“He looks good,” Hal said, echoing Hailey’s thoughts as he snapped pictures.
“We do wonderful work,” the director said, still breathing heavily behind her.
Fredricks had been embalmed, and it had been done well, which brought her back to the question Hal had raised—who paid for his burial? Hal lifted Fredricks’s arm, and Hailey noticed the fabric at the elbows was flattened from wear. “Hold that,” he said and Hailey did while he photographed.
“Suit doesn’t match the casket or the quality of the embalming,” Hailey commented.
Hal turned to the director. “You have records on payment?”
The director shrank into his suit. “Payment?”
“Records of who paid for the burial,” Hal repeated.
“I can’t—”
Hailey frowned. “We can get a warrant.”
He nodded. “Yes, you’ll have to do that. I’m sorry,” he added with the same expression he’d had speaking on the phone to Mrs. Dubavich.
It was no surprise that they’d need a warrant. The days of getting anything easy were long gone. Turning back to Fredricks, Hailey spotted a dried white rose on Fredricks’s left lapel, but other than the flower, he was free of adornments: no jewelry and no personal items with him.
Hal and Hailey turned their focus to Fredricks’s hands. If his prints were on those other buttons, then he had either touched them a long time ago and somehow the prints had been preserved or … Hailey spotted the white bandage and lifted Fredricks’s hand where gauze crisscrossed his palm and wrapped up the index finger of his left hand.
Hal snapped pictures and when he was done, Hailey touched the tip of the bandage, feeling the end shift. Hal leaned forward and using a pair of scissors from the kit, carefully cut off the bandage.
The director, who had stepped away to take another call, charged at them like a rhino. “What are you doing?” Then, when the end of the wrapped finger fell off, he stumbled back. “Oh, my.”
Miguel spun from the scene.
Something dropped into Hal’s gloved hand and together they stared down at the end of a cork. The index finger of Fredricks’s left hand was missing its first joint.
“Now we know where the print came from,” Hal said.
Someone broke into a casket and stole the tip of a dead man’s finger—all to link Fredricks to a series of buttons planted on the killer’s victims. So far Jim was the only one who hadn’t been seriously hurt.
Jim. He was being targeted by this mystery shooter.
But for what?
Hailey found an evidence bag from the kit at her feet and opened the Ziploc bag so Hal could put the cork inside. She recorded the time, date, and location on the side with a Sharpie. Marshall had refused their request for an evidence team. There weren’t enough cops to go around, so they’d have to process this one themselves.
The director glanced at the cork end, frowning. “He probably had wishes to be buried with it,” he said without conviction.
As Hailey shifted the bag in her hand, she noticed the words “Chateau St. Jean” printed on one side of the cork. The end was stained a dark red. A red Chateau St. Jean made her think of the Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages Jim had been drinking last night. It wasn’t an uncommon bottle, but it was Jim’s favorite.
Hal saw her expression. “What?”
Hailey shook her head. “Later.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He put an arm over her shoulder and then, in an attempt to make her smile, struck out in a baritone and sang Merle Travis.
“You haul Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.”
Hailey forced a smile and seeing it, Hal stopped. “I tried.”
On the way out of the cemetery, Hal turned back into the grounds rather than out toward the street. The shadowy form of the fog hung like a ghost above the graceful curves of the hilltops. When the car stopped, Hailey turned to Hal, who rested both wrists on the steering wheel and lightly drummed his fingers on the dashboard.
Outside the window, she recognized John’s grave. On the anniversary of his death, Liz and Jim had brought her and the girls, but the rain had been coming down so hard that only Jim had emerged from the car to place flowers on the grave, while the women sat in the back of the town car and made their own rain.
The soft mound that had been there the last time Hailey had come out to see John was now flattened. The dark, wet dirt, whose ripe smell was so pungent in her memory, had been replaced with fall leaves. Even from the car, the marble of John’s headstone looked dulled, indistinct from the ones all around it, and she found herself shivering under the scorching blast of the car’s heat. “Why are we here?”
Hal stopped drumming. “I thought you’d want to stop. You want me to come with you?”
She didn’t look up. “I don’t want to stop.”
Hal turned in his seat, shut the fan off. “You should.”
“I can’t.”
He waited for her to change her mind or explain her reasons. She didn’t.
He pulled away from the curb and paused to stare at John’s grave. When he drove forward, he flipped off the radio and the heat, leaving the car silent except for the rattling hum of the engine and the clank of a coin stuck down in a vent somewhere.
He wanted to talk about it.
Every time, she drew back.
They were partners. She trusted him as much as she would ever trust anyone. Maybe even more.
But she didn’t trust anyone enough to speak that truth.
Chapter 6
Fatigue pressed on Hailey’s shoulders and pinched the small of her back like the weight of another person. She and Hal had brainstormed the entire way back to the station and had come up with nothing. Fredricks had been dead twelve years, which meant either someone took his finger twelve years ago with the idea that they would want to use it in a future crime … or someone had dug up Fredricks’s body recently.
The cemetery had no cameras on the burial plots, so they had no way of knowing when and if the body had been dug up. The director had assured them that the body couldn’t have been dug up without someone knowing about it. But he also suggested that Fredricks had wanted to be buried with the cork in the place of his fingertip, so they were having a tough time trusting his insights.
Shelby Tate couldn’t say with certainty when the finger had been removed, other than that it had happened postmortem. She had taken some skin samples near the incision to try to do better, but she had warned them that it really was just a guessing game.
Hailey arrived home as the girls were climbing the steps with Liz, each carrying her small backpack: Camilla’s purple with flowers, Ali’s a pink Hello Kitty. When Hailey called out, they turned back down the stairs and ran to her. Before they reached the curb, they were chattering about the events of the day in a way that simultaneously relieved the tightness in her back and made her feel all the more exhausted.
Inside, they sat in the kitchen where Hailey made snacks as Liz started dinner. “Jim’s gone to the office, if you can believe it.”
“He’s out of the hospital?”
Liz shook her head the way she did when she was irritated with someone. “Dee spent the morning rifling through his desk, then went to get him at noon time and took him straight to the office. I swear they’re insufferable together,” she muttered, then caught herself, forcing a smile by carefully creasing each corner of her mouth like her table linen. “Oh, I’m overreacting. Of course it isn’t Dee’s fault. He should be resting, is all.”
“You’ve got a full house with all of us here,” Hailey said, wondering again why Dee lived with her brother and his wife. For Hailey, living with Jim and Liz made sense. She couldn’t manage the kid schedules and her job without help. But she didn’t see the same logic in Dee’s pres
ence at her in-laws’ home.
“We love having you guys here,” Liz said. “And Dee too.”
“She and Jim are close,” Hailey said.
“They are. Very,” Liz agreed. Hailey didn’t read any bitterness in her tone.
“I’m an only child, but it seems unusual to me.”
“I’m certainly not that close to my brothers.” Liz began to chop a tomato. “Dee had it rough after they went to live with their aunt and uncle. They already had two girls, and their aunt wasn’t the kindest woman. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
Jim would have been a son to them—a bonus probably. Carry on the family name and all that. He’d probably had it much easier.
Liz seemed to deal well with Dee’s presence, but maybe that was because they were so different. Dee didn’t have any interest in the domestic duties. She was focused on her career and, because of that, on Jim’s, while Liz was the matriarch. All household decisions were hers. Hailey helped cook and clean up, but most times Liz ushered her out of the kitchen because she wanted to be there. Dee was more like Hailey. If meals were up to the two of them, they’d probably order takeout and eat off paper plates.
“Here, Mom,” Cami said, handing Hailey a stack of math and spelling worksheets. Each was decorated with a rainbow of stars from the teacher.
“Wow. Good work, Cami.”
“And I have a new book I’m reading—”
“I did art at school,” Ali blurted. “Do you want to see?”
“Of course I do.”
Camilla scowled at her sister’s interruption.
“It’s our whole family,” Ali said, unfolding the white page. In its center was a big hill drawn in green marker, and on top were five stick figures, each standing at a different angle along the curve. Ali pointed to the stick figures. “That’s Grammie and Poppie and you, Mom, and there’s Cami and me.”
“That’s beautiful, sweetie,” Hailey said. It reminded her of a world peace ad of people of different races holding hands along the side of a globe.
Camilla leaned over to look more closely. Hailey stiffened in anticipation of her older daughter’s question. “Where’s Daddy?”
Ali shrugged. “I didn’t have enough room for heaven, so you can’t see him.”
Desperately, Hailey wanted to open the refrigerator and pretend to pull something out, to hide her face from them, but both girls turned to their mom, and she could feel the steady heat of Liz’s gaze as well. “Heaven is a really big place,” Liz announced. “Maybe you could draw a picture of it sometime, Ali.”
“But isn’t Daddy here, with us?” Camilla asked.
Shivers grew tight along her skin.
“I don’t know for sure where Daddy is, Cami.”
Camilla frowned and Hailey knew they were on awkward territory. Cami was much more logical than her younger sister. For Ali, peace came from knowing that her father was in a better place. That he was happy and okay and that he would be watching over them.
Liz and Jim were Episcopalians who talked about the specifics of heaven the way a doctor could name the specific chambers of the heart. Hailey wanted to know that John was somewhere good, somewhere warm and redeeming, and not just a pile of bones in the earth under the flattened grass.
“If Daddy has any say in it,” Hailey said. “He’s right here in this room, watching you guys and thinking about how smart and beautiful you are, and how big you’re getting.”
“But you can’t see him,” Ali said, pointing back to the picture. “That’s why I didn’t draw him.” She looked up at Hailey. “Right, Mommy?”
Camilla turned to look up at her mother too, and the pain in Hailey’s spine sharpened into an unbearable ache as she winced and sank into a chair. “I don’t really know. I haven’t ever been to heaven, so I don’t know what it’s like.” Neither girl spoke. “But your picture is really beautiful.”
“I’m going to ask Father Dylan on Sunday,” Camilla said.
Liz stepped forward and set milk in front of the girls, then put her hand on Hailey’s back. Warmth radiated through Hailey’s blazer. “I think that’s a wonderful idea. Now, why don’t you go get changed, Hailey? The girls and I will get dinner going.”
“I could use a shower, if there’s time.”
“Sure, Hailey. We’ll be fine.”
The tension in her spine dissipated as soon as she had made it to the stairs. With the bedroom door closed, Hailey took a puff of albuterol and sat on the edge of the bed. Dropping onto her side, she shoved her fists into the heavy quilt.
What did it matter where John was? Heaven, hell, underground. He wasn’t coming back.
He was never coming back.
So why couldn’t she let go of the way their marriage had deteriorated?
On the last anniversary they shared together, John had taken her to dinner at Boulevard, a fancy spot close to the bay. It was unusual to go someplace so expensive. Celebrations had always involved one of their favorite ethnic take-out places, like Koh Take Thai, which they called “Kentucky Thai,” or the little sushi place on the west edge of Golden Gate Park.
John had wanted to splurge. He’d made her dress up and ordered champagne.
Over appetizers, he gave her a pair of diamond studs.
Though they’d seemed huge, he’d assured her they weren’t. They were each “only” a quarter carat, and surely she could wear them at work.
Like she would show up at the scene of a double murder in diamond studs. Instead of feeling grateful, she’d been furious. She hardly ever wore earrings. Occasionally, she put in the small pearl studs that had been her mother’s. Only those.
To make matters worse, throughout their anniversary dinner, a constant trickle of people from Jim’s political life interrupted them. The mayor’s assistant was there with his girlfriend, a buxom blonde in her early twenties, as well as several “key supporters,” as John had called them.
He spent as much time away from the table as he did at it.
He had eventually invited a wealthy older couple—the president of some big bank and his wife—to join them for dessert. When they were finally left alone, John complained he’d developed a headache and wanted to go home.
In the car, he’d insisted she put the earrings on.
Hailey had, thinking she would return them, that they weren’t anything Hailey wanted to own or wear. He glowed with pride, looking like a man she didn’t know at all. Then, he said something she would never forget or forgive. “You’re going to make a wonderful senator’s wife someday.”
Every decision about their future was made together. Whether Montessori preschool was worth the extra expense. How far apart the kids should be. How they would handle the after-school care. Which refrigerator to purchase when the old one died. Whether they should switch cell phone carriers. They sat at the round kitchen table and made lists of pros and cons, discussed and debated for days. It took nearly three weeks to decide on a preschool for Camilla.
Now he had chosen their future—his as a senator and hers as a political wife—without so much as a single joint discussion.
Within days, he was talking about his plans for running for office after he helped with his father’s next election. In those conversations, he carefully skirted the conclusion he’d reached, that Hailey would need to quit the force. She saw it clearly—so translucent was the veil that masked his political ambition.
Two months later, three days after he’d said they needed to think about “how to wind down her career,” Hailey had kissed Bruce Daniels.
A month after that, they’d started sleeping together.
But John was dead now.
The failures in their marriage didn’t make a difference to him, wherever he was. Yet Hailey couldn’t seem to break free of them.
Chapter 7
Fifteen minutes after the girls’ bedtime, Hailey’s cell phone started to ring. It rang at eight-fifteen, then ten minutes later, then ten minutes after that. When Hailey finally answered,
Bruce asked where she was, meaning why aren’t you on your way to me? Finally, Hailey conceded that she would go over to his place. She needed to try to force herself to move on.
When Hailey came down in her jacket, Liz was downstairs in the living room, sipping tea and reading a novel. “The girls are asleep, and I thought I’d go out for an hour or so. Meet a friend for coffee.”
Liz stood, smiling, and stepped around the chair to clasp Hailey’s arm, as close as they ever got to an embrace. “I’m so glad, dear. I was wondering when you’d start dating again.”
Hailey stepped backward, catching her heel on the area rug. “Oh, it’s nothing like that.”
Liz smiled softly, disappointed. “Oh. I understand. Have a good night, then.”
Heat flushed her cheeks as Hailey looked away and searched for something to say. Hailey didn’t want Liz to think she was lying, so she turned and nodded sadly, adopting what she hoped was an innocent expression. “Thank you, Liz. For understanding.” And without meeting her gaze, Hailey left.
Liz grew up outside Washington DC. John had always said that his mother’s family raised politicians. Both of Liz’s brothers and her father were attorneys who had worked in the political arena, and her uncle was a lobbyist. John had also let on that Liz’s family was very wealthy. He once commented that their house had been a gift from his grandparents, and for that reason, the deed was in Liz’s name.
Liz had been quite ill for several years when she was a teenager. Her mother had been very concerned that Liz might never marry. Jim had arrived as a savior—not just for Liz, but for her mother as well.
It made sense that Liz put a lot of emphasis on Hailey not being alone.
When she arrived across town, Bruce came to meet her at the car, something they had starting doing after Hailey had been attacked in his lobby. For two weeks, she’d hidden the bruises from John, showered when he was out, wore long-sleeved pajamas and pants … John never noticed. That was how disconnected they were.
All that was history now.
The building still made her a little sick to her stomach. She never entered alone. She called from the car and Bruce met her at the door.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 36