Stay Dead (Elise Sandburg series)

by Anne Frasier

Elise shoved the phone into David’s hand, pulling up her pants. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “What it looks like is something severely kinky,” Mason said. “Sex? In the perp’s house? That’s really messed up.”

  “What are you doing here?” David asked, pocketing his phone.

  “We were staked out in the alley, thinking if Tremain showed up he’d sneak in the back. We saw the blinds open and figured it was our guy.”

  From outside came the sound of a million sirens and police cars descending on the house.

  Avery made a face. “We called for backup.”

  Elise reached for her blouse. “Always a good idea. And Mason? Could you look the other way?”

  He closed his mouth, made a choking sound, and backed out of the room. “Sorry,” he mumbled once he was out of sight.

  “Did you see her red bra?” came Avery’s voice from beyond the room.

  “I saw a lot more than that,” Mason said.

  Elise fastened the final button of her blouse. “I can hear you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Should they send him? Could he handle it? Always the question, never verbalized, but there. Just under the surface. Nobody understood that these were the cases David had to take. They didn’t understand that this was his penance and hopefully his salvation.

  The Amber Alert went out thirty minutes after the abduction. Gender: Male. Name: Kenny Gage. Age: Eight. Skin color: White. Hair: Blond. That information was followed by blue eyes and a weight of forty-five pounds.

  Twenty-four hours after Kenny was abducted on his way home from school and two hours after Elise and David’s visit to Tremain’s house, a child’s body was reported by campers at Skidaway State Park.

  Avery and Mason were still on surveillance, so that narrowed down the available homicide detectives to two. David drove while Elise rode in the passenger seat fielding information from incoming calls.

  The white coroner’s van was already on site when they arrived at the scene. Also on site were the expected police cars, along with someone from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. First responders had been there awhile, the initial 911 call having come in over an hour ago.

  A perimeter had been established with yellow crime-scene tape. John Casper met them at the end of the dock. “They’re pulling the body out right now,” he said.

  There wasn’t a lot that could be processed when a body was found floating in the water, but detectives, lab techs, and the medical examiner would do what they could. Reporters with TV cameras swarmed, and an open area under a grove of trees was packed with people hoping to see something.

  The dead child was dragged from the water into a small motorboat and placed directly into a lined body bag. From there he was taken to shore, the bag unzipped for evidence collection and photos.

  “Initial take on the situation?” David asked, barely glancing at the child.

  “Body is pretty fresh, so I’m guessing it’s the missing boy,” John Casper said, his voice low.

  Needing to step away, David nodded and strode to the end of the dock to stare at the sunlight reflecting off the water, marveling at the shifting pattern.

  Of course he thought about that other time. How could he not? Same age, same size, same hair color. Water.

  He could have let Elise come alone, but maybe he was a masochist. And he didn’t deserve to look the other way or trade Avery for the stakeout gig. This was his punishment. For not being there for his son. This was the guilt parents lived with after losing a child, no matter how it happened. Even if they weren’t to blame, which was most often the case. But parents were supposed to protect their children, keep them from harm. That’s what mothers and fathers did.

  Dr. Kicklighter thought he should quit homicide. She didn’t come right out and say it, but it was the reason he still had to see her once a week. She didn’t feel he was healed. And no, he wasn’t. And no, he couldn’t quit. Because working homicide was one of the things that kept him going. People were always trying to fix the past. They deliberately, often unconsciously, relived events similar to something that had gone wrong. A bad decision, or a situation completely out of their control. That’s what he was doing. Trying to fix what had happened. A sort of atonement. A sort of righting of his wrong life. He wanted to be the hero for a change. He wanted to save the life of a child.

  And this recent thing with Elise. God, he’d been out of his mind. He’d failed her, just like he’d failed his son. She was right the other day when she’d said he hadn’t saved her. That she’d saved herself. For once in his life, he wanted to be there for the person he loved.

  Instead, she’d been her own hero. That was Elise. For a while there, he’d suffered from the delusion that she might actually need him. But she was back to her old self, and she didn’t need anybody.

  David returned to the group of people clustered around the body just in time to hear Casper pronounce the boy dead at the scene.

  “Not really much to process,” the crime-scene investigator told them. “Body was most likely dumped in another location, carried here by the tide. Once the ME gets a lock on the approximate number of hours the body was in the water, we’ll contact a tide expert to see if we can come up with a rough guess as to drop location.”

  If the body hadn’t been found in water, they would have documented everything on the spot, rolling him over to get both sides. Now the main objective was to keep any possible evidence inside the bag with the body, but everyone knew water usually erased all traces.

  Some of the officials moved away while David and Elise stood over the dead boy. He was almost beautiful, with skin the color of marble. One eye was half open, the pupil a creamy white, like a cataract.

  Elise pulled out her phone and scrolled to a photo of the missing Gage child. “It’s him.” She turned the phone so David could see the image. He nodded.

  “The parents will have to give us a positive ID,” she said. “I’ll call them once the body is at the morgue. After that we’ll set up a press conference.”

  They moved back so the crime-scene investigators and medical examiner could finish up. The body was tagged and the bag was zipped and lifted to a gurney. As David and Elise approached the crime-scene tape, microphones appeared from the crowd of people.

  “Press conference once we have the details,” Elise said.

  David scanned the mob, looking for anyone suspicious. Sometimes killers watched the crime-scene drama. The perp could be taking it all in right now.

  “Who found the body?” David asked one of the first responding officers. She pointed, and David and Elise briefly interviewed a gray-haired, semi-toothless woman with a baby in her arms, leaving her with a business card and contact information.

  “If you think of anything you might have forgotten,” Elise said, “give us a call. Anything you might have seen around the campgrounds that just didn’t seem right. Trust your gut.”

  The woman nodded.

  One reporter, a persistent woman David had seen on the local news, broke away from the throng. “Someone said it was a young boy. Can you confirm that?”

  “No comment at this time,” Elise said.

  Another microphone, another question. “In your professional opinion, would you care to speculate? Was the MO consistent with previous murders? In particular, the Organ Thief?”

  “I can’t say.” Elise kept walking. “I know you want your evening sound bite, but you’re going to have to wait until the body is identified and we’ve notified next of kin.”

  At that moment, a man burst through the crime-scene tape and charged at the gurney being wheeled toward the coroner’s van. People shouted. Cops jumped forward and tackled the man, bringing him to his knees.

  “I’m the missing boy’s father!” he sobbed. “I have to see!”

  The cops dropped back, and the man staggered to his feet
.

  The agony in the father’s voice triggered something in David. Suddenly the world wasn’t moving at the right speed, and every second lasted too long. He was aware of matching Elise’s stride, and aware of the way his coattails hit his legs. He could hear his heart beating in his head, and he kept hoping the kid on the gurney would be a John Doe. But of course he wouldn’t be. And of course he wasn’t.

  Through a haze, David watched as the body bag was unzipped. And this time he looked longer than he’d looked before. Maybe to keep his eyes off the father’s face.

  Blond hair, plastered to a white forehead. Blue lips. Blue chest. A hole where the child’s heart should be.

  Mr. Gage let out a sob and fell across the dead body of his son. The air smelled of salt water and anguish. Brilliant sky, calling birds, a dead son with blue lips.

  Elise was suddenly there, pulling the man away. “Mr. Gage, please. We haven’t collected all of the evidence.”

  The man straightened, his awareness expanding beyond the small body on the stretcher, taking in Elise and David and the medical examiner, the cops. He swallowed and nodded.

  “Is this your son?” Elise asked, looking directly at him, speaking very clearly. “Is this Kenny Gage?”

  “Yes,” the father whispered. “Yes.” And then the guilt started, because it came that fast. “I should have been there. He shouldn’t have walked home by himself. I should have been there.”

  David would like to have told him the guilt would go away, but that would be a lie.

  “Where are they taking him?” the man asked. “Where’s he going?” Then another thought, a painful thought: “I have to call my wife.”

  David was aware of Elise moving away, cane in hand, back to the edge of the crime-scene tape where the crowd had grown and more reporters were shouting questions.

  David opened his jacket and flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Gould. Would you like me to call your wife? Do you have anyone else you’d like to contact? A family member? Minister?”

  The words barely penetrated the man’s brain. “No,” he finally said. He pulled out his cell phone. He stared at it, then up at David. “I don’t know what to say to her.”

  “If you dial the number, I’ll tell her.” David spoke softly, clearly, and compassionately. “You dial, then hand me the phone.”

  With a trembling finger, the man’s hand hovered over the screen. “I can’t.”

  “Would you rather we went there? To your wife? I can take you.”

  The man looked up. “Could you do that?”

  “Of course.”

  David told Elise he was driving Mr. Gage to his house. She looked startled. “It’ll be okay,” he told her. “You can pick me up, or I’ll catch a cab to the morgue.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  The boy’s father stood there, numb. “I don’t even know where my car is. I don’t remember where I parked.”

  “Let me have your keys,” David prompted.

  Gage handed them to David, and David hit the “Lock” button a couple of times. A car responded, and the two men walked toward it.

  It took fifteen minutes to get to the Gage home. Blocks away, signs appeared in every yard. Pictures of a smiling blond boy. In the car beside David, Mr. Gage buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking.

  The Gage driveway was full of cars, probably relatives and friends, watching, waiting, searching, the house having been turned into a command center. The yard was full of the same signs they’d seen on the route there, the house located in an average, well-kept neighborhood of matching brick ranch-style homes. Palm tree in the front yard.

  The front door opened before they reached it. A woman, a young mother, long hair. Young. So young. “Kenny?” she asked, her eyes going from Gage to David. And he could see she already knew. Maybe she’d known hours ago.

  David introduced himself. He started to speak, but Mr. Gage interrupted in a sudden need to be the one to tell his wife. In a sudden need to share his pain with the only person who could truly understand.

  “Honey, he’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  In situations like this, people needed more than vague words. Otherwise they couldn’t process the information. Otherwise they turned it into hope when there was none.

  “Your son is dead,” David said. “I’m sorry.”

  Your son is dead.

  Words someone had told him a day not so long ago. Because the passage of time becomes molasses when dealing with the death of a loved one. A month. A year. Two years. All the same. “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  The man and woman clung to each other, sobbing. People from within the house gathered at the door.

  David produced a business card and approached a middle-aged man who hadn’t yet fallen apart. David pulled out a small tablet and wrote down the address of the morgue where the young couple would need to go to sign papers. He ripped off the lined sheet and handed the address to the man. Then David left them to their grief, walking to the curb where Elise waited in the unmarked car.

  He slid into the passenger seat, looked at her, saw the sympathy in her eyes, and looked away. “To the morgue.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Elise pulled the car into the parking lot assigned to the morgue, a deliberately nondescript building on the outskirts of Savannah. The routine for entry was always the same, and required the buzzing of a black button at a gray steel door. But this time it was answered, not by coroner and medical examiner John Casper, but by a young girl with long dark hair and a red skirt just visible beneath her white lab coat. Bare legs. Un-sensible shoes.

  “I’m the new assistant,” she said as Elise and David introduced themselves and displayed their badges. “The medical examiner is expecting you.”

  So formal. Elise wasn’t used to that.

  The girl led them to a brightly lit, windowless room David and Elise were both way too familiar with. John Casper appeared and greeted them, then turned his attention to Elise. “I heard you had quite an adventure.” Casper was dressed in his signature outfit: white lab coat, jeans, and red Converse sneakers. His dark hair looked even curlier than usual, most likely due to the high humidity.

  “You could say that,” Elise said. Not that she’d consider being abducted an adventure, but leave it to Casper to make an awkward and naïve comment.

  “It’s good to see you.” His eyes got glassy with a rush of emotion. Embarrassed, he cleared his throat, looked down at his feet, then slapped David on the arm in a male greeting.

  The two had bonded at their first meeting, laughing over a line from The Wizard of Oz, something about being most sincerely dead. After that, they’d spent a few evenings drinking beer and talking bodies. Casper was young and enthusiastic, and he tended to say things he shouldn’t, which probably explained the rapport.

  “Family will be here soon,” David said. “Right now we’d just like to get your brief, pre-autopsy assessment of the body.”

  “As in, was this murder committed by the Organ Thief or a copycat?” Casper asked.

  “Yes.” The answer came in stereo.

  “Come on.” The young medical examiner motioned for them to follow him down the hall. “I’m engaged,” he announced over his shoulder with no preamble—typical behavior for Casper.

  “Wow.” David sounded surprised. “Congratulations.”

  “You met her. My assistant, Mara.”

  “She seems nice,” Elise said. “And she smelled good.”

  Casper laughed. “The weird thing is that I gave up on dating a long time ago. Decided I was going to be a bachelor because the women I met just didn’t get my hours or my obsession with bodies and forensics. They were either freaked out by what I did, or they were a little too interested in it.”

  In the autopsy suite, they gathered around the metal table where the child’s body
had already been placed. Casper stood on one side, David and Elise on the other.

  “I quit looking, really. And then I met Mara at a coroner’s conference. We just clicked. The job opening came up here, and she transferred from the coroner’s office in Dallas.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Elise said. “But working together. In the same field. In the same office . . . Is that a good idea?”

  “I think it’s a great idea. What could be better?”

  David looked at Elise, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.

  She changed the subject, settling on her own form of small talk, which tended to involve holidays and the weather. “So, what are you and Mara doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “Not sure. Mara’s family lives in Texas. And honestly, I have some relatives around here, but I try to avoid them.”

  And then they got down to business. “Okay,” Casper said. “I already have a preliminary, but let me start out by saying I’m ninety-five percent sure we’re dealing with the Organ Thief. The incision is precise, like the early murders, and in no way sloppy like the Kingfield murder.”

  “That pretty much answers our question,” David said. He suddenly seemed eager to get moving.

  “Once the family leaves I’ll start the autopsy,” Casper said. “I know you want a report as quickly as possible. If you’re staying, you’ll have to gown up. You know where everything is.”

  Elise was about to tell him they planned to observe when she glanced over at David to see that he’d gone chalk-white, his forehead and upper lip beaded with sweat as he stared at the dead child on the table.

  “I think we have the information we need,” Elise said. “If anything changes, or if something pertinent comes up, give us a call no matter the time.”

  “Will do.”

  She grabbed David’s arm and steered him out of the room and down the hall toward the back door.

  “Bye!” Mara said with a wave.

  “Cute girl,” David said as they stumbled outside into the sunshine and fresh air. He lunged for a wall and pressed his back against it.