Behind The Veil: A Gina Harwood Novel Page 5

  But it was who they were. She shrugged and forced her attention to the body. Harriet's slightly plump body was laid out carefully on the metal examination table. An autopsy would follow, as soon as the detectives were out of the room. She supposed they could remain in the room for it, but the very thought turned her stomach. The report would be hard enough to read, knowing the procedures as well as she did. The cracking of the breastbone. The circular saw to the skull.

  Gina told her mind in no uncertain terms to focus on the task at hand, and started over.

  Harriet's plump body was laid out on the examination table. Her pink, flowered shirt and white Capri pants were ragged from the various metal bits of the bridge, but her undergarments were in one piece. Not for the first time, Gina thought of how awful it would be to die in white Capri pants. Her face looked peaceful, caught unawares by her own gruesome death. Nothing was missing, not like her mother. No trophies for the killer this time.

  Just a long, open smile on her neck that didn't belong. No carvings. No puncture wounds. No open, staring eyes.

  If the coincidence weren't blinding, Gina would have sworn it were a different killer. Unrelated.

  Except, it was one month to the day of her mother's brutal death. That couldn't really be ignored. If it was a coincidence, it was a hell of a thing.

  Hell of a thing.

  Gina sighed. Someone was going to have to advise the next of kin. Again.

  “Snyder,” she said softly. The tone in her voice must have hit some sort of chord, because his head snapped up and their eyes met. “I did it last time. It's your turn.”

  He didn't seem to need to ask what she was talking about. His face fell further and he nodded, walking out of the room.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Jake didn't recognize the number coming up on his phone, so he was wary of answering it. Later, he would try to tell himself that he had a bad feeling about the unknown number, like he knew that something really bad had happened; he tried to convince himself that some psychic connection between him and his beloved older sister had been irrevocably and obviously broken, and he knew it. But at that moment, the only hesitation he felt was the same that any telemarketer by trade felt when they saw an unknown number come up on their caller ID: the concern that their own kind was calling. Jake answered it anyway.

  It wasn't a telemarketer.

  What kind of life might Jake have had, had it been someone simply wanting to sell him a cable package? Perhaps some investment options? Share the good news of Jesus Christ?

  It doesn't matter. That's not what happened.

  Instead, he heard a familiarly gruff voice on the phone, devoid of human emotion. It might as well have been a telemarketer, but this one didn't have special offers or religious entreaties; this one only had bad, bad news. The worst news.

  Jake sat down hard. Again.

  He listened to what the disembodied voice had to say. It asked if he would come in to the station, to talk. He heard himself say Yes. He was slightly surprised by his ability to make his vocal cords vibrate in any way that would produce sound.

  The voice hung up.

  Jake watched his fingers dial Marcus' familiar number. The way you know a best friend, he thought, is if your body instinctively reaches out for that person, without any cognitive thought. Marcus picked up, like he always did. He always did.

  “Hey, man.” Marcus sounded sober, which was unusual.

  Jake tried to say something, anything. His voice just squeaked oddly, but didn't form any kind of words.

  “Dude, you there?” His friend sounded concerned.

  “Marcus,” he heard himself say, and was thankful for that. He'd read of people who had undergone severe trauma, they lost the ability to speak for years. Forever, maybe. He didn't want to be a mute, even though he didn't think he really had anything useful to say. What could he say? What could he possibly say to make this all better?

  “Do you need me to come over? Did something happen?” Marcus' words spilled out into his ears, making him flinch.

  His head bobbed up and down until he realized his friend couldn't see the movement. “Yes,” he croaked. Yes to everything. Yes, something terrible has happened. Yes, my life is ruined. Yes, I need a friend. Yes, yes, yes.

  “I'll be right there, man, hold on, okay?” A click, Marcus didn't wait for an answer. He was on his way. Super-Marcus. Jake laughed, the sound bordering on a bad kind of hysteria. A hysteria that wasn't drug-induced; a hysteria that was people-induced. Jake suddenly felt like moving to a mountain cave, just running away. Running away from people forever. If he wasn't close to anyone, no one could die, he wouldn't get hurt anymore. It wouldn't matter. The only thing that would matter was his eventual mortality, and he could handle that, really. That was no big deal. This all felt like his fault, somehow; some part of his mind stabbed at him with tiny knives of guilt.

  His heart was bleeding out. Jake doubled over in pain and struggled to breathe. Marcus would be here soon, he tried to assure himself, tried to assuage the hurt with logic. A+B=C. Marcus would come, they would go to the police, the police would make it all better. His insides churned. Except they couldn't bring Harry back. Nothing would bring Harry back. Harry was gone.

  Jake fell into a tight ball on his bed. It was bad enough to lose his Mom, his beautiful, loving mother whom everyone loved. Everyone. But Harry? Harriet Fowler, nee O'Malley, there was a truly innocent creature. She had always stood up for him, even when he was a despicable monster of a teenager. Even when he went through that phase where he had hated everyone, he had still loved Harry. And Harry still saw only the good in him.

  With Harry gone, Jake felt like there was no good left in the world. No good left in him. Nothing left.

  He waited for the tears to come, but all he felt was an empty coldness.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  The husband arrived first, demanding to see his wife. A large part of Morgan wanted to call over a boy in blue and have him walk the husband next door and down the steps, the cold steps. Handle all the paperwork. He could, he knew, it wouldn't technically be against any kind of rules. It would save him the grief, the cries of a desperate husband, save him from having to ask the obvious. Make him sign papers with the shakiest hands.

  He could ask Harwood to do it.

  Morgan considered this for a few seconds longer than he probably should have, but eventually came to the decision that he was being a giant pussy about the whole thing. He was a homicide detective. This was connected to the biggest unsolved case in his career so far – hopefully ever, he amended. He needed to see every step through himself. Besides, he scowled to himself, he hadn't seen Harwood come back from her coffee run yet. That was hours ago, he realized with a start. How long did it take the woman to get coffee?

  “Hello Jack, I'm Detective Snyder.” Morgan extended an arm out to the disheveled man in hastily thrown on sweatpants and a t-shirt that extolled the virtue of hot dogs in a slightly suggestive way.

  Jack Fowler shook the offered hand automatically, but his eyes were wild. “Jack Fowler. Where's my wife?” he demanded. “Where's Harry?” He wasn't crying, but his whole body was tense and shaking from mental strain.

  Morgan sighed. “Please come to my office for a moment, Mr. Fowler. Then, I'll take you to see her immediately.”

  The man nodded, a tight, curt nod.

  The two weaved through the busy halls and cubicles, and down a slightly grimy, almost-alley kind of hall, narrow and yellow. Their office was a small room with a single, frosted-glass window in the upper corner of one wall. Still, it let some natural light in, for which Morgan was thankful. The room was designed for a single desk, but two small ones had been squashed in, with two semi-comfortable office chairs and a stool. The wall was lined with filing cabinets – the hallway outside their door was also lined with the same sort of metal cabinets extending all the way down to the main office area, representing years of paperwork. Too much paperwork. What really made Morgan chuckl
e was the duplication of efforts now; instead of the Computer Age making their paperwork so much easier to type instead of write, their office still required the paper. And the electronic records. So now, they had twice as much to do.

  Morgan opened the thick wooden door for his guest and bee-lined for the uncomfortable metal stool. Fowler stood in the middle of the room and swayed from side to side. “Have a seat,” he said, nodding in the direction of the nearest chair and readying his clipboard. He searched through the pens on his desk for one that wasn't quite as chewed up as the rest.

  Fowler stared, confused, at the chair for a moment, as though he'd forgotten what they were used for, before sinking down into it. He half-hid his face with his hands.

  Morgan cleared his throat. “I'm sorry, Mr. Fowler, but I have to go through a few questions first, and explain the procedures for identifying the body, before we go downstairs. After that, we'll come back up here, okay?”

  The man seemed to convulse in the chair, sending the locked wheels back an inch on the linoleum with a scraping sound. Then, he nodded, and forced his shaking hands down to his lap.

  Morgan verified the man's basic information on the identification form (Jack Fowler, husband of the deceased, thirty-five years old), and wrote furiously to capture all of the extraneous information that Jack kept offering, as if to delay the inevitable by prolonging story-time. They were three years apart in age. They met on her birthday – June 16th – eight years ago. She stepped on his foot and made him drop a bag of groceries he'd been carrying home; she then proceeded to berate him for his terrible food choices and pronounce him a bachelor-for-life if he didn't eat better. This from a total stranger, he laughed shakily. They married five years ago. They wanted children badly, but she had a severe case of PCOS, and the doctors advised it was very unlikely without in-vitro or hormone therapy, which they didn't want to do. They'd been trying since their honeymoon.

  “We just found out last week,” he finished. His head had been slowly dropping further and further forward, until his forehead was less than an inch from the desk, and he was talking at the wood. Or just to himself. His eyes were squeezed together in pain, and his hands were holding his midsection.

  Morgan's brow furrowed. “Found out what, sir?”

  Jack shook his head. “That she was pregnant. Just a month, but...”

  “I'm very sorry,” Morgan said, lamely, interrupting the grieving husband without thinking, and trying to ignore the flash of sorrow that burned through him. He needed to stay professional, he thought to himself, official. It would be easier on the man to get this done quickly and cleanly. Another flash, this time guilt, as he realized that it would be mostly easier on himself. He finished scrabbling on his paper, tucked the pen under the clip, and stood up. Pins and needles ran down his leg from sitting so long on the stool. “Are you ready?”

  Jack shook his head again.

  “Okay. Take your time.” Morgan leaned against the wall and studied him. There were questions he was dying to ask, but they would wait until after. He wanted to clock the reaction to the body first. Harriet Fowler disappeared, as far as he could tell, while her husband was allegedly asleep in bed. Did she walk out? There were no signs of forced entry at the house. She was fully dressed, not in her nightclothes. Was there a fight?

  He scribbled a note to give to the coroner regarding the pregnancy. He needed that confirmed.

  Fowler whispered something. Morgan leaned in to hear, but didn't quite. “I'm sorry, what?”

  The man lifted his head. His eyes were hollow. “How can anyone be ready?”

  The identification was, as expected, awful. Howls of grief ricocheted off the thick concrete walls, choked through a tight throat, making them sound more animal than human. Morgan waited patiently, nodding reassuringly at the beat cops that stood just outside the swinging doors, peering through the slightly foggy windows. He always brought a pair of badges down with him, if they could be spared. People were unpredictable; people who just lost loved ones were very unpredictable. Sometimes, grief was expressed in rage.

  Mr. Fowler was not one of those people, however. He alternated between the howling and the silent, shuffling cries, until finally he simply lowered himself to the floor beside the table and sat staring up at the underside of the metal.

  “Mr. Fowler?” ventured Morgan.

  No response.

  Morgan walked slowly to where Jack sat on the floor and crouched beside him. The officers pushed the swinging doors open and held them there, waiting and watching closely. “It's time to go back, Jack,” he said softly.

  Fowler blinked once, then several times and grimaced in pain. He turned his head slightly toward the detective, but didn't raise his eyes. He nodded.

  Morgan gestured for the two to come over. “Help us back to the office, yeah?” The two men heaved Jack up and gently helped him walk back up the stairs.

  On the way back, Morgan noticed Jake O'Malley sitting in the waiting room with his tall friend, this time, instead of his sister. Jake didn't notice them, and Fowler still hadn't raised his head.

  Harwood was in the office, sitting in one of the office chairs, head down, writing furiously. The officers lowered Jack into the other chair and left the room, leaving Morgan to the cold metal stool again. “Jack, this is Detective Harwood, she's the other detective on this case.” Jack nodded slightly, and so did Harwood. She was still writing, but she had swiveled her chair to face the proceedings.

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary last night, or early this morning?” started Morgan.

  “Hold on,” interrupted Harwood. “One second.” She finished the sentence she was writing and looked up to meet Jack Fowler's eyes, which were on her now. “Mr. Fowler, do you recognize this?” She fished around in her purse and held up a plastic evidence bag containing an intricately carved pendant, the brown of the wood grain highlighted with red and gold paint. The pendant was shaped like a figure eight, or an hourglass, on its side, with small spikes emanating from the middle. Morgan didn't recognize it.

  Jack' Fowler's face drained of all color.

  6

  “No, what is it?” Jake O'Malley held the bag, flipped it over. He had never seen the pendant before. He felt a cold chill up his spine. Later, he would remember this moment and tell himself that, like the phone call, he felt something, staring down at the baggie. That he knew.

  Of course, he didn't.

  He saw the two detectives exchange a heavy glance. “It was delivered to your sister's mailbox last week, with a note,” explained the woman. “The note appears to be a death threat, of sorts. They didn't mention anything to you at all?”

  Jake's brow furrowed, and he felt rage at his brother-in-law. Harry had a death threat last week and they didn't say anything about it? Didn't go to the police? “They didn't report it to the cops?” Maybe they did, he thought, maybe it's the cops' faults. But he saw them both shake their head no. “Who sent it?”

  “Thought maybe you'd have an idea. It wasn't sent through a service – there's no postmark. It was apparently hand-delivered to her mailbox.”

  “That's technically a crime,” observed the Ken-doll detective. Jake felt bad about the moniker for a moment, and tried to remember his actual name. He couldn't.

  “What did the note say?” asked Jake.

  The detectives exchanged that glance again, but the woman reached for a sheet of paper and handed it to him. It appeared to be a photocopy of the original note, written in scrawling, slanted cursive. The letters were close together and very difficult to read. He squinted at it, trying to make out words. “I can't read this,” he said, bringing it closer to his face. “Is this even English?”

  Detective Harwood took the note from his hands and held it in front of her. “Sort of, yes.” She went on to read the note aloud to him:

  “You will blossom a beautiful flower of rotting death. Soon, I will at last be free. Lillian sealed you. Freedom sealed you. Fire seals you. The wall is hungry again.
Time is short. I am coming.”

  Jake looked at her incredulously. “What the hell is that? Is that all of it?”

  The detectives both nodded. “Is any of that familiar? Have you ever read something like that, or heard anyone say anything like that before?”

  Jake froze, the peculiar sensation of a string tugging somewhere in the caverns of his memory. “No way, it's just crazy! It doesn't even make sense!” But Lillian and Freedom, that bothered him deeply. It did indeed sound familiar. Lillian and freedom. He squinted as if peering through his mind.

  “What?” the Ken-doll was studying his face. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, it's just...” his head snapped up. He remembered. “So somebody sent that gibberish and that wooden thing to Harry? Why?”

  The man was still staring at him with a guarded expression. Detective Harwood swallowed. “No clue, not yet. But don't worry,” she leaned forward and bared her teeth. “We'll find whoever did this. I promise. They'll be held accountable.” Her teeth clacked together and Jake shivered. She was beautiful, but a little scary.

  Jake scurried out of the room, with a mission.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Gina watched him go, thoughtful. She turned to see Snyder staring at the spot where the boy was sitting. “Tail him,” she ordered. “He knows something. I want to know where he goes.” Her voice was tired, and she rubbed her temples again. Snyder fished into his pocket and threw her the bottle of ibuprofen.

  And then, even though she had no authority over him whatsoever, he nodded curtly and rushed out the door.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  “Dad! It's me, open up! It's Jake!” Jake pounded on the door again. The car was in the garage, he had jumped up to see through the window. His father had to be home. “I know you're here!”