Dangerous Echoes

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘I’m not jealous.’

  ‘Really? Then what was that about?’ He pointed back the way they’d come.

  She shrugged. ‘I just want to get down to the morgue and start the autopsy, okay. I don’t have time to stand around while you pursue your social life.’

  ‘Pursue my social life?’ He snorted. ‘Now I know you’re jealous.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. What would I have to be jealous of?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  She tightened her lips and kept walking to the lift, all too aware of the smirk on his face as he pushed the call button and waited for the lift to come. He’d always been such a know-it-all when it came to reading others. Sometimes it had been good to have a friend who could interpret people and their emotions—she’d learned so much from him. Sometimes it just annoyed the crap out of her. ‘You don’t need to come with me.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  The lift dinged and the doors opened. ‘I’d prefer that you didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Erika, but you should know by now, you don’t always get what you want.’

  She wanted to growl at him. Instead, she stepped into the lift just as he did. His arm brushed hers as they turned to push the button to the basement at the same time. Her skin prickled and heat surged through her. He glanced up, gaze clashing with hers, the green of his eyes brilliant in the dim glow of the fluorescent lights overhead. There was a look there that made her feel like he was reading her mind; like he was touching her soul.

  She swallowed hard and turned swiftly, almost stumbling over her own feet.

  ‘Erika?’ Hartley’s warm fingers gripped her arm, her shoulder bumping into his chest as he held her steady. ‘Are you sure you want to do this now?’

  Her throat felt tight. She cleared it. ‘I need to find out what happened to Peter. To find the truth of his death. I need to do it now. Then I can get out of your hair and go home.’

  ‘Okay.’ His grip lightened, fingers brushing up and down her arm, the expression in his eyes one of sympathy and something else she didn’t understand. It couldn’t be worry, because all she really was to him was a bad memory from the past and a pain in his arse right now.

  But the kiss…

  The kiss meant nothing. It happened because they were both emotional. Because he was trying to make her feel better or prove a point or…

  Well, she didn’t know exactly why he’d kissed her. None of the reasons she’d come up with quite made sense. Men didn’t kiss women simply because they were emotional or had once been close friends. Usually it had more to do with desire and passion created by a mix of chemicals in the brain that made reason and intelligent thought non-existent while sexual release was attained. And that definitely wasn’t the case here. She wasn’t attracted to Hartley and he most definitely wasn’t attracted to her and even if they were, what did that matter? When she was done here, she would go back to Melbourne, back to her job that was everything to her and he would stay here. It didn’t matter what either of them felt about the other, because ultimately, they both had their places to be. He was a country boy at heart and she was… Well, she didn’t really know what she was. She supposed she liked living in the city, except she missed the open spaces, the echoing emptiness of the barren plains that rolled on and on beyond the far horizon once she made it out of the stifling enclosure of this closed-minded town. She’d not realised how much she missed it until she was driving here. Didn’t realise how much she missed the places where the echoes lived. She’d had to leave them just like she’d had to leave Harts and Peter all those years ago. She hadn’t much liked the picture of herself that had been painted here. It had taken running away to make her realise she didn’t have to fit herself to that picture. She could create an entirely different one. And she had. One that didn’t belong here with Harts or with the echoes that had once been her friends.

  So she would go back to where she’d made a place for herself and he could go back to his normal life before she careened into town and turned everything upside down like she always had. He could return to flirting with Nancy if he wished.

  She sucked in a breath as pain stabbed in her chest.

  His worried frown deepened. ‘Erika, are you sure…’

  ‘Why did you kiss me?’

  ‘I…what?’

  She liked that she could catch him off-guard. It was nice to not always be the one who didn’t understand emotions or thought processes. But then again, perhaps he looked shocked because they were heading to the morgue, about to do an autopsy on Peter’s body. She should be thinking only of that. So, why wasn’t she? Made uncomfortable by the question, she waved her hand. ‘Forget I asked.’ The lift door opened. ‘Let’s get this done.’

  ‘Erika.’ His hand was on her arm again before she’d made it to the doors into the morgue—she wished he would stop touching her. It was making it difficult to keep her mind where it needed to be. ‘It’s only natural not to want to think about the death of a loved one, let alone doing an autopsy on them. It’s no wonder you tried to distract yourself from all of this by kissing me.’

  ‘You kissed me.’

  ‘I…’ He frowned, mercifully letting go of her arm and folding his arms across his chest. ‘That’s not how I remember it.’

  ‘Then you’re remembering it wrong.’ She turned away, reaching out to push the green button to open the morgue doors.

  ‘Erika. Do you really think I kissed you first?’

  She froze, hand hovering over the button. She shouldn’t look at him and yet she couldn’t stop herself. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember you reaching up for me.’

  ‘You reached for me first.’

  ‘You opened your mouth to me.’

  ‘The kiss surprised me.’

  He brushed his hand through his hair, the look of puzzlement increasing. ‘If you didn’t want to kiss me, you could have just pushed back, said no.’

  ‘So could you. You pulled me close.’

  ‘You raked your hands through my hair.’

  He was standing close again, gaze skipping down to her lips and back to her eyes. Her chest tightened. The hot prickling intensified. ‘I’m not talking about this.’

  ‘You brought it up.’

  ‘I’ve got an autopsy to do.’ She hit the green button and fled through the opening doors.

  A cool wash of air moved over her and she sighed with relief at the familiar landscape of the morgue—the stainless steel tables, the instrument trays, the compartments where bodies were stored until they were cleared for burial. She’d worked in a number of different morgues during her training and then in her job, but every single one, whether a simple country hospital morgue with bare-minimum equipment or the flashier technology-studded installations in the city, had an essence at heart that was the same. Cold. Practical. Clinical. She felt right at home.

  The door opened again behind her, but she ignored it. She didn’t want to think about or talk to Hartley Cooper right now. All she wanted was to find her brother’s body and examine it with the care and precision she was known for. Then, and only then, when she knew more about what had happened, would she be able to breathe.

  She found the clipboard with the locker allocations—no computerised system for logging the bodies in place here, obviously—and found the cool-locker he was in. She expected Hartley to hover in the background—usually the cops she worked with preferred not to see the working end of the post-mortem, despite, or perhaps because of, the horrors they saw out in the field, but he was at her shoulder when she reached the locker door.

  ‘Here, let me.’

  He opened it and pulled out the tray. Her brother’s body was in a bag; not precisely usual, but not unusual given the circumstances of his death and the fact that they didn’t have a coroner or forensic pathologist here. There would have been nobody to prep the body.

  She angled the trolley in place and said, ‘Help me lift the tray onto the trolley?’

  H
e unclipped the tray and helped her lift it down, then pushed it over to the autopsy bed. ‘On three?’

  She nodded and together they lifted the bag, lowering it gently onto the metal table.

  She stared at the bag for a long moment, then steeling herself against what she’d see inside, said, ‘We have to get this off him.’ She reached for the zip on the bag.

  Hartley’s hand covered hers. ‘Shall I?’

  She looked up at him, brows raised. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘I just thought…’ He shook his head, a strange smile on his lips, and then lifted his hand away. ‘Of course you can.’

  She knew how Peter had died, could smell the burned flesh even if she hadn’t already known, but when she uncovered his head, she couldn’t help reacting to the sight. There was nothing here that was recognisable and yet her mind framed his face over the twist of features, so that she saw him lying there, eyes staring up at her, accusing. Pleading. Blaming. Blaming her for running away, for not thinking about him, for not helping him the moment he’d asked without question. Pleading with her to find out who had done this to him. Oh god. Peter.

  No. She took in a sharp breath, blinking rapidly. This was why she never wanted to see a photo of the victim before she went to work. Why she never wanted to know their names. It made it all so much harder when she could see their smiling face layered atop the death on her table. Peter might be dead, but he could still speak to her if she could make herself forget who he was and find the clues left behind. But it was so hard this time, harder than she’d imagined it could be.

  ‘Are you okay, Erika?’

  Hartley’s voice came at her from far away, but she heard it, and it was enough to allow her to blink away the accusing image of her brother’s face, to suck in a breath laced with the scents of disinfectant, burned flesh and metal. And something else? Under the other scents, pungent and recognisable. She leaned closer, sniffed. ‘I smell kerosene.’

  ‘You do?’ His face was twisted in an expression of distaste—dead bodies, even refrigerated ones, had a certain smell and it upset most people.

  ‘Yes. I’ll have to take a sample to do a chemical trace, but I’m quite certain there is kerosene here.’ She looked up at Hartley. ‘Why would there be kerosene at a meth lab?’

  ‘Perhaps they were using it somehow?’

  ‘No. With all the combustibles, having kerosene there would have been foolish in the extreme.’ She frowned down at her brother’s body, still mostly shrouded in the body bag. ‘This smells like it was poured on him.’ She glanced up at Hartley who was looking at the body in surprise. ‘Did the firefighter in charge of the investigation mention anything about what caused the explosion?’

  ‘No. I think they’re still looking over the site. I was planning on speaking to Grim later today.’

  ‘Grim?’

  ‘Toby Grimshaw. He’s one of the professional firefighters based in Echo Springs. He takes care of most of the fire-related investigations here, although he has to send most things to the police forensics teams in Dubbo or Sydney given we don’t have our own unit. He’ll be the man to talk to about this.’

  ‘We need to ask him if he’s found any kerosene containers.’

  ‘Okay.’ He swallowed. ‘So, are you done? Is that all you need?’

  ‘I haven’t even started.’

  She directed him to put some gloves on and help remove the body bag. He paled, but helped despite how it affected him.

  ‘You can go now if you’re squeamish,’ she said, folding the bag up neatly and putting it on the bed behind her to examine for any evidence later.

  He swallowed hard, hands jutting out from his sides as if he was afraid of touching himself with them. ‘I’m fine. I need to stay here to ensure the chain of evidence is correctly handled.’

  ‘Of course. Given the fact this post-mortem is not yet officially sanctioned.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t think I was questioning your abilities.’

  Her brows rose. ‘Why would I? I’m excellent at what I do.’

  ‘Of course you are.’ His smile widened.

  Her stomach fluttered a little. Ignoring it, she looked down at the body. ‘The fire was hot. His clothing has melted into his skin.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘No. It does make it more difficult to find particulate evidence that would normally be found in the fibres. Clothing always picks up a remarkable amount of evidence.’ She looked down at his feet. ‘Where are his shoes?’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t wearing any.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, the skin here is almost intact indicating he was wearing shoes, probably leather. Someone took them off when they brought him here. I’ll need to see them. They could have evidence on them.’

  Hartley turned around and spied two zip-locked bags on a far table. ‘Maybe that’s them.’ He walked over. Peter and Tyler’s names were printed on the outside of the bags. ‘Yep, this is them by the looks of things. Tyler’s are here too.’

  ‘Okay, while I take samples of skin and clothing for chemical analysis, can you please don a fresh set of gloves, and very carefully remove the shoes from the bags and put them on separate tables so I can look at them later.’

  ‘Sure.’

  There was a sound in his voice that caught her attention. She glanced up at him—he was already donning new gloves. He still looked a little green, but his gaze was fixed firmly on her and he moved his lips in a tight smile and nodded, as if she’d asked him a question. She nodded back and then, bending over the body, picked up an instrument and went to work.

  Chapter Eight

  It didn’t take long to take the samples she needed—from under fingernails, remaining hair, skin, blood and scrapings off the teeth. She did a visual check of the body and pulled samples of glass and metallic shards that were embedded in the soft tissue. ‘It’s difficult to tell with the extent of necrosis, but I think there is evidence here,’ she pointed at the frontal bone of the skull, ‘here,’ to the ribs, ‘and here’ to the phalanges, ‘of trauma.’

  ‘What kind of trauma?’

  ‘I will need to take an X-ray to see.’

  ‘Can’t you see that with your X-ray vision?’

  She looked at him blankly. What?

  ‘You said Miss Chief would have X-ray vision like any true super hero.’

  She looked down at the body and then back up at him. ‘I’m not a super hero.’

  Hartley smiled and shook his head. ‘You are still so literal.’

  ‘That was a joke?’ He nodded. ‘It wasn’t very funny. You need to work on your material.’

  He barked out a laugh. His face lit up when he laughed like that. There was a glow in his eyes that made her want to laugh with him, except she didn’t quite know what was funny. But then he looked guilty, his gaze returning to the body. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing.’

  ‘Grief can do strange things to people.’

  A shadow clouded his eyes as he looked at her. ‘Yes, it can.’ He gestured at the body. ‘Wouldn’t that trauma have been caused by the explosion? When the bodies were thrown?’

  ‘I don’t think he was thrown.’ She looked back down at her brother’s body. She shook her head a little. No. She couldn’t think of it that way when she was working on it. He was the victim. The body. That was all. ‘There is explosive debris, but not the kind of breaks I would expect if they had been at the epicentre of the explosion.’ She glanced up at him. ‘I need to X-ray the body before I go any further. The X-ray could help make cause of death clearer.’

  He helped lift the body across to the trolley and then pushed it to a door at the far right of the morgue that had ‘X-ray’ written over it. ‘You know how to work it?’ he asked when they were inside.

  ‘Of course.’ He had come around the trolley and was now standing close behind her. Too close. She jerked the trolley in place and slammed her foot down on the brake, then turned to set the machine. ‘You can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘I’ll call
you when I need you.’ She waved him away. He went, but not before saluting her with a ‘Yes ma’am.’

  The door swung shut behind her and finally she was alone.

  She put on the apron that was hanging on a hook and breathed out a sigh of relief. Except it came out as a little stuttering gasp. She pressed her hands to her eyes and took in another deep breath before turning back to the machine. She pressed a few buttons, heard the familiar hum behind her as it jerked to life, taking the slow progression of photos she’d need to finish her job.

  Too quickly, the machine gave one final groaning click and fell silent. Usually she liked the silence of the morgue, but now she hated it. She wished for some sound to distract from the push-pull of emotions she couldn’t allow out.

  She closed her eyes, clenched her fingers tight into her hands, and pictured the mountain meadow, the scents, the warm breeze, the rolling green of the hills that spread out before her reaching out to touch the blue sky that was fading to purple and orange and red in the distance. Yes. That was better. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly and shook out her hands. Nerves still kicked under her skin when she opened her eyes, but they weren’t pulling her in all directions like they had been a few minutes earlier.

  She hadn’t felt this bad for years. It was this place. This town. It had always made her feel wrong. Peter had been different. He hadn’t exactly fitted in, not like Harts, but he’d liked it here and been liked in return. And he’d been loved and cared for by Mabel.

  Now he was dead.

  Her fingers curled at her sides again, before she made herself press on, finish the array of X-rays necessary for a full and complete picture of the how and the when that could lead to a why.

  The door swung open just as she finished. ‘Are you done yet?’ Hartley was outlined in the doorway, his expression hidden in shadow.

  Her fingernails pressed so hard into the flesh of her palms, she wondered she couldn’t feel them cut her skin. Even so, she managed a fair approximation of a smile and said, ‘All done in here. We’ve got to get the body back on the autopsy bed so I can finish the post-mortem.’