Regrets Only

by Nancy Geary

  He shrugged. “My SWAG?”

  His Scientific Wild-Ass Guess was not what she wanted, but she’d have to wait until all the evidence had been gathered and processed through the Crime Lab to get a definitive answer.

  “How’d a front-end accident manage to damage the top and back?” she asked. “It looks to me like someone bludgeoned this car.”

  “Why don’t you give me a few moments to do my job before you start demanding answers or speculating about them yourself?” Frank asked without shifting his focus away from the interior.

  “Sorry,” Lucy said in a less than heartfelt apology as she took a few steps away. “Why are the criminalistics guys here if this is a suicide?” she quietly asked Jack.

  “Come on,” he said, nodding in the direction of a sand trap where a figure with a black tarp draped over it was visible. “I’ll show you.”

  A paramedic hovered, unwilling to accept the futility of his presence despite the arrival of the Medical Examiner’s wagon. Two cops wearing black Windbreakers with CRIME SCENE written in white lettering stood a few feet away. One was making several notations in a small spiral notepad. The other, a young officer whom she recognized but did not know by name, smoked an unfiltered cigarette.

  When the two of them approached, the smoker ground out his butt with one foot, reached into his pocket, and removed a rubber glove, which he pulled onto his hand with a snapping noise. He moved to the tarp, took hold of the top end, and pulled it back.

  A woman lay on her back with her stiletto-heeled shoes crossed at her ankles. Blood covered her chest, arms, and hands. A black hole in her flesh and burnt fabric marked the bullet’s entrance somewhere in close proximity to her heart. Mascara had smeared onto her cheek and blood was streaked across her chin. One eye was open, the other shut. There was something familiar about the face.

  “Who is she?”

  “Name’s Morgan Reese. A doctor. License lists her address in Bryn Mawr.”

  Lucy covered her mouth with her hand to contain her gasp.

  “Do you know her?” Jack asked.

  She shook her head, trying to organize her thoughts. The mother of Archer, the lost love of Mr. Haverill, and here Lucy was in the middle of the night to investigate her horrible death. She couldn’t hold out with her information for long, but she needed a chance to collect herself. It was too early in her career in Homicide to fall apart over a body while her seasoned partner watched.

  Fortunately Jack didn’t belabor the point. “The police found a thirty-five caliber handgun just beside her body,” he continued, pointing to where a white outline in the shape of a pistol had been spray-painted onto the grass.

  “Was death instantaneous?”

  “She was dead by the time the EMTs arrived. We’re assuming a heart wound, which would mean pretty quick—almost instantaneous depending upon where she hit—but we’ll need an autopsy to tell us definitively. There’s also a fairly nasty head injury—blunt-force trauma. When I told you we thought suicide, we hadn’t seen that yet. Contact was on the left side toward the back of her head. Hard to imagine it was even physically possible for her to do that to herself.”

  “Who called the police?”

  “A woman named Gertrude Barbadash. She heard the shot. She lives by herself over there,” he replied, pointing behind them to a yellow clapboard house that Lucy hadn’t noticed before. Nestled back from the road, it had a long covered porch in front and black shutters on all the windows. “The place is called the Rabbit Club. It’s my understanding she runs it.”

  “The Rabbit?”

  “It’s a men’s club. Bunch of guys meet a couple of times a month to cook. Old Philadelphia,” Jack offered, as if that phrase somehow clarified the situation. “Barbadash is the house manager. The club provides her with living quarters upstairs.”

  Lucy glanced over at the building and noticed a small light in a window on the second floor. Not the most hospitable setting, but perhaps the pay was good. Although many of the houses along South Concourse Drive and Parkside Avenue had been rehabilitated, the neighborhood surrounding this section of Fairmount Park wasn’t the best; she certainly wouldn’t want to live alone in a seldom-used building in the middle of a seasonal golf club.

  “Where is she now?”

  “A paramedic took her to the ER. She complained of dizziness,” the officer explained. “She’s an older lady and was visibly upset.”

  As anyone would be, Lucy thought. Age had nothing to do with it.

  “What else did she say?”

  “Not much. She was reading in her bedroom and heard a shot. She called the police but was too scared to look out the window.”

  “What about the car wreck?”

  He pulled out a notepad and flipped through several pages. “She didn’t mention it. Just said she heard a ‘deafening bang’ that was ‘very close.’ That’s all she described.”

  It did seem odd that she’d missed the crash, the broken glass, perhaps even the sound of repeated banging, no more than three hundred feet away.

  “Who found her?”

  “Officer Callahan. He and Mike Regio responded to Barbadash’s call. On the way up Christ Church Lane, they saw the car. They got out and started looking around. And here she was.”

  “What about the Mercedes?”

  “It’s registered to the deceased.”

  Lucy looked at Jack, who’d furrowed his brow. He seemed lost in thought. “So what happened?” A car accident, a head wound, and a bullet to the chest. Whatever demons Dr. Reese had tried to escape caught up with her tonight.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. There’s no apparent blood in the car. Looks like both head and chest injuries were inflicted after the crash.”

  “As I told Harper, we found this in her purse,” the police officer said. With his gloved hand he held out a piece of light blue stationery with the initials MAR in the top right-hand corner. Across the sheet was scrawled in almost illegible black ink:

  Dearest Avery,

  For all I’ve done, I’m sorry. I never meant to harm you or anyone. I hope that with time you will understand the choices I made and that you can find it in your heart to forgive me. We are all imperfect. Perhaps I was more imperfect than others, but you must never doubt my love for you.

  “And these.” He handed her a ziplock bag containing an orange plastic canister. Lucy could see that it was a Klonopin prescription for Walter Reese. The antianxiety medication had been obtained from a pharmacy in Bryn Mawr. The prescribing physician was Morgan A. Reese.

  “Who is Walter?”

  “Don’t know. Husband; maybe a relative.”

  “The other thing you probably noticed was this.” The officer crouched down and pointed to a series of scars partially obscured by blood on Dr. Reese’s limp wrists.

  The three pinkish lines in her flesh, each no more than an inch long, ran perpendicular to her thin radius and ulna. The scars were revealing—but of a cry for help, not an intent to succeed. As a doctor, Morgan would have known that if she truly wanted to die, incisions along the forearm were more likely to sever high-pressure arteries. She could also have prescribed heparin or other drugs for herself to decrease her blood’s ability to clot, making a parallel cut foolproof. That’s not what she’d done—then or now—but whoever had bashed her in the back of the head wanted her death to appear self-inflicted. He might even have known about the failed earlier attempt and tried to capitalize on it.

  Jack nodded to indicate they’d viewed the body long enough. As the tarp was replaced, Dr. Reese’s haunting one-eyed gaze disappeared behind the blackness.

  “Has her family been notified?”

  “Family hasn’t been identified. Her home telephone is unlisted.”

  Lucy paused before mustering the courage to speak the words that would reveal her personal involvement. It wasn’t something she wished to share, but she had no choice. She took Jack’s arm and pulled him away from the body. Suddenly she didn’t feel professional at al
l. “Archer . . . my boyfriend . . . this is his mother,” she stammered.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  She shook her head, wishing for a moment that she was.

  Jack put his arm around her shoulders. The strength of his grip felt good. “Let me get you home. Lieutenant Sage can contact next of kin.”

  “Don’t make me go. Not yet.” She wanted to say the right words but knew her suddenly timid voice and tear-filled eyes revealed her struggle to maintain composure. “Let me finish here. Let me go back to the precinct and do the paperwork.”

  “O’Malley, you don’t have to be a hero. The case can be reassigned. It’s your boyfriend’s mother.”

  “No,” she blurted. “Don’t do that. Please.”

  She didn’t know Jack well enough to confess her true thoughts: that she was beginning to care deeply for Archer and that she was going to learn everything she possibly could about his mother. She’d never known what actually happened with Aidan and it haunted her a decade later. Information—the truth—might help Archer and his father. And at the heart of what they would need to know was who murdered her. Although she had no doubt about her commitment to the task, for the first time in her law enforcement career, Lucy dreaded what she might discover.

  “Please,” she said again.

  Jack paused before patting her shoulder gently. “I may be making a huge mistake here, O’Malley, but I’m not going to second-guess my partner’s judgment about her own objectivity. You say you want this case; it’s your call. Just promise you’ll let me know if and when it gets to be too much.”

  “I promise.”

  He sighed. “Okay, then. We’ve got a ton of work to do. Let’s get going.”

  8:12 a.m.

  Lucy struggled to climb the narrow steps to her apartment. As she pulled herself up the banister, she felt as if her legs couldn’t possibly carry the weight of the news she was about to deliver. Archer had dropped her off at the crime scene suspecting nothing. He’d kissed her good-night only a few hundred yards from the body of his dead mother. He’d no doubt returned to her apartment and slept peacefully, perhaps without even a dream to stir his slumber. How would he react now?

  She stood on the landing and fished in her bag for her keys. It was only eight in the morning and she was surprised to hear the radio playing. The kettle whistled. Archer was awake already. She couldn’t postpone the inevitable.

  Lucy turned the lock and opened the door slowly. He stood beside the stove, stirring a tablespoon of honey into a steaming mug. Then he returned to the cast-iron frying pan in front of him and mixed the contents with a wooden spoon. As he cooked, he hummed along with the Beethoven concerto. From the threshold, she could see the line where his tan back met his very white bottom, a line revealed by the loose pajamas that hung low on his hips. The familiar smells of his breakfast—scrambled eggs, sausage, and fried apples—filled the small room. It was a Sunday morning ritual.

  “Welcome home,” he said, as he noticed her enter. “You must be wiped out.”

  She nodded, dropped her purse, took off her thin jacket and patent leather loafers, and sat in a chair. He’d lit a fire in the wood-burning stove. Several back issues of Granta were piled on the kitchen table. Without thinking, she picked one up and stared at the cover, an abstract arrangement of colors and faces.

  “I didn’t realize I’d have company for breakfast so I was going to do some reading. But this is much better.” He smiled, and placed a mug in front of her. A mint smell emanated from it. “Are you hungry?”

  The toaster popped. He removed the two slices of crisp wheat bread and put them unbuttered on a plate. Then he added two new ones. “What happened?” he asked, as he lifted the frying pan from the flame and scraped the scrambled eggs onto a platter.

  She looked over at him. Her eyes welled with tears.

  Archer came over to her and wrapped his arms around her neck. “In all honesty, I can’t imagine how you do this job, face death day in and day out.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not the work . . . this is not the work. I’m not upset about . . . This has to do with you,” she stammered.

  He took a step back. “Why? What’s wrong?” Then he shook his head. “I know you were surprised about my father, about the house. I probably should have given you some more information. Maybe it wasn’t fair. I just didn’t want it to take on significance that it doesn’t hold for me.”

  She shook her head. “This has nothing to do with last night or dinner. Archer—” She reached out and clasped his hand in both of hers. “It was your mother. The victim was your mother. She’s dead.”

  He sank down onto the floor and sat cross-legged with his head in his hands.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What happened?” he asked without looking up.

  Lucy described what she’d seen and what little she’d learned.

  “So it wasn’t suicide?”

  “No, but we think her killer wanted it to look that way.”

  He pushed himself over to where she sat and rested his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair. She could hear the sausage crackling in the pan and smell the apples starting to burn, but she didn’t move. As a police officer, she felt frustrated to sit with the next of kin and know that there were no questions to ask. Archer hardly knew this woman except by name. He wouldn’t be able to explain who Avery was, or why Dr. Reese might have been at Fairmount Links, or who might have had reason to kill her. She was more a mystery to him than to anyone. And because he hadn’t accepted the invitation to lunch, hadn’t responded to his mother’s overture after nearly thirty years, he’d lost the opportunity to hear what she might have had to say. Lucy knew that he would be thinking of that more than anything else.

  After several minutes, he stood, moved back to the stove, and turned off the flames. He leaned against the counter. “I can’t miss her. I didn’t love her. I didn’t know her,” he recited, as if he needed to remind himself. “And yet I still feel this emptiness.” His voice cracked. “I only hope that Dad finds some relief. He’s been waiting for her to walk back in the door ever since she walked out. Now at least he can abandon that hope and move on.”

  The sentence struck Lucy as callous, although it was a phrase she’d heard so many times before. Moving on. Confirmed information that a loved one was dead allowed the family to move on. Friends and relatives of a missing person were relieved when a body was discovered or when a defendant was convicted. She’d never understood why that was easier than living with uncertainty; uncertainty allowed for hope to be sustained. But she knew from everything she’d read and heard and seen that closure, even horrible closure, was universally welcomed. Maybe that’s why Aidan’s death still haunted her. There were too many open questions to move on.

  “Are you going to investigate?” Archer asked.

  She nodded. “Unless you don’t want me to. The case is assigned to me and Jack, but my Lieutenant would let me off if I asked.”

  “No,” he replied. “I want you to do it. But I want you to make me a promise.”

  “Anything,” she replied without thinking.

  “Don’t hide information from me. Don’t try to protect me or my feelings or my family. I want to know . . . everything.”

  She shuddered, realizing the predicament she was in. But she understood his sentiment completely. That had been all she’d asked for ten years ago and she hadn’t gotten it. “I promise.”

  10

  10:13 a.m.

  Jack Harper stood on the front steps of the Joseph W. Spelman Building, a drab, yellow brick structure with a few narrow, rectangular windows on one side that housed various divisions of the Department of Public Health, including the Medical Examiner’s offices. He had his hands in his pockets. His Phillies baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes and he wore dark glasses. It was the belt-and-suspenders approach to keeping out the Sunday morning glare.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Lucy said, tucking her white shirt
into her khaki pants. She still hadn’t slept, and had barely managed to shower and change her clothes before heading to University Avenue. She’d stayed at the kitchen table with Archer until the last possible moment, reluctant to leave him with only Cyclops for company. Although she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was attending his mother’s autopsy, he must have sensed where she was going because he didn’t ask.

  “Ladd will be in a bad mood whether we’re prompt or not. No doubt he’s none too pleased to have had his Saturday night ruined, and now his Sunday breakfast interrupted. Speaking of which—” he said, producing a crumpled paper bag from the pocket of his nylon jacket. “Have you eaten? I bought you a Boston crème just in case.”

  “Thanks. But I’m not sure even I could stomach that at this moment.”

  “A few more months on the job and you won’t give it a second thought.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Lucy had never seen an autopsy before and would have been just as happy to keep it that way. Although she wasn’t a squeamish person and had certainly dealt with enough violence and blood over the past eight years, watching Morgan Reese be cut open and have her vital organs removed and weighed was enough to turn her stomach several times over. She would have much preferred to get the report and photographs and meet with the Medical Examiner—as she’d done numerous times before—but Jack had insisted that they watch this one live. With a prominent Caucasian female victim, Lieutenant Sage was sure to be keeping close tabs on their investigation.

  “And you never know what might come out verbally or visually that never makes it into the report,” he’d said as she had left the station to break the news to Archer. “Not that I’m impugning the integrity of our ME’s office. Never. But it’s happened to me before that when I’m looking at something on a body, a mark, a bruise, who knows what, I learn something that no picture or typewritten word is ever going to teach me.” He’d smiled and tweaked her cheek. “I’ve been at this job a lot longer than you. Just for a moment let me pretend to know something you don’t. Indulge me.”