Authors: Teri Thackston
“I know you guys can handle the load.” Hosken jingled his
coins again. “That’s it.”
As the other detectives returned to work, Jason stood and
beckoned to Charlie. “I found three more unlicensed body shops near the docks.
Let’s go check ’em out.”
“MacKenzie! Garcia!” Chief Hosken approached them, a file
folder clasped in one meaty hand. “You’ve pulled a new case.”
Charlie groaned. “We’re working six homicides already.”
Jason shoved a hand through his hair. “And we’re waist-deep
in checking body shops for that hit-and-run.”
“That case is low priority,” Hosken interrupted. “I know
somebody got killed but I doubt it was intentional.”
Fury burned Jason’s gut. “That somebody was my friend and
the driver who killed him might be a chronic drunk. He needs to be found and
taken off the road.”
“And we need to find the son of a bitch who’s goin’ around
poppin’ old ladies too.” Hosken shoved the file at Jason. “The victim’s name
was Amalia Campanero.”
Stepping close, Charlie gently took possession of the
folder. “We’ll look into it.”
“I want a report in my hand before five today.” Hosken’s
pocket change jingled furiously as he turned and walked away.
Jason scowled at his partner. “How can we wrap up any case
when he keeps shuffling our priorities? He took Ty’s case away too. I know he
wants to be a hands-on chief, Charlie but look how far he
hasn’t
gotten
in solving it.”
“About as far as you have working it on your own time.” At
Jason’s sharp glance, Charlie lifted one eyebrow. “I know you’ve been back to
that club to question the staff.”
“Somebody had to do it. Hosken missed two waitresses who
were working the club the night Ty was shot.”
“Did they tell you anything?”
“Not a damn thing.”
Charlie clapped a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Let Hosken work
it a while. He might eventually see something we missed.”
“Yeah, right. I’m going to check out those body shops. You
coming or not?”
Charlie sighed and dropped the new folder on the pile on his
desk. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
* * * * *
Emma hesitated in the prep room doorway. She’d been back at
work for two days but this was her first time in the autopsy area. The familiar
room stretched out before her. Three stainless steel workstations lined the far
wall. The first two were dark because the other medical examiners and their
technicians were working on lab reports upstairs.
Furthest to the right, at Emma’s station, a task light
illuminated the draped form on the slanted table beneath it. The suite was
quiet, the cold air laden with the sting of chemicals and cleaners and the
scent of sweet, still blood.
“You ready t’get cookin’, Doc?”
Emma jumped at the voice.
“Sorry.” Autopsy technician Skitch Reid leaned over her
shoulder. A grin brightened his youthful face. “Did I scare you?”
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t know you were there.”
As he studied her face, Skitch’s brown eyes widened with
real concern. “Dr. Powell said he could assign someone else to this case if you’re
not up to it yet.”
Emma knew what he really meant. She’d come close to being on
that table herself and they all worried how her work would affect her.
Feeling a twinge in her ribs, she straightened her spine. “Let’s
do it.”
“We got a couple of new techs while you were gone.”
Following her into the room, Skitch flicked a wall switch with a sweep of one
hand, fully illuminating the third workstation. “Fresh meat, straight from med
school. One of them even came from
Harvard
.”
He gave his last word a drawn-out inflection that eased the
tension in Emma’s jaw. She led him across the shadowed room to the pool of
light that showered their station.
“How are they working out?” she asked.
“Not grade-A but they pass inspection.” He began to set up
the equipment tray, his long brown fingers arranging the stainless steel
appliances with graceful ease. “Harvard, of course, thinks he knows it all.”
“If I recall, so did you your first few weeks on the job.”
Emma’s gaze ran over the draped body but she didn’t remove the covering.
Not
yet. Not yet.
“Yeah but I did know most of it. Admit it, Dr. St. Clair. I’m
the cream of the crop.” His dark eyes gleamed like hot mocha. “I’m rarely wrong
about anything.”
“And rarely modest.” She snapped on a pair of surgical
gloves. “You assisted Dr. Powell while I was gone?”
“Uh-huh.” Skitch positioned the equipment tray and locked
its rollers. “I prefer to work with you or Dr. Reiser.”
A stilted silence settled as both of them remembered they
would never work with Dr. Brian Reiser again. Emma spoke quickly to fill the
gap. “I talked to Brian’s parents last night. They said to thank you for the
Godivas you sent.”
“Dr. Reiser always sent his mom chocolates at Easter. Since
he wasn’t here…” Skitch shrugged, meek when it mattered. “I’m really glad you’re
back, Dr. St. Clair. I couldn’t handle one more shift with Dr. Powell. He’s so
mayonnaise-on-white-bread, if you know what I mean.”
Emma had forgotten Skitch’s odd habit of associating
everything with food. “Strait-laced?”
“That’s it. You’re more fun to work with and you don’t blow
your top every time I drop a liver on the floor.” He chuckled when Emma lifted
an eyebrow. “Just kidding. But I did splatter some stomach fluids on his… Well,
Dr. Powell shouldn’t have removed his scrubs before I got the specimen tray out
of here.”
“Oh, Skitch.” Emma swallowed a laugh as she pulled her face
shield into place. “You are so lucky I’m back.”
“Don’t I know it.” Skitch lowered his own shield. “So, do
you have plans for lunch?”
“I’m meeting Marta.”
“Ah, the delectable ADA Marta Zamora.” His dark eyes went
dreamy. “Can I come?”
“Maybe next time. We want to catch up on our girl-talk
today.” She took a deep breath. “Well, let’s get to it.”
Gently, she drew back the sheet to reveal the patient’s
head. White hair, matted with blood, blue veins showing through the thin flesh
of a bony forehead and…
For a moment the room seemed to spin in a clockwise motion
while Emma’s stomach careened in the opposite direction.
“You okay?” Skitch leaned into her line of sight and his
dark brown face smeared across the fluorescent lighting. “Doc?”
“Fine.” The room steadied slowly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re the color of scrambled eggs.”
“I’m okay.” Emma tried not to think about the fact that half
the victim’s face was missing.
“Doc?” Skitch said again.
She inhaled deeply, getting control of her racing pulse. “Turn
on the recorder, Skitch. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He reached for the overhead control panel and pressed the
switch to start the audio recorder. “I don’t think there’s much to look for,”
he said, peering over her shoulder.
“Not much at all,” Emma agreed. “Read the file.”
“The file.” Skitch swore under his breath. “Sorry, Doc. I
left it on my desk upstairs.”
Emma forced herself to look at the corpse, to study what was
left of the woman’s face, taking in the lines around the slack mouth, the
papery texture of bloodless skin folded about the neck. And the wound… No one
deserved an end like this.
“Go get it, Skitch,” she quietly said as she turned off the
recorder.
“I’ll be right back.”
A chill breathed over Emma’s skin as Skitch left. Looking
down at this body as she had stood looking at so many others, she experienced a
sense of unreality. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman had opened
the one eye left to her and spoken.
This is exactly what Edgar hinted might happen.
She
closed her eyes as another wave of dizziness swept over her. She reached out to
steady herself against the table and her gloved fingers brushed the arm of the
dead woman.
“Here now.”
Emma’s eyes popped open. Feminine and faint, the voice
shimmied up her spine.
“I wanted to watch that hospital show,” the voice went on. “I
always watch that hospital show on Monday night.”
Looking up, Emma saw a woman standing in the shadows near
the cooler room door. Her features were difficult to make out in the dimness,
so Emma lifted her face shield. It didn’t help.
“Jaime wanted to watch that silly game. ‘Here now,’ I said
to him, ‘I watch my hospital show on Monday night’.” The woman’s voice quivered
with age. She sounded Hispanic.
Emma narrowed her eyes, taking in the woman’s white cotton
housedress and slippers. This isn’t one of the new technicians, she realized.
The woman gestured toward the body. “Jaime did this.”
Shaking off her surprise, Emma moved forward. “Ma’am, you
can’t be in here.”
“I had to tell you about Jaime. My brother. He shot me and
ran out the back.”
Tiny hairs on Emma’s arms prickled beneath the sleeves of
her lab coat. She stopped near the middle autopsy station and studied the other
woman’s form again. Small and slight, the figure seemed almost a part of the
shadows and, somehow, not quite right. Emma wished that Skitch would return.
“Ma’am, you really have to leave,” she said.
“Here now, young lady.” The woman’s voice shook again, as if
she couldn’t quite catch her breath. “I had to tell you what my brother did.”
Emma’s gaze ran over the shadowed form. “You said your
brother shot you. Are you hurt? Shall I have someone take you to a hospital?”
“I’m getting tired but I do not hurt, Dr. St. Clair.”
Emma caught her breath. “You know my name?”
The woman stepped forward at last, into the pale light.
Bile welled in the back of Emma’s throat. That face. The
woman’s face, lined with age and as dry and pale as paper, stared at her with
dark eyes.
Emma jerked around and looked at the body on the table.
“You’re…” Words wedged their way past the bile in Emma’s
throat. “You’re her.”
When Emma turned back, the space in front of the cooler room
door was empty. The woman had vanished.
Emma’s colon turned to water. Pushing away from the table,
she stepped toward the shadowed end of the long room but stopped when her
trembling knees sent pain vibrating down the freshly knit tibia of her left
leg. Her heart beat at her fractured ribs and both lungs threatened to
collapse.
Hauling in one breath after another, she looked back at the
ruined face of the woman on the autopsy table and tried to put the scientific,
analytical part of her mind to work. But science had abandoned her and no
matter how many ways she analyzed what she’d seen, she came to the same
conclusion.
The face of the woman on the table was the same as that of
the woman in the shadows.
“They’re related, that’s all.” Her tongue brushed thick and
gummy against her teeth as she spoke aloud. “They must be related.”
Turning her back on the corpse, she removed her face shield
and gloves and shoved them inside a hazardous waste bin. If the woman had been
related to the victim, then seeing her kin in such a state would have been a
terrible shock. That would account for the strange things the woman had said.
That or she really had been shot. Maybe at the same time that Amalia Campanero
had been killed.
Stripping off her lab coat, shoe covers and hair cap, Emma
dumped them into a laundry bin and then shoved open the door to the connecting
shower area.
“Ma’am?” she called out. No one responded. “Ma’am, please
answer me.”
Empty shower and dressing stalls yawned at her as she
hurried through the shower area. Although her knees had stopped shaking, her
quick steps and turns took a toll on her left leg, forcing her to slow down.
Footsteps echoing against the tile floor, she moved through the locker and
laundry rooms until she finally entered the main corridor.
A door stood at each end of the long gray hallway, each one
leading to staff parking areas. One other door near the central elevator led
into the front public area of the building. All three doors required special
electronic card keys to be opened from the outside. It was impossible for
anyone to get through them without one of those keys.
Emma forced herself to breathe slowly, to think. How could
the woman have vanished so quickly? So quietly?
Almost as if she hadn’t really existed.
Emma took another breath and exhaled away that notion. Of
course the woman had existed.
Emma looked at the elevator. The dial above it indicated the
car was parked here on the first floor. As slowly as the elevator moved, the woman
couldn’t have reached an upper floor and sent it back down already. Besides,
the elevator led to labs and staff offices and it too required a card key to
operate.
Bypassing the elevator, Emma opened the door leading to the
public area of the building. The receptionist sat alone in the lobby straight
ahead. But that didn’t mean she’d been alone for all of the past few minutes.
Emma hurried into the lobby. “Cory, did an elderly woman
just come through here?”
Cory Kendall looked up from the medical textbook she was
studying, her hazel eyes sleepy behind the lenses of her glasses. “No one has
been in all morning, Dr. St. Clair.”
“Someone was in the autopsy suite a few minutes ago. An
older woman. Please have the security guard check outside.”
Cory’s eyes went wide. “You saw her in the autopsy suite?
While you were working? Oh, Dr. St. Clair, that’s not good.”
“Tell the guard she was wearing a plain white dress, almost
like a nightgown. I’ll check the family rooms and the chapel.”
Cory grabbed the phone. “I’ll page the guard now.”
“Thanks.” Leaving the reception area, Emma walked down the
corridor and into the first of the three family rooms. A tweed sofa of faded
blue-gray and two matching chairs furnished the room. Plants stood in each
corner of the windowless area and simple landscapes hung on pale gray walls.
Magazines were neatly stacked beside tissue boxes and empty wastebaskets stood
discreetly beneath each end table. Emma checked the other rooms and found them
the same. Other than the elderly murder victim, there were no bodies waiting to
be autopsied so there were no families waiting for news.
Leaving the family area, she headed in the other direction,
toward the chapel. The double doors stood open. Stepping inside, Emma turned on
the overhead lights. Pale walls reflected the soothing sea foam green of the
carpet, forming a hazy atmosphere in the cool, quiet chapel.
“Is anyone here?” she called out.
Moving up the center aisle, she searched each pew but found
no sign of the woman or anyone else. Finally, she reached the altar. It was
simple, made of teakwood and adorned only with unlit candles. A stained glass
window hung high above it, depicting a cloudless blue sky and a beam of soft,
golden light.
Emma stared up at the window as memory swept over her. A
golden light at the end of a long tunnel…
A chill crawled through her and her throat tightened. Maybe
the woman hadn’t been a member of Amalia Campanero’s family who had somehow
slipped into the restricted area.
Maybe she was a ghost.
Emma shook her head. Where did that absurd idea come from?
She turned. The tightness in her throat released in a
startled gasp as she collided with a hard body. Jerking back, Emma gripped the
backrest of the nearest pew and stared at the man into whom she’d run. Dark,
shaggy hair, traces of gold that glimmered in worried eyes…
Her besieged mind began to spin. He was the man from her ER
dream, the man the voice had urged her to help.
“Dr. St. Clair?” Catching her left arm, he eased her down on
the seat of the pew.
Emma kept staring. Strange sensations filled her as they had
in her ER dream, an urge to help him and…something more. But that was
ridiculous. She didn’t know the man, couldn’t know that he needed help, had no
help to offer him.
“The receptionist told me you were here.” He watched her
with concern. “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head. This was all too much. “I just need to
sit for a minute.”
His gaze moved over her face, studying, assessing. “I’ll sit
with you.”
Emma realized she was still shaking her head and made a
great effort to keep it still.
“I’m Jason MacKenzie.” Releasing her at last, he produced a
badge. “Clear Harbor Police Department. I’ve been trying to contact you.”
His name clicked in her confused mind. MacKenzie. Jason
MacKenzie. The detective. He had called her when she was in the hospital, then
again at her parents’ home. And hadn’t Brian mentioned him a few times, saying
they were friends?
Emma pressed her fingertips against her temples and tried to
make sense of what was happening. He was the man from the hospital. But he’d
also been Brian’s friend and the detective who’d phoned her. And…and…
Oh, God.
Other images flooded her mind as she stared into those
golden-brown eyes. Images from other dreams that she’d forgotten. Private,
intimate dreams.
Dreams of him.
“I’m sorry.” She spoke slowly, still trying to take it in,
to ignore the impossible sense of familiarity. “I know you wanted to talk to me
but I’ve been out of town.”
“Recuperating at your folks’ home in Wyoming.”
She realized her hands were trembling and quickly hid them
in her lap. This man was real. But that only proved that her ER dream had been
some strange bridge between her subconscious and her traumatic memories. But
the other dreams…
Suddenly Emma wished she’d stayed with her parents in
Jackson, that she’d never returned to Clear Harbor, that she was talking to her
loving and supportive father instead of this man who shouldn’t be real.
More adult feelings swept in and she longed suddenly for
his
arms. Arms that she’d felt embrace her inside her own mind. In dreams his hands
had touched her, caressed her…how had she forgotten such dreams? Since her
accident, they had filled her sleeping hours with comforting fantasies that
somehow, in waking hours, had slipped to the recesses of her mind.
“I heard you were doing the autopsy on Amalia Campanero,”
the detective said.
The name brought back the other image, knocking her for
another loop. The woman in the autopsy suite…
“Dr. St. Clair?”
Blinking, she realized he was bending over her. She felt the
heat from his body, smelled the tang of salt on his sun-darkened skin. A
familiar scent made her dizzier.
Old Spice.
“I’m fine.” She heard the lie in her voice. She hovered on
the edge of some kind of nervous breakdown and she would fall over that edge if
she didn’t get a grip on something soon. Trying to anchor herself in the
moment, she asked, “Did you just come in from the main parking lot?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see a woman out there? An elderly woman?”
“What elderly woman?”
Emma’s mind raced as Detective MacKenzie answered her
question with his own. If there was no woman, had she imagined the incident?
Had she been so nervous about the autopsy that she’d suffered a stress-induced
hallucination? She had been pushing herself since she’d returned to work and
she hadn’t been sleeping well. Stress. It was just stress.
“Dr. St. Clair?”
She took another deep breath, caught a whiff of his
aftershave again. A scent from her grandfather’s generation, solid and rugged
and masculine, it suited him. Suited him and appealed to her. Grounded by the
scent, Emma decided she should deal with the image from her dream first. She
should find an explanation for…him.
Forcing herself to meet his curious gaze, she said, “You
were at the hospital the night of my accident.”
His dark eyes glimmered with wariness. “I’m surprised you
know that.”
“I was…drifting in and out of consciousness.”
That much was true. Obviously she’d been conscious more than
she’d thought. And yet her first glimpse of him had been from above. That part
had certainly been a dream. It must have been.
“My partner and I have been assigned to your hit-and-run
case,” he said, still studying her too closely. “I wanted to talk to you about
that too. Let’s grab some coffee.”
She clenched her still trembling hands. “Coffee is the last
thing I need.”
“Okay. A cup of herbal tea.” He inclined his head toward her
and those dark eyes took on a different expression. “Or maybe a stiff drink?”
Somehow, compassion from him was no more comforting than his
wariness had been.
“I’m fine.” She pressed her hands open against her thighs
and took yet another breath, hoping more oxygen would slow her racing heart. “Do
you have information about my case?”
“No but I have questions about it and about Ms. Campanero’s
murder.” His dark eyes glimmered again, appearing almost angry. “You’ve avoided
talking to me for a while now.”
“I did talk to you.” Defensive, she tried to calm down. But
it was impossible beneath that gaze. “On the phone. In the hospital.”
“I told you I needed to speak with you in person.”
“Now isn’t a good time.” Holding one hand against her
stomach, she stood up. To her relief, her left leg didn’t give out as she’d
feared it might. “Maybe later, after I finish the Campanero procedure. I should
have a preliminary report around noon. I can fax it to you.”
He moved back to let her exit the pew but he didn’t give up.
“Why don’t we talk about it over lunch?”
“I’m sorry.” She edged past him. She needed to get away from
those piercing eyes. She needed to think. “I have plans.”
“Coffee afterward, then.”
He followed as she headed toward the chapel door, his long
legs bringing him close enough behind her that she could feel the warmth from
his skin. The sensation was pleasant and she found that reaction oddly
irritating.
“In addition to the Campanero case,” he said, “I still need
to get your statement on what happened to you. You ducked out on me before, Dr.
St. Clair.”
Censuring now, his tone implied that she owed him the
interview. Maybe she did. After all, he wasn’t just a cop on this case. Brian
had been his friend too.
Her irritation with him caved beneath sudden guilt. “All
right. I’m meeting a friend downtown at Rodolpho’s at twelve-thirty. Do you
know the restaurant?”
“I know it.”
“Meet me there at one-thirty and you can ask your questions.”
“I’ll be there.”
He followed her out of the chapel and along the corridor.
The control door to the autopsy area opened as they approached it and Skitch
stepped through. The young man’s curious eyes darted from her to the detective
and back again.
“Sorry I took so long.” Skitch lifted a file folder. “I had
to dig it out from under a pile of candy wrappers. When I got back, you’d
disappeared on me, Doc. And I heard that security guards are looking all over
the place for some woman you said was in the autopsy suite.”
Detective MacKenzie frowned. “Is that the woman you were
asking me about?”
Emma tangled her fingers together. If she really had just
imagined the woman, she didn’t want anyone else to know. “Yes, she must have
wandered in there by mistake.”
Skitch frowned too. “No one can get back there without a
card key.”
“Well, she seems to be gone now.” She fumbled her hands into
the pockets of her scrub pants and then pulled them out again. “Um, Detective
Jason MacKenzie, this is Skitch Reid. He works with me.”
“Yeah, we’ve met a few times.” The detective offered his
hand to the younger man. “Nice to see you, Skitch.”
The curiosity in Skitch’s eyes brightened. “Detective
MacKenzie.”
Backing away, the detective inclined his head toward Emma. “I’ll
see you later.”
“Goodbye.” As he walked away, Emma resisted the urge to
watch him. With effort, she grabbed the handle of the door to the inner
corridor. It wouldn’t open.