Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  Her phone rang. Like clockwork. As soon as it occurred to her that the morgue had been a little quiet for a few hours, a victim showed up.

  The phone still in her hand, she looked down at the screen. Halted. A silent gasp caught in her throat. Her chest tightened at the unfamiliar number.

  It was area code 843.

  “What is it?” Hal asked, stopping beside her.

  “Charleston, South Carolina.”

  “Maybe it’s Harper,” Hal said. Harper was the Charleston detective who’d helped Schwartzman after Spencer had killed her aunt. And another woman. When he’d drugged Schwartzman and bound her in her aunt’s garage.

  She was frozen at the sight of that number. Why would Harper Leighton be calling?

  Just to catch up? Or something more.

  Something bad.

  She wouldn’t know unless she answered. She lifted the phone to her ear. “Schwartzman.”

  “Anna, it’s Harper Leighton.”

  Schwartzman nodded. “Hi, Harper.”

  “I sent a photograph to Hal. Have you seen him?” The breathless quality in her voice made Schwartzman’s heart race again.

  Something was wrong.

  “He’s right here. Harper?”

  “Can you ask him if he got the photograph? Please.”

  “Hang on.” She pressed the “Speaker” button. “Harper said she sent you a photograph.”

  “Let me look, Harper. You okay?” Hal navigated through his phone.

  Harper didn’t answer, and the lines between Hal’s eyes deepened. “I’ve got it, Harper. Picture of three girls.”

  “The one on the right is Lucy. My daughter.”

  Hal and Schwartzman exchanged a look.

  Schwartzman’s throat went dry.

  “Is she okay?” Hal asked.

  “She’s fine,” Harper said, her tone not the least bit convincing.

  “What am I looking at?” Hal asked.

  “I just got this picture from the assistant district attorney in Greenville, the one working Spencer’s case.”

  Schwartzman felt a wall against her shoulder, as though it had come to her rather than her to it. She leaned in, allowed the dingy off-white surface to take some of her weight.

  Spencer. Even when she succeeded in pushing him out of her thoughts briefly, he always reappeared.

  “A picture of your daughter?” Hal said. “What does your daughter have to do with Spencer MacDonald?”

  “Zoom in on her neck.” Harper’s voice ended in a crack.

  Necklace. She’d almost said necklace.

  Hal’s large fingers fumbled on the small screen. Finally the image grew in the frame.

  “She’s on the right,” Harper said again, as though watching over their shoulders.

  The girls on the left disappeared as he zoomed in on Lucy. Her dark hair must have been her dad’s, but the rounded nose, the eyes—they were Harper’s. Then Lucy’s head and torso were gone until the screen was filled with a section of Lucy’s chin, under which hung a thin silver chain.

  Hal shifted the image upward, and the pendant came into view.

  Schwartzman wanted to vomit. She leaned harder into the wall, pressing her free hand into her stomach as though holding herself together from that center point.

  The pendant was a small silver sea turtle.

  Identical to the one that Schwartzman had as a child.

  Identical to the one they’d found under the bedside table in Spencer’s home, the evidence that had helped put Spencer in prison.

  “Shit,” Hal said.

  “When did she get this necklace?” Schwartzman asked.

  “I’ve never seen it,” Harper said. The breathless quality was still there.

  “Did you ask her about it?” Hal asked.

  “I’m at her school now. I pulled her out of class to ask about it.”

  Schwartzman felt the old fear, like her body plunging into ice-cold water. It burned her scalp, dug its talons into her spine.

  “Jed’s with me,” she added.

  Hal’s head dropped. “What did she say, Harper?”

  “She said she found it one day in her locker at school. In a little white box with a yellow bow.”

  Yellow. As though prodded by an electric shock, Schwartzman started to walk. She strode a few feet down the hall until she realized she still held the phone. Walked back. She needed air.

  Hal caught her eye and nodded, motioning for the stairs. They started toward the exit.

  “When?” Hal asked.

  “She doesn’t remember. Not exactly.”

  Schwartzman found her voice. “When was the picture taken?”

  “At a tournament in Columbia. Jed took her. I was working that weekend.”

  “That weekend,” Hal repeated. “When?”

  “It was the weekend Ava was killed.”

  “So Lucy got it before Ava was killed. It would’ve been in her locker before the tournament. Is that right?” Hal asked. He was speaking quickly, emphatically.

  Scared.

  “Yes,” Harper confirmed. “It was after Frances Pinckney was killed but before Ava.”

  Frances and Ava—the two women Spencer had killed. To lure Schwartzman to Charleston. Her aunt’s best friend. Her aunt. Schwartzman stopped walking, pressed her eyes closed. Spencer had involved the detective’s child even before Aunt Ava died. How had he known?

  Because Harper was already working Frances Pinckney’s case.

  “Where is the necklace now?” Hal asked.

  “She doesn’t know,” Harper said. “She thought she’d lost it that weekend.”

  Spencer had gotten to a teenage girl, to Harper’s daughter. But why? What had he hoped to achieve?

  Hal punched open the metal door, and it slammed into the concrete building’s front. Schwartzman shivered against the warm outside air.

  “Harper?” Hal asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice broke.

  “Are you okay?”

  Silence. “Truth be told, I’m rattled.”

  “Yes,” Hal agreed.

  How far would Spencer take it? How far would he go to get her back? He’d already killed two people. He hadn’t stopped yet. Would he kill a teenage girl? It wouldn’t be about hurting the girl. Not for Spencer. It would be about hurting Schwartzman.

  About getting out of jail.

  “I’ll be okay,” Harper said, her voice sounding more like her own again.

  Schwartzman was unable to speak. Her heart seemed lodged at the base of her throat.

  “What else did the assistant district attorney say?” Hal asked.

  A voice in the background. “Tell them.” Harper’s husband.

  Tell them what? Schwartzman was too scared to ask.

  Hal’s mouth was drawn in a straight line. He felt it, too. The icy fear.

  “She wasn’t specific,” Harper said. “There’s some noise from the defense.”

  “What kind of noise?” Hal pressed.

  “They’re saying there’s no evidence.”

  “Of?” There was a bite to Hal’s tone.

  “No evidence that Spencer killed them. They’re claiming that Spencer was set up—that someone planted the necklace to frame him.”

  Schwartzman swayed on her feet, locking her knees to keep herself upright.

  If the necklace found at Spencer’s house was the same one Harper’s daughter wore in the picture, then Spencer’s attorneys could argue that it was planted. By Harper maybe. Or they might imply that Schwartzman was behind the whole scheme—that Schwartzman had deceived Harper about Spencer’s guilt and convinced her to plant the evidence to help get a conviction.

  After all, she had planted evidence.

  If the defense suggested the necklace was a plant, surely that would call into question the other evidence. The evidence that she had—in an act of desperation—planted: the knee pads, the gloves, Ava’s hair, the fur from Frances Pinckney’s dog . . .

  She couldn’t breathe. Spencer
would go free.

  She pressed her phone into Hal’s hand and walked away. No, half ran.

  Awkward in her slacks and boots, she was desperate to sprint. To pull off her shoes and run in stockinged feet the way she had as a child in the big green yard behind the house.

  To hell with the asphalt and the glass and the debris.

  She wanted to fill her lungs, to run until she couldn’t think, until she couldn’t breathe.

  She had done this to herself.

  This is what happens when you try to push me away. When you try to get away from me. You can’t, Bella. So don’t even try.

  But she had tried. Now what would he do?

  17

  Hal ended the call and ran after Schwartzman. She wanted to be alone, but spending too much time in her own head was a bad idea.

  Hal’s dress shoes were loud on the pavement as he caught up with her. Schwartzman stopped and turned back, fear on her face. When she saw him, she stopped. Shrank.

  She didn’t fight him when he put his arms around her.

  He pulled her close. She felt tiny. She was taller than Hailey, taller than his ex-wife, but she seemed smaller than either of them now.

  “He’s going to get out,” she whispered, her voice like a ghost’s.

  “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “Where?”

  “I need a drink.”

  She didn’t argue.

  He led her to his department car and put her in the passenger’s side. As he started the engine, he had to remind her to put on her seat belt.

  She looked down. “I don’t have my purse.”

  “It’s there.” Hal pointed to the floor where she had dropped it.

  “My phone.”

  “Here.” He put it in her hands.

  She leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes as he drove toward his neighborhood. He thought of taking her to the Tempest, his newest dive bar of choice, but decided instead on Watson, which was a little quieter, more upscale.

  He parked half in a loading zone, threw his department pass on the dash, and jogged around the car to help her out. Schwartzman was dazed as he led her past the neon-pink sign of the bar next door, Ruby Eyes. Two Asian women passed and eyed him suspiciously. He held his tongue and opened the door for Schwartzman, holding her arm as they entered. It was dark inside and relatively quiet as they climbed the stairs to the bar.

  Hal chose the small corner table, taking a seat with a good view of the bar. Facing the room was always his preference. Today it felt like necessity.

  A minute later a waitress set down two bar napkins.

  Schwartzman didn’t look up from the menu. “Do you have Evan Williams?”

  The waitress glanced back over at the bar. “Think so. How do you like it?”

  “Neat.” A beat passed. “Make it a double.”

  Hal nodded. “For me, too.”

  Schwartzman pushed the food menu aside. He’d make sure she ate something before they left. He wondered what the rules were for drinking during chemo. Probably a bad idea, but this didn’t seem like the time to worry about it.

  Schwartzman said nothing when the drinks arrived, giving the waitress a nod as she lifted her drink and took a long pull. With a slight grimace, she swallowed, eyes closed, and set the glass down.

  Hal tried the bourbon, which smelled like caramel corn and pepper. He’d never had a palate for what his dad called brown liquor. It didn’t matter how expensive the bottle, brown liquor was brown liquor. And liquor—brown, clear, or anything in between—had only one purpose as far as Hal’s father was concerned, getting drunk, which was why there was never any liquor in his parents’ home. Beer, some wine, but never hard liquor.

  Schwartzman emptied the glass and caught the eye of the bartender. Her gaze tracked to Hal’s glass, but she didn’t comment. He asked for a Guinness on the second round, and Schwartzman propped her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand.

  He could think of nothing but Spencer. What he’d done, what she knew. He waited for her to start talking. They had to talk about it. There was so much he didn’t understand. “I never pictured you as a bourbon drinker.”

  She touched the glass, ran her finger across the design cut into it. “I grew up with Evan Williams.” Before he could ask what she meant, she shook her head. “Not the Evan Williams. Just the bourbon. It was always around.” Her voice dropped as she whispered, “The single barrel was my daddy’s favorite.”

  Daddy’s.

  Her eyes were glassy. The word daddy sounded strange from a woman as accomplished as she was. It opened something up in him, maybe the hole he had from his own loss.

  “You were close to your dad.”

  She nodded.

  “Is that why you never took the name MacDonald?”

  Her eyes flashed wide. She hadn’t been expecting him to go straight to Spencer. She sank a little lower in the chair. “Maybe.” She paused. “Or I was stubborn. It was about the only thing I never gave in on.”

  Hal thought of all that she had let Spencer control. Her name seemed like a strange thing to hold on to when she’d let go of so much. But maybe it was the one act of rebellion, the one way to assert the independence he had taken away.

  The second round of drinks came, and Hal took a sip of Guinness.

  “Spencer hated that I never changed it,” she went on. “He tried a few times to change it for me. But I was never MacDonald.” Schwartzman took a drink of the second bourbon. She scowled at the flavor and pushed it away. “The single barrel is so much better.”

  Hal watched her as he eased into the subject of Spencer. “So Annabelle Schwartzman.”

  She wiped her mouth and folded the napkin slowly. “I never liked Annabelle either.”

  “So Anna?”

  “I kind of like Schwartzman. Makes me think of Dad . . . and Ava.”

  “Just Schwartzman?” he repeated.

  She cracked a sad smile. “Too weird, huh?”

  “Oprah, Bono, and Schwartzman?”

  “Liberace, Banksy,” she said as the waitress came to check on them.

  Schwartzman watched her walk away again. Something shifted in her expression, as if she knew what was coming, as if she could read his mind. As her gaze found his, her body language started to relax, the alcohol taking effect quickly. Had she even eaten breakfast? Her shoulders drooped, her free arm draped across her legs. But her expression remained sharp, focused.

  He studied her, wondered what he didn’t know. About Spencer. About that necklace, the evidence that had helped put Spencer away. Schwartzman was afraid. That much he knew.

  He felt the fear, too. He knew how these things went. If the defense suspected that the necklace had been planted, all the evidence that had been collected at the house would naturally be called into question. And the evidence at Spencer’s house was all they had to convict. There had been no trace left at the scenes to link Spencer to the deaths of Ava Schwartzman or Frances Pinckney.

  Without the evidence at his house, he would surely go free.

  She took another small sip of the bourbon and grimaced again as though she’d forgotten how bad it tasted. “Go ahead.” Her face was serious, but there was something about her expression that made him want to smile.

  She raised her brows, waiting, and he felt the shift in her. She was all business now. But he wasn’t sure what she meant. “Go ahead, what?” he asked.

  “Ask.”

  Multiple thoughts entered his mind at once. Fleetingly the notion that she was flirting. Then questions about Sandy’s cancer, the case. Spencer. Her reaction to Harper’s call. The panic in her eyes when Harper had said there was noise from the defense. “What do you know about the evidence in Spencer’s arrest?”

  “Be more specific,” she said.

  It was like talking to a lawyer. “What do you know about the necklace found on Harper’s daughter?”

  “Nothing.”

  He stopped.

  “Keep going,”
she said. “You’ve got more questions.”

  “Do you know if the necklace found at Spencer’s house is the same one that was given to Harper’s daughter?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Does Harper?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think she does.”

  He watched her. She had a secret. “But you know something about evidence found at Spencer’s?”

  She said nothing.

  He thought through the items that had been found in Spencer’s garage. “The gloves, the hair?”

  Her gaze fell into her lap. “I should get home. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “Damn,” he whispered, and she squeezed her eyes closed as if reacting to a violent murder in a horror movie.

  What had she done?

  18

  Across the table from him, Denise wore a low-cut black top.

  Her cups runneth over.

  The skin was a little less taut than some of the girls he picked up in hotel bars, but she was educated. She didn’t charge by the hour. She was looking for love, certainly.

  But he didn’t know if she was accepting the date because she wanted to go out with him, or if the date was part of some master plan that involved her being in the pharmacy two nights ago. The first order of business would be finding out why she’d been there. He’d thought of almost nothing else since he had watched the film yesterday afternoon.

  He had wanted to take her out last night, but she’d had something she needed to do. That’s what she’d told him. Even the words had made him uneasy. Something she needed to do. He’d woken in a sweat this morning. If they’d gone out last night, he would have taken care of her already. Not to mention there were fewer people out in the city on a Thursday, although fewer was a matter of magnitudes. Nothing was private in San Francisco.

  He tried to tell himself there were benefits to waiting until Friday. He’d have the weekend to figure out what she was up to, to take care of things if she was a threat.