by Debra Webb
What She
Doesn’t See
A Novel
Debra Webb
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2015 Pink House Press
2006 Never Happened, Harlequin Books
Edited by Marijane Diodati
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
PINK HOUSE PRESS
WebbWorks, Huntsville, Alabama
Second Edition July 2015
Chapter 1
Monday, July 21, Miami
“You’re early, Alex.” A wide grin accompanied the remark. “You know I can’t let you get started just yet.”
The detective was right. Charlie Crane’s body was still in the house. Alexis Jackson surveyed the gruesome scene. She could have done without seeing the old guy with his head mangled by the bullet that had passed through his skull, but there was no erasing that stomach-turning image now.
“Yeah, well, Hitch,” she said, shifting her gaze from the poor bastard in the easy chair, “you’re late. You guys were supposed to be gone an hour ago.”
Detective Louis Hitchcock, fondly called Hitch by friends and enemies alike, snorted at her comeback. “The M.E. had a little fender bender, but he’ll be here any minute now, and then,” he spread his arms wide to indicate the room, “the place is all yours.”
As Hitch spoke, his gaze slid down her Margaritaville T-shirt, pausing ever so briefly on her breasts. Alex didn’t flinch, she didn’t even get mad. She was forty years old, five feet six, and one hundred twenty pounds of toned muscle and hard-earned grit and determination. She wore her hair long, straight, and blond—her methods for keeping it that way were a closely guarded secret. The men she dated, including the one visually devouring her right now, liked to wax on about how the color of her eyes reminded them of the sea.
She sighed. Though she was damned proud her efforts to stay in shape, the downside to being a blue-eyed blonde with a decent figure was that most men, and some women, mistakenly thought she was just another pretty face. But they only made that mistake once.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
He snapped his gaze back to hers and cleared his throat. “Who hired you?”
Alex felt reasonably sure he didn’t really care, he just wanted to make conversation. She knew he still had a thing for her. If she was into long-term relationships and cute guys with adrenaline-driven egos, she might just give him a second chance. The fact of the matter was she’d had a momentary lapse in judgment and they had been there, done that.
She had a firm rule and she didn’t intend to bend it again. Cops were off-limits. As were firefighters, P.I.’s, and paramedics. Give her a CPA any time. As simple as it would be to tread into deeper waters with a sweet guy like Hitch, she saw the risks a mile away. He wanted something permanent. The white picket fence and the kids. The only things in her life that were permanent were her friends and her work. That was fine by her. She had a business to run. Keeping one step ahead of the competition was hard work, she could do without a husband and kids slowing her down.
“I didn’t think this guy had any family,” Hitch tacked on, dragging her attention back to him.
“The landlord.”
Charlie Crane’s death might be a suicide, but in the state of Florida all unattended deaths had to be investigated. Her gaze went back to rest on Charlie’s slumped form. He had to be seventy at least. It amazed her that he didn’t have any family at all. No wife or former wife, no kids, no siblings. No one. Not even any real friends as far as the landlord knew. A stir of something Alex refused to identify made her stomach feel a little tight and queasy.
Hitch cocked his head and studied the stiff, then tossed her a sympathetic look. “Well, I’m glad it’s you and not me. As soon as the M.E.’s finished, I’m out of here.” He visibly shuddered.
She considered the spray of blood and brain matter on the paneled wall behind the body. Could have been worse. She’d certainly come across scenes more ghastly than this. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”
“A guy never knows what a girl’s going to like.” Hitch flashed her another of those charming grins.
“You could always stay and watch, you might learn something more about what this girl likes,” she challenged. As she anticipated, he chuckled and promptly ignored her suggestion.
The fallout from the manner of death didn’t really bother her. The bodies were a different matter. Somehow seeing the person, or what was left of the person, made her knees go a little weak. She fought hard not to let Hitch see her reaction to the corpse that hadn’t been taken away yet. She had a reputation to maintain after all. Not to mention she went through this routine every time she showed up at a scene. Men just couldn’t believe that women could handle seeing something this grisly even though women were the ones who bore their offspring. Go figure.
Clients often asked how she got into the business of dealing with dead things—people as well as other stuff. She usually made a joke of it. Someone had to do it, right? Truth was, her first experience cleaning up after the recently deceased had come at the ripe old age of fifteen. She hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter. It was either jump in and help her mother or stand back and watch her do it alone. Alex hadn’t been able to do the latter. Her mother had needed her, but she would have cut out her tongue before she would have asked her daughter for help.
As with this current assignment, her father hadn’t chosen the tidiest way to end his existence. A slightly off-center shot to the chest where the lungs could have sucked in most of the blood would have been preferable and considerably simpler. Nothing about her father had ever been simple. He’d chosen a single shot to the head. The explosion had made a mess of the crappy room in the dilapidated house they’d called home. He’d been an alcoholic who couldn’t see past the pit he’d dug for himself, so he’d taken the easy way out.
Considering her line of work, Alex supposed you could say the event had made a significant impact on her. After dropping out of college and drifting from one dead end job to the other, she started her own business: Never Happened. Another cop she’d dated only once, before her self-imposed rule, had given her the idea and all the reasons in the world she would ever need not to date cops. Despite that unpleasant experience she’d ended up dating Hitch. When it came to men, apparently she had a faulty memory.
Giving credit where credit was due, that first cop had given her something to think about. What happened when a person committed suicide or died of natural causes or, God forbid, was murdered? Who cleaned up the mess? In the past it was usually a family member, but today, with elderly folks who had no family left or with those too busy to maintain family ties, there was rarely anyone to call.
More often than not, there were diseases to worry about, and in the cases of advanced decomposition, normal body fluids could become toxic, making it dangerous for a regular Joe to do the cleanup.
All she’d had to do was get licensed in the cleanup and disposal of hazardous materials, learn to use the right cleaners and equipment, and she was good to go. Her phone hadn’t stopped ringing since. For the first time in her life, she’d become totally self-sufficient and was her own boss. She wouldn’t get rich but she did well enough to keep her bills paid and a small crew in work.
When
the victim’s cause of death fell outside natural causes or was unattended, like now, Alex had to wait until the police had done their job to get started on hers. The delay made the scene a little less pleasant, but there were masks for that.
In her Toyota 4Runner were the accessories of the trade: Hazmat—hazardous materials—outfits and bags for carrying away the refuse. The outfits weren’t attractive by any stretch of the imagination, think beekeeper, but they worked and that was what mattered. Assorted neutralizers, protein-stain cleaners, various tools and rags, as well as enzyme cleaners that killed blood-borne bacteria and pathogens equipped her for the job. Not exactly the disinfectants and bleach one used at home, but the objective was the same.
A full forty-five minutes and a latte later—Hitch insisted on sending one of his minions to the Starbucks on the corner since Alex was forced to wait—the M.E. showed up and took charge of the body.
She and Hitch stayed out of the way, during which time she listened to how he’d installed French doors in his living room over the weekend and how he would love it if she stopped by to see what a great job he’d done. After three months, he still wanted to be friends. She wanted that as well. She feared it would never be enough for him in the long run so she steered clear of getting too close again.
With a promise to have a look soon, Alex watched the cops and the M.E. head out. Since the M.E. had pronounced the cause of death as probable suicide and the police hadn’t found any indication of foul play, Alex could do what she’d come to do: Make the sparsely furnished, paneled den look as if a suicide had never happened on the premises.
She had no preset amount of time to spend on the job. Each one was different. First she donned the requisite suit, including shoe covers, safety glasses and gloves, and then she surveyed the scene. She mentally noted the areas where matter had sprayed outside the anticipated range. A close check under furniture as well as behind curtains and blinds was essential. No one wanted to enter a room after it had been cleaned and discover human remains still clinging to the underside of a blind slat.
“Aha.” Alex grunted with the effort it took to fish what she was relatively certain was an eyeball from under a chair. When the object rolled, covered in dust bunnies, into the open, she knew she’d been right. In cases such as this one, it wasn’t unusual for parts to be overlooked. Unless foul play was suspected there was no reason for the cops to round up every speck of DNA.
Alex reached for her hazmat bag to chuck the eyeball, but something other than dust on the surface caught her attention. She tried to lift it loose but her gloves wouldn’t allow for the fine motor effort. Carrying the eyeball loosely in the palm of her hand, she went in search of tweezers.
After a few frustrating failures she finally lifted what looked like a contact lens off the delicate surface. She dropped the eyeball in the hazmat bag but kept the lens to examine it further. This was no ordinary vision enhancer. It was thicker than the usual lens and quite large. The damned thing was as big as a quarter with a metallic looking rim around the edges. Very strange. The sort of gadget you might see in a sci-fi movie.
It was probably nothing, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She’d had the same briefing everyone in her line of work received. Anything suspicious should be reported to the police. No exceptions. No hesitation.
Alex bagged the lens and, after removing her right glove, called Hitch. He answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Hitch, this is Alex.” She stared at the object in the bag and hesitated, but only for a second. “Look, I found one of the vic’s eyeballs at the scene.”
He chuckled. “The guy blew his brains out. The M.E. shouldn’t have any trouble confirming cause of death without an eyeball. Just toss it.”
“It’s not the eyeball I’m calling about.” She frowned, studying the lens more closely. “The guy was wearing some sort of weird contact lens. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s nothing, but I think you need to see this for yourself.”
After the usual joke about how some ladies would come up with any kind of excuse to enjoy his company, he promised to swing back by the scene pronto. Alex put her phone away, stashed the lens in a safe place, and did what she’d come to do.
Nearly three hours later Hitch showed up.
“Had another call,” he said by way of apology for his tardiness.
She lifted her shoulders. “No problem. I’ll be here a while longer.”
He looked around and made one of those sounds that meant wow. “It’s hard to believe it comes this clean.”
She handed him the plastic bag. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
His typical comeback wasn’t forthcoming. He was too busy visually examining the lens or whatever the hell it was.
“Weird, huh?” Alex couldn’t help feeling a little vindicated by his apparent interest.
Too preoccupied to respond, he squinted to make out more details. Finally he said, “It looks almost like some kind of electronic gadget.” His gaze met hers. “You say this was on the guy’s eyeball?”
She nodded. “Stuck on the surface just like a contact lens.” She’d forgotten that Hitch was big into the world of electronics technology.
“I’ll have it checked out. I’ve got a buddy over in Morningside who’s deep into computer technology. He stays on top of what’s new and hot. Maybe he can at least identify what this thing is.” Hitch shrugged. “He’s done this kind of thing for me before. He loves this stuff.” He gave Alex a knowing look. “The kid should be working at the state crime lab. He’s that good and he’s fast.”
“Let me know what you find out.”
Clearly still in a world of his own, Hitch nodded as he turned away. “Will do.”
He left without another last-ditch attempt to entice her to go out with him. That was just like a man. No matter that for months he’d endeavored to woo her to go on another date, he could still be distracted by a new toy.
After a couple more hours of elbow grease and a final look around, Alex decided it was as good as it was going to get. The only thing she hadn’t been able to rectify was the bullet hole in the paneling.
Now for her least favorite part of the job: collecting payment. This business was cash-and-carry, no thirty days to pay, strictly payment due at time of services. She did accept Visa and MasterCard and, if she knew the individual well enough, personal checks. As much as she disliked this part, it was essential to get payment as quickly as possible since it was all too easy for money to end up spent on the living.
She dropped the hazmat bags containing the refuse, all the cleaning rags associated with the job, as well as the suit, gloves and shoe covers she’d worn, at the disposal center before heading to the landlord’s property office.
A long hot bath was calling her name. Tomorrow was another day. In a city like Miami, as well as its many suburbs, where drug deals went wrong and gangs got even, there was always plenty of work cleaning up after the dead.
Chapter 2
Wyatt Murphy maneuvered through the city streets, keeping the cleaner in his sights. His cell vibrated and he didn’t have to look to know it would be his superior. Wyatt had been in Miami a mere three hours and already things had gone rapidly downhill.
“I’m on site, sir.” There was no need or time for the exchange of casual greetings. The clock was ticking.
“Have you located the target and secured the device?”
“I have located the target.” He hesitated before passing along the rest. “The device was not in place, sir.”
The prolonged silenced that followed underscored what Wyatt already knew—this was not good by any stretch of the imagination. He’d managed to gain access to the body. It still amazed him what some people would do for a hundred bucks. Catching a morgue attendant outside the building on a smoke break had been sheer luck.
“The target had disposed of it in some manner?”
Wyatt executed a right turn, maintaining the necessary distance required to ensure th
e newly acquired target wouldn’t notice the tail. “I’ve examined the body. Unfortunately, his left eye is missing. The residence needs to be searched and—”
“Why haven’t you searched the residence already? Time is our enemy, Agent Murphy. It is imperative we recover that device ASAP preferably without involving the local authorities. I’m certain you’re aware of what’s at stake.”
“Yes, sir. I’m very much aware.” Wyatt resisted the impatience clawing at him. “The cleaner was on site before I arrived. One of our team has picked up the waste the cleaner dropped off to examine anything taken from the scene. The house is being thoroughly searched as we speak. I have the cleaner under surveillance right now. If she has the device, I will recover it.”
A heavy breath on the other end of the line warned his superior was not happy. Well, that made two of them.
“Very well. Keep me posted. I’m in the hot seat here, Murphy. We cannot allow this technology to be lost again.”
“I understand, sir.”
The call ended and Wyatt refocused his full attention on the white 4Runner. He’d done a quick background check on Alexis Jackson. There was no reason to believe she was in the game.
He hoped she was as smart as she was attractive. A smart woman would not allow herself to get mixed up in this unpleasant business.
A smart woman would want to stay alive.
Chapter 3
Alex breathed deeply of the summer breeze as she cruised along Ocean Boulevard, allowing that saltwater essence to clean the stench of death from her lungs. She loved everything about Miami Beach. Maybe she didn’t live in one of the upscale art deco homes in this world-renowned neighborhood, but she didn’t care. This was home. Stunning, intoxicating, and forever youthful. The perfect climate and the lush scenery might draw the world to Miami, but it was the eclectic blend of people that made this city so unique.