“Positive,” Schwartzman confirmed. She lifted the corners of the victim’s lips. “We can see the existing lines in her face. The nasolabial folds, for instance, are perfectly clear.” She ran her finger along the creases that ran between the victim’s chin and nose.
“She has light parentheses lines, as well,” Schwartzman added, pointing to the fine semicircles on either side of her lips. “Those lines are extensions of the nasolabial folds. But there are no signs of any dimples.” She crossed the room and wheeled back her magnifying scope, raising it so that the height would be more comfortable for Hal. “Here,” she told him. “Look.”
Hal peered through the glass.
“See these,” she said, pointing to the facial lines around the mouth.
He stood back. “Okay. No dimples,” he agreed. “But it’s possible they’re stepsisters or half sisters. Or one of them was married to the other’s brother.”
“That’s technically true,” Schwartzman agreed. “But she didn’t talk about their relationship that way. She made it sound like they were sisters.”
“How so?” he asked.
Schwartzman paused to recall the words. “When I asked her if their parents were still living, she said that they had ‘both passed.’ Like she was referring to a single set of parents.”
“I agree. I would’ve thought the same. We call that a hunch.”
Schwartzman felt a twinge of pride. “I guess that’s what it was. She also said that she was glad to have a chance to meet me.” She paused, replaying the conversation. “No. Not glad. She said it was ‘really nice’ to get a ‘chance’ to meet me. Nice.” There was a twinge in her gut as she said the words. Like bad milk.
Spencer.
Hal wrote down the words. “Nice to get a chance to meet you?”
She nodded, watching Hal underline the word nice with the quick stroke of his pen. He agreed that it was odd.
“And she called me by name,” Schwartzman remembered. How had that woman known her name if it hadn’t come from Spencer?
“Maybe she saw the name on the door,” Hal said, his pen poised on the page.
“My name’s not on the door.” Something she had specifically requested, one of the tactics to evade Spencer. She wasn’t listed on the department’s website either.
Schwartzman had commented on the photographs. Only of the two girls. The one at Fort Sumter. Something flashed through her memory. Another piece dropped into place. “I asked her about one of the pictures from the house.”
“Which one?”
“There was one of the two girls standing in front of a ship. Not a ship, an aircraft carrier.”
“Sure. I remember.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I took a picture of it.”
Schwartzman slid Stein’s body back into the wall. She pulled off her gloves and dropped them in the trash as Hal searched for the image.
“Here.” He handed her the phone.
Schwartzman turned the phone sideways and used her fingers to zoom in on the image.
She was right.
“That’s the USS Yorktown,” she said, breathless again. “I went there a dozen times with my aunt as a child.” She tilted the phone so he could see. “In this picture, you can see the entire length of the boat behind the girls.”
“Okay.”
“In reality, that’s impossible. The dock that leads to the boat isn’t long enough to allow for a view of the entire boat. You can see maybe two-thirds at best.”
Schwartzman studied the edge of the girls for evidence that they were somehow edited into it.
“You’re sure?” Hal asked.
“Positive. My aunt took a picture of me and that boat almost every summer from the time I was maybe four until I was in high school. Every picture is me and one end of the boat or the other, never the whole thing.”
She handed the phone back to him and watched as he zoomed in on the girls until the image was completely grainy. “So you think it’s been Photoshopped?”
“Yes.”
Hal was about to say something when his phone buzzed from his pocket. “Harris.”
Schwartzman could hear a deep, craggy voice on the other end.
“Did you find anything?” he asked.
The man said something, and Hal’s expression said it was bad news. “Hang on. I’m going to put you on speaker. I’m here with my colleague.” Hal lowered the phone and nodded to Schwartzman. “You repeat that, Gary?”
“Your Victoria Stein doesn’t exist,” the craggy voice said.
“Doesn’t exist or isn’t with the bureau?” Hal asked.
“Doesn’t exist. Period.”
Hal groaned.
Schwartzman glanced toward the bank of drawers. If that wasn’t Victoria Stein, who was it?
“The driver’s license is a fake,” the voice went on. “The Social Security number belongs to an elderly woman—Victoria Stein—in Pensacola, Florida, and the credit card links to that Victoria Stein’s bank account.”
“Florida?” Hal asked. “Huh.”
Schwartzman watched him, trying to put it together as he did.
“Identity theft,” Hal said.
“Technically,” the agent agreed. “What’s weird is that there are no charges to Stein’s bank account. That card was issued in March, delivered to Victoria Stein in Pensacola, and activated through the automated number, but your perp hasn’t used it once.”
Hal exhaled. “No chance she’d be with another agency?”
“No. I checked.”
“The DOJ have anything to add?”
“Nope,” he said. “Nothing there. If you get me an image, we can run your victim through recognition software, see if we can come up with a name.”
“I’ll get one over.”
“Probably take us a week, though. Those guys are way backed up.”
A week. The body would be a Jane Doe by then.
“What about the other name?” Hal asked. “Terri Stein.”
“You get any kind of ID on her?”
Schwartzman exhaled. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask for ID. She never saw families. They went to the police station for answers, not the morgue. But this one found her.
“No,” Hal said. “And I think she’s in the wind.”
“I assume you don’t know if we’re dealing with a Teresa or just Terri?”
Schwartzman shook her head. Of course she hadn’t gotten the spelling of her name. She hadn’t asked for ID. She hadn’t done anything right.
“Okay. I’m running it both ways,” the agent said.
“Plus, Teresa could be T-E or T-H-E,” Hal said.
“Ah, Christ, Harris. Hang on.” There was the sound of the agent hunting and pecking on the keyboard, then a pause. “I’ve got a hundred and sixty-three variations on the name. You want me to narrow it by age?”
“Yeah,” Hal said. “Narrow it to ages twenty-five to forty and send it over.”
“Will do, but I’m guessing none of these is your suspect.”
Hal sighed. “I know it.”
“Sorry, buddy.”
“Appreciate the call anyway.” He ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.
“The Stein sisters don’t exist,” Schwartzman said.
“Doesn’t look that way,” he conceded.
“So the two women pretended to be sisters,” Schwartzman said. “One of them supposedly lives in LA and the other here. Then one of them kills the other.”
Hal watched her. “You have a theory about why?”
Because Spencer enjoys scaring me? No. That’s too simple. He had something larger in mind, but she had no idea what his plan was. She shook her head.
“Until we know who they are, it’ll be hard to figure out what they were up to.”
There had to be something else they could do. “So what’s the next step?”
“We’ll put together a composite sketch on Terri Stein, and I’ll run Victoria’s image through the database and get it out to M
issing Persons. Someone, somewhere will recognize them.”
Schwartzman lined up the tools on her tray, spacing them with a focused precision. That plan was too slow. She wanted something she could do right now. That moment. Something to connect Spencer to the woman lying in the metal drawer.
“Once we know who they are,” said Hal, “we’ll figure out how they connect to Spencer McDonald.”
The scalpel slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.
She watched as Hal bent to retrieve it, watched as he set the knife on the tray and slid it into line with the others. The pulse in her carotid thundered inside her eardrums. “You mean ‘if’ they connect to him.”
“Do you believe it’s an ‘if’?” he asked.
Without answering, Schwartzman lifted the scalpel and carried it to the cleaning station. She knew what Spencer was capable of, the lengths he would go to get her back, the time he would devote to a plan. Their careers weren’t long enough to wait him out. She straightened her neck, drew her shoulders back.
“Do you doubt the connection?” he asked again.
She turned toward him. “No, I do not.”
“I don’t either. Not even a little bit.”
She let the words sink in. He believed her. Not just that Spencer was crazy or scary but that he was capable of this.
For the first time, someone was truly on her side.
“We should get to work, then.”
She opened the door and waited as he passed. “Yes,” she whispered.
14
San Francisco, California
There was no word from Hal on Friday. It had been a busy day in the morgue, made worse by the fact that she stopped what she was doing every time her phone made a noise. She completed three autopsies before leaving at three forty-five to make it to Dr. Fraser’s on time.
She shouldn’t have been surprised that she didn’t hear from Hal. There was no reason to be in touch unless there was something to report.
Which meant there was nothing.
No lead on Terri Stein, no news about Victoria’s real identity. No link to Spencer. No word from him either.
She couldn’t decide if that was a surprise or not. What she did know was that it wouldn’t last.
His silences never did.
Dr. Fraser’s office was designed to calm, with its fichus trees and fresh-cut yellow tulips. Yellow. She rubbed her palms over her shoulders and drew a deep breath to calm her racing heart. For distraction, Schwartzman checked her e-mails and the most recent lab results on her phone.
The origin of the specific lavender seeds found in the victim’s lungs couldn’t be isolated. She wasn’t surprised. Lavender wasn’t commonly associated with murder, so the notion of sourcing a specific plant was probably uncommon. She forwarded the information to Hal. Checked for new e-mails every fifteen or thirty seconds and, finally, out of desperation, picked up an issue of Us Weekly off the table.
The cover story was about an actress facing cancer. The proud-looking woman smiled for the camera. Her head was shaved entirely bald. She wore a bright-yellow sweater. Yellow was the color of cancer. Of course it was.
Schwartzman was grateful when she was finally called into the exam room. Dr. Fraser was comprehensive in his explanation of the procedure and her odds. “I sit in this room with women whose biopsies come up totally clean and women who will be back the next week to plan treatment,” he told her. “Whatever happens after this, Annabelle, I am here to help you get through it.”
She shivered.
“It’s normal to be nervous.” The door opened, and a nurse came in. She introduced herself as Bonnie. Perky. Alert. Positive.
“Bonnie is a breast cancer survivor,” Fraser announced.
She wore a pink pin pinned to her surgical top, above her heart. “Nice to meet you, Annabelle,” Bonnie said, offering her hand.
Again Schwartzman felt the deep run of cold.
“Please,” she said. Please don’t call me that. Annabelle. “I go by Anna.”
“Of course,” Bonnie said, making a note.
She wasn’t nervous. The idea of breast cancer was terrifying, but one only had so much room for terror, and she was already consumed by something, someone, much more lethal than cancer.
The biopsy itself was quick and not terribly painful. They took samples from both adrenal glands as well as from the calcification in her right breast. Bonnie chatted through the entire procedure, explaining in more detail than necessary how long the soreness might last, that she could take ibuprofen, and on and on about procedures and coping with anxiety.
“I’ll be fine,” Schwartzman said finally, and Bonnie’s mouth snapped closed. Perhaps she’d been too short. Distraction techniques were useful. She had plenty of experience there.
And yet there was something calming about the idea of cancer. When thoughts of breast cancer crowded her brain—for as long as her mind raced with images of mastectomy, chemo, and being bald lasted—she wasn’t wondering when and where and how Spencer would appear again.
Arriving home that evening, though, she was antsy and frustrated. It was almost six and nothing from Hal. She would probably have to wait until after the weekend to hear anything.
She tried to imagine a way to put work aside for the night. She could go to a movie. She hated being in the theater alone. She was normally so content with a book and a cozy blanket, a glass of Evan Williams bourbon. She was working on the last bottle her father had left when he died. There had been eleven. She wondered if she would buy it herself when the final bottle was gone, or if it would no longer appeal if the bottles hadn’t come from him.
She’d successfully been able to push Spencer from her mind before, hadn’t she? She just needed to find a way to do it again. Distract herself with work or a book . . . an old movie?
She had almost convinced herself to go to the new exhibit at the de Young Museum when a text message came in from Ken Macy.
New Balinese place you have to try. Only been open 1 week. Was there last night. No delivery for takeout yet. Soon, I hope. Will keep you posted.
She could just go by herself for a quick dinner. Get out of the house. The restaurant was ten blocks away. She entertained the idea of walking. It wasn’t raining, but the weather was cool enough to be comfortable in a jacket. She had expected spring to come more quickly in San Francisco, but May was as wet and cold as the winter.
No. She didn’t walk. Walking meant crowds, unfamiliar people. She imagined passing people on the streets. Looking at their faces. Would Terri Stein, or whoever she was, be out there somewhere? Would Spencer? She used to love to walk, but these days she didn’t allow herself that kind of vulnerability.
She drove only to and from work and once a week to the store, the dry cleaner. If she was at a scene late, she asked one of the officers to escort her to her car. She had meals delivered. She lived like a shut-in.
Because of Spencer.
Since leaving Spencer, she’d rarely ventured far from her routine—school, work, the occasional outing. But since Spencer had found her again in San Francisco, every time she left her building—no, every time she opened her apartment door—it felt as if she was taking a risk.
Hal Harris had left her a voicemail informing her that he’d reached out to the Greenville police. Spencer was there. Or so they said. But she knew better. She’d lived almost seven years certain that Spencer was just behind her while—as far as anyone else could tell—he never left Greenville.
She could stay home, order something else. There were a hundred places in San Francisco that delivered. Takeout and her book. The McCullough book sat closed on the table by the chaise, a slender white bookmark to remind her that she’d read only ten or twenty pages in a week. She could read.
No.
She needed to be out. If only for a few minutes.
Decided. She would drive to the new Balinese place. Be there in ten minutes, wait twenty or so for the food, and be home in another ten. An hour, h
our and a half, on the outside. What if . . .
She caught herself.
Enough. Enough of letting Spencer rule your life.
It was a restaurant. There would be people. The restaurant was located in the Marina District. The streets would be packed. In fact, parking would probably be a nightmare. Have an Uber take her? She rejected the idea before it was even fully formed. She simply couldn’t imagine getting in a stranger’s car. If someone could hear her thoughts, they’d say she was paranoid, crazy even. She couldn’t argue.
The truth was that even with something so simple, Spencer ruled.
Pocketing her car keys and a single credit card, her driver’s license, and her phone, Schwartzman headed out. Her pulse raced slightly as she emerged from the parking garage and took her first turn. Her hypothalamus sent messages to kick her sympathetic nervous system into action. She was more alert, more tense. She took deep breaths and turned the radio to a 1990s country station. Heard Garth Brooks.
Slowly the music, the familiar roads calmed her. The restaurant, Rumah, was actually a couple of blocks east of the busiest part of the marina. Schwartzman drove past to confirm its location. The door opened, and a couple came out, but it didn’t appear to be packed. She found a parking place half a block from the restaurant. Walking toward the restaurant, she was relieved. She could do this.
A couple walked past with two huge dogs, crossing into the street to allow her to pass. “Evening,” the man said.
Schwartzman studied his face. He wasn’t familiar. He didn’t sound Southern. Just someone being polite. It still happened.
She reached the door of the restaurant. Four women sat at one table, dressed up for a night out. A long table surrounded by dark-headed adults and children, a gray-haired man at the head. Couples sprinkled in, but she saw no one alone.
She hesitated. Sitting alone would be so uncomfortable.
She could always order and go wait in her car. Or just walk through the streets. There were plenty of people out.
“Hello.”
Schwartzman jumped and spun, catching one foot on the other as she twisted away. She stumbled backward and fell hard on her backside. Rough pavement shredded her palms, and her keys flew from her hand as she tried to break her fall. Her heart hammered in her chest.
Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) Page 12