Authors: Lisa Black
‘You angel,’ Theresa said with an embarrassing amount of fervor.
‘I admit that I am naught but Sweetness and Light, but do you mention it specifically for a reason?’
She rinsed out her porcelain Cleveland FBI mug and filled it by way of an answer. Then she told him of the events during the previous seven hours. Her voice apparently hadn’t learned to stop doing that trembling thing, because at one point he got up and gave her a hug. Don was sweet that way.
What Theresa didn’t think he knew was how it made her heart pound and her skin sweat; she tightened her arms around him in a way that pushed some of the air out of his lungs, and she knew it was too tight but couldn’t make herself let go; she pushed her nose into his shoulder and inhaled Ivory soap and Gain laundry detergent; she wished the world would freeze forever at that one moment in time so that she’d never have to remind herself that she was an adult, a professional, and eleven years too old for this nice boy who should date a nice kindergarten teacher and then settle down to raise two or three children of his own.
But the world didn’t stop, and she stepped away and went back to her coffee with cheeks burning, knowing Don would chalk it up to grief and shock. Well, shock. He would know she felt no more grief for Darryl than he did.
He gave her a moment to collect herself, then asked: ‘So, Temporary Acting Supervisor, what do we do now?’
‘Glad you asked.’ Theresa pulled several envelopes out of her pockets.
He groaned.
‘Hair samples, presumably Justin’s. Blood sample from the wall by the elevator. Ditto from the wall by the hallway. Blood sample from the deskmen’s office floor. Blood sample from Darryl’s autopsy.’
‘I thought you said CPD was handling this scene.’
‘They are. And they have plenty of samples of their own.’
‘All right. What else?’
‘A few other tasks, but for yours truly. I’m going to need Justin’s fingerprints from his personnel file.’
‘Good luck with that,’ he said.
HazMat had responded for the unhappy task of wiping up her co-worker’s spilled blood, and the disinfectant smell permeated the entire first floor. On the plus side, Theresa guessed that the deskmen’s office hadn’t smelled that fresh since long before her tenure at the ME’s. They bundled all the soiled cleaning materials into three large red biohazard bags, and then finally stripped off the isolation suits they had to wear. Those Tyvek suits serve their purpose admirably, protecting both the worker and the crime scene from contaminating each other, but they’re hotter than hell, and the day Theresa had to wear one to each scene she would begin to think about retiring.
But on the second floor the staff had begun to trickle back in, reluctantly, disappointed at not getting the entire day off. Many comments were made as to the efficiency of coming in for only half a day; the staff were convinced that the county would be more cost-effective if it had left them home enjoying a third cup of coffee in front of the midday talk shows. The county, of course, couldn’t have cared less.
The center of the room consisted of empty space for citizens to wait in line at the counter to obtain autopsy reports or death certificates. To the right sat the copy machine, protected behind a low swinging door that only employees could enter, and then the glass wall and door to Stone’s office. To the left sat the vault, a storage room with file cabinets going back to the seventies. Small windows lined the room, filling the space with a grayish light as the sun filtered through the usual late winter clouds and reflected off the buff-colored Formica and faded carpeting.
Janice, Queen of the Secretaries, stood in her usual spot behind the counter, directing the day’s chaos from underneath her helmet of shellacked brown hair, armed with a gel pen and a cordless phone she’d bought herself in order to have more range of motion. Like most queens, she could be quite gracious as long as one followed court protocol and showed the proper amount of respect. Theresa waited as she finished explaining to their histologist over the phone that, yes, she really did have to come in or the entire afternoon would have to come out of her vacation pay. Period.
Then she hung up. ‘You poor thing. You walked in on his body?’
‘Yep.’
‘But CPD did the crime scene?’ Stone might have been okay with allowing others into their territory, but Janice certainly hadn’t signed that off.
‘Yep.’
Janice said nothing, but punched a number into her handset with an angry thumb.
‘I have a few prints that I need to compare, though. I’m going to need Justin Warner’s print card from his personnel file.’ Theresa spoke gently, respectfully, while knowing that it might not do any good. Couldn’t hurt, though.
Janice put the receiver to her ear. ‘I can’t give you anything out of a personnel file.’
‘He’s missing and possibly dead. Either that, or he’s a murder suspect. In any case, I have prints I need to eliminate.’
She scowled, either at Theresa or at whoever was at the other end of her line and not picking up their phone. Theresa could hear the relentless buzzing from across the counter.
‘You don’t have access to personnel files,’ she said, putting a very delicate emphasis on
you
.
‘I don’t want his personnel file. Just the fingerprint card. I
am
the fingerprint examiner.’
She terminated the unanswered call with an impatient stab to the ‘End’ button. ‘Reese won’t pick up. We’re going to be short a pathologist, and there are six already scheduled for today.’ She meant six autopsies, plus any other traffic accidents or heart attacks which occurred between now and the early afternoon. ‘You’ll have to get the ME’s permission.’
‘Fine,’ Theresa said. ‘But any minute now CPD is going to come up here and ask for it, and you’ll have to give it to them. I don’t even need the original. Just let me make a copy of it.’
She considered this.
‘I mean—’ Theresa tried to carefully prod, though subtlety had never been her strong point – ‘our own guy was murdered, in our own building.’
Janice walked away without another word. Theresa crossed her fingers and waited, worrying about Reese. He lived not ten minutes away in one of the vast brick mansions that lined Fairmount Boulevard. She had been there a few times for parties; he and his wife liked to entertain, though only the upper echelons. Theresa could not recall him ever being late to the morning viewing, much less blowing off an entire day. Despite their funds, they didn’t even seem to vacation very often. And from his growing potbelly, she didn’t think he’d be out jogging.
Janice returned, holding out a square piece of stiff white paper.
‘Thank you.’ Theresa went off to the copy machine behind its swinging door before Janice could change her mind. When Theresa returned it, she asked the woman, ‘Where do you suppose Dr Reese is?’
‘The man may be a bit of a snob,’ she said, while Theresa clamped her tongue down on a comment about elitism, pots and kettles, ‘but in twenty years here I have never had him not answer his phone.’
Theresa said, ‘If anyone needs me, I’m going on a short break.’
Calling the homes on Fairmount Boulevard mansions was not an exaggeration. Gorgeous English country houses outfitted in hardwood and surrounded by greenery, where anything that sold for less than half a million or had fewer than five thousand square feet under truss would be considered on the small side.
Theresa had second-guessed herself through every inch of the winding, wooded boulevard, asking herself just what the hell she thought she was doing. So an older, professional man had decided to sleep in? So his cellphone had gone dead? Maybe they had a family emergency, one of the grandchildren broke an arm or something, and the Reeses had rushed to whatever junior mansion their doctor offspring lived in, in whatever equally gorgeous suburb of whatever city. Or maybe Dr Hubert Reese had awoken in the night in the grip of a homicidal rage, driven to work, murdered one deskman and brought the other one back there to lock in his cellar for future use. No matter which scenario might be most likely, none were any responsibility of Theresa’s. None at all.
She kept driving.
Maybe she simply needed to take a break, to get some fresh air, a moment away from the horrific scene she’d encountered this morning, even though it wasn’t really that horrific, not for Theresa, who had waded through such scenes at least a couple of hundred times before.
Just not when personally acquainted with the victim. Not usually, anyway.
With the sun up, albeit hidden behind the sky’s usual carpet of gray haze, Theresa found the house without any trouble. She’d last seen it at some sort of summer barbecue. Fourth of July, she thought. Rachael had been out on a date, and Frank had gone to the ball game, so Theresa had shown up with only a plate of deviled eggs as company. Now, the grass, though soggy with the spring rains, looked just as neat as she remembered it, the driveway perfectly clear of last fall’s dead leaves. No cars were in the long drive, but then any present would reside in the four-car detached garage behind the house. Both buildings were made entirely of brick, of course.
Theresa got out of the car, sucking in the smell of clean air and damp tree bark, listening to the chirps of birds filtering back from the southern states. Aside from the tail end of the morning commute along Fairmount, she seemed to be the only human in the area.
The driveway curved around to the back; she left her car there and didn’t bother walking around to the front. The three stone steps up to the rear door were as clean as the driveway. The very ordinary-looking screen door seemed a little out of place, but behind it sat a heavy, dark wood barrier with an ornate brass handle.
Which hung open about six inches.
Maybe he’d just been leaving, preparing to go to work.
Through the screen she could see the kitchen, cherry cabinets, granite countertops, a coffee cup sitting on the island in the middle. No blood, no bodies. But still, reaching out to rap on the aluminum frame made her heart pound and her throat go dry. Something, somewhere, was bad. Very bad.
Her knock rattled the screen door, and she called Reese’s name. She had to force herself to give it proper volume. He would probably appear in the doorway any second, himself startled at her unexpected presence and scaring the friggin’ life out of Theresa.
Nothing.
She couldn’t make herself knock again.
Time for the next step. She pulled out her cellphone and called CPD. Theresa wasn’t stupid.
After a few minutes she got Dispatch to route her through to Shephard. Theresa told him where she was and why.
‘What’s this doctor’s connection to Johnson?’ he asked.
‘Other than working in the same building? None that I know of.’
‘Why do you think he may be in danger?’
‘He’s not answering his phone, and his back door is open.’
‘That’s it?’
Theresa said, ‘With this guy, that’s enough.’
He paused to think, no doubt weighing manpower concerns over the risks of blowing off even a minor anomaly in light of that morning’s events. ‘Okay, I’ll send a car. Stay where you are.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going in.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What if he’s bleeding to death, like Darryl? A few minutes could save his life.’
‘
No
. Stay out of that house! That’s an order.’
Theresa felt sorry for the guy – he’d had a busy morning, too – but she was already in the kitchen. It did not appear any more ominous without the intervening screen. Some dishes in the sink, crumbs on the shiny granite counter, and nothing else of note. ‘I understand, Sergeant, I do. But I don’t work for you, and I have valid reason to be concerned for Dr Reese’s safety, so I’m going to look for him. It’s on me. Is this a recorded line?’
She moved into the hallway. A paneled dining room with a table long enough to seat twelve comfortably and original, though uninteresting, paintings on the walls … but no blood, and no doctor.
‘This is my cellphone, so no, it’s not a recorded line!’
‘Oh, sorry. I was just trying to give you an out – I mean … you know what I mean.’
‘
I
mean get out of that house! Wait in the driveway.’
‘No can do. Stay on the phone with me?’ she asked. Okay, begged, but she hoped that desperation would not translate through one or two cellphone towers.
‘Yes, I will stay on the phone, but do not go into that house.’
‘Too late. Kitchen and dining room clear. I’m going to call him again, maybe he’s upstairs and I don’t want to startle him.’ She covered the receiver with her hand and shouted the doctor’s name as loudly as she could. Waited. Nothing.
‘No response. Here’s a family room, puffy couches, big screen, leftover potato chips. Nothing – sinister. Small hallway bath, clear. Nice towels. I’m moving toward the front of the house. This must be the living room proper.’
‘Do you hear anything? Any movement?’
She paused. ‘No. Okay, living room, English chintz furniture, mahogany tables. Everything is too perfect, I bet they live in the family room. It’s nippier in here, too, probably harder to heat with these large windows. They could put plastic over them in the winter, but that always ruins the look—’
‘MacLean! I’m not interested in listing the place,’ he protested finally. ‘Just make sure there is no one else there – look for people, not decor.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Foyer. Front door is closed and, let me check, locked. Moving into a … what would this be? Parlor? Rumpus room? Living Room Part B? There’s a few couches and end tables and – oh.’
‘MacLean?’
‘There’s blood here.’
She thought she sounded calm. More or less.
‘There’s a smear of something that looks like blood on an otherwise perfect fawn carpet. Maybe it’s dirt. Next room – okay.’
‘Theresa?’
‘It’s not dirt.’
SEVEN
S
hephard found her in the library – an actual library, her dream room, with four walls of bookshelves in deep walnut, a matching desk, overstuffed leather armchairs and a window seat below leaded glass panes. Her dream room except for the body of Dr Reese, awkwardly sprawled between the front corner of the desk and a small round occasional table with an inlaid wood design.