Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  He seemed to sense Hal staring. When their eyes met, Hal raised his eyebrows and the man returned to his paper. Hal had seen him come in behind the two patrol officers, but he hadn’t gotten in line.

  Meeting someone maybe?

  Schwartzman joined him to wait for her order, and they made small talk about the case—the disappointing news that there were no obvious horse lovers or vet connections at the office, the unanswered questions about the FIMO clay found on Posner’s tooth. Hal shared the news that they’d made no progress on the board of directors or the people who had cared for Sandy Coleman during her stay in the hospital.

  “What about his computer?” Schwartzman asked.

  “No incriminating pictures other than the ones of Patrick Fraser.” Hal told her about Norman Fraser’s assault charge.

  Schwartzman looked stunned. “Dr. Fraser beat up a kid?”

  “He was accused of beating up a kid.” Hal knew what someone was charged with and what actually happened were often not the same.

  “Do you think he killed Posner?”

  Hal considered Norman Fraser. If Fraser had killed him over the pictures of his son, then certainly he would have taken Posner’s laptop from the house. But it had been sitting there, right on Posner’s desk, a few feet from his body. He was missing something. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s next?” she asked.

  He had to follow up on Fraser. That much was obvious. “We’re cross-referencing Posner’s e-mail correspondence with Sandy Coleman’s name and seeing if anything comes up.”

  “Something will.”

  He tried to absorb her confidence as they walked back down the block, then parted at the department. He promised to call her later to touch base. As soon as he’d left her side, her gait accelerated, the forward tilt of her body purposeful, efficient.

  He reached the department doors and noticed the blond man from Starbucks walking past. The newspaper was gone. His hands were in his pockets. No coffee. Hal watched as he rounded the building toward the morgue.

  Toward Schwartzman.

  He reminded himself that the path also led to the parking lot.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. The lab. “Harris,” he answered.

  When he looked up again, the man was gone.

  “It’s Naomi. Got a hit.”

  “I’m coming down the stairs.”

  “Good. I was wondering about that coffee.”

  Naomi waited with a piece of paper in her hand, a printout of a record. Hal handed her the coffee and took the page. The print from the death certificate belonged to someone named Jake Charles. Hal scanned the report and found no priors.

  “Who is he?”

  “Used to be a cop, patrol out of Ingleside.” The Ingleside District included the area south of the Mission and west of Bayview. Not a bad beat.

  “And now?” Hal asked.

  “Private investigator.”

  Private investigator. That meant someone had hired this Charles guy to deliver the death certificate to Schwartzman.

  Spencer?

  While it was the obvious guess, this didn’t feel like Spencer’s work. Every move Spencer had made so far was calculated to be deeply sinister. Unless Hal didn’t yet understand the significance of Joseph Strom, a death certificate for a man who’d died in a car accident at the age of fifty-seven lacked the necessary scare factor. “You have a number for Charles?”

  She flipped the page and pointed to a handwritten address and phone number. “Found it on Google.”

  She raised her coffee cup and turned back to her work.

  Hal folded the page into his back pocket and carried his coffee out of the lab. He tossed the green plug from the coffee lid into a nearby trash can and took a long drink. Chocolate coated his tongue. It was no longer hot, but even lukewarm it was still pretty damn good.

  He took another swig before pulling his phone out of his pocket. If he was going to go visit this Jake Charles PI, Schwartzman deserved to come along. He wished he’d told her about the prints when they were together.

  He stared down at the coffee cup, then took one last pull. It wasn’t even coffee. It was hot chocolate. He could save himself some real cash by buying the stuff in big canisters like his mother had done when they were kids. Still, the damn drink made him happy. And happiness—even for the moment—was something there was less of these days.

  His phone buzzed in his hand. Hailey. Something else that made him happy. “Hey, partner. Long time.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “About to head out. Why?”

  “I answered your phone,” she said. Which meant she was working at her own desk. She hadn’t done that in weeks.

  “Who was it?”

  “A Jay Schenck. He’s the executive director of the Finlay Foundation. Whatever that is.”

  “What did he say?” Hal asked without explaining.

  “That he’s at the office today until three,” Hailey said.

  “Good, I’ll go see him.”

  “You want company?” she asked.

  “I’d love it,” he said, surprised by the offer. “Are you available?”

  “I am.” She sounded pleased. “I’ll meet you in the back lot.”

  “Headed there now.” He palmed his phone, glad for the opportunity to catch up with his partner for the first time in weeks.

  He always thought better as part of a pair. This would give him a chance to share the evidence on Posner and the strange connection with the cable installation guy. Not to mention he would be able to get her reaction to the PI’s fingerprints on the death certificate Schwartzman had found on her windshield. It would be good if that was clear in his head when he approached Schwartzman with the information about Jake Charles. She had enough to worry about without him adding to it.

  More than enough.

  21

  Coffee in hand, Schwartzman returned to the morgue, dreading the next case, her third of the day. Two victims of a vehicular accident had arrived within a few minutes of finishing her second look at Gustafson.

  Thinking a cup of coffee might do her good, she had walked to Starbucks and run into Hal. But there had been something distinctly awkward about the interaction, as if he was keeping something from her.

  They were both keeping secrets.

  She trusted him. Whatever it was, he would tell her in time. Wouldn’t he?

  She hadn’t told him everything. Not about what she’d done at Spencer’s. She couldn’t tell him. That information could only hurt him. Hurt them both.

  Sitting at her desk, she drank the coffee and checked her voicemail before moving on to her next autopsy—a three-month-old baby boy. These were the worst cases.

  One voicemail was from the Realtor, who called almost daily. Like most days, she announced that she had located a few potential properties that met Schwartzman’s requirements and was sending links via e-mail. Schwartzman would look at them tonight, with a glass of wine. A reward for getting through this next autopsy.

  At least Roy wasn’t in the morgue. His day off. She was grateful not to be checking over her shoulder for him all day. Was it Spencer who had made her this way? Was she making Roy more nefarious than he was? Creating something in her mind because of what she’d been through?

  She was jumpy. Calm down and control yourself. You’re in charge.

  She stared at drawer ten, the baby drawer. She had procrastinated long enough. Just as she got out a fresh kit and set up the tools on the table, the phone rang. She’d been waiting for a call from the lead inspector, so she answered it without looking at the number. “Hi.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” came a female voice.

  Adrenaline mixed with nausea in her gut.

  “I’m sorry. Who is this?”

  “It’s Laura Patchett. I assumed you recognized the number.”

  She glanced at the screen. The 864 area code. Greenville.

  “Laura Patchett,” the voice on the phone repeated. “I’m
the assistant district attorney for Greenville and Pickens Counties. We spoke a few months ago.”

  She recalled their first conversation, just after her return from South Carolina. Patchett had asked if Schwartzman would testify against Spencer. She had agreed. Then she’d gotten a call that they didn’t need her, not in the arraignment anyway. Official charges had been made, and the judge denied bail. Across the country, Schwartzman had been weeks away from a double mastectomy, and going back to South Carolina would have delayed the surgery.

  “Dr. Schwartzman.”

  “Yes,” she said, clearing her throat. “I remember. How can I help you?” Fear pounded a furious drumbeat against her ribs. Was this about testifying? Could she do it? Go back there and face him again?

  “I’ve sent you an e-mail,” Patchett said. “The defense has come up with new evidence that is not good for our case. I need you to look at the attachment and call me back. My team and I need to create a strategy about how to approach this, so time is at a premium.”

  Time is at a premium.

  “I’ll do it now.”

  “You’ve got my number,” Patchett said. Not a question. “Call me directly. No one else.”

  Hers was no longer the soothing, professional voice Schwartzman remembered. Patchett sounded unnerved, and the call left Schwartzman with a pit in her stomach. She locked up the morgue and hurried down the hall to her office, where her computer was. Her fingers fumbled with the lock, and then she mistyped her password as she attempted to log on.

  During that first call, Patchett had told Schwartzman that she would be the ticket to putting Spencer away, that juries needed to see the victims. If you could get women jurors to identify with the witness, if you could make the male ones recognize some piece of their own mothers, wives, and daughters, Spencer would be sentenced.

  They would win.

  Her in-box was slow to load the twenty-three new messages. She ignored several departmental e-mails whose subject lines read, “Urgent” and “Please Respond.” There it was. The subject read, “Traffic Camera Video.”

  Oh, God. A traffic camera.

  She double-clicked on the video link.

  In the center of the computer screen was Schwartzman herself. The film was grainy, heavily pixelated, as if the video had been taken from footage of a broader view, a camera a block or two away. Or more? How sophisticated were traffic cameras these days?

  She recognized the house across from Spencer’s, the cluster of dogwood bush she’d hidden behind. She studied her own profile. In her memory the street had been dark, much darker than it appeared on film. She hadn’t noticed the porch light at the house close to her hiding place.

  Standing in front of the house where she had once lived, where she had lost her unborn daughter, she had been solely focused on what she could do to finally be rid of Spencer MacDonald. But the porch light she’d overlooked then was visible in the footage. Dual-bulb and industrial looking, it illuminated a full 180 degrees, which meant it caught Schwartzman as she stood, watching the house. It caught her as she ducked behind the bushes when Spencer’s Lexus backed out of the driveway.

  It caught her as she started across the street.

  Her dark, shoulder-length hair was unmistakable with its wave. Her gait, her posture as she moved like a woman walking to her death. She felt her own fear again, remembered the terror of that voice, of that woman’s face on the wall.

  The crushing realization that the woman was her.

  She watched the footage until she disappeared around the side of Spencer’s house and watched until the clip ended. Forty-six seconds. Not even a minute. At the conclusion, a white circular arrow filled the center of the darkened screen. To watch it again.

  There was no question that it was her. Which was fine. She had been there. That was where she and Spencer had their confrontation. No one was disputing that fact. So why did the DA consider this footage so damning?

  She started the video again. The footage was clearer than she would have expected for a traffic camera, and she could clearly read the make of Spencer’s car as it backed out of the driveway and drove away from the camera. She was grateful not to see his face. At the same time, she wondered if seeing it might have given her some clue.

  Did he know she was coming, even as he pulled away? Or had her entrance into the house triggered some sort of silent alarm that drew him back? She had never found out how he had ended up back there so soon after she’d watched him drive away. Now, with four months’ hindsight, she was certain he’d had a plan.

  Had he known about this camera? He can’t know everything. And yet he seemed to.

  It was only in the third viewing that she realized why Laura Patchett had called. Schwartzman slammed the laptop closed. Let out a primal shout. What had she done? Why hadn’t she trusted that the police would find something to keep Spencer in jail? Why had she gotten involved? Why had she gone to South Carolina at all?

  They had her on film, walking across the street in front of Spencer’s house, the plastic sack she held in her right hand in full view beside her. The bag that she had taken into Spencer’s house but not brought back out.

  Because she had planted it in his trash can.

  She put her face in her hands. Hal had told her to stay. He had told her not to go there. That it wasn’t safe. But Ava was dead. Spencer had known she would come for Ava. And she had. She had fallen right into his trap.

  Would they be able to enhance the footage enough to see the words Home Depot printed in orange across the plastic? Surely they would link the bag in her hand to the identical one in Spencer’s trash—the one that held the evidence she had collected. If they checked carefully enough, if the film could be enhanced to make it all clearer, would they see that she had, in fact, been wearing gloves?

  Because if so, then they would know.

  That she had planned it.

  That she had gathered what she needed.

  Gone to his house.

  And planted evidence that he was the killer.

  22

  The drive to the Finlay Foundation’s headquarters with Hailey was filled with the easy banter that Hal had always associated with their partnership. Hailey didn’t keep thoughts to herself, and she didn’t mince words. In twenty minutes, she’d covered updates on her daughters, the mother-in-law who lived in the in-law apartment of their home, and the man she’d been seeing for almost a year. She’d also managed to grill Hal with two dozen questions about his own far less interesting life.

  What she didn’t mention was work, which was unusual. Their relationship had been built on the backs of their shared cases. It was how they’d come to trust and rely on each other. Until recently. More and more, her focus was shifted to the task force. He waited for her to bring it up.

  “How’s Anna?” Hailey asked, again avoiding talk of the job.

  “Schwartzman,” he said, a knee-jerk reaction, recalling the conversation they’d had in the bar. She didn’t want to be called Annabelle. Or Bella. But Schwartzman was an awkward mouthful. Somehow he’d gotten used to it. “She seems okay.”

  “Any word on the case?”

  He could still hear the fear in Harper Leighton’s voice from their call. That bastard had gotten to Harper’s daughter, and it filled him with rage.

  “Bad news?” she asked.

  “It’s not good,” he said tightly.

  “He’s going to get out? The ex-husband?”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” he said, turning down Harrison Street. “Where is this place again?”

  “Should be two blocks down on the right.” She let him drive a moment. “Anything I can do?”

  He glanced over.

  “To help with Anna?”

  He shook his head, slowing to read the numbers on the buildings.

  “There,” Hailey said. “Fourteen twenty-eight.”

  The building was a converted two-story warehouse, and there was no sign for the foundation. They parked and went i
nside. He wasn’t convinced it was the right place until he saw the directory. There, halfway down the second-floor listings, was the listing: Finlay Foundation.

  They climbed the stairs, Hailey in the lead, and knocked on the frosted-glass door of Suite 206. Nothing on the door marked it as the Finlay Foundation. He supposed they didn’t get a lot of visitors.

  “Come on in,” came a male voice.

  Hal followed Hailey inside. The office was a single suite, maybe half the size of the Homicide department. A large conference-room table occupied the spacious main room, and off the other side were two closet-like offices. The conference-room table was covered with glossy pamphlets, envelopes, and bright-yellow stickers that read, “Cancer Sucks.”

  The man who emerged from the inner office was young and trim and around five nine. His hair was cut close to his head other than a bit on top that was left long and gelled to the side. He had a full beard that was carefully groomed, hazel eyes, and high cheekbones. Without the beard, he could have been in high school.

  “I’m Jay Schenck.” He waved to the conference table. “We’re getting ready for our annual fund-raiser. It’s pretty much 24-7 these last few weeks.”

  “Thanks for seeing us,” Hal said, nodding to a chair at the conference table.

  “Of course.” Jay pushed aside a stack of envelopes and sat across from Hal. Hailey took the chair beside her partner.

  “Are you usually alone in the office, Mr. Schenck?”

  “Jay, please,” he said. “We have a part-time assistant who mostly works from home and a boatload of volunteers. Thankfully.”

  Hailey settled in but said nothing as Hal pulled out his notebook. “How long have you been the executive director?”

  “I took over in February,” Schenck said, crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands in his lap. He might have stepped out of an ad in a men’s magazine. “Mrs. Finlay was very ill late last year and had to step back. Before that she was very involved. More than that—she basically ran the organization. Single-handedly. Truly, her energy was inspiring.” He pointed to a picture on the wall of an attractive older woman standing next to Oprah Winfrey. Beside it was another of the same woman with Bill Gates.