Afterward, he’d delivered her home, clean as new.
“Doc? Hey, Doc?”
Schwartzman turned her head and saw Ken. The ugly reality of Spencer softened into Ken’s kind face.
She was safe. Spencer was not here.
But she couldn’t shake him. He had never felt this close.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She forced herself to swallow, nod.
“You’re a little pale.”
“I feel a little sick,” she said honestly. Exhausted most likely. It had been a long night. It was late. A little sleep and she’d feel fine.
“You want me to drive you home?”
“No.” Relying on others had stopped feeling safe. The only true comfort was in being alone. She walked slowly toward the street. “Thank you,” she added, not wanting him to worry. “I’ll feel better with a little air.” The fog gave each breath the sensation of chewing on something light and cool.
Ken said something about a Mediterranean place. She caught dolma.
She thought of dolor, the Spanish word for “pain.” Qué dolor. A homeless woman used to frequent the clinic where Schwartzman worked during medical school.
“Qué dolor,” she would say, cradling her head. The head. Dorsal funiculus. Composed of two ascending fasciculi—gracilis and cuneatus, one descending fasciculus, the comma fasciculus. Then there was one more . . .
“Doc?” Ken shook her firmly.
She started. Blinked hard. Focused. Taking in his face, she had the overwhelming urge to yawn.
Yawning was linked to stress. Athletes yawned before competition, paratroopers before a drop. Part of the flight or fight, linked to the hypothalamus.
It was part of the fear.
“I think I should drive you home,” Ken said.
“Absolutely not,” she told him, fighting the physiological reactions. Fear was preferable to dependence. She took care of herself. “I’ll be fine.” Her eyes rattled in their sockets, making it difficult to meet the intensity of Ken’s gaze.
“Okay, but only if you call as soon as you’re home and let me know you’re okay.” He held up her phone. “I’m going to program my number in your phone.” She recognized the black-and-white-checkered case, though she had no idea how he’d come to possess her phone. He passed it back to her, clinging to one end. “I’m listed under Ken Macy. But you can search under Ken, too. You really—”
The rest of his words slid over her as her mind wandered back to the scene. She fingered the place where her necklace always lay flat against her manubrium.
Identical. The two necklaces weren’t just similar; they were the same.
When he stopped talking, Schwartzman put the phone in her jacket pocket. She clasped her case in front of her, gripping the handle with both hands. Her legs resisted motion, and it felt like breaking through a barrier to propel herself forward.
Then she was at the car. It was open.
Ken lifted the case in the trunk and opened the driver’s side door for her. Leaned in. “You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded again, not trusting her voice.
He stepped back and closed the door for her. He stayed beside the car for several seconds before turning back to the scene. Watching over her. But he did walk away. Good. She waited until he was gone. Her fingers fumbled to slide the key into the ignition, but she didn’t turn over the engine.
She was afraid to go home.
She should leave before her colleagues noticed. She was not someone to sit around. She was efficient, professional. A scene was not a place to have a meltdown.
And yet she didn’t want to leave. There was something soothing about a crime scene—the banter, the group all working around one another. It made her feel safe.
At her apartment, there was only silence.
She gripped the wheel with one hand. Fingered the pulse in her neck with the other. Throbbing. Like an extra heartbeat, like the volume of her blood had doubled and was at the same time coursing through her body at twice its normal speed. Her cheeks were flushed from the constriction of peripheral blood vessels, her muscles constricted. Ready for flight. The reaction was her sympathetic nervous system kicking into gear.
This is just panic. Physiological fear. An instinct. You can control it. Breathe. He’s not here. He can’t be here.
Adrenaline washed through her veins in another flood of heat.
Get home, where you can manage your emotions in private. She turned the key in the ignition. Flipped on the defrost, the AC, and the heat. Without the AC, the heat merely fogged the glass. She buckled her seat belt and put the car in drive. Her breath raspy and loud. As if she’d been running. As if it was the first time she’d ever driven.
Schwartzman drove slowly, something that infuriated everyone else on the road. Along Van Ness, cars honked and sped by. Someone shouted, “Get a driver, Miss Daisy!” A minute or so passed, and there was no one behind her.
She turned the heat down, cracked the window. Your house is secure. After the delivery of the flowers, the building had added cameras to every entrance. Four new guards patrolled the floors and stairwells, while a second front desk clerk had been added so that the lobby was never unmanned. More than secure. It’s practically fortified. Schwartzman experienced the slightest release of pressure.
She took a right on Jackson. A car turned in behind her. This was a crowded city. Not the suburbs of Greenville. There was always a car behind her. She eyed her tail as the car followed her through one stop sign then another.
Okay, she told herself. Turn.
She took a left.
The car followed.
She cranked the air to cold and glanced back, but the headlights were too bright to see the driver. The shadows made it look as though someone was in the passenger seat, as well. She studied the rearview mirror, trying to make out the features of the driver. She would know Spencer’s rounded jaw, his tight mouth. She nearly swerved into a parked car. As she jerked the wheel back to the left, a scream caught in her throat.
“Get a grip,” she said aloud.
In the six months since she moved to San Francisco for the ME job, she’d felt safe. There was no indication that Spencer was trying to contact her or that he even knew where she was.
Not until the phone call to the morgue, when he told Schwartzman that her mother was in the hospital.
Then the delivery of the yellow flowers.
In the years she’d lived in Seattle for medical school, Spencer had never once shown his face.
At least not that she could prove.
Somehow, despite that, he had shadowed her all that time. Notes in her locker in the hospital. Typewritten, of course. Vague.
Good luck on the orals.
You handled the patient in 3107 like a pro.
All signed YSG. Your Southern Gentleman. A joke from a lighter time in their marriage. Never documented.
Two notes might appear in a single week, or months might pass in silence. She never knew what to expect. Or when.
Once she was at a bar with a group of med school students. Halfway into the night, her server stopped at the table to announce that her husband was on the line and he needed to speak with her urgently. When she denied the possibility, the server had pressed. “You are Annabelle Schwartzman?” She had been forced to take his call. Even though it lasted only seconds, the sound of his low, satisfied chuckle still plagued her nightmares. Later she’d discovered that he had tracked her by her credit card.
She’d come home from school one night to find a bar of her favorite honeysuckle soap, made locally in Greenville, sitting on her pillow, wrapped in a little yellow bow.
She had bagged it and taken it to an attorney in Seattle, one who specialized in domestic abuse cases. He’d helped her hire a private investigator to investigate Spencer. The experience had cost thousands of dollars that she didn’t have. To pay, she’d taken an orderly job at another hospital in Seattle, worked her days off for three months.
The attorney told her to drop it. “You can never prove anything with a man like that,” he told her. “It’ll only make it worse for you.”
She never asked what he’d meant by, “a man like that.” She already knew. Ruthless, dangerous. Unrelenting. Since she’d left South Carolina, Spencer had never taken the threats further than notes and phone calls.
This wasn’t notes and phone calls. This was murder. Spencer’s involvement in this would mean an incredible escalation.
It had to be a coincidence. She was safe here.
There are people everywhere in this city. You are not alone.
To confirm her theory, she drove slowly and scanned the street. There. A couple walking with a large dog. Something wolf-like. A husky. But that car was still behind her. She slowed almost to a stop. Let the car pass her or make a move. Surely the driver wouldn’t wait. Why didn’t he honk?
The car remained close on her tail. She revved the engine and sped to the end of the block. Turned right and followed the street down two blocks until the final turn, which took her to her apartment’s garage. The car followed. She didn’t turn into her garage. No. She wouldn’t lead them there.
Instead she waited until the car was right behind her and picked up her cell phone. She unlocked the screen and found Hal’s mobile number. Holding her finger over the “Call” button, she shifted into park and pulled hard on the emergency brake.
But what could Hal do? At best he was ten or fifteen minutes away.
This would be over by then. She cracked the car door and stepped into the street. Courage gathered like a storm cloud. She felt the cool sensation of sweat on her upper lip as her blood was shunted from her body’s viscera to the extremities in preparation for fight or flight. She made her way to the strange car.
The window went down. A man. Unfamiliar.
“Why are you following me?” she asked.
Large hands splayed above the wheel. “Was I too close?”
“What do you want?” she demanded, glancing at the phone to see the reassurance of Hal’s number on the screen.
A woman leaned across. “He doesn’t want to admit we’re lost,” she said, laying a hand on the man’s forearm. “Give her the address, Peter. Maybe she can tell us where it is.”
“We’re looking for Macondray Lane. It’s supposed to be close to Leavenworth and Green. We’re just driving through and staying with some friends tonight.”
Relief swept through her limbs, leaving her knees weak. “It’s there,” she said, pulling herself together and pointing to her own apartment building. “Turn left at the corner and go down a block. Get a parking pass from the night watchman. Or you might find parking on the street.”
“See, Peter,” the woman told him. “I knew we were close. We’re down from Chico on our way to Santa Barbara. For a wedding . . .”
Schwartzman didn’t wait to hear the rest of the explanation. Her parasympathetic nervous system now back in control, her empty stomach ached, leaving her nauseous and exhausted. She returned to her car. With the doors locked and her seat belt fastened, she could breathe again.
The couple drove up beside her. Too close. Their proximity gave her a jolt. The woman waved at her.
Schwartzman waited until they turned at the corner and followed her directions exactly as she’d instructed. She made an illegal U-turn and crossed through the alley to the parking garage.
Using her key card, she entered the garage’s secure door and waved at the night watchman.
Everything was how it always was.
Only it wasn’t. Or it didn’t feel that way. Was she crazy to think that Spencer was behind Victoria Stein’s death? Was it insane to think he wasn’t?
Notes, gifts, inconvenient calls, those had been disturbing, creepy. When she’d received a certified letter saying that he had filed a lawsuit against her for breaking their marriage contract, she spent $500 in legal fees to determine that he had no case. Amazingly, even in South Carolina, a woman was free to leave her husband. Not that it mattered for Schwartzman. Whether or not the law allowed it, Spencer did not.
The continuous ruses and ploys were frustrating, a constant reminder that she was never quite free.
She had to believe it was all in an effort to get her back to South Carolina. She couldn’t imagine where else he expected the antics to lead.
But murder changed everything.
The flowers, the similar-looking victim, the fact that the woman was from Spartanburg. The necklace. The stakes were so much higher, which meant something had changed. What would motivate him to murder?
Unless this has nothing to do with Spencer.
She didn’t believe that for a second.
4
San Francisco, California
Standing in Victoria Stein’s living room, Hal pulled off the latex gloves and tucked them in his back pocket to dispose of later. He carried his own supply of gloves in his car. The Crime Scene Unit never had anything bigger than large, and he had hands that could cradle a basketball as if it was an Easter egg.
He idly scratched the back of his hand. Dr. Schwartzman was usually tough to read, but it was plain as day that this victim gave her a helluva scare.
And why wouldn’t it? The victim might have been her sister, holding that bunch of yellow flowers after Schwartzman got similar ones from her ex.
Then that necklace—how in the hell could they explain the necklace? He’d seen plenty of crosses in his day but never anything like that. And they weren’t just similar. The two necklaces were identical.
Schwartzman had realized it immediately. She’d gone totally pale, her eyes hollow. He had never seen her like that.
No. He had. Once before when he came into the morgue after her ex had called to say that her mother was in the hospital. Only she wasn’t. Schwartzman’s mother was fine. The bastard was just jerking her chain, some sort of sick prank. Hal wanted to nail that guy for what he had put Schwartzman through. But this—a murder. If he was behind that, then that changed the game totally.
“We need to get ahead of the questions about her on this one.”
“I can’t see how anyone would peg her as a suspect,” Hal said. But Hailey was right. The question of Schwartzman’s connection was inevitable.
“No,” Hailey said. “But we’ll need to look at every angle.”
They had to anticipate that the questions would come back to her. And it was better to have answers before the questions got asked. “I’m going to do some digging into her ex. You know his name?”
“She doesn’t talk about her past. I didn’t even know there was a husband until dinner tonight. First name is Spencer, not that it’s helpful.”
“We’ll need a timeline of events. If he’s behind this, there must be some reason why he’s chosen now. She got the flowers—what—a week ago?”
“Maybe two now.”
There could be some significance to the dates. They needed to know more. Hailey had drawn the conclusion that Spencer was involved, but it was still a leap. The necklace, yellow flowers, a similar victim from a nearby town.
But murder?
Murder wasn’t stalking. It was a huge escalation. Hal had seen Schwartzman that day in the morgue, when she thought her mother was in the hospital. She was so frail, so broken—not at all like the woman he had come to know in their work together. It raised every hair on his body, brought out every protective instinct.
He needed to understand everything that possibly connected that victim to her. They needed to talk to Schwartzman.
“Inspector Harris?” A patrol officer stuck his head into the living room from the main hallway. “They’ve got the neighbor out here if you want to talk to her.”
“Thanks. I would.” He turned to Hailey. “You want to join?”
“I was going to check in with Roger.” She
glanced at her phone. “Actually, Dave has an early flight back east tomorrow. I was going to drop by on my way home. I could come back in an hour or so.”
Hailey was in a new relationship, and things seemed to be going well. Hal was glad. It had been a tough couple of years for her. She’d lost her husband, John, and was raising two girls.
Dave was the kind of guy Hal would have chosen for her. Solid, kind. Not like John.
Hal had the sense that this case was going to take over their lives. Best for her to get time with Dave now. “Go,” he told her. “I’ll check in with Roger after I talk to the neighbor.”
“And Schwartzman?”
He had been thinking the same. “I’ll call her, see if we can meet at the station.”
“Or we could go to her.”
She wasn’t a suspect. She was a victim. A colleague.
A friend.
“Good call.”
“You’re okay handling the neighbor?”
Hal had nowhere to be. He felt the rush of a new case, the surge of energy.
“Absolutely,” he said, rubbing the tops of his hands against his jeans. The gloves always made him itch.
“Thanks, Hal.”
“Anytime.”
She pointed to his hand, where he was scratching. “I keep telling you, you need the latex-free ones.”
Hal stopped scratching. “I know, but I’ve got a whole box of these.”
Hailey shrugged. “Suit yourself, but you might not have any skin left by the time you’ve gone through that box.” She gave him a playful nudge, and the two of them walked back through the apartment and out to the landing.
Each floor had only two apartments. Both front doors were on the west side of the landing. Victoria Stein’s door faced north, and the neighbor’s faced south. Between them a large potted fern obscured the direct view of one apartment door from the other. Even with the plant, if the neighbor had been coming in or out at the same time as the killer, she might be able to make an ID.
As Hailey headed for the elevator, Hal approached a woman standing with one of the patrol officers.
She wore pajama bottoms featuring gingerbread men and light-blue, fuzzy slippers that had seen a lot of miles. On top it appeared she had on multiple layers of sweaters. A tan one was visible under a black one with a belt that tied in the front. In her hands, she gripped a mug.
Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) Page 3