by JoAnn Chaney
The woman’s body wasn’t in much better shape than the face. Swollen and broken, cuts and sores dotting the rubbery flesh. Her nipples had gone a grayish color, her fingernails were black and crumbling away at the tips, there was a long slash across the bottom of one foot.
Loren’s cell phone rang, and he left the room. Spengler stayed. Matt kept looking. It seemed to him that his vision had begun to swim in and out of focus, like a camera lens trying to readjust.
There was a mole at the base of her left breast, the kind that’s raised and dark brown with the texture of a raisin, sitting right where a bra would nuzzle up against the skin. Matt had kissed that mole the week before, nibbled on it, and she’d laughed and pushed him away. He’d been at her place, saying their good-byes because Riley was going on a trip to South America. She’d always wanted to go, so he’d had Jill book the trip. She’d screamed when he told her, jumped into his arms and nearly bowled him over. Riley was supposed to be in Machu Picchu now, out of cell phone range as she explored the ancient ruins, but she wasn’t. She was here. Here. Dead. Her face beaten and swollen, her hair a thick rope on the cold metal table.
His vision swam in and out of focus, and it felt like the volume on everything had been turned down, too. Spengler said something, but it was muffled, as if he had pillows pressed against his ears. Maybe this was shock.
He dropped the sheet. It caught the air for a moment, billowed out like a cloud before it settled again, slowly, as if by magic. The door opened and Loren stuck his head in, said something to his partner. Spengler nodded and left, shot a long look at Matt before closing the door behind her.
Matt’s cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. He slowly pulled it out, looked at the screen. He was getting a call from an unknown number. He considered declining the call, letting it go to voice mail, but then answered it anyway. Because he knew who it was. She’d always had impeccable timing.
“Hello?” he said. Cautiously, because he thought it might be a hallucination, his own mind playing tricks on him. It wasn’t all that far-fetched, not after everything that’d happened in the last few days. He might be imagining the phone was ringing—hell, he might be imagining the phone altogether, and if he pulled it away from his head and looked, he might be holding a banana up to his ear. That thought made him giggle hysterically, and he clamped a hand down over his mouth, because how would it look, for the cops to hear him laughing like that? “Hello, is anyone there?”
There was a crackle of static from the phone, and a hiss, as if the call was being beamed to him from a great distance. Outer space, maybe, directly to his ear. Incoming call for Matt Evans; Denver, Colorado; Denver County; State of Colorado; United States of America; the Earth; the solar system, the universe.
The eye of Marie.
“Matt?” a voice said. There was a buzz of feedback, and an echo, so it sounded like someone had shouted his name down a long tunnel. “Matt? Matt? Matt?”
“Who is this?” he said, clutching the phone so hard his knuckles had gone white and numb. “What do you want?”
There was another blip of static and then it was suddenly gone, and the voice in his ear came through crystal clear.
“Matt?” she said, using that breathy, high-pitched voice he hated so much, the one that sounded a little like Marilyn Monroe. He heard that voice in his dreams, sometimes. He’d recognize the voice of his wife anywhere. “Didn’t I say you needed some excitement in your life?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Shawna Goodall had been working at the coroner’s office for nearly fifteen years, and she’d seen a lot in that time. Plenty of bodies coming in and out through the swinging doors, sliding in and out of the cold boxes on the wall, getting cut open and stitched back up again. There were some murder victims—not as many as a bigger city might see, but maybe that was something to be thankful for. And although Shawna had been around long enough that death had become a normal part of her day, just more of the usual between the time that she punched in and punched out again, there were times when it got interesting.
Like now.
Shawna was standing outside Prep Room 2, wanting to open the door and head in to grab the reports she’d typed up the day before and then forgotten—she’d been in attendance for the initial examination of the victim they’d brought in, riding bitch is what they called it, which meant she hadn’t done anything herself, only witnessed it and took notes. She thought it was a waste of time, having to double up like that, but there’d been funny … things happening to some of the bodies coming in, and the new rule had sprung up. So she’d perched on a stool while Mo had worked, typing in everything she heard. It wasn’t a full autopsy—that would come later, after the body had been properly identified. Some of it was boring—like the color of the victim’s eyes, the texture of her skin, the placement of different moles and birthmarks. But other things were more interesting. Like this: the woman’s teeth had been mostly broken and shattered from being tossed around in the river, but two of them had made it, molars near the back of the mouth, and Mo had taken X-rays and a mold to include in the record, to be used for comparison against dental records for identification purposes. Standard procedure.
“Two or three hard hits in this same spot would’ve done it,” Mo said. She was bent over the head wound, poking around with her gloved hands and forceps. “She was hit from behind with—” Mo paused, and straightened up. Dropped something she’d snagged out of the wound onto a metal pie pan. It clinked as it landed. Shawna leaned forward, looking. It was a small chunk of metal, gleaming dully in the bright overhead lights.
“Chrome?”
“Looks like it,” Mo had said. “Plating that came off the—the head of a golf club, maybe? The wound is about the right size for a nine iron. We’ll have to run some tests, see what we can find.”
It was all in the report, and Shawna had meant to file it the night before but had forgotten. She’d been in a hurry to get home—she had a new recipe in the Crock-Pot and she didn’t want it to burn, and her shows were on. So she’d meant to sneak back in first thing and snag the report, hoping no one would realize it was a little late, but there were people in there already. Shawna quickly retreated around a corner when the door started to open, just out of sight but able to hear everything that was happening.
A man came out first, talking into his phone. A cop, she realized. There were always plenty of them around here, too; she’d gotten used to the way they spoke and moved, the way they were always watching, their eyes shifting back and forth. But mostly she’d gotten used to how scary they were, how these cops sometimes seemed dead themselves, nothing but a shell with a badge, especially when they worked murder cases.
The door opened again, and closed, and now there were two cops in the hall, the man and a woman.
“Judge Ramirez issued a search warrant for his house,” the male detective said. “It’s about damn time. I told him to either shit or get off the pot, looks like he took my advice. I’ll meet a team over at his house and get them started, then come back.”
“All right. I’ll take Evans back to the station and get him to answer a few questions.”
The two of them walked away from the room, talking about things that didn’t make a lot of sense to Shawna—someone named Janice and an old case file and a map and Wisconsin, of all places. When they finally turned a corner Shawna came out, thinking that the room was empty and it was safe to go in, but then she heard a muffled voice and paused with her fingers wrapped around the doorknob. There was a man still inside, she thought, and he was weeping. Shawna had seen and heard plenty of tears in this place over the years, it was nothing new, but maybe this wasn’t crying at all, maybe it was—laughter? She leaned closer. Yes, the man was definitely laughing, hysterical and giddy, a loud donkey bray that turned into a high-pitched pig squeal at the tail end. That sound made her think of women in old black-and-white movies, when they were so frightened they crammed most of a fist into their mouth, when their eyes were
rolling around in their skulls like loose marbles. It was a laugh, but it was also frightened, the sound a person makes when there is no other option, when the choices are to cry or scream or laugh, and the latter seems like the safest bet, although it’s ultimately the worst.
“Can I help you?” Shawna jumped and screamed at the voice behind her—the female cop had come back and was looking at her with an unreadable expression. “Hear anything interesting?”
“He’s—he’s laughing,” Shawna stuttered, stepping away from the door. First chance she got, she planned on hightailing it away from this room, out from under this cop’s dark frown. A deep vertical line had appeared between her eyebrows, and Shawna didn’t think that was a good sign. Not for anyone, but especially not for the guy in Prep Room 2.
The cop didn’t tell Shawna to leave, or to stay put. She didn’t say anything at all, just walked right back into the room without warning and left the door open behind her. Shawna could see partway into the room—the cop’s back and a slice of the clean white tile floor and the woman on the table and the man. His shoulders were slumped and he looked defeated.
“You see something funny in here, Mr. Evans?” the cop said. She folded her hands across her chest and glared—if this woman had pulled her over on the road, Shawna probably would’ve wet her drawers. But she had a good view of the laughing guy’s face through the open door, and he seemed unimpressed. Like he’d come up against far scarier women than this one.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “You brought me all the way down here and this isn’t even my wife.”
“Who is it, then?” the cop asked.
He laughed again, a scoffing sound that reminded her of a rubber-soled shoe against linoleum.
“Her name’s Riley Tipton,” he said. “She worked for me. I was going to—” His voice caught thickly. “I was going to leave my wife for her.”
There was a pause. The cop seemed to be considering what to say next, and the guy stood still beside the dead woman on the table, his hands down by his side. He swallowed thickly, his throat convulsing. All of them, all three of them, were waiting to see what would happen next, Shawna thought. See who would speak first. Like it was a game.
“I didn’t kill Riley,” he finally said. “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you think.”
“Then who did?” the cop asked.
“It was Marie,” the man said. He laughed again, sharp and painful, and Shawna thought she saw the flat gleam of moisture in his eyes. “Marie must’ve found out about me and Riley, and she killed her.”
The cop paused.
“Your wife?” she said doubtfully. “You’re saying Marie did this?”
“Yes.”
“How would she have done that? Your wife fell off a cliff.”
The man laughed again, and this time he didn’t stop.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They could keep Evans in custody for forty-eight hours before they’d have to either formally charge him with murder or let him go home. It wasn’t long—two days was a small window, and they’d have to work fast. They’d requested his cell phone records and credit card statements, even the surveillance footage from the parking garage under his office. The map and the insurance agent’s statement were enough to get a search warrant, but they needed more. The wheels of the world turn achingly slowly at times, Spengler realized. Hurry up and wait.
“You thirsty?” Loren asked. They were keeping Evans in one of the interview rooms, which amounted to nothing more than a cell with a door instead of bars, a table and chairs instead of a cot and toilet. “Coffee? Coke? Water?”
“Water, please,” Evans said.
“Sparkling or tap?”
“Sparkling would be fine.”
Loren laughed nastily.
“I’ll make sure you get your top hat and pocket watch, too. What do think this is, the Four Seasons?” he said. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t serve you toilet water, fuck boy.”
They’d spent the last hour in the interview room with Evans, questioning him on everything they could think of, but he hadn’t said much of anything. He hadn’t even requested to see his lawyer yet, but only sat silently, his hands folded sedately on his lap, staring blankly. It had to be difficult with Loren breathing fire right into his face, taunting and teasing, shouting angrily. The only reaction Evans had was when the vein running up one side of his forehead began pulsing with the beat of his heart and the blood began creeping up his neck, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Let’s start again. You said Marie killed Riley,” Spengler said. “But if we believe your story, your wife is dead. How do you know she had anything to do with your girlfriend’s murder?”
Nothing but silence.
“Let me explain this to you, one more time, just so you understand where we’re coming from,” Spengler said slowly. “We know your first wife was killed under questionable circumstances. We’ve received the case file from Madison PD—you were ultimately cleared, but the whole thing sounds funny. A little over twenty years later your second wife falls off a cliff, you’re the only witness to her death, and now you’re saying the woman in the morgue is your girlfriend and you’re completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Do you really expect us to believe this?”
“I guess I’ll call it a night,” Loren said. “Jump on my unicorn and head home to the gingerbread house I live in. I mean, since we’re living in a land of legend and fairy tales.”
“Loren,” Spengler said warningly. “Mr. Evans, maybe it isn’t clear, but it’s in your best interest to be completely honest with us.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“We’re attempting to contact Ms. Tipton’s family to verify her whereabouts,” Loren said, ticking off his fingers. “The coroner is running dental and DNA records to nail down the woman’s identity. So we’ll know soon enough who that woman is, but what I still don’t understand is how you know Marie killed your girlfriend, especially since she took a dive headfirst from a hundred feet up. But maybe that’s not what happened? Maybe you know more than you’re letting on and can clear up these muddy waters for us?”
“Here’s my question: How do you know my wife’s dead?” Evans asked suddenly. “How can you be sure? What if she’s still alive?”
Spengler glanced at Loren. He’d sat back, was staring hard at Evans. The only thing that moved was the one hand he had resting on the table, the pointer finger and the thumb moving apart and then coming together again in a pinching motion.
“According to you, she fell off a cliff,” Spengler said, frowning. “Down into a river that’s been running hard. Even the best swimmers couldn’t swim across it in its current conditions, and it’s been over a week and her body hasn’t been found, so we’re going with the assumption that she’s dead. Unless there’s something you want to share with us.”
There was a moment of silence. Then two. Evans sighed and muttered something under his breath, passed his hand over his face so his features stretched like putty before snapping back into place.
“Pardon me?” Spengler asked.
Evans sat up.
“Marie’s not dead,” he said. “She faked the whole thing. I don’t know how she did it, but she’s trying to set me up for murder. For her murder, and Riley’s.”
There was another beat of silence. Then Loren laughed. Threw back his head and laughed so hard tears sprung out of his eyes. Spengler didn’t react at all.
“That’s the biggest load of horseshit anyone has ever tried to feed me, and I’ve been a cop a long time,” he said. “How about we’ll leave for thirty minutes, give you time to come up with something else? I could use another good laugh.”
Spengler held up her hand to silence Loren.
“What would make you come to that conclusion?” she asked. “And if what you’re saying is true, why didn’t you tell us this before? Right at the beginning?”
“I suspected what she’d done but I wasn’t sure. I was taking a leak when she fell, and she s
creamed for help—”
“So those campers did hear her?”
“Yeah, Marie screamed. Made it sound like she’d been pushed. And when I came out of the trees she was gone. It made me wonder if she was trying to set me up. But I wasn’t positive until I saw Riley’s body. And then I knew.”
Spengler made a small dissatisfied noise and sat back, glanced at Loren.
“I know how this looks,” Evans said. “But I didn’t kill Riley, and I didn’t kill my wife. She’s behind all of this.”
“What makes you even say that?”
“She’s been acting—funny the last few months.”
“I’m afraid acting funny isn’t a good enough explanation,” Spengler said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“It started about a year ago. She stopped sleeping through the night. I’d get up and she’d be downstairs, watching TV or reading. She was angry and anxious all the time. She started taking meds. Antidepressants. But none of it seemed to help. She kept accusing me of cheating on her. Of spending all our money. Of hiding things from her.”
“Was she right?”
“I … was seeing Riley,” Evans said. He looked down at his hands. “But that’s it.”
“What else?” Spengler asked. “That can’t be it.”
“I started noticing she was watching a lot of true crime on TV. And there was that book that came out a few years ago, when the wife fakes her death and sets her husband up for murder? You know the one? She read that thing over and over. Kept it on her nightstand. I finally went out and picked up my own copy and read it myself.”