by E. M. Parker
“No, I can’t.”
“I insist. I have plenty more of them. I just happen to think this one works the best. Please.”
Fiona took the stone out of the box and held it up to the light. It was unlike anything she had ever seen, its deep color rich and translucent. She never gave much thought to the energy of things, but she couldn’t deny feeling something as she held it. It was probably nothing more than the power of Iris’s suggestion, but that suggestion infused her with an instantaneous feeling of confidence that she did not want to relinquish.
“Thank you. I promise to take good care of it.”
“I know you will. Now allow me.” Iris took the amulet and walked behind Fiona. After clasping it, she said, “Looks perfect on you.”
“If this helps to ward off all my personal demons, I’ll wear it enthusiastically,” Fiona mused.
“It will certainly do that.”
After another embrace, Iris opened the door and Fiona stepped out into the hallway. “You make sure you get some rest, okay? And please take our conversation with a healthy grain of salt.”
“I’ll try. And I’ll try,” Fiona said, not sure if she would actually be able to accomplish either. “Good night, Iris.”
“More like good morning. It will be light in a few hours.”
As she stood alone in the quiet hallway, Fiona could not help but wonder how long she would have to wait to truly see that light.
CHAPTER NINE
DETECTIVE CHLOE SULLIVAN WATCHED WITH a solemn gaze as two crime scene technicians loaded Donald Tisdale onto a gurney for transport from his apartment to the Denver county morgue freezer that would keep his lifeless body preserved until an autopsy could be performed. After more than a year in Major Crimes and dozens of homicides investigated, Sullivan figured that she would have become numb to it all by now. The frozen look of terror stamped on a victim’s face. The dense, coppery stench of blood. The finality of death, and the realization that yet another person would never again see their loved ones, or eat their favorite meal, or fulfill the next day’s to-do list. The dull chest pain that she felt after Tisdale’s final departure was just the latest reminder that she still had a long way to go.
As his body was being wheeled out of the apartment, Sullivan’s partner, Detective Marcus Greer, was making his way in. There were two uniformed officers huddled together, along with three CSI techs and a medical examiner, all fighting for access to the same five feet of space where Tisdale’s body was found. The thick plaited rope that served as his noose was being dusted for fingerprints while the chair that he had apparently stood on was put under forensic lights in the search for any useful bits of trace evidence.
Greer waded through the crowd to get to Sullivan, who was standing in the kitchen sipping on a bottle of water that she had retrieved from her car.
“You wouldn’t happen to have another one of those, would you sport?” Greer asked with a hopeful glint.
“Always thinking of you,” Sullivan replied as she handed him the unopened bottle that she brought in anticipation.
“You will be canonized one day, Chloe Louise Sullivan. Mark my words.” Greer opened the bottle and downed its contents in less than four swallows. After he finished, he turned his attention to the crime scene work. “What are they looking for exactly?”
“Anything in support of the prevailing wisdom that this was a suicide.”
“You mean the rope and hanging body weren’t enough?”
“Not for me,” Sullivan answered emphatically.
“Okay. What about a note? Has one been found yet?”
“No. Not in the apartment anyway.”
“What about a social media post? That seems to be all the rage these days.”
“Tisdale didn’t have a Facebook account, at least not one under his name. Given the fact that his driver’s license says he was seventy-one, he did low-level work as a janitor, and had no computer in his apartment, it’s probably safe to assume that he wasn’t very tech-savvy.”
“Assumptions don’t solve cases.”
“Assumptions are all we have right now,” Sullivan countered. “I mean, aren’t we assuming he committed suicide?”
“Absent evidence to the contrary, yes.”
“So what does the current evidence tell you?”
Sullivan followed Greer as he made his way out of the kitchen toward the group of technicians. “The evidence tells me that Donald Tisdale, aged seventy-one, was working a dead-end job that barely paid above minimum wage when he should have by all rights been retired. The evidence also tells me that he was in debt up to his asshole, and there are piles of overdue notices on the kitchen counter to prove it. He was unmarried, alone, barely knew anyone here, he was tired of working, tired of struggling, and he wanted a way out.”
Sullivan nodded. So far his logic was holding up. “Go on.”
Greer pointed to the rope tied to a utility hook that had been attached to a door frame. “He put a lot of thought and work into this. He knew that the light fixture wouldn’t be strong enough to support his weight, so he went to the trouble of screwing this hook into the frame, a big job that probably took some time. But he knew it would hold up. We know this was done recently because there’s paint and fresh dust from the door frame on the carpet. If this were a foul-play situation, taking the time required to create such a set up would be seriously inconvenient at best.”
“And the absence of a suicide note?”
“He didn’t need one. He had those overdue bills and a copy of his monthly check stub to tell the story for him. It’s really unfortunate that he couldn’t find another way, but at the end of the day, he made his choice.”
Sullivan patted him on the back. “I have to admit, that was really well thought out, and to most anyone else in the world, it would make total sense.”
“But you’re not buying it.”
“Call it my finely-honed woman’s intuition, call it your run-of-the-mill hunch, but no, I’m not buying it.”
“All right, detective. My turn to quiz you. Look at the evidence through those rose-colored lenses of yours and tell me what you see.”
“Everything you said about the dead-end, low paying job and the mountains of debt makes sense. But according to the building manager, Tisdale was never once late on his rent. Not once in seventeen years. In fact, he had just paid this month’s rent in full two days ago. Why would he do that if he had even an inkling that he was going to kill himself the next day?”
Sullivan could see Greer’s wheels turning in search of the not-so-clever comeback that had become his trademark. Thankfully he couldn’t summon one this time. “Continue.”
“There were lots of bills, yes, but nothing that couldn’t have been fixed. It’s not like they were coming after the guy’s house or car or retirement. He didn’t have any of those things. Being into a credit card company for ten-grand is no reason to end your life. I could understand if he had some underlying issue like depression or bipolar disorder, but the few people who knew him claimed that they hardly ever saw him in anything but good spirits. Based on what we’ve seen, he wasn’t on any kind of medication, not for his heart, not for his blood pressure, and not for any psychological issue. To me there is no obvious reason this man would want to commit suicide.”
“Sometimes people don’t need a reason, Chloe. Sometimes they’re just tired.”
Sullivan shrugged as she looked around the apartment. Aside from the piles of mail in the kitchen and black dust on the walls and doors from the CSI techs, the space was orderly. Nothing to suggest an unwelcomed guest. The door was intact, ruling out forced entry. And, as Greer rightly pointed out, the fact that the hook was retrofitted to the door frame suggests time and planning, neither of which supported the intruder theory. There was also the matter of motive. If someone wanted Tisdale dead, why go to these extremes to do it? Based on the condition of the apartment, robbery did not appear to be involved. If Sullivan were to look at the evidence objectively,
Greer’s argument beat her own hands-down. This was a suicide. Open and shut. All she had to do was take the evidence for what it was. She could make Greer’s week by admitting that he was right, they could go back to HQ, hammer out the paperwork, grab a quick bite of breakfast, and she could retire to her bed for a much-needed ten-hour hibernation. Another case in the books. Easy-breezy.
Except it wasn’t.
“What’s that?” she suddenly asked Greer, pointing to a baseboard near the kitchen sink.
Greer walked into the kitchen, bending down in front of the sink for a closer inspection. Sullivan didn’t need to get any closer to know what she was looking at.
“I can’t believe I didn’t notice that earlier,” she said.
“I don’t think anyone noticed it.” Greer took a pen light out of his jacket and shined it on the tiny pool of red under the sink. “It’s definitely blood, and it’s definitely fresh.”
“How in the hell did no one else see this?”
“Hey Collins, I need you in here quick,” Greer yelled over his shoulder.
The crime scene tech entered the kitchen immediately. “We just found some in the bedroom too. Come take a look.”
Sullivan and Greer looked at one another in disbelief as they followed Collins.
She noticed it the second she walked in, plain as day, on the baseboard between the bed and the nightstand.
“This pool is larger than the one in the kitchen,” Collins said as he took out a glass vial to begin the collection process. “And it appears to be just as fresh.”
“What the entire fuck?” Greer said without even the hint of a smile.
“Tell your people to keep looking,” Sullivan said to Collins. “Every nook and cranny, every square inch. If we missed something this obvious, God only knows what we’ll find if we start digging around.”
Collins left the room to relay the message to his team.
“So what do you think now?” Sullivan asked.
Greer took a long look at the pool of blood and shook his head. “I’m starting to think you may be right.”
For as good as it felt to hear those words, Sullivan could not take any satisfaction in them.
“How do eight highly-trained, highly experienced crime scene investigators, yours truly being the best among them, miss something this glaringly obvious?”
The most immediate answer in Sullivan’s mind was that the blood wasn’t there before. But that would be impossible.
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, Marcus. What I can tell you is that there is a lot here that doesn’t add up. I’ve been saying that from the beginning.”
“That woman’s intuition thing is no bullshit.”
“Apparently not in this case.”
Greer began walking around the bedroom, looking in corners, under the bed, inside the closet, for what, Sullivan wasn’t sure. She suspected he didn’t know either. But he now knew, as she did, that there was more to be found.
“What else is your intuition telling you?”
The instant Greer asked that, Sullivan felt a chill so strong that it physically shook her. “It’s telling me that this place is creepy as hell.”
Greer blew out an audible sigh of relief. “Glad I’m not the only one who thought that.”
“I actually felt it the moment we walked in.”
“Same here. I didn’t want to say anything, being the fearless bad-ass that I am. But the air here is definitely strange.”
Sullivan thought back to her canvassing of the building and her run-ins with the various tenants. Of the few who answered their doors, the only one who didn’t set off her Spidey-senses in a major way was the woman in 605. Everyone else, including the older woman next door to her, seemed like they were cast right out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
“What do you say we go help out the techs?” Sullivan suggested. “The sooner we can find what we’re supposed to find, the sooner we can wrap this up and get the hell out of dodge.”
“Right behind you, sport.”
As she rejoined the team in the living room, Sullivan’s finely-honed intuition communicated one last bit of unfortunate news: she wouldn’t be finished with this place anytime soon.
CHAPTER TEN
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THREE NIGHTS, Fiona had barely slept. No great shock, considering the harrowing events of the last twenty-four hours, but that didn’t make her exhaustion any less debilitating.
She had spent much of the morning attempting to make sense of her bizarre conversation with Iris. When that wasn’t successful, she turned her attention to Olivia’s bedroom. It had been quiet for the remainder of the night and into the morning. And only now, as she got dressed in the hope of making something useful out of the day, did she hear proof that someone was alive in the apartment: the muted sound of an expletive-filled reality television show.
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
After getting dressed, Fiona consulted the Denver Central Committee of Alcoholics Anonymous directory for the nearest meeting location. Having several options, she chose the Sunrise Serenity group. She had nothing to go on but the name in making her decision, but the idea of finding a bit of serenity somewhere definitely had its appeal, even if that somewhere was a smoky room filled with miscreants confessing their various sins.
Of all the awful things that happened last night, her near miss with the bottle was the worst. She may have come a long way in her sobriety, but she still needed help maintaining it, and if last night was any indication, she always would. Attending a meeting would be her first step in admitting that.
Before Fiona left her bedroom, she put an ear to the wall and listened. Aside from the television, the apartment was quiet. Fueled by an unexplainable compulsion, she tapped on the wall and whispered. “Olivia? Are you there?”
It was eleven thirty-eight in the morning, which meant that she should have been in school. But that didn’t stop Fiona from calling out again.
“Olivia? If you’re there, can you say something?”
She heard nothing but the television, as the volume suddenly and inexplicably grew louder.
“That’s it, time to get out of this psycho ward.”
****
Fiona walked past Olivia’s apartment with tentative steps as she approached the elevator. Once she rounded the corner, apartment 612 would be in sight. Her mind shuddered at the idea that something as awful as a murder could have occurred so close to her, and she readied herself for the possible torrent of emotions that would hit her should there be any signs of it.
The only thing she saw as she came upon the apartment was a yellow strip of tape across the closed door. She had assumed that the words on it read ‘crime scene’, but she didn’t want to look close enough to find out for sure.
Thankfully, the elevator arrived just as she’d walked up to it. The doors had barely opened before she made her way inside. She was in such a hurry that she nearly knocked over the man who was exiting.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Fiona cried as she grabbed the small man by the shoulder to stop him from tumbling over. “I didn’t see you. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” The man’s gruff voice betrayed his light, friendly face. “No one told me there was a fire on this floor.”
Fiona’s face turned red with embarrassment. “There isn’t. I just need to watch where I’m going. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. One hell of a hip-check you’ve got there, young lady. The Red Wings could use a bruiser like you.” The man tugged at his thick gray beard as he smiled. “Thankfully, not a hair out of place.”
“That’s a relief.”
His emerald green eyes suddenly lit up with recognition. “You’re the new tenant in 605, right?”
Fiona could not hide her surprise. She wasn’t aware that anyone here even knew she existed. “Yes I am. Fiona Graves.”
“Ah yes, Fiona. I’ve been meaning to stop by to introduce myself. I’m Arthur Finley, the facilities manager.�
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“So, you’re the guy I need to call to fix that stubborn bedroom window that puts up a fight every time I try to close it.”
“There’s always something in desperate need of repair around here, so I’m afraid you’ll have to take a number, but I’m definitely your guy.”
“Good to know.” Fiona extended her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Finley.”
“Please, call me Art. And it’s nice to meet you too.” His bright face took on a solemn expression as he looked over Fiona’s shoulder. “I guess you heard about that business last night.”
“A detective came by my apartment asking questions. She didn’t share much, but I got the feeling it was pretty bad.”
Arthur nodded. “Yeah, pretty bad.”
“What do you know about it?”
He took one more look at 612. “Were you headed down?”
“Yes.”
“I was on my way to check on a leak in 617, but if it’s okay, I think I’ll head down with you.”
“Of course.”
When Fiona stepped onto the elevator, Arthur followed. “First floor?” he asked before pressing the button.
“Please.”
Arthur continued as the elevator made its way down. “I’ve been talking to Mr. Barlow, the building superintendent. The police told him that Donald had been dead for at least twelve hours. Mr. Barlow was the one who found him, and the only reason he did was that another tenant complained that Donald’s television was too loud. It probably would have been me who opened that door, but I had the night off to attend my son’s rehearsal dinner. He’s getting married in three days.”
“That’s wonderful,” Fiona offered with a smile, though it felt awkward under the circumstances.
“Thank you. I couldn’t have been more relieved that I wasn’t here. I don’t know how I would have reacted had I been the one to find him.”
“Did you know Donald well?”
“I considered him a friend. He and I talked nearly every day. We’d go out for beers, catch an occasional Rockies game, sometimes a movie. He was a really good man and I enjoyed spending time with him.”