Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1)

by Danielle Girard

  Inheriting the house? In Charleston? Ava had no one else. Ava holding her tight at her father’s funeral. Making her promise to come stay in Charleston. The old house on Meeting Street, the one that had been her grandparents’. The place where she’d hidden out after the miscarriage, while she planned to go finish medical school. How she’d longed to stay longer. If only Spencer weren’t so close. But now, without Ava, what would Schwartzman do with a house in Charleston?

  Her mother made an uncomfortable noise. There was something else. Something she wasn’t saying. “Mama?”

  “You should know that she was—” The sound of her mother’s voice catching on something. “Her death wasn’t natural.”

  “Wasn’t natural?” Schwartzman repeated.

  Her mother said nothing. There was a beep as another call came through.

  “Mama, are you saying she was murdered?”

  “I hate that word.”

  Murdered. Ava was murdered. Grief pulsed through her like waves of electricity. Spencer. The phone pressed to her ear, she pulled her knees to her chest, tried to close herself in a ball. As though she could cut off this new reality. Make it disappear. But it was real. What better way to force her to come back to South Carolina than to kill her favorite person?

  “You call me as soon as you book your ticket, Annabelle,” her mother said. “The moment you book it.”

  “Mama, you’re not listening. I’m not—”

  But the line was dead. Her mother gone. Schwartzman pressed the phone against her chest. Held it there. She had breast cancer. A woman here had died because of her. Ava was dead. Because of her. She had lost Ava. Gone without a second’s notice. How desperately she wished that she’d seen her one last time, or called.

  Would he just keep killing people until she came home? Would he target anyone who showed concern for her? Was it even worth the fight? She could stop fighting it all. Go home and be with him. Let him handle her cancer and her surgeries. Live in the yellow hell. At least then no one else would get hurt.

  For as long as the game lasted. Surely he would tire of her. He would tire of a wife who couldn’t be perfect. He just wanted her back. If she gave him that, he won. If she went home, maybe he would just give up. Divorce her. Because what else could he possibly imagine would happen?

  Shivers ran through her. She’d spent all these years fighting to get away. She was a doctor. She had a life. She was not going to South Carolina. He could not make her go. Cancer was not a death sentence, not necessarily. Going to South Carolina was a death sentence. Hadn’t enough people died?

  She wondered who would perform the autopsy on Ava. Had it already been done? She wanted to be there, to watch and make certain nothing was missed. To watch over her.

  In the interview room, Macy and the inspectors stood from the table. They were finished. She’d missed the end, but from Macy’s expression, maybe it would be okay. She experienced a little pang of regret that either way, she would distance herself. There was no room for anyone in her life.

  Cancer and Spencer’s shadow were her only companions.

  She slipped out of the viewing room and ducked into the bathroom at the end of the hall. She sat in a stall and forced herself to pull it together. She had time to sort things out. She might have gone to the morgue, but she would be worthless there. She would research the cancer and its treatments, call the police department in Charleston and find out what happened to Ava. She would make a game plan.

  She would move forward as she always did, but first she would give herself the morning, allow herself to find distraction in the simple tasks of living. There was a pair of slacks at the dry cleaner, supplies to be replenished at the market. She could buy a coffee, read the paper, draw the errands out. If she were lucky, it might last a couple of hours.

  Schwartzman moved through the hallways without seeing anyone familiar and was grateful to step outside, where the sun finally shone. The stairs to the department were damp, and the air had the wet, clean smell of rain. But even as she reached the fresh air, what she really wanted was to be back inside, in the comforts of her morgue.

  “Schwartzman.”

  Ken Macy jogged toward her.

  “I’m glad I caught you. Hal said you came in to watch the interview.” He exhaled.

  Seeing his face confirmed what she’d already known—she believed him. It might have been easier if she didn’t, but she did. Not that it changed anything. Everything was different now.

  “Thank you for being here,” Macy said. The intensity in his eyes made her look away.

  “Of course,” she said, reaching into her purse to find her car keys. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You did.” He reached for her free hand, the one on the strap of her purse. Schwartzman stood, frozen.

  “Thank you,” he said, squeezing gently. “I hope you will let me buy you dinner as a thank-you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I didn’t say it was.” He let go of her hand. “I’ll text you later in the week.”

  She didn’t tell him no. She had enjoyed their dinner. How was that less than two days ago? How had everything changed so dramatically since Friday?

  He walked back into the building. Even after being questioned, he moved with ease and confidence, comfortable in his own skin. He turned back and gave her a smile. She liked him.

  Alone on the stairs, Schwartzman was cold and filled with the awkward sensation that she’d made a scene and everyone was watching. But as she scanned the crowd, it was just people doing what they did. Walking, texting, talking on the phone, a homeless man asking for money from a group of women who were gathered against the outside of the building, smoking.

  She was invisible to them, the woman surrounded in dark shadows.

  Schwartzman turned back toward the building. Just thinking of the morgue, the bodies waiting for her, brought a sense of calm. The morgue was the only place she felt calm now.

  21

  Greenville, South Carolina

  The alert on his calendar buzzed Monday morning at ten forty-five, fifteen minutes before their scheduled time. She would be hanging on to her phone, waiting. He spun the Italian leather office chair and stared out the window. The sky was blue. Leaves on the trees that lined the street waved gently. A typical day.

  What he liked most about his view wasn’t the sky or the city below but the Baptist church. From here, he gazed down on the historic building with its Roman columns and the steps that rivaled Lincoln’s memorial. He peered down even on the green spire with its crossed arrows and down on the parishioners who trudged inside each week like ants drawn to honey.

  He could have had the corner over the park. His partners thought he was crazy not to choose that one. He had first pick, of course. But he liked this one. Some believed it was his strict Baptist upbringing. His mother, in fact, had commented on that exact reason when she visited.

  “Your father would be proud,” she’d said.

  Although the office building was only eight stories high, their offices occupied the top floor. In his angry moments, the view mollified his fury. In frustration, it calmed him. And in the rare times of fear, the church below infused him with power. How could it not? There he was, peering down on God himself.

  As he spun back around to the desk, he unfastened the top button of his dress shirt and pulled his tie loose. He pressed the intercom.

  “Jenny?”

  “Yes, Mr.—”

  “I’m not to be disturbed until I buzz you again,” he said, interrupting.

  “Of course, sir.” He punched the intercom off and stood from his desk. He had come to dread these calls. What had been so invigorating early on was now tiresome. The anticipation, the planning, he always enjoyed that. He was used to leveraging help. He could not, after all, travel to her. So he had others do it for him. But this was the furthest anyone had ever gone on his behalf. The manipulations had to be perfect, intricate but also simple. The challenge was delightful,
but this part . . . the aftermath with its cleanup, all the reassurances that had to be made because people inevitably became nauseatingly wobbly-kneed after the deed was done. These things fatigued him immensely.

  He bolted the solid oak office door that, along with soundproofing, he had installed when he moved in, then crossed to the large painting that hung above the couch. He pulled it down and set it on the leather to reach the wall safe. With his eyes closed for practice, he punched in his sixteen-digit code and heard the short, soft beep before turning the knob ninety degrees to the right. The door fell open. He retrieved the small nylon sack and closed up the safe, rehung the picture.

  Then, instead of sitting at his desk, he dragged one of the guest chairs to the window and sat on it, as he did every time. From the nylon sack, he removed the cheap burner phone and cord, the small black box, and a digital recorder with his required background sounds.

  He slid the battery onto the phone and plugged it into the outlet just below the windowsill, giving him enough slack to raise the phone to his mouth to talk while it charged. He did not like to leave charge in the battery, and he certainly never left the battery on the phone. He appreciated that the idea of a burner phone was that it was untraceable, but this recent acquaintance had taught him that very few secure technologies were actually secure.

  He set the digital recorder to the appropriate file, slid the black headphones over his head, and set the speaker beside the phone. The voice transformer was a relatively inexpensive gadget that altered his voice, making it sound approximately a half octave lower. He suspected the gadget’s target market was something mundane like married men attempting phone sex with their wives or girlfriends. He had tested it out thoroughly. It also succeeded in making him sound in character.

  He double-checked all the settings and dialed the number. At the first ring, he pressed the recorder and held it to the phone. The sounds of men shouting filled the air.

  “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, babe. It’s me,” he said.

  “It’s always so loud there,” she said. The same thing every time he called. She might have been part of the recording.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Hang on. Let me see if I can find a quiet corner.” He pretended to move and instead turned the volume down slightly on the recording.

  “It sounds so awful.” Again with the same refrain.

  “Not long now,” he told her. Another redundancy. He had come to think that if he could pinpoint the time required for her inane comments and the big sighs she used to punctuate their conversations, he might have been able to record himself and set up these calls to run themselves. There was no ending the relationship now. He would have to stay the course for another month at least.

  “Chuck?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How did that parole meeting go? I forgot to ask last week.”

  This was the problem with posing as a real-life prisoner. It made it easy to get the details of what they’d done, to play the part realistically. But every damn thing ended up on the Internet.

  “Okay. Don’t want to jinx it by talking ’bout it yet.” He could sense her pout in the silence. “We’re getting closer, babe. That’s all that counts, right?”

  “When do I get to see you? I could come up there, just for a visit?”

  “No.” His voice cracked, and he hoped it was less apparent through the modulator. Damn her. “We mustn’t let—” He halted. He hated her for making him flustered. He found his character again.

  “Chuck?”

  “We can’t let no one know ’bout us. Blow the whole thing we worked so hard for.”

  “I know. All the bartering you do to use the guard’s burner phone and get the private room to talk. Protecting me.”

  “Yes.” He reiterated all the lies he’d built to gain her trust and help.

  “But you’re not even on the chat room anymore.”

  He had already told her that he was afraid the cops were patrolling the room, that it was too dangerous so close to his potential release. He should not have to repeat himself. “You know why.” The truth was he didn’t like being connected to someone for too long. It raised the risk.

  He was not going to get caught because of some pathetic loser.

  “I know, but it’s so hard not seeing you.”

  He said nothing. This was just what she had to do. He no longer bothered to try to stop the rant. He was used to the way she talked in circles.

  “I’m trying to be patient, Chuck.”

  “You’re doing a good job, babe. I’m torn up about it, too, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. You know I couldn’t do it without you.”

  A beat passed. “I did it just like you said,” she said proudly. “Every last detail.”

  She’d given him the details last week. He was hardly interested in hearing them again. The endless questions about lavender and yellow flowers. Some women asked far too many questions.

  He hoped he wouldn’t be required to find another one to finish up.

  “So when do I get to see you?” Her voice was pure whine. A spoiled girl used to pouting her way into getting what she wanted. He’d known loads of them growing up. Despised them all. “Chuck, you promised after it was done.”

  He exhaled silently, controlled. “Got to watch to see what direction the police investigation goes. No one has made contact with you?”

  “No,” she said, sounding slightly disappointed. “I saw her, though.”

  “Saw who?”

  “The coroner who got you put away.”

  He exhaled at the reference to Bella. He had told her to steer clear of Bella.

  “I know. I wasn’t supposed to talk to her, and I didn’t. Not much anyway. You were right, though. Sarah was a dead ringer for her.”

  He said nothing. He wanted to end the call. Immediately. And at the same time, he wanted to hear every detail. How long had it been since he’d set eyes on Annabelle? Nearly seven years. He had images, of course. They were served to him regularly through different sources.

  He longed to see her movements. The length of her stride when she was intent on getting somewhere. The way she touched the hair behind her right ear when she was hesitant. The way she dug her toes into the floor when she was angry. He missed every little detail. He sucked a breath through clenched teeth and let the air out slowly.

  “You get the picture I sent?”

  “What picture?”

  “Of her and that cop she’s dating.”

  “Dating?” he said, his voice slipping. He coughed to cover the rise in his voice, clenched his fist. Get control, damn it. That would be too much, too far.

  “Yep. Same one we talked about. I sent the picture to your e-mail.”

  Dating. Speechless, he fumbled with the digital recorder, inadvertently starting up the same noise as the beginning of the call. He jabbed the “Forward” button and found the track with the guard yelling at two prisoners who were fighting. He had recorded it off a YouTube video. He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “I got to go, babe. A few more weeks and we’re home free.”

  “Okay, Chuck. I love you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Probably not, babe. Day after for sure.”

  She sighed but didn’t complain. “’Kay, baby. Bye.”

  He ended the call and slid the battery off the phone, then snapped the burner phone into two pieces. Time for a new one. He slid the phone into his pants pocket, took the painting down, and opened the safe. He returned the rest of his things to the wall safe, locked it up, and rehung the painting. He forced his hands to keep moving while his brain spun on her words. The cop she is dating. Annabelle had never dated anyone. It was impossible. He closed out the thought as he scanned the room, confirming that everything was in its place before he quietly unlocked the office door.

  Returning the chair to his desk, he paused to gaze down on the church steeple. His chest rose, and his shoulders straightened. There was nothing to connect him to
the woman on the phone. No money trail. The chat room where they’d met and built the relationship was gone. He could stop calling, and she should have no way to track him.

  And yet he would be calling again. He had hoped Ava’s death would be the final act, but he wasn’t sure he was done with her. If Schwartzman left again—returned to Seattle or San Francisco or headed out of South Carolina—then there would be more calls, more plans.

  He had done everything right so far, and he was not a man who screwed things up in the last stretch. The church taunted him. His father’s voice. A quote from Corinthians.

  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

  And another of his father’s favorites. Rejoice in sufferings. Repent your sins and rejoice in giving yourself fully to God. Fury raged inside him, and he turned his back to the church. With the sweep of his hand, he sent the coffee mug on his desk flying into the wall. The ceramic exploded with a satisfying snap.

  He took two deep breaths and reached across his desk to hit the intercom. “Jenny, can you please bring some towels. I’m afraid there’s a broken coffee cup, and it’s a bit of a mess.”

  “Certainly, Mr. MacDonald. I’ll be right in.”

  22

  San Francisco, California

  Schwartzman slid the body back into refrigeration bay four and made a note of his placement in the file. With the bodies cleared, she washed up. Normally she would have completed her paperwork at the desk in the morgue, but the deceased was a smoker and the smell lingered. Instead Schwartzman exchanged her lab coat for a sweater and moved into her office.

  Beside “Cause of Death,” she made a check next to “Natural” and wrote, “Ventricular fibrillation leading to sudden cardiac death.” If not for the hefty life insurance policy, the man’s death wouldn’t have called for autopsy. He had all the risk factors for sudden cardiac death—hypertension, high cholesterol, history of heart disease.