“Would that help bring his killer to justice?” the shorter woman asked, and I nodded. “That’s all we want. Right, Alana?”
Alana nodded, scrubbing at the tears on her cheeks. I offered her the box of tissues on my desk and glanced away to give her some privacy as she dried her eyes and took a deep breath.
“My partner just walked in,” I said, waving at Fletcher as she stepped through the door. She cocked an eyebrow curiously as she spotted me and hurried over, slinging her coat onto the desk she'd set up beside mine. “This is DI Fletcher,” I introduced her. “And these are…” I trailed off.
“Rayla Harrowson and Alana Valdez,” the shorter woman said, smiling in greeting.
“They know the victim,” I explained, and Fletcher’s eyes brightened. “Do you two want any tea or coffee before we get started?”
“I would take a water,” Alana said. Her voice was still thick, but her eyes were mostly dry again.
Fletcher went to grab it as she also needed coffee for herself, and I led Alana and Rayla into the interview room. “Is it okay if I record this?” I asked, and when they nodded, I turned on the camera in the corner, the little red light flashing that it was ready.
When Fletcher returned, we all sat down, two on either side of the table. “Why don’t we start with his name and how you know him,” I said.
“His name is Jacob Greene,” Alana began. “He and I met in university. He’s my best friend.” Her voice caught. “Was my best friend, I guess.” Rayla threaded their fingers together and squeezed. “Rayla and I met about a year ago, and since then, the two of us, Jacob, and his partner, Em, have been pretty inseparable.”
I wondered what it would be like to so suddenly lose a friend and then learn about it in the newspaper. The hole my father’s disappearance still cut into me, but there was still the possibility he was still alive. Jacob was simply gone. I remembered what Alana had said earlier. The last record of him had been wrong. The last thing people would ever read of him had misrepresented him, turned him into something he wasn’t, and that almost seemed like the greater death.
“Where did he work?” I asked.
“New Wave Industries,” Rayla answered, but I shook my head, not recognizing the name. “It’s a tech company that started up about five years ago. Jacob was hired as an intern and then stayed on full-time when his internship was up. He mostly worked in coding.”
“Do you have any idea why he would do this?” Fletcher dug a tablet out of the satchel she’d brought in with her and pulled up the picture of the melted card. “We believe it might be his work ID.”
Both women leaned in for a closer look but shrugged. “I have no idea,” Rayla said. “He liked his job.”
“He cut up his credit cards, and we couldn’t find his phone or laptop. Had his behaviour changed at all in the last week or two?” I asked. “Was he acting strange, did he seem paranoid, anything like that?”
Alana and Rayla glanced at each other, each trying to throw their minds back in time. “On Tuesday, the four of us went out for dinner,” Alana said slowly, eyes tight as she thought about it. “Jacob showed up late and out of breath, and he made us switch restaurants. He wouldn’t say why.”
“He was twitchy all night,” Rayla agreed. “He kept glancing out the window like he thought someone was following him.”
“Was there?” Fletcher asked. She had her little notebook out and was jotting everything down.
Rayla shivered and rubbed at her arms. “He was acting so paranoid that it kind of got to me, too. I swear there maybe was someone following us when we left the restaurant.”
I slid Fletcher’s tablet towards me and flicked through the case file until I found the picture of Connor Harrigan. “Was this him?”
Instantly, Alana and Rayla’s expressions darkened, diving towards positively stormy, and Alana growled deep in her throat. “No,” she said. “But we certainly know him.”
“He spent most of last year harassing us, Jacob specifically,” Rayla explained, her voice trembling.
“We know, we spoke to him yesterday after we caught him snooping around the scene. His name’s Connor Harrigan.” I put the tablet to sleep and gave it back to Fletcher. Relief flooded Alana’s face as Connor’s image disappeared. “He said that he realized how wrong he’d been and that he wanted to apologise.”
Alana snorted, her features contorted with derision. “Yeah, right.”
“I told you so,” Fletcher muttered.
I gave her a look that said ‘not helpful.’
“Did he seem violent enough to go this far?” Fletcher asked, raising her voice so the women across the table could hear.
“Most of the time, it was verbal harassment,” Alana said. “But Em told us about this one time they were alone with Jacob, and Connor,” she said his name like it tasted foul in her mouth, “shoved Jacob hard enough that he fell and broke his wrist.”
“Jacob said he fell off his bike and broke it. He refused to talk about what happened. Em told us the truth later,” Rayla added.
Maybe Harrigan had been putting on an act. That level of deceit seemed a bit beyond him, but I could be wrong. It wouldn’t hurt to look into him more.
“Did you get a look at the person you thought was following him on Tuesday?” Fletcher asked Rayla, pen poised to take down the description.
Rayla squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to conjure up the image. “He was tall, blonde, and I think he had a limp.”
“How tall, would you say?” Fletcher said, but Rayla just blinked at her.
“How am I supposed to know that?”
“Was he my height?” I suggested.
She shrugged, and her lower lip trembled, distressed that she couldn’t remember anything more specific. “I don’t know. He was across the street. He never got close.”
“That’s okay.” Fletcher reached across the table to squeeze Rayla’s hand, hoping to comfort the other woman as her shoulders shook. “You’ve given us a lot of really useful information.”
I shifted in my seat and scratched at the back of my head, unsure if I should even voice my next question. “There is one other thing. I hate to ask, but we need someone to identify the body. Would one of you be willing to come down to the mortuary and help us with that?”
Fletcher kicked me under the table. She didn’t need to--I already felt awful asking, even though I knew it was something that needed to happen. Alana sniffed then stiffened her spine, crumbling the tissue in her hand. “I can do it.”
“I’ll go, too,” Rayla said, glancing at Alana. “You shouldn’t have to do it alone.”
“Do you know how we can contact his parents?” I asked. They needed to know soon, before they read about it in the paper as well.
“They live in Glasgow,” Alana said. “Em probably has their number or address. Jacob was actually planning on finally coming out to them. I kind of thought that was why he was acting so strange on Tuesday.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Now he’ll never have the chance to tell them.”
“They’ll never get to know the real him,” Rayla whispered.
Fletcher’s face crumpled with sympathy even as she tried to remain professional. She mentioned her parents only rarely, so I didn’t really know much about her relationship with them, though she knew all of my family drama. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to come out, not knowing for sure how they would react. I almost thought I wouldn’t have had the courage to, and a part of me was guiltily glad I’d never had to find out.
“Can we get Em’s address?” I asked, and when Alana nodded, Fletcher slid her notebook and pen across the table so Alana could write everything down. “You haven’t told them?”
Rayla covered her face with her hands while fresh tears broke in Alana’s eyes. “We didn’t know how. Does that make us horrible friends?”
“Not at all.” I rushed to reassure her. It had taken five aborted phone calls for Eleanor to finally tell me that Alasdair was gone. �
��What if after the mortuary, we all went to speak with them together? Fletcher and I will help you find the words, and then you can be there for your friend.”
“Okay,” Rayla said. She was trying to be brave, but it wasn’t working. Her voice was seconds away from breaking, and her entire body trembled uncontrollably. She and Alana had lost all the anger they’d come into the station with, and now, there was nothing left to hold them together. Nothing except each other and the tight clasp of their entwined hands.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Are you ready to leave now, or do you need a minute?”
“Let’s just rip the plaster off,” Alana decided.
Alana and Rayla helped each other stand, and then they followed Fletcher and me out of the interview room. The four of us piled into one car, since Alana and Rayla had taken a taxi to the station, and I eased us out of the car park and onto the busy street.
The ride was silent, heavy, and tense as if we’d squeezed a fog-drenched forest into the vehicle as well. I drummed my thumbs against the steering wheel and flicked between radio stations, trying to find something that fit the mood without dragging it down even further. The talk shows only grated on my nerves, and eventually, Fletcher batted my hand away and left the radio on a traditional station, the volume low.
I pulled into the mortuary car park and climbed from the car. Fletcher and I were halfway to the front doors when we realized that Alana and Rayla weren’t with us. I turned around to see them still standing by their open doors, staring up at the boxy building like they’d been encased in ice.
“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” I said even though I knew that was a total lie. They were about to see the cold, battered body of their best friend. There was no way this could ever be okay.
Fletcher twitched her head, motioning for me to come with her, and we walked back to the car. She held out her hand to Alana, and I followed her lead, offering my hand to Rayla. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it, her fingers warm against mine, and I gave them a gentle squeeze. Alana and Rayla let us lead them up to the door. Alana slipped her hand from Fletcher’s as we stepped inside, though Rayla kept a hold of me, edging in closer to my back for comfort.
I flashed my card at the receptionist, and she pointed us towards the lift that would take us down to O’Neils’ lab. She passed Fletcher a visitor’s pass that would allow us to access the lower floors, and Fletcher thanked her with a wink before we left.
We crowded into the lift. Fletcher swiped the pass and pressed the right button, and then we each leaned up against the handrails attached to the metal walls. “Do you flirt with everything that moves?” I asked Fletcher, hoping to lighten the air just a little bit.
Fletcher caught onto what I was trying to do. She grinned at me. “Only the pretty girls. Which is all of them.”
Soft smiles lifted Alana and Rayla’s lips, but the expressions were tenuous, quickly slipping away. But for just a moment, the clouds parted within the lift, allowing us all to breathe just a little easier.
Unfortunately, when the doors opened on the clinical, steel and off-white walls of the mortuary, it was as if storm clouds had smashed against the shore, instantly soaking us to the bone. I shivered as I stepped out into the hall. The air conditioning blasted out of the vents at full force, carrying us right out of the pre-summer day outside and back into the dreary spring I thought we’d left behind for the year.
Helpful signs pointed us towards the room, and I led the way through the swinging doors. Large metal drawers took up the entire back wall, and there were three matching silver tables spread evenly across the floor. A body lay on one of them, covered by a large white sheet.
I’d lost all feeling in my fingers, Rayla’s hand a vice around mine.
O’Neil sat inside at a desk, his back to us as he hunched over a microscope. I knocked on the cold door frame, and he held up a single finger, telling us to wait, without bothering to turn around. We let ourselves inside and approached one of the empty tables, arranging ourselves around it. Rayla finally released my hand, and my fingers tingled as blood rushed back into them. I flexed them a couple of times, waiting for feeling to come back.
The forensic pathologist finally put away his research and spun his stool around to face us. He had a long nose and a moustache that really didn’t work with his face, and his brown hair was limp across his forehead. A little bit of product and maybe a shave would do wonders for him.
“Dr O’Neil,” I greeted him. “Sorry to disturb you. We’re here to identify the John Doe that came in yesterday.”
Confusion crinkled the man’s face as he stood up and began to check the tags on the various drawers. “I had a Jane Doe come in yesterday but no John Does.”
Alana bristled across the table from me, her earlier anger waking up once more, pushing the grief back for a moment.
“That would be incorrect,” I said.
He blinked a couple of times, trying to work it out in his brain, trying to remember which body I meant. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive.”
He shrugged, walking to the table, touching the corner of the sheet. “Oh, the homicide. My bad. Are you ready?”
“Give us just a second.”
Fletcher and I checked in on Alana and Rayla. I raised my eyebrows in a silent question, and both women nodded, each taking a deep breath to steady their nerves. We approached the table as a group, and Alana and Rayla looped their arms together as we looked down at Jacob’s body; covered with a white sheet that draped over the contours of his limbs like the soft mountains of the Highlands. Alana choked, her hand flying to her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut. Rayla trembled, but she didn’t look away, clenching every muscle of her body as she steeled herself.
“Okay,” I said to O’Neil.
He carefully drew the sheet away from Jacob’s face and shoulders, folding it neatly across his chest. His skin was pale and a little grey, his eyes closed above his sunken cheeks, and his lips were white-blue slivers like something out of a winter fairytale.
“That’s Jacob,” Rayla whispered. Her eyes were glossy, and she pulled the scarf from her hair so she could clutch it between her hands, worrying it around and around as if it were an anchor holding her in place.
Alana cracked her eyes open millimetre by millimetre, throat jumping as she struggled against her fear. Her knees gave out when she saw her friend lying there, and Fletcher, standing beside her, caught her before she hit the floor, looping an arm around her shoulders to help hold her upright.
There was no dignity to the table. The white sheet was no shroud. It accentuated the vulnerability of his naked body rather than hiding it, and the clinical colour of the fabric only brought out the unnatural blue tones of his skin. That metal slab was no comfortable pillow. It was a cold, merciless hand, more apt to snap the neck rather than support it.
And this would be the last memory these two ever made of their best friend. It was a dark image to be left with.
“Thank you for coming down,” I said, pulling the sheet up as if that would somehow make it better. “I know this must have been incredibly hard. Fletcher, would you mind waiting with them outside while I speak with Dr O’Neil?”
Fletcher nodded. Obviously, it would be less than ideal for me to give her the information secondhand, but Alana and Rayla didn’t need to hear the clinical side of things, and I also didn’t want to leave them alone in the mortuary.
I waited until the three of them were out of the room and then gave them an extra few seconds to make it to the lift before I turned back to O’Neil. “Have you finished the post mortem yet?” I asked.
“Yes,” O’Neil said, clapping his hands together. “I was actually about to call you before you showed up. Shall I take you through it?”
“Please,” I said. O’Neil pulled latex gloves on and then peeled the cloth back once again, pushing it all the way down to the waist so we could see the knife wounds in all their horrible glory. The flesh around each dark, li
ttle mouth was purple and mottled, the edges of the cuts dry and almost cracked looking.
“So there are ten knife wounds in total. The one on the arm, the one in the back, and then the eight on the chest.” O’Neil pointed out each one as he named it, even lifting Jacob up for a second so I could see the deep stab in his back as well. “But here’s the interesting thing. The first strike to the chest was the one that actually killed him. It went right into the heart and twisted. All the others were extra.”
I leaned in a little closer for a better look, the sharp stink of formaldehyde heavy in my nose, and I could see that the blow was practically perfect, angled just right to hit the heart in between the ribs.
“And if you look at the wound on the back…” O’Neil lifted Jacob upright once more, and the way his head flopped forward made me feel a little sick. “Do you see the bruising all around it?” He inscribed a circle in the air with his finger just above the stab wound. I nodded. The bruising was deeper and darker there than it was on the chest. “Like it was thrown. You can see a lot of other bruises on the arms and whatnot. Adams mentioned he probably fell down the stairs? That would explain the bruising.”
I pursed my lips thoughtfully as O’Neil carefully laid Jacob back down. His report had given me a lot to think about, but I wanted to go over it with Fletcher before I came to any conclusions.
After O’Neil shucked his gloves off and tossed them away, I shook his hand, took the report and then left the mortuary to make my way up to the lobby where Fletcher, Alana, and Rayla were waiting. Jacob’s friends sat side by side in the uncomfortable grey chairs, stunned into silence by the day’s events. Fletcher was over by the vending machine, buying everyone some snacks, and as I approached, she glanced side to side and banged her fist against the side of the machine just as the first Mars Bar fell so that a second jumped free of its prison as well.
She returned with the snacks just as I arrived, but Alana and Rayla just held the chocolate bars in limp fingers like they didn’t even realize the sweets existed. “Are you still up to go with us to Em’s?” I asked because both women looked like they were ready to simply fall to pieces. “We can take you home and go by ourselves, if you want.”
The Hidden Eye Page 6