Expire

by Danielle Girard

  “Trachea?” she’d asked Hal, who had checked his notebook.

  “That’s what they said. That’s the windpipe, right?”

  “Yes,” she had confirmed. Food would go down the esophagus not the trachea. In the autopsy, she’d confirmed the victim had some benign esophageal stricture, a tightening usually caused when stomach acids damaged its lining over time. But this condition did nothing to explain the choking. What’s more, the piece of tenderloin the victim had supposedly choked on was in his esophagus not the trachea, which meant he should have been able to breathe.

  Schwartzman had eventually discovered increased levels of mast cell tryptase, which suggested anaphylaxis. When asked about allergies, the wife confirmed that her husband had been allergic to bees. When Schwartzman ran a test for the presence of the antibody cells—IgE—specific for bee allergies, the results were positive. A closer look at the victim’s stomach showed he had ingested a bee that had been ground up and added to the sauce on his meat.

  Would Hal have seen those results? Had he made an arrest? Her thoughts settled on Hal as the drug pulled its thick blanket over her. Hal. If only she could get a message to him. It’s Roy Butler, Hal. Look at Roy Butler.

  She tried to whisper the words as she sank into the blackness.

  27

  Thursday, 6:30 a.m. PST

  Hal woke to the smell of coffee and the soft purr of the Nespresso maker through the closed bedroom door. It smelled like Anna. The scent of rose on the sheets. He lifted his head and remembered, the moment of peace shattering.

  He palmed his phone on the bedside table, hoping for something.

  His three nephews and his niece grinned in the background picture he’d taken six or seven years ago. The youngest, just a few weeks old then, nestled in the arms of the oldest. He studied James’s tiny infant face. “James reminds me of you as a baby,” his mother had told him when they were alone. James’s father, his brother-in-law, might not appreciate hearing his child looked more like his wife’s brother than him. But his sister Becca had said it, too.

  He stared at the tiny flat nose and the swollen pink lips. What would his baby look like? Would he or she look more like Anna? Or like him? How would their genes mix?

  And what if he never got to see the baby? He felt as though someone were carving into his chest with a spoon.

  Buster snored on the floor near the window.

  Hal sat on the edge of the bed, willing himself to move. He held the phone tight in his fist and then threw it hard on the bed. How he would have loved to hear it explode against the wall. But he couldn’t afford to break that phone. It had to be working when she called or when someone found her and called him.

  From the bed, the phone rang. Hailey Wyatt.

  “Hey,” he said, struggling to keep his voice calm. Who would the call about Anna come from? Telly? Hailey? His captain? “What’s up?”

  “Theobold is in the morgue. Says we can come meet him in an hour.”

  She started to say something else, but the words became a blur. The results from last night’s stabbing. The morgue. Anna’s morgue. He shook his head, cleared his throat, and interrupted her. “I talked to a couple of the homeless who regularly sleep near Union Square. They were pretty drunk last night, so I wanted to go back and talk to them again this morning. And there are a few more I’d like to chase down before they pick up and move for the day.” He tried to slow his speech, to disguise the obvious panic in his words. He could not go to the morgue. “Why don’t you go see—” He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. The acting ME.

  Her voice was pinched. “Hal.”

  “We’ll catch up after. We’ve got three murders to work. We’re behind the eight ball here. If we can clear these—” He shut his mouth. He was going to say that if they could clear these, then he could get back to looking for Anna.

  Hailey’s voice was soft. “We should meet up first. Roger’s going to be in the lab in forty minutes. We’ll go over the victims and the evidence, touch base on where we are. I think you’ll be able to catch those guys sleeping for the next few hours. It’s too cold to move now.”

  It was true. In the winter months, the homeless tended to sleep later, the harsh cold air keeping them bundled until the sun had risen in the sky. The other thing he heard in her voice was that she wanted to see him. She and Roger had already spoken.

  “That work?” she pressed.

  “Sure.”

  “Then I can go with you to Union Square.”

  Which meant he’d have to go to the morgue. “We need to divide and conquer. I’ll start with the homeless. You can start with . . .”

  “Theobold.”

  “Right.”

  There was a brief pause before she spoke again, as though she considered arguing. Then she said simply, “I’ll see you in the lab later.”

  “See you there.” He ended the call. It made sense to divide tasks. He didn’t need to hear the cause of death. He could get the report from her and talk to the people who might have seen something.

  And he wasn’t prepared to go to the morgue. Not while the ME was someone other than Anna.

  When Hal emerged from the shower, there was a text from Roger confirming their meeting at the lab. First Hailey, now Roger. Both of them checking on him. Only Roger and Hailey knew about him and Anna. He’d been so relieved that Roger knew, to have it out there in that moment, but now he wished it was still his secret. Then they wouldn’t look at him with those expressions, the ones they didn’t even know they were making. Their mouths partially open, as though they couldn’t think about it without being winded. The sad-puppy eyes of pity. Hailey was especially bad. She knew his history with Sheila and had watched him like a sister, worried about him being alone.

  I’ll be there.

  He made himself coffee, grateful that his mother wasn’t in the kitchen when he entered. She’d set the table, and a bowl of hot oatmeal and blueberries was centered on a place mat, a folded napkin beside it.

  As he was putting a top on the travel mug, his mother appeared. He leaned down to kiss her cheek and started for the door.

  “Made you some breakfast,” she said.

  Steam rose from among the berries on the oatmeal, like little ghosts escaping. It turned his stomach. “Thanks. I’m not hungry,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

  “See you later,” she responded. He could feel her gaze on him as he left the house. He was surprised she didn’t argue. Eating a solid breakfast had always been one of her firm rules. That she didn’t enforce it now made his fears about Anna worse.

  When Hal arrived, the lab was hopping. A half dozen people—one tech trying to lift fingerprints off some tool with bright-orange rubber handles, one head down over a microscope, another working at a computer. But no sign of Hailey or Roger.

  Hal crossed to the center of the room, where Naomi Muir was working at a light table, reconstructing a piece of shredded paper with a pair of tweezers.

  “That ours?” he asked.

  She looked up. “Nope. It’s one of Kong’s.” Before he could ask, she nodded to the small break room at the rear of the lab. “They’re in there.” She lowered her head and returned to her work.

  In the break room, Roger and Hailey were hunched over the table. A stack of files sat between them, but they didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular. Hal knew immediately they were talking about him.

  “Coffee?” Hailey asked when she spotted him.

  “I can get it.”

  She was already up, pulling a mug from one of the hooks under the cabinets. He couldn’t remember the last time Hailey had willingly served him coffee unless she was up to get herself some first. And even then, she always did it with a kind of don’t-get-used-to-this look.

  Hal sank into the chair and opened his notebook. He was not going to talk about himself. Or Anna. He thanked Hailey for the coffee and nodded to Roger. “We have anything from the scenes that might help us find a suspect?”

 
Roger glanced at Hailey.

  Hal’s stomach tightened. “Do you know something?” he asked.

  Hailey shook her head.

  “About Anna?” Roger said. “No. Nothing yet.”

  The bridge of his nose ached, and tears burned his eyes. Damn it.

  “We’re still wa—”

  Hal shook his head. “Tell me when you find something. For now, let’s focus on these three murders. Close this case.”

  “Sure,” Roger said.

  Hal sat in front of his notebook, clicked open his pen, and drank from the coffee cup, letting the liquid burn his mouth until the pain distracted him from the fear. He wrote the date at the top of a clean page and nodded. “Okay then. What do we know?”

  28

  Thursday, 9:45 a.m. EST

  Georgia Schwartzman was not a woman who allowed herself to obsess about what others thought. If she had been, she would never have married Sam Schwartzman, not in a town like Greenville. And she had loved him. He had been the first man to hold her attention for any span of time. Their life together was good. She had loved him until the day he died.

  But she had also enjoyed the fact that marrying him was viewed as a bit scandalous. Not by her family. Her parents had loved Sam, who’d worked for her father from the month he’d graduated from law school. That Sam was Jewish didn’t bother them in the least. Her parents were progressive in that way. But among her decidedly prissy friends—both from high school and those from the small college she’d attended—many thought it shocking she would marry outside her Baptist upbringing.

  After Georgia had skipped their weekly lunch on Wednesday, Patrice and Cheryl Ann had reached out to make sure she wasn’t ill. She’d assured them she was not, lied that she had a couple of appointments that had gotten moved around, and promised to see them soon. This afternoon there was an event for the children’s hospital, and she was beginning to waver on going. But what excuse could she make for yet another absence? Surely Patrice and Cheryl Ann would know something was wrong if she didn’t attend.

  And what was wrong?

  She wasn’t ill. She felt fine. She wasn’t even particularly worried about Bella, but then how could she be? She had no idea what her daughter might be doing. And it felt so impossible to believe that someone had kidnapped her. She was a grown woman.

  Her thoughts returned again to Spencer. If only she could sit down with him and have a conversation, clear up her doubts. But when she called his office, the receptionist informed her that he was still out. “I’m afraid I don’t know when he is expected back,” the woman said in a slightly bored tone.

  Determined to take her mind off Spencer, Georgia strode into her closet and focused on what she might wear to the fund-raising event. She pulled down a blue sheath dress that set off her eyes. She hung it on a hook beside the mirror and then chose a deep-red one with a blouse top and tiny pleats around the skirt. Either would be fine. But looking back and forth between the two, she couldn’t make up her mind.

  There used to be a time when she could call Sam, and he would tell her what to wear. A silly thing, but she always appreciated his advice. And more than that, she appreciated that her husband took the time to give the question his attention. He didn’t give her the pat answer that many of her friends got from their husbands—“Oh, dear, you’ll look great in whatever you choose”—always delivered with a barely concealed roll of the eyes, as though a woman’s attire were a trivial matter they were too important to address.

  Spencer had been like Sam that way. And like him in other ways as well, or so she had thought. Staring between the two dresses, Georgia thought again of Spencer’s assistant, Jenny Fontaine. Older than him, Jenny had added a layer of class to his office. She and the Fontaines used to exchange holiday cards, she remembered.

  After leaving the closet, Georgia went to her desk and found her master card list. There on the third page was Jennifer Fontaine. Jennifer Fontaine and Lindsay and Valerie, her two girls. She was a single mother. Georgia studied the address, thinking. Ten years had passed since she’d sent Christmas cards, but the address on her list was the same one she’d seen the young receptionist write down.

  Not that it meant Jenny Fontaine was still there. She might live anywhere now. But even as she calculated the odds that Jenny was still at that address, Georgia decided she would pay her a visit. She was at the front door before she realized she was still in her pajamas.

  Changing quickly, she pulled her hair into a low ponytail rather than taking the time to style it, something she almost never did. In her car, she entered the Fontaines’ address into the navigation system and saw the house was even closer than she’d expected. She could be there in ten or twelve minutes.

  Suddenly she longed to go back into the house and crawl into her bed. She could spend the day sleeping and playing the silly movies Patrice was always watching with her daughter. Skip the fund-raiser and have a little dinner, a glass of wine, and more stupid television. She rarely watched TV, but there were surely a hundred things that she might get lost in.

  Then she could shut out the doubts about Bella. That she’d been so wrong about her daughter’s husband. That his adoration was actually something dark and sinister.

  That Spencer had actually hurt Bella.

  Which would mean that Georgia was the worst type of mother.

  She followed the directions to the Fontaine house, which was clustered among a development built in the mideighties. The houses were almost mirror images of one another, their individuality expressed in the slightly varied front doors or color choices. Each had a small square front lawn on one side and a simple driveway and two-car garage on the other.

  The awkward-sounding electronic navigator announced she’d reached her destination. Georgia parked on the curb and looked up at the house that belonged to Jenny Fontaine. A pink tricycle was on its side by the front door. Perhaps grandkids, she thought, trying not to lose her nerve.

  Georgia walked up the front path and rang the doorbell. A dog barked from the inside, and tiny feet pounded across a hardwood floor. Then a woman’s voice warned not to open the door, told the dog to hush.

  The woman who answered was not Jenny Fontaine, though she looked a little like her. Her daughter, Georgia guessed. In one arm was a little girl, maybe three but maybe younger. Georgia had long since lost the ability to judge the age of children. In the other hand, the woman held on to the collar of a curly-haired dog with sandy fur.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” Georgia said, holding her hands together and trying to smile. Her lips quivered with the effort. “I was looking for Jennifer Fontaine.”

  The woman shook her head. “She’s not here. Who are you?”

  “I’m Georgia Schwartzman. I knew her a long time ago. Are you her daughter?”

  The woman nodded. “I’m Valerie.”

  “I used to get your Christmas cards,” Georgia added. “Is she still in the area?”

  Valerie’s mouth worked a moment before the words came out. “She passed away last year.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Georgia said. Jenny’s death hadn’t occurred to her. She was younger than Georgia, but not by much.

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m not sure,” Georgia admitted. “I knew your mom when she worked for Spencer MacDonald. She was his assistant.”

  Valerie said nothing.

  “When did she leave his office?”

  “She quit last January,” Valerie said.

  “Because she was sick,” Georgia probed, feeling her cheeks burn at the intrusion.

  “She wasn’t sick then. She just quit.”

  “Do you happen to know why?”

  Valerie shifted her daughter onto the other hip, holding the dog between her legs as she did. She didn’t ask her to come in, so Georgia stood on the front porch, unsure if there was something she ought to do to help.

  “Why do you want to know?” Valerie asked.
>
  Georgia searched her mind for a response that would make any sense. The police visit and then the things her friends had said. Her doubts. “My daughter is missing. She was married to him.”

  The little girl said something in her mother’s ear, but Valerie hushed her. She leaned forward, interested now. “You think he had something to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t know,” Georgia said quickly. “I have no reason to think that.” She paused, longing to excuse herself, to tell Valerie she wasn’t feeling well, that she wasn’t making any sense. Return to her car and drive home. But the police had come to ask her about Spencer, and it had seeded this doubt. Wasn’t that why she’d gone to his office? Why she had come here?

  Valerie bounced the girl on her hip and scanned the empty street.

  “Perhaps I’m not thinking clearly,” Georgia admitted. “I came to see your mom, since she knew him well. I thought maybe . . .” But she couldn’t articulate what she thought. Ideas spun around her like gnats, too fast and small to grasp.

  “Mama worked for that man for fifteen years,” Valerie told her. “And then she came home one day with one of those white boxes you take when you leave a job. One small box. Hardly had anything in it. Just pictures of us kids and the grandkids. She’d just up and quit.”

  “And she didn’t say why?”

  Valerie shook her head. “She couldn’t work there anymore. Said she’d seen something she couldn’t unsee.”

  Georgia felt her hand hover at her throat. Seen something. In his office.

  “My sister, Lindsay, and I pressed her about it, but she wouldn’t tell us. Said it wasn’t illegal, but it changed everything for her.”

  Georgia felt light-headed and put a palm on the door trim to support herself. “She never went back in?”

  Valerie shook her head. “And as far as I know, he never reached out. The company paid her accrued vacation leave, and that was it.” She nodded to the little girl. “We took Madison out of day care the next day, and Mama helped watch her until she died.”