by Sara Reinke
He accepted her handshake, folding his fingers against her small, cool palm. To his surprise, she met his grip firmly, offering him a hearty pump, and not the limp-wristed, delicate sort he was anticipating.
“You’re new with 11?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I just started last month,” she said, and then she laughed, rolling her eyes. “I know, fresh-faced girl, big new city…it’s very ‘Mary Tyler Moore.’ Everyone keeps telling me. Whatever the hell that means. I’ve been assigned the municipal beat, so you’ll probably be seeing a lot of me.”
She offered him her card. Susan Vey, it read. Again, Paul found himself all-too aware of the tantalizing view down the front of her blouse. Again, he caught himself noticing how pretty she was, and how young she was―and just how damn long it had been since he had been with a woman.
“I…I’ll look forward to it, then,” he said to Susan Vey.
As she walked across the broad, granite-tiled foyer of the municipal building toward the revolving glass doors, Paul found himself mesmerized by the click-click-clack of her high heels against the polished stone floor, and by the gentle, side-to-side swaying of her shapely buttocks beneath her skirt.
“You gotta love the newbies,” he murmured.
“I hear you,” said the cameraman with a laugh from beside him. He was loading his heavy camera into a padded carrying case, being mindful not to tangle the long, looping coils of wires as he did. Susan Vey was new, but this guy―David somebody or another―wasn’t. Paul had seen him before, plenty of times. He was a good-looking kid in that stereotypical, blond-blue-eyed, Midwestern way. He and Paul had worked together long enough to exchange brief but friendly banter whenever they crossed paths.
“Yeah, well, at least she’s got a nice ass,” Paul remarked. What was David’s last name? he wondered. He knew it; David had told him at least a hundred times. It was right on the tip of his tongue…
“She’s my sister,” David said dryly, his expression shifting, growing less than amused. Almost simultaneously, Paul remembered―and bit his teeth against a groan. David Vey. Jesus Christ, there goes my foot in my mouth. Not to mention his foot probably up my ass.
Paul blinked at him, feeling immediately stupid. “Uh,” he said. “Sorry.”
He turned and ducked into his department, his face flushed. “You didn’t mention the tip line,” Jason said as Paul breezed past his desk.
“Yes, I did,” Paul replied. “Earlier in the interview. Twice at least.”
“Hey, McGruff,” said a homicide detective named Dan Pierson, leaning into the office doorway as he sauntered by. “Nice interview. I heard every word. I especially liked the line about her ass. You think that’ll make the cut?”
“Yeah, get bent, Pierson,” Paul replied, smiling in friendly enough fashion as he flipped the other man off. There had never been any love lost between Paul and Dan Pierson―and that was putting the matter kindly. What had started out as a not-so-friendly rivalry before the onset of the Watcher case had only grown more heated and bitter from there, and in the end, Paul had nearly seen Pierson fired for insubordination.
Pierson shook his head and laughed, disappearing from the doorway. As much as he despised Pierson, Paul wished like hell he could follow him upstairs to homicide. It wasn’t that the public affairs gig was bad. There wasn’t much work involved in it at all. After the Watcher, Paul had found himself an unwitting and instant celebrity. He’d done the local and national media circuits for months, and Robert Allen, the mayor, along with the entire city council had decided he should become some kind of spokesperson for the Metro Police Division. He’d received the Lieutenant appointment and a hefty raise. He had his own office with a nice window view, and a private parking place. It was a comfortable living, and that was precisely why Paul hated it. He’d been a cop the grand majority of his life. It was all he knew. There had been a time when nothing in the world had mattered more to him than his job.
Putting him in public affairs had been pretty much like putting him out to pasture, at least as far as Paul was concerned. Whatever enthusiasm he’d felt for his job, whatever ambition or satisfaction he’d taken in his work, was now all gone.
Why do they call you that, Uncle Paul? Emma had asked when she’d heard one of the other detectives call Paul “McGruff.”
It’s a joke, kiddo, that’s all, Paul had replied. You know, McGruff, the cartoon dog on TV.
Oh! Emma had exclaimed, her eyes widening with comprehension. Oh, McGruff! Take a bite out of crime! She’d beamed in delight.
Glad one of us is happy about it, Paul thought. The other cops called him McGruff because they knew, just like Paul did, that his promotion had emasculated him. The name was a joke, but worse than that, Paul’s job had become a joke. He had become a joke.
Jason was a pain in Paul’s ass. He was one of those kids who had studied anything other than law enforcement in college, but then decided he wanted to be a cop when he grew up. Jason had enlisted in the force, but had never served a day in uniform or out on the streets.
“But the whole segment was supposed to promote the tip line,” Jason protested, rising to his feet. “How the community can pitch in to help us solve crimes, how common citizens can become uncommon heroes, just by―”
“I have to go,” Paul said, walking into his private office in the back of the department. He leaned over his desk and hooked his blazer off the back of his chair. He glanced at the photos of M.K. and Bethany by his computer screen and felt his heart momentarily ache. The girls came to spend every other weekend with him, and he could talk to them whenever he wanted to on the phone, but that wasn’t the same as seeing them day in and day out, being a part of their world. He felt like little more than a spectator now, a cordial stranger to them.
“Go?” Jason asked, as Paul walked past him again, brushing close enough to force the younger man to scramble back a step. He had a dark, tousled mop of hair that never seemed to be combed, and preternaturally large blue eyes. Both features, along with his short stature and slight build, lent him a nearly adolescent appearance. Paul fought a constant urge to card him.
“Yes, go. I have to pick up Emma from school.” Paul shrugged on his jacket and glanced at his watch. “I’m late, in fact. See you tomorrow.”
“But I―” Jason hiccuped in protest. Paul closed the office door smartly on him, cutting short his reply.
He walked briskly across the foyer and nearly plowed headlong into a woman walking hurriedly in the opposite direction, her arms laden with file folders. She was juggling these, an overloaded attache case in one hand, a paper cup of coffee in the other, and her cell phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. Everything fell in a loud tumble to the floor when she and Paul smacked together, and he yelped, dancing backwards as café latte splashed against his pant legs.
“Damn it―!” he snapped.
“I’m sorry!” the woman exclaimed, dropping to her knees and snatching up the coffee cup. The latte was spreading in a quick pool on the floor, and she grabbed at her fallen papers and files, trying to rescue them from ruin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even see you. I was busy checking my messages, and I’m late for a meeting…”
Her voice faded as she looked up at him. She smiled, her pretty mouth unfurling, softening immediately within him any aggravation he might have ordinarily felt. “Hi, Paul,” she said.
“Hi, Brenda,” he replied, genuflecting and helping her collect her things. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. My God, it’s been a long time. A year, hasn’t it?” Dr. Brenda Wheaton was the state assistant medical examiner. Her office was located in the building adjacent to Paul’s. When he’d worked as a homicide detective, he’d enjoyed the pleasant occasion to see Brenda frequently.
“Almost,” he said.
She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he’d shamelessly harbored a crush on her even before he and Vicki had ever parted ways. But he had been married, and Brenda had be
en married, and that was all there had ever been.
Brenda had a long sheaf of creamy blond hair that she wore almost constantly in a ponytail fettered from the nape of her neck. She had large, dark brown eyes and almost elfin features. She was from Kentucky, “the backwater, Bluegrass hills,” as she liked to say, and she had the most wondrous, lilting, melodic accent he’d ever heard.
She always smelled good to him, too, some kind of light, floral perfume she favored that lingered in the air around her, even after she’d leave a room. How a woman could spend her day conducting autopsies and surrounding herself with death, and still smell so absolutely wonderful was beyond Paul’s comprehension.
“I’m sorry about your pants,” she murmured. “I’ll pay for the drycleaning. Just send me a―”
“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s alright. It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
He helped her rise to her feet, offering her his hand and letting her slip her palm daintily against his. He offered her the stack of file folders he’d collected from the floor, and she smiled as she took them from him, balancing them against her hip. “So how have you been?” she asked. “How is your wife?”
“Divorced,” he said. He meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding bitter, and Brenda’s smile faltered.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said almost simultaneously, his voice overlapping hers. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded. It happened awhile ago.”
Ten months, three weeks, three days and two and a half hours ago, in fact.
“Me, too,” she said, and when he blinked in surprise, she held up her left hand momentarily, demonstratively to display her bare ring finger. “It’s a long story, but it was for the best. I guess you know how that goes.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. Brenda’s divorced? he thought, surprised. “Well, hey, if you ever feel like commisserating together, maybe over dinner or something, we could…”
He hadn’t asked a woman out since Vicki had left him. Hell, he hadn’t asked a woman out since he’d first approached Vicki more than twenty years ago. But some things never changed and as Brenda’s bright expression faded, Paul fell silent, immediately sensing he’d just made a monumental ass out of himself.
“That’s really sweet of you, Paul,” she said. “But I…I’m sort of seeing someone.”
“Oh,” Paul said, nodding, stepping deliberately back and away.
“For about three months now,” she said. “A detective in the homicide division…”
“Oh,” Paul said, inching toward the doors, his shoulders hunched, his eyes cut toward the floor.
“Maybe you remember him? Dan Pierson?”
“Oh,” Paul said, feeling momentarily punted in the balls. “Yeah, I remember him.”
What in the hell could she possibly see in Pierson? Three months was a long time in the dating circuit. That took you definitely past the point of casual dinners and amicable pecks on the cheek. He tried not to think of Pierson kissing her, squelching his fat, greasy lips against Brenda’s, or running his hands, his thick fingers up and down her trim, slender body, caressing her curves. The idea that Pierson might be sleeping with Brenda, slipping between her sheets and thighs every night, left Paul vaguely nauseous and more than vaguely dismayed.
“But I’d sure still like to―” Brenda began, and then a folder, which had been wedged precariously at best among the stack balanced at her hip tumbled to the floor, scattering a mess of autopsy photos around their feet. “Damn it!”
“I got it,” Paul said, kneeling again. He scooped the photos together and froze when he glimpsed a stark headshot of a corpse lying against the stainless steel autopsy table.
Mascara remained, smeared and apparent on her cheeks. Her skin was the color of putty, a waxen, lifeless grey. Her face was dirty, blood-spattered and bruised. A gag had once been wedged in her mouth tightly enough before her death to leave the corners of her mouth torn. Her pale blond hair was matted with dirt and particles of broken plaster.
“Vthhnnooo,” she had mewled at Paul in his dream the night before. “Theeeess…!” No, please!
Paul jerked, dropping the photographs as if they’d bitten him. He scrambled to his feet, wide-eyed and stunned breathless. It…it’s not possible, he thought. It was a dream. Just a goddamn dream…!
“Paul?” Brenda asked, alarmed by his stricken expression. She’d started to genuflect, to collect the pictures, but rose again, stepping toward him. “Paul, what is it?” She cut her eyes toward the spilled photos, and then looked at him again. “Do you know her?”
“I…I don’t…” Paul said quietly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the headshot. It had fallen to the ground, but the girl’s lifeless face continued looking up at him. Her eyelids hadn’t been fully closed. He could see the milky whites of her irises, thin crescents visible beneath the overhang of her lashes. Just a dream! his mind screamed. It’s not possible! It was just a dream!
“She’s a Jane Doe brought in this morning,” Brenda said, leaning down and lifting the photograph, holding it out toward him. “I’ve got missing persons running a check on her, and I’m sending her dentals to the state lab. I can’t pull prints from her…”
No, Paul’s mind moaned at this. Oh, God, no, it’s not possible
“…because someone cut off all of her fingers, and they weren’t found with the body.” Brenda tucked her fingertips beneath his chin, forcing his gaze to snap away from the picture. “Do you recognize her?”
“No,” Paul said quietly, hoarsely. He stepped back, ducking away from her touch. “No, I…I don’t. Just for a moment, she looked like someone…and I thought…”
Brenda’s brows lifted in gentle sympathy. “You don’t see these for awhile, and the shock of it feels brand new, doesn’t it?” she asked. It took him a moment to realize she thought he was acting strangely because he’d gone soft since leaving the homicide division; that the images had affected him.
More than you know, Brenda.
“Yeah,” Paul told her, forcing a smile. He held her files while she stooped, shoving the autopsy photos into the folder. She stood and smiled as he presented her with her papers again, that broad, strained smile still affixed to his face.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. He hooked his thumb toward the doors. “I just…I gotta go. I’m keeping tabs on my niece while my brother’s on his honeymoon…”
“He got married?”
Paul nodded. Christ, the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was exchange small talk. His stomach had twisted into a thick, painful knot, and he was afraid that at any moment, he was going to vomit. He was shaking; he folded his arms and stuffed his hands beneath the crooks of his elbows lest she notice. “Yeah, he’s off in the Bahamas, and his little girl’s staying with me. She’s due out of school…” He spared his watch a glance. “…now, so I’d better…”
“Sure,” Brenda said, nodding. “I’m running late, too. I should go myself.”
Paul nodded again. He turned and walked briskly toward the doors, his gait stiff. “It was good to see you again, Paul,” Brenda called after him, but he didn’t turn or acknowledge her. He barely made it outside―through the revolving door and then cutting an immediate left. He clutched the balustrade of the terrace overlooking a row of decorative hedges and then retched.
CHAPTER TWO
“So how was your day at school, kiddo?” Paul asked Emma.
She went to a private school out in the suburbs, someplace small and close-knit and far more expensive than Paul would ever pay. It cost his brother, Jay, nearly as much to send Emma to one year at the Sacred Heart Academy as it had been for Paul to attend one at college. Three years earlier, Emma’s mother, Jay’s first wife, Lucy had died, and Jay had done some major investing with the life insurance money―not the least of which had been setting up a trust account so that Emma could attend private, expensiv
e schools for the rest of her days.
She sat in the passenger seat of his Explorer, the seat belt drawn in a taut diagonal across her white blouse, her hands folded neatly in the lap of her green-and-blue tartan uniform skirt. “It was okay,” she said with a shrug, her dark eyes turned out the window, watching the scenery go by.
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t being totally truthful. He leaned over and tugged on one of her ponytails. “You want to tell me about it?”
She shrugged again, but sighed in resignation. “Jamie Alcross told me the Bahamas are in the Bermuda Triangle,” she said. “He showed me on a map. He told me ships and planes get lost in the Bermuda Triangle all the time. They disappear, and all the people with them, and no one ever finds them. Planes, Uncle Paul. Daddy and Jo went to the Bahamas on a plane.”
“But, Emma, we’ve talked to your daddy since they arrived in the Bahamas. Jo, too. They’re both there, safe and sound.”
Emma sighed again, rolling her eyes. “Yes, but they have to get on a plane again to come home,” she said.
He blinked. She’d caught him off guard, and just when he’d figured he had the whole problem solved. Goddamn it.
He looked out the windshield again and drummed his fingers momentarily on the steering wheel. “There’s no such thing as the Bermuda Triangle, Em,” he said at last. “It’s just a story people made up.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s like monsters,” he said. “Flying saucers, Bigfoot and haunted houses. None of that stuff is real.”
“How do you know?” she asked again.
He glanced at her. “They teach us that in police school.”
Emma’s eyes widened momentarily, and then she giggled. “No, they don’t.”
