The pinot was for courage or maybe to celebrate.
She paid cash.
She headed north on Interstate 26 toward Greenville. It was just past five when she arrived at Sumter National Forest. As she drove, she tried to recall the campground where she and her father had pitched their small brown dome tent. She had only camped twice in her young life, both times here with her father.
Though she was a teenager and might have been helpful, she and her father were awkward campers. Setting up the tent took forever, the fire made with a log starter never burned longer than it took to make s’mores. One night was all they lasted, even though they’d originally set out for two.
What she remembered was that the spot where they camped was mossy and lush, hidden under a canopy of trees so thick that the morning sun hit the ground only in thin wisps of light. She wanted to find that place. There, she could practice shooting the gun without the risk of being seen or, worse, hitting a camper or hiker.
As she drove in, nothing looked familiar. It wouldn’t be dusk for another couple of hours, but the clouds above her were dark, making it seem later than it was. She consulted the screenshot of the map on her phone, located the Horn Creek trailhead, and tried to orient herself. Horn Creek was far enough back in the forest and away from the campgrounds that she was unlikely to run into campers. She turned down one road but reached a dead end. With no room to turn around, she had to reverse straight out. She doubled back to the main road and set out again.
It took two more tries to find Horn Creek Trail. She pulled down the dirt road until it ended at the trailhead. There, not ten feet off the trail, was a small red tent. Damn. What now? She turned around and retraced her path, checking the map for another trail that looked smaller, more secluded. She did not want to see anyone out here, but the map offered no insight into which were the most popular trails. The only other trail nearby was one that led to a lake called Lick Fork. Schwartzman made her way down the bumpy dirt road, praying there weren’t campers there, too.
The parking area came into sight. Empty. The first drops of rain fell as she opened the windows and listened for sounds. Human sounds. There was always the risk of animals. Someone else might have been frightened, but there was nothing Schwartzman feared out here. Being killed by a mountain lion didn’t scare her. That would make her death a fluke, the unlucky winner of nature’s odds.
Being killed by Spencer. Being held by him. Being owned by him.
These were the fears that kept her awake at night and caused her to wake in a cold sweat. Sitting in the quiet car, she surveyed her surroundings again, then got out and went to the trunk for the satchel. Unzipped it slowly and studied the gun, the ammo.
She opened the box of ammo and put a fistful of bullets in her pocket.
She closed the trunk door quietly and, while the car light was on, thumbed the release to open the cylinder. Six slugs. Six chances. She remembered the one time she had shot a gun. She’d been maybe eleven or twelve and they were at a reunion of her mother’s family. Some cousins she barely knew were shooting a 0.22 rifle at cans lined along the fence. Mostly boys, they taunted her until she tried.
That day, she lay on the grass with total focus, lined the sights on the can, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. Knocked the can right off the fence, got up, and walked away.
She only hoped she was still that good.
She drew three bullets from her pocket and slid them into the chambers. The car light clicked off. She stood, surrounded by quiet, and closed the cylinder, felt it lock. Careful not to drop anything, she walked up a short hill toward a patch of trees maybe sixty yards from the car.
The loblolly pines stood high over the cluster, their treetops swallowed by the low-lying cloud cover. Among the pines were bushes and other trees—sycamore, sweet gum, and elm. Standing in their midst, she could hear the rain hit their high branches, but the drops didn’t reach the forest floor. Ghost-like tendrils of the clouds swirled through the high branches.
She blinked multiple times, urging her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. She chose one of the loblolly pines, maybe three feet in diameter, and studied the bark, searching for a good target. Schwartzman settled on a knot oozing sap.
A little above his chest level, she estimated.
The perfect shot would be maybe two or three inches lower and an inch to the right. Hitting the cardiac notch of the left lung was ideal. Puncture the lung and the heart in a single shot.
Death would be fast. Not entirely painless but shock would likely dull his senses quickly.
She turned and took five long strides. Turned around. Raised the gun. Right hand wrapped on the grip, left hand cradling the right. There was no safety. Just cock it and shoot. She widened her stance, lowered her shoulders, imagined Spencer in front of her. That tree. Felt his kiss on her face, her lips.
The sound was deafening. The barrel kicked upward. Not as bad as she’d expected. She lowered the gun again. Pulled the trigger once, twice in quick succession. A little breathless, she moved to the tree, stared at the knot. Searched the surface. Nothing. She ran her fingers over the bark, searching for metal. Nothing. She’d missed. All three times.
She opened the chamber and turned the gun upside down, releasing the empty shells into her left hand. Three of them. Put them in her left pocket, zipped it close. Reloaded. Moved back again. Loaded four more. Took two steps closer this time, telling herself that she would be able to get close to Spencer when the time came.
Again she drew back the hammer and aimed. Fired. Twice. Three times. Four. Returned to the tree and saw nothing.
Who was she kidding? She couldn’t do this. She would end up dead.
She sank down and pressed her forehead to the rough tree bark. Damn. What was she thinking? She should ditch the gun and go home, she told herself. Stop wasting time. As she rose to her feet, a glint of metal caught her eye. Her pulse steadied to a strong, clear drum. She touched the slug. How had she missed it?
The metal was maybe two or three inches from the knot. The same distance between the center of an average adult male’s lung to the lung’s edge. Four inches below the first, perhaps an inch to the right, was another. Maybe the spleen or the liver. Not as good as hitting the heart, but it would kill him.
She’d hit two for seven. Not terrible.
A moment later, she saw two more bullets side by side, maybe six inches lower. That would be his thigh, perhaps a knee. Better than 50 percent. She would have six chances. She could do this. Schwartzman could kill Spencer MacDonald. Six tries, she might even be able to kill him twice.
She pushed her finger into the hard wood, following the grooves created by the bullet. How deep the bullet had drilled into the wood. She pictured Spencer’s chest. An easy through-and-through. Maybe the bullet would catch a rib and ricochet. She remembered a victim where a single bullet had created three separate wounds on the heart, all by ricochet. A small-caliber gun. The wife had shot him. She recalled the bitter woman who’d sat hunched down in her chair at the defense table when Schwartzman had testified in the trial.
How many bullets had she pulled out of victims? Her chest grew heavy. Fear and disappointment mixed into something with a nasty taste. The gun in her hand, she sank onto the soft, marshy ground, pressing her back into the tree’s hard trunk. Oh, God. She could not kill Spencer. Not even once.
She dropped her head and let the gun slip from her hands. She was not a killer.
There was no question that Spencer MacDonald deserved to die. Perhaps she had even earned some cosmic right to be his executioner, but she wouldn’t. Because that was a reality she would have to live with.
Wake with every day and lay down with at night.
She was a physician. She had taken the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Even if her patients were dead people, she had vowed to take care of them in that death, to prove what had happened, how and by whom.
She was also part of the judicial system.
How could she continue t
o do her job and fight for justice after she’d committed murder? And she couldn’t believe Ava had left that gun for Schwartzman to murder Spencer.
For self-protection, maybe, but not for murder.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She would have to find another way to solve the problem of Spencer MacDonald. She rose slowly, picked up the gun gingerly, and released the cylinder, dropping the remaining bullets into her hand. She had decided that she would dispose of the gun on the way back to Charleston.
Keeping the gun only invited trouble.
Back at the car, she opened the passenger side door and knelt down to tuck the gun under the seat. She noticed a long hair on the barrel—hers, most likely. She pulled the hair free and studied the tiny white bulb on one end. The root.
Staring at the strand of hair, Schwartzman knew exactly what she had to do.
38
Charleston, South Carolina
As Schwartzman drove back toward Charleston, her mind weaved the tiny idea into a plan. She was disappointed she hadn’t thought of it sooner. If she had, he might already be behind bars. The miles ticked by, and she made a mental list of all the pieces she would need. Others that would be helpful if she could get them.
Ava was easy. Frances Pinckney would be tougher.
It would mean calling Harper Leighton.
Schwartzman hesitated. She didn’t want to bother the detective until she knew exactly what she was asking for, and how she was going to explain her reasons for needing it.
She stopped only once on the way back to Charleston, pulling off near the tiny town of Harleyville to dump the gun and the remaining ammunition in a small tributary off 7 Mile Road. Instead of dinner, she ate the food she’d bought earlier in the day—part of a baguette, grapes, and almonds. She was too excited to be hungry. Only as she was pulling into Charleston did Schwartzman contact the detective. She needed two things. One she might get. The other she likely would not.
“Anna?” Harper said in lieu of a greeting.
“Yes,” Schwartzman said. “I hope I’m not calling during dinner.”
“No,” the detective assured her. “Not at all. Jed and Lucy aren’t even home yet. She’s got volleyball practice, and Jed’s picking her up. Is everything okay? Someone’s at the house, right?”
“I’ve been out for a bit, but I’m sure someone is there. It’s not really necessary.” She didn’t want someone at the house. She couldn’t anticipate Spencer’s next move, but she suspected it wouldn’t happen in these next few days. He’d made quite a splash, and he had to know he was being watched. Better to lay low.
Then again, Spencer had his own way of seeing things.
“No. It’s absolutely necessary,” Harper countered. “There will be someone on that house, at least through Ava’s service.”
That gave her two more nights to make this happen. She wanted this done before then. She wanted to stand at Ava’s coffin and know that justice was being served. She had a lot to do.
“But you didn’t call about the patrol car,” Harper said.
“No,” Schwartzman agreed.
“What can I do for you?”
Schwartzman drew a quick breath. “I’d like to see Frances Pinckney.”
Harper remained silent.
“Examine her, I mean,” Schwartzman clarified.
“She’s been released for burial,” Harper said. “The services are tomorrow.”
Schwartzman swallowed. She pictured Frances Pinckney at the mortuary, dressed and ready for service. Or maybe she’d been cremated. Harper said burial, not cremation. “Is she at the same place Ava is?”
“She’s not. If she were at Woodward’s, I could call T. J., but I don’t know these folks. Is everything okay, Anna? Is there something we should be looking into?”
“No,” Schwartzman said. No arousing suspicion. “I guess I just wanted to see his other victim. That probably sounds weird . . .”
Harper didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think anything about grief is weird,” she said. “Everyone does it differently.”
Schwartzman felt tears burn her eyelids.
“Why don’t you come to the service tomorrow?” Harper suggested. “I suspect it will be closed casket, so you wouldn’t get to see her, but maybe being there would help.”
Schwartzman considered the offer. Of course she would go. “That would be great,” she said. Wings batted against the inside of her belly. Fear and excitement, possibility.
“Of course,” Harper said. “She was a good friend of your aunt’s. I’m sure the family would welcome you.”
Harper was giving her access to Frances Pinckney’s DNA. “Thank you.” She thought of Roger. He would know the best places to isolate a home owner’s DNA. She’d never thought to ask him. For her purposes, hair would be the easiest to obtain.
“It’s at two in the afternoon. I’ll text you the address.”
She could pull this off. She could put Spencer behind bars. “Thanks again, Harper. There is one more thing,” Schwartzman said.
“Sure.”
“I’d like to go over the images in Ava’s file.”
“You mean the crime scene photos?”
“Actually, I’d like to see the coroner’s pictures,” Schwartzman said.
“Is there something specific you want to see?” Harper asked.
She thought about the images of the bruising on Ava’s chest. She could not give away what she needed. She could not take the risk that Harper would take notice, that it would come out later.
“No.” She spoke the word firmly. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just want to look again, just in case.”
“Burl’s been over the body, Anna,” Harper said. “He’s good. I don’t think looking at those images again is going to get us anywhere.”
“I have to try,” Schwartzman said. “You understand, don’t you?”
A beat passed. “Of course.”
“If I could just see them one more time.” She held her breath, prepared to beg. She needed access to those images. It was the only way. “Please.”
“They’re uploaded into secure storage,” Harper told her. “I can share the file with you electronically. The link will only be good for twenty-four hours. Is that enough time?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, trying to imagine where she would go to view them. She didn’t have a computer with her, and she needed an anonymous place where she could search the Internet without it being traced back to her.
“I’ll text a secure log-on and password to your phone,” Harper said. “Probably take me about thirty minutes.”
“That’s fine. Thank you, Harper.”
“This is between you and me, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Schwartzman agreed. “My lips are sealed.”
“Get some sleep, Anna. I’ll see you at the service tomorrow.”
Schwartzman pulled to the curb on the next block and used her phone to search for an Internet café with computers for rent. They were harder to come by these days. She didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Farther down the screen, she found a place listed as Concierge Café, computers and concierge office space for rent, hourly. She dialed the number.
“Concierge Café,” said a young man’s voice.
“I’m in town for business, and my computer won’t boot. I need to rent a computer for about an hour. You have computers for rent?”
“We do. We’re open at seven tomorrow morning.”
“And what time do you close tonight?”
“Nine o’clock.”
Schwartzman glanced at the clock on the dash—seven forty-five. “Nine tonight?”
“Monday through Saturday,” he said with the brusque shortness of young people. “Sundays we close at six.”
Schwartzman thanked him and disconnected the call as she pulled from the curb in the direction of town. The address was close, traffic light, and she was in front of the café in six minutes. She parked, locked the rental car, and
went inside, where she signed up for computer time and a cup of coffee. She took her cup of black coffee and went to the farthest cubicle. She’d paid for ninety minutes of computer time even though the coffee shop closed in just over an hour.
She’d take what she could get.
Evidence was not her forte, and she wished she could call Roger. He would have been able to enhance the pattern of the injuries to Ava’s chest to identify the knee pads. She would be working in the dark.
You can do this.
The link from Harper had dropped into her text messages, and she found the site easily. Setting down the steaming cup, Schwartzman scanned through the thumbnails. Grief struck her midsection, rattling her spine. She pressed her fist under her rib cage and started to click through the images. Finally, she narrowed on the ones of the body preautopsy.
The head, arms, fingers, and then chest. There were several of the entire torso, but she chose one with a close-up of the pattern in the skin. One side. Ava’s right breast.
She studied the perimortem bruising. Some sort of diamond pattern across the oval of the knee pad, but only the very center of the pattern was discernible. The bruises would continue to develop for several days after death, but the coroner had taken only one set of images. She considered returning to the mortuary, seeing Ava again. The idea made her feel empty, slightly nauseous. Zooming in on the pattern on the skin, Schwartzman launched a new browser and ran a search for carpentry knee pads. She clicked on “Images”: 173,000 results.
She scanned the first pages, moving deliberately across each row. Clicked to the next. Scanned. She lifted the coffee mug and took a long drink. Searched the rows for the diamond shape. Every few lines, she returned to the image of the bruising for comparison.
“We’re closing in ten minutes,” the barista said, and, when Schwartzman didn’t answer, he rapped his knuckles on the edge of the cubicle.
“Okay,” she told him without taking her eyes off the screen.
She’d been through hundreds of images of knee pads, and none of them was quite right for the patterns in Ava’s skin. Ava was approximately five eight, which put her chin at about five feet high and her breasts at approximately four feet. The bruising ran from the bottom of her breasts, which was probably three foot nine or ten when accounting for her age, and reached almost to the manubrial-sternal joint. The joint was approximately eight inches below the chin. Schwartzman jotted down the numbers. It meant the knee pads were approximately six inches long.
Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) Page 30