by Mary Bush
Val did exactly as Gwen showed her and was amazed at how much easier it was. She quickly moved the instrument around the upper jaw and on the last snip, it detached from the man’s body.
“That’s a good trick. I never tried it that way before,” Val said, smiling to herself. This technically wasn’t a lie, since she’d really never tried it in any way before.
“If you can break away for a second, there’s an investigator here to see you. That’s what I came to tell you,” Gwen said.
“An investigator? Is it Detective Gavin?” Val’s interest perked up at the possibility.
“No, it’s someone else. He wanted to speak to Dr. Blythe, but Blythe’s unavailable. The man wants to know if he can talk to you in the meantime.”
“What does he want to see me for?” she said, disappointed it wasn’t Gavin.
“He’s here about Julia DeHaviland’s murder.”
“Why? Her husband did it. What on earth can he be investigating?” Val began to lose interest and looked back at the dead man on the table, his face oddly contorted now that he was missing his upper jaw.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. Can you talk to him now or should I tell him to come back later?”
“I might as well do it now and get it over with.” She pointed to the jawless man. “He can wait.” Val went to the sink, pulled off her gloves and washed her hands. That was about as far as her cleaning up was going to go. She glanced in the mirror hanging over the sink, thinking how disheveled she looked with her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and no makeup on. Her scrubs had several stains on them, making her wonder not only how they got there, but also what they were.
Gwen walked over to the side of the sink and stood against the wall. “There’s a great band playing downtown tomorrow night at this bar in Allentown called Nietzsche’s. We should go. Howie’s on call and we’re both off. The music’s kind of alternative but I read good reviews about them. The bar’s supposed to be a good place to meet men too. Good music and men. The way I see it, it’s a win-win situation. You are single, right?”
Val just nodded, hoping Gwen would move on to a different topic. Val really liked the idea of going to Nietzsche’s. She hadn’t been there in years and ached to get back into socializing, seeing a band. Seeing people. But knew she had to say no to Gwen. Again.
This wasn’t the first time Gwen asked to do something outside of work. In just the last couple of days, she had been bombarded with offers. Val came up with excuse after excuse not to go anywhere with her and quite frankly, was running out of good-sounding reasons. The last thing she wanted to do was socialize with Gwen Carmondy. Val had to admit that she liked her. So, nothing personal. Val simply shuddered at the thought of possibly being asked the one question she dreaded the most, the one that could get her fired… “So how did you know Oliver Solaris?”
Thankfully, Gwen did move on. “Oh, by the way, the detective is British. Love his accent, but his face…”
“What’s wrong with his face?” Val asked as she wiped her hands.
“Well, it’s just that…” Gwen hesitated. “It’s just that he might have been in an accident, so don’t stare at him.”
Val threw the paper towel in the garbage and reached for a second one, wiping them vigorously another time, not even realizing her hands were dry as she quickly grew irritated by Gwen’s remark.
“I don’t stare at people,” Val said abruptly, then thought, What kind of person does she think I am? Does she really think I would be rude enough to stare at some disfigured man? Maybe I’m not a seasoned death investigation professional, but I’m certainly not an uncouth baboon.
“Just warning you, that’s all. Sometimes it’s hard not to stare no matter how many times you tell yourself not to. I just don’t want you to be surprised.”
Val said nothing further and walked out of the decomp room. For some reason Gwen was on her heels, following her down the hallway. A feeling of superiority wafted over Val. She sensed Gwen wanted to find out why the detective was asking to see her and was trying to be included in the interview. She had no problem with Gwen tagging along. This detective was here to talk to her about one of the most high-profile cases in Buffalo’s history, a case she had been part of. Let Gwen sink her teeth into that.
When they arrived at the office, a man was sitting in the tiny space, reclining in the chair. His back was to the door.
“Don’t stare,” Gwen instructed in a hushed tone in Val’s ear as the two went inside. Val reached a hand behind her, swatting at Gwen, trying to keep her at an acceptable distance, and quiet.
The man turned round, stood up, and smiled. “I’m Jack Styles. I’m investigating the murder of Julia DeHaviland and was hoping that I could ask you some questions.”
Val did stare, and her mouth opened but no words came out. She was speechless.
He was tall, his frame outlined by broad shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist. Chiseled cheekbones and a strong jaw were accompanied by dark hair and dark eyes. Everything about him looked good, but it was mostly his eyes. He had devilish eyes, the kind of eyes that grabbed women’s souls instantly and held them indefinitely.
“You must be Dr. Knight.” Jack continued to smile.
“Yes. How can I help you, Detective…?” Val hesitated. She was staring at him so intently she forgot who he said he was. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Gwen cover her mouth to hide the satisfaction of fooling her. Her cheeks grew hot as she became self-conscious.
“Styles. Jack Styles.” He held out his hand, still smiling but now in a pretentious manner. He hadn’t taken his gaze off her and seemed to be aware that she was distracted.
Val immediately disliked him, growing increasingly annoyed by the pompous grinning. He was an attractive man and he knew it. She hated this type. Worse yet, the realization of how unkempt she looked was embarrassing to say the least. It put her at an immediate disadvantage in dealing with him. It would be hard to put him in his place when she looked like something even the cat wouldn’t drag in.
“Well, Detective Styles…” Her words still went nowhere. She was so irritated that she had lost her train of thought.
“Let me explain.” He crossed his arms and looked right into Val’s eyes. “My partner and I have been privately hired by Colin Turner. I tried earlier to talk with Dr. Blythe but he’s unavailable and says he will be for the rest of the day. I bumped into Ms. Carmondy and she told me that you knew Julia DeHaviland quite well. I was hoping to ask you some questions about her.”
Val had been at the medical examiner’s offices long enough to know that when Blythe was unavailable he didn’t want to, nor did he need to, speak with you. This meant that this investigator wasn’t anyone important. Blythe didn’t need to be polite with him. Nor did she. And she didn’t want to be polite. This jackass was working for Julia’s husband, her killer.
“Privately hired? Oh, so you’re not a real detective,” she said.
Jack looked down at his arm and pinched himself in an exaggerated, affected manner. “I think of myself as very real. Though I’m not normally referred to as ‘detective.’ Mr. Styles or Jack will do just fine.”
Val’s irritation soared. “How can you work for that murderer?” she snapped.
“Who says he’s a murderer?” Jack asked calmly.
“Everyone,” she snapped again.
“So, he’s tried, convicted and sentenced all without ever stepping into a courtroom?” He had an air of superiority that Val couldn’t stomach. Every word she lashed at him, he replied with a smart retort.
She tried again. “Does he need to waste the taxpayer’s money?”
“I’m not paid by your taxpayers.”
“No, Colin’s paying you with Julia’s money.”
Jack just grinned.
Touché, Val thought. She was about to ask him to leave when he spoke up.
“So, what can you tell me about Dr. DeHaviland? I have Colin’s version, which I will admit is not the
most flattering. She really couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.
Val hissed, “He was a lousy two-timing bastard. How dare he badmouth her?” She lingered on the dare as if she herself would call Colin out.
“Please continue.” Jack sat back down and crossed his arms, letting Val rant. She went on, the events from her last conversation with Julia erupting. “The last thing she said to me is that he wouldn’t win.”
“How so?” Jack stood up from the chair, his demeanor serious now. “Did she ever mention anything to you?”
“No.” Val looked away. “I was supposed to have dinner with her. She was going to tell me more then, but I found her dead instead.”
“What can you tell me about the other murders? Francine Donohue and Jeanne Coleman. Did Colin have any connections to these other women?” Jack said, his tone softened.
“I don’t know very much about them. If Julia suspected Colin knew them, she never mentioned it to me. Anyway, Dr. Blythe is working on those. You should talk to him.” All Val wanted at this point was to be rid of Jack Styles.
“If I give you my card, do you think that you could give me a call if you remember anything else?” He held the card out to her.
Val took it, and as soon as he was out of the room she tossed it into the trash.
“I told you not to stare. You could have caught flies with how wide your mouth was open,” Gwen said. She was clearly amused with the joke. “You have to admit a guy who looks like that doesn’t walk through the door every day.”
“I wouldn’t have stared if you didn’t set me up,” Val said, fuming.
“I’m sorry. I thought you would think it was funny.”
“Maybe it would have been if he wasn’t such an egotistical bastard.”
“True, but he is good-looking. Just remember I saw him first!” Gwen said. “Anyway, the band starts at nine tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at six and we’ll get something to eat. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
19
Gwen was true to her word. She picked Val up at six the next night.
Avoiding an evening out with Gwen was something Val couldn’t do anymore. Gwen was friendly, personable and liked by many of her coworkers, something Val couldn’t claim. If Val outright blew her off one more time she’d look like a bitch, and then risk becoming labeled as a bitch in office gossip. Val tried to be as anonymous as possible in the medical examiner’s office. Having Gwen hate her, turning into an enemy, would be far worse and definitely much more dangerous than hanging out and socializing for a few hours. An enemy wouldn’t hesitate to get her fired—a friend maybe not.
Val concocted and stowed a plausible excuse for how she knew Oliver Solaris just in case. If she needed to resort to this, it was ready to go.
Luckily for Val, Gwen kept the conversation light and airy, venturing no further than run-of-the-mill chitchat as they drove to the restaurant. The conversation continued, minus Oliver thankfully, as the two were seated at Cole’s restaurant on Elmwood Avenue in the north section of the Elmwood Village. A collection of trendy restaurants and shops peppered each side of the street but this one was the only one with an outside patio.
With the weather being warm, Val and Gwen jumped at the opportunity to get the last open table. Once their glasses of wine had been delivered Gwen asked Val about her background and her family.
Val took a deep breath. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the conversation took a dangerous turn. She responded plainly. “I’m an only child. My parents died a long time ago. I was in my late teens when it happened. My father went first with a heart attack and my mother followed one year later in a car accident. When she died, my family was gone.”
Val often described her parents’ death candidly. It wasn’t that she was callous. It was a protective mechanism. It was the only way she could answer the question without falling apart, though it had been almost twenty years. She was a grown woman, yet at times she still felt like a lost child.
“You don’t beat around the bush at all now, do you?”
“It is what it is,” Val said. “So, what’s your story?”
“It’s kind of boring. Better order some coffee to keep you awake if you’re going to sit through my saga.”
“I’ll get a cup if I need it.”
“Just remember, you asked for it,” Gwen said. “I got married when I was seventeen. Dropped out of high school to do it. He was twenty-seven. God, was I stupid back then. My parents disowned me. They said if I was going to throw my life away, then they wanted nothing to do with me. I haven’t talked to them since that day.”
“I thought you said this story was going to be boring?” Val said.
“It is to me.”
Val took a sip of her wine. “What happened to your husband? It’s obvious that you don’t have one anymore.”
“I divorced him five years after I married him. After I caught him cheating on me for the third time. You know, I wasn’t even mad when I caught him. I guess I had just grown used to it.”
“What a bastard.”
“You got that right. He wasn’t much of a husband. I’m far better off without him.”
“That must have been tough. The divorce, I mean. You were what? Twenty-two? Did you have anyone to help you through it?”
“No. I had to learn to take care of myself, which I did. I grew up fast. It took a couple of years to get back on my feet after my divorce. Then, I got my General Education Diploma and went to college and became a registered nurse.”
As Gwen spoke, Val couldn’t help but think how similar their lives have been. Both lost parents while still teenagers and they had to struggle to make something of themselves. She felt close to Gwen, perhaps a bond through similar hard life experiences. Val felt comfortable discussing more of her own story, telling Gwen things she never told anyone. “In order to make ends meet while I was in school, I worked nights and weekends as a waitress and still had a hard time. How did you do it, moneywise?”
“I worked full time at a shoe store in the local mall while going to school. There was no extra money to buy anything. Christ, I had to buy clothes at the thrift store. Nowadays, I don’t wear anything without a label…” Gwen laughed. “And never anything previously worn by someone else!”
Val shook her head and smiled as she reminisced: her own story was so much the same. “I still remember one particularly rough year when I went into a drug store and couldn’t spend the three dollars it cost to buy red fingernail polish. Do you know what was the first thing I bought when I starting making money as a dentist?”
“Designer nail polish?”
“No. I bought a Mercedes that was almost the same color red as that nail polish I wanted to buy.”
Gwen burst out laughing and lifted her glass in a toast.
“Keep laughing. I drive a ten-year-old Honda now! It is red.” Val laughed so hard that it hurt. She couldn’t believe how good it felt. She liked Gwen and wanted to know more about her and asked another question even though it was risky and might possibly bring up Oliver Solaris. She wished at that moment the Oliver Solaris issue didn’t exist. Unfortunately, it did. Val wondered how quickly this new friend would hate her if she knew the truth about her. “You said you were a registered nurse. How did you wind up as a death investigator?”
“Well, I worked as a nurse for a while, but was bored with it. A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of the morgue and death investigation. It was love at first sight and I knew immediately this is what I wanted to do.”
Val took a deep breath: that friend must have been Oliver. She waited for the obvious question now and thought to the excuse she had concocted as to how she knew this man, ready to use it.
“So, how did you get into death investigation? It’s a far cry from what you used to do,” Gwen asked.
Here it comes. But at least there was no mention of Oliver, yet. Val picked up her glass and swirled the contents. Then took a healthy gulp. This question was easy and
she decided to answer it truthfully. She told Gwen about her encounter with Mr. Tate. There was no reason to hide it. It was because of him that she became a death investigator.
“You know, I felt my life was over when I couldn’t practice anymore. I had no idea what I was going to do. There was nothing else I wanted to do, so I thought. I liked dentistry—hell the money I made was great—but I was never excited about it. Something was missing. Truthfully, many days were dull. I was bored at the office and couldn’t wait to leave. So, I understand perfectly how you felt when you were a nurse.”
She looked at Gwen and continued, answering from her soul.
“When I was hired at the medical examiner’s office, it was basically to fulfill a need and that need was to pay my mortgage. It was a paycheck. But, now, life is exciting. My job is exciting. It certainly is anything but mundane. It’s kind of odd to say, but working with the dead has made me feel more alive than anything else I’ve done before.” She held up her hand to reveal her scar. “To think, without this, I would never be sitting here today. My life would never have taken this bizarre turn.”
“It’s funny where life takes you sometimes, isn’t it? To be doing something that makes you feel excited is a rare thing to find. I know what that’s like.”
Val realized that she dangerously exposed herself and then quickly added, “Yes, without Mr. Tate and Oliver I might not be here today.” She took one last gulp of her wine, finishing what was left, ready with her excuse for how she knew this man. It had to be coming next.
“So, I didn’t notice a wedding band on that Jack Styles’ finger. Do you think he’s single?” Gwen asked.
Val was stunned and she stared at Gwen. This question, she wasn’t expecting. Though she was surprised, she exhaled in relief and answered, “I could care less. He’s an egotistical bastard. In fact, that’s my new name for him. Egotistical Bastard. I’ll call him EB for short.”