mother was big breasted with rounded hips, Schwartzman was lithe. She also stood stronger, more confident than her mother, who was always a little timid. Especially now. And Schwartzman wore her dark hair loose and wavy where her mother’s was always done. His vision was too good, better than twenty-twenty. He couldn’t see his Bella, but he could imagine her.
Slipping his hand under the shallow ledge, he shifted to adjust the momentum in his pants and gave her a reassuring nod.
With a last survey of the room, Georgia Schwartzman pulled the chair back and sat, propping the pristine purse in her lap like a prize Yorkie.
He put the phone receiver to his ear. She did the same, all the while looking confused and out of sorts, like she’d never seen a movie where someone came to a prison and talked over a phone behind glass. He experienced a flash of annoyance, impatience.
This wasn’t his favorite version of Georgia—her clueless damsel persona. Georgia was a chameleon. She could seem drunk on two glasses of chardonnay with a group of tittering women and an hour later recall every detail about the merger discussion happening at the next table.
And today she’d never looked so helpless. “Oh, my dear Spencer.”
“Georgia, it’s so good of you to come.”
“I want you to know, I’ve been trying to come for a month, but they said you weren’t taking visitors.”
He leaned into the glass. “I never heard about a single visitor. They must have turned everyone away.”
Georgia’s eyes were narrower than her daughter’s and her face slightly rounder; her nose turned up at the end. She had a tendency to keep it that way, proud of the little upturn. But propped in the air, the nose made her look like a pig. He preferred Bella’s nose, a perfect forty-five-degree slope between bright-sapphire eyes.
“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked.
“I’m sure it is,” he went on. “But that’s the whole game in here. They do whatever they want, and what can I do about it?”
Georgia sat a little straighter. “Well, something has to be done about that. What does Mr. Merckel say?”
Merckel was his lawyer.
“He’s helped some, but there’s not a lot he can do. The evidence against me is damning. Doesn’t matter that it was obviously planted.”
Georgia smiled. The power smile.
The spur of arousal came on again. He’d done too much penance. He would have to satisfy the desire soon. Today might be the day for a celebration. Because he knew that smile. Georgia was gloating.
Which meant she had it.
“I’ve got to find something to prove that it wasn’t what it looked like that night,” he said. “That someone set me up. Not Bella, of course.”
“Bella would never do something like that,” Georgia said quickly.
“Not in a million years. I trust Bella more than anyone,” he lied. “I miss her so much.” He felt a little disappointment at how quickly she’d come to Bella’s defense. Served enough wine, Georgia had been known to let slip the disappointments about her life—the husband she’d chosen for his potential who had never wanted the same things she did. The daughter who took after her father rather than Georgia. How lonely it all was for poor Georgia.
But don’t underestimate poor Georgia.
“I think I might have just the thing,” she said.
He blinked wide eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You know that investigator you told me about? Well, I called him.”
“You did?” He feigned surprise. “Why? Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, of course. I called him to look into your case.”
“You called him to help me?” He tried to appear happy. It was a stretch behind six inches of bulletproof glass, especially when he knew that wasn’t how it had happened. Before his formal arrest, he had told his guy when to approach Georgia and how to get her to bite. Check and see if she can use any help. Maybe mention the situation, how worried you are.
“You’re my son. Of course I did.”
He swallowed bile. He didn’t want a parent.
“He found a picture that I think you’ll
find very interesting.” She unbuckled the purse and pulled out a small manila envelope. She took her time, enjoying his perceived anticipation.
After she drew the picture out, she pressed it against the glass awkwardly, trying to hold the phone in her other hand. As he expected, it was the photo of three girls. High school age. They stood in front of a high net, their volleyball shorts tight around their meaty teenage thighs.
“Who are they?” he asked innocently.
She set down the picture, brought out a second one, and pressed the new one to the glass. Again, he knew all about it. A close-up of the girl on the right. The top of her jersey filled the center of the image.
“I don’t understand,” he said to please her. As though he couldn’t see it perfectly well himself.
And she was pleased, so filled with glee at her work. She tucked the phone to her shoulder so that she could tap the white-tipped nail of her other hand on the face of the girl on the right side of the picture. “This one here. She’s the ticket to getting you out of here.”
There it was, the scene as he’d dreamed it.
This would be like writing a master play. Setting it all up from behind the scenes and putting the actors in the right roles to make the whole thing come alive.
And come alive it would.
13
Schwartzman struggled against the bindings. Coarse. The scent of plastic. A searing pain around her wrists. She struggled to breathe. Rubbed her hands together. The binding slid across itself. Synthetic. Twine would have caught. There would have been the smell of hay. Either way it was rope, thick rope, tied tightly. Too tightly. Her skin was worn raw. It split with a series of sharp stings like splinters piercing the skin.
“Open your eyes,” he said, taking hold of her chin. The smooth ends of his fingertips. The smell of aftershave and Gucci cologne.
She jerked away from him.
His fingers tightened.
“You will watch this,” he said. “You will see what happens when you try to keep away from me.”
Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2) Page 10