Behind The Veil: A Gina Harwood Novel Page 3

  “Oh, oh,” sobbed Harry. “I feel awful, I was (sniffle) so awful to those officers, I thought they did it! Your face, I mean,” she cried.

  Peter laughed, and then looked as astonished as everyone else did at the sound. “Why did you think that?” he asked.

  She half-laughed, half-wailed. “They said you came here from interrogation, and I thought, well, you have a black eye, and … I don't know! I thought you only got a black eye if you got punched!”

  All gathered laughed, some a low chuckle, some a loud guffaw; the laughter bordered on hysteria and Jake felt like he were going mad. Only Peter remained silent.

  “I did get punched,” he said quietly. “Your mother's death punched me.”

  And like that, the spell was broken. The pallor of their mother's passing drifted down upon them like a cloud, and pressed its full weight on their hearts.

  “I want to see her,” said Jake, looking at the floor.

  “No, you don't,” answered his father, who closed his eyes again and remained silent.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Forensics turned up no matches whatsoever between the bathroom scene and the kitchen scene. There was no blood cross-contamination, no hair or tissue cross-contamination, nothing. “What's more,” continued Gina, reading the file. “The forensics team has found no hair or tissue underneath Susan's fingernails that would indicate a struggle. Other than the obvious abrasions, no bodily signs of struggle at all. No remnants of whatever material was used to make the puncture marks or slices, or carving. All blood accounted for on the floor of the kitchen. As far as they can tell, the body was not moved from another location. No explanation as to why there were no sprays or splatters, except a note explaining that 'very low blood pressure, extreme relaxation, or perhaps some sort of heavy sedative' could prevent them, however...” she slammed the folder down on the desk and glared at Snyder before continuing. “No drugs found in the system. And someone dying like that is unlikely to be extremely relaxed.” Snyder sighed. “Hand-print?”

  She shook her head. “No explanation. Maybe the killer lifted her arm and placed the print himself?”

  “He'd have been standing in all that blood. I don't think so. Maybe at the very beginning, if she was unconscious? Painted her hand with her own blood before she started bleeding heavily?”

  “Maybe.” She sagged into a chair and looked at Snyder. She was surprised to find him looking back at her, the same helplessness she felt reflected in his eyes. It steeled her resolve and she stood back up and turned her back on him, facing the whiteboard. Names and places were scrawled all over it; most had lines through them. “Already talked to all his Bingo buddies?” she asked, surprised at the struck-through list of names.

  “Yep. Easy to track down, eager to help. Corroborated his time-line exactly.”

  “Hmmm,” she hummed, thinking.

  “What's more...” he continued, sidling up to stand behind her. “I have something on Peter...”

  “What?” she snapped, harder than intended. Whenever he had an interesting or necessary piece of information, he always made her ask for it, a trait she despised. He flashed his bright white teeth at her and bowed his head slightly.

  “It's not admissible in court,” he said, thoughtfully.

  “Oh, for chrissake, Snyder, just spill it.”

  “The guards can hear right through that hospital door,” he continued, pursing his lips.

  Gina fought the urge to deck him and stood silently. The silence elongated, and finally, Snyder relented to it.

  “They overheard him telling his kids the exact same story he told us.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Like, to corroborate the story?”

  “No,” he corrected. “That IS the story. That was his explanation to them. Of what happened. If there is something else, then whatever he's keeping from us, he's keeping from them, too.”

  Gina considered this. “He could have known the guards were listening.”

  Snyder shrugged. “Maybe. Just thought it was interesting.”

  She walked back over to the desk and sat on the edge of it, picking up the folder. “None of the neighbors saw anything out of the ordinary. One of them, a nosy old bird, saw Peter walking home exactly when he said he did, too.” She sighed. “Forensics marks the time of death at around 3pm, about two hours before he got there.”

  “She didn't work?” He had produced an apple from somewhere and took a big, crunchy bite out of it. Gina stared at him. Sometimes she wondered if he kept a Mary Poppins-bag of tried-and-true Gina-annoyances on his person at all times. Incredible.

  “Do you even read these things?” she flapped the file at him, which had grown from nothing to three inches thick in less than twenty-four hours.

  He munched away on the bright green apple happily. “I don't know how you find the time to get through all of it, honestly. I think we'd be better off splitting it and each reading half.”

  Gina snorted. “I don't trust your memory.”

  He looked mock-affronted. “It cuts to my heart.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “She worked part-time at a hobby store. They didn't need the money, she apparently did it for fun and for the discount. She was crafty, liked scrap-booking and photography mostly.”

  He sat up, intrigued. “Did we interview anyone there?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, should we?” she tilted her head and stared vacuously at him. “Yes, of course 'we' did. Every single employee said she was fabulous. Said she was either the mother they always wanted or the daughter they always wanted, depending on age.”

  “Popular gal.”

  Gina nodded.

  “Til somebody used her tummy as a canvas,” he finished.

  “I was thinking about that,” said Gina. “Coroner said the carving was directly over the uterus. Think that matters?”

  Snyder looked skeptical. “Every other cut seemed pretty random. And her abdomen was a nice, wide canvas. I wouldn't think so, no, but let's not count it out.”

  “Think we should interview the children?” Gina asked, knowing the answer, but hating to voice it herself.

  Snyder looked at her blankly. “Ah, yes. Make me the bad guy who orders the kids of the dead mom yanked in.”

  “They're not kids, per se. They're twenty-five and thirty-two. They both have very solid alibis, but maybe they have some information.”

  He snapped his head up. “How old was she?”

  “Fifty-six. Clearly written in the file that you don't read,” Gina cocked an eyebrow at him and pointed to the folder in her hand. “Why?”

  “I do read the file, I just must have missed that. I thought she was in her forties. She looked great for her age.” Seeming to have lost interest, he turned back to his apple and perused the papers on his clipboard.

  Gina tapped her pencil against the file and saw him twitch. “So, the kids?”

  “They're not kids, they're twenty-five and thirty-two,” he parroted without raising his head.

  She sighed. “I'll ask them to be brought in.”

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Jake went first, squeezing Harry's hand as the pretty detective came out to retrieve him. He guessed she was about his age, maybe a few years older, and in other circumstances... well, these weren't other circumstances. Jake looked back at Harry and Jack, leaning against each other tiredly. Marcus hadn't come with them to the station, but Harry's husband did. Marcus volunteered to stay with Peter. Jake followed the woman down the well-lit but grungy hall and into an equally grungy but less well-lit interrogation room; he felt really bad about watching her ass in her crisp uniform pants as he was being led to talk about his dead mother, but couldn't help notice. It was a nice, if momentary, distraction. Jake sat down in the metal chair behind the plain metal table, where the dark-haired beauty led him.

  “I'm sorry about the room,” she said, her voice silky smooth. Jake noticed her partner, a tall, tan Ken-doll, grimace. “My office is tiny, this is the best we can do.�
�

  “It's okay,” he said in a small voice. “You're not... um...” Jake's throat went dry.

  The Ken-doll detective put a bottle of water in front of him. “It's okay, ask us anything,” he said gruffly.

  Jake cleared his throat. “You won't show me pictures, will you? I don't want to see my mom like that.”

  The two detectives exchanged glances. The woman smiled. “No, Jake, I won't show you any pictures of her. I'm Detective Harwood, this is Detective Snyder.” The Ken-doll nodded and looked away. He looked bored. Jake noticed Detective Harwood's eyes were as sharp as daggers when she looked at the other detective.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “I'm not sure how I can help. Was my mom really murdered?”

  The woman looked pained. Even though he hadn't pegged her as being too much older than he was, he still felt like a child sitting in front of her. He was vaguely aware he sounded a bit like one, too. “Yes. She was.”

  “Did she feel any pain? When she died?” he begged her silently to say 'No.' He needed to hear 'No.'

  “We don't...” started the woman, but the other detective stood up straighter and sat on the other end of the table.

  “Yep.” he said. “Probably lots. It wasn't a pleasant scene.”

  Jake winced. The girl looked daggers at the detective, but he continued. “There was a great deal of blood, and Susan O'Malley had dozens...”

  “Hundreds,” whispered the woman.

  “Hundreds,” continued the man, without missing a beat. “...of wounds. The autopsy revealed that almost all of the wounds were inflicted while she was still alive. It didn't indicate whether she was unconscious, but you have to think she was conscious for at least some of them.”

  All Jake chose to hear was that the autopsy didn't indicate that his mother was conscious. In his mind, he decided she was unconscious for all of it. She never felt the pain. She died in her sleep. He took an experimental breath after he realized he'd been holding it for quite some time. It was uneven and ragged. He didn't trust his voice, so he remained silent.

  “So, Jake,” the Ken-doll leaned in close enough for Jake to smell spearmint on his breath; he could hear a tiny mint clicking against the man's teeth as his tongue moved inside his mouth. It turned his stomach. “We expect you will want to help us find who did this to her. Find them and punish them.”

  Jake nodded, still unsure of his voice.

  The woman perched on the table right next to him, making him feel oddly claustrophobic with them both so close. He was vaguely aware that he was crying, but all he could think of, over and over, was the man's words: “It didn't indicate whether she was unconscious.” He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see her lips moving. Jake shook his head as though to clear away flies.

  “I'm sorry,” he croaked. “What?”

  She smiled at him. “Did your father ever tell you anything about their relationship? The affairs? The fights?” Her voice was calm and compassionate. The other detective had withdrawn to his corner again.

  Jake knit his brow together in worry. “What affairs? Fights? No, no, not them, they were always disgustingly in love, no way, really?” The words came out in a flood and spawned broken images in his mind – his mother and father dancing to no music one evening, humming discordant melodies to themselves that matched nothing, not even each others' tune; Harry and Jake crying “Ewwwwww” with a child's cootie-fervor whenever their parents were caught kissing; the way their hands were always touching or intertwined in bed whenever Jake would sneak in to wake them up on Christmas morning. “No way.”

  She pursed her lips. “Do you know anyone who might have meant her harm? Anyone at all?”

  Jake felt a rage building within him and looked at her through eyes narrowed to slits. “Look, lady,” he started angrily, ignoring the badge on her chest or the sudden way her partner pushed himself away from the wall. “I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm twenty-five. I don't live at home. Maybe I'm not as close to my parents as I should be.” Jake fought the realization that it was too late to get closer to his mom now; he forced the thought down with a guilty swallow. “Nobody hated my mom. Isn't this your job? To find the twisted fuck that did this to her and take him down? Jesus,” he spat the last word out of his mouth.

  Detective Harwood's face was an impassive mask of stone. The Ken-doll looked angry. Jake didn't care. He was tired and spent, and wanted to curl up in his bed with pillows packed around his body and wake up to find this was all a terrible dream. Then he'd go and visit his mom; she'd make hot chocolate and they'd play Trivial Pursuit, just the two of them, and there wouldn't be any death, any blood, any detectives, any hospitals, any funerals.

  Jake buried his face in his hands and sobbed openly.

  3

  Jake stared at his father's form clothed in the hospital sheet, absentmindedly watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. He seemed so old suddenly. Did he look this old last week? Jake couldn't remember. There were little, coarse-looking grey hairs covering his father's head that seemed whiter, weaker, than he remembered them, deep-etched lines in the familiar face that seemed like imposters. The sadness and weight seemed to exude from every pore, every line, the very position of his body, even in sleep. Jake wanted his old Dad back again, the one that smiled and danced badly with his wife. With his Mom.

  After minutes that felt like hours, Peter's eyes fluttered and then groggily opened. A yawn escaped him, and he seemed to almost smile before remembering where he was – and why. The weight pressed back down upon him and he sunk back into the bed under its presence. “Hey kiddo,” he said, but without any spring in the tone.

  “Dad,” started Jake, but he looked down at his hands and couldn't continue for a moment, rubbing a knuckle absentmindedly. “How are you feeling?” he finished, stiltedly.

  Peter managed a small smile, an echo of its former glory, it's former life. “What's on your mind, kid?” He stretched out his arm and grabbed Jake's fingers.

  Jake clutched them for strength. “The cops, they questioned Harry and me,” he said, but the sudden pain in his hands stopped him. Peter had balled his hand into a tight fist, without letting his son's hand free. Jake whimpered slightly and yanked his hand free, shaking it to reintroduce the circulation.

  Peter's hand shot open as quick as though he'd been electrocuted and his eyes were bright. “Sorry,” he said, reaching back out. Jake tentatively took his hand again. “What, did they accuse you two of doing it too? Are they that stupid? They got nothing,” he sighed and laid his head back again. “No fucking clue.”

  Jake blinked hard. It was the first time he'd ever actually heard his father curse. Twenty-eight years of “goldarn” and “jimminy,” like his father was some eighty-year old woman from the hills. It shocked him into speech. “No, Dad, they didn't do anything like that. But they said, well...” he swallowed hard again, finding it difficult to keep his mouth from going unbearably dry. “They asked if you ever told us about the affairs or the fights. Were you and Mom getting a divorce?”

  Peter looked at his son blankly for an uncomfortably long time, as though he'd momentarily forgotten who the young man at his bedside was. Jake started to grow concerned about what drugs or sedatives the staff might have administered, when suddenly his father broke into loud, long laughter, raucous laughter, hoarse and uncontrolled laughter. His whole body tensed and doubled up, and he screamed peal after peal, holding his belly as if it might explode. Jake chuckled once, nervously, but found no humor in either the question, or his father's strange reaction.

  “Oh, man, aw Christmas,” Peter gasped as he started to calm down, tears of mirth mixing with the ever-present tears of grief. Jake did smile at that – 'Christmas' was one of his father's most common 'curse' words. “They got you, Jake. They really did. Can you imagine? Us, divorce?” He hiccuped and his mouth drew down into a frown. “No,” he said softly, peering into Jake's eyes. “There weren't any fights, no affairs, no divorce. We were happy as clams
. They just want to believe I did it.”

  Jake's eyes dropped for a second, but he forced them back up. He feared that his father might hate him forever for it, but he had to hear it from his dad's own mouth. “Did you?” he rasped, voice barely audible.

  Peter was still. His eyes took on a strange and awful glow and his lips pressed into a thin, white line. He never dropped his gaze from his son's. His face morphed through several emotions almost at once – rage (making Jake wince at a hit that never came), sadness, and finally resignation. It was a full minute before he found his voice.

  “No, Jake.” He sounded exhausted, and hurt. “I could never raise a hand to your mother.”

  “Do you know who did?” asked Jake, steeling his jaw.

  Peter's gaze dropped to his lap and he pulled his hand away from his son. “No, kiddo, I don't.” He turned his head away and stared out the window, indicating silently that the conversation was over.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  “Why'd you do that?” Morgan still stood in the corner, arms folded. Harwood didn't seem to even hear his question.

  Aggravated, he pushed himself off the wall again and walked in front of her. She looked lost in her own thoughts, mindlessly chewing at the end of a pen. Most of the pens in their cramped office looked like firecrackers had been inserted in the butt ends, thanks to that endearing little habit. He screwed his mouth up disapprovingly and bent down to her face. “HEY, Earth to Harwood. WHY did you do that?”

  Her head snapped up. “Huh?” The end of the pen was still in her mouth. Morgan fought the urge to grab it and throw it across the room. It seemed he was always fighting the urge to throw something across the room when they 'talked.'