The Girl In the Morgue

by D. D. VanDyke

  “We all have different ones,” Bob said with a shrug. “Helping people down is the fun part.”

  “And you’ve never had someone fall?”

  “Fall…no. Jump, yes.”

  Cal felt sick. “Really? I’m sorry.”

  He nodded.

  Maybe there were worse things than rescuing people from precarious positions. Cal could only imagine how it would feel to watch someone jump to their death.

  The CHP returned with the breathalyzer. As he gave instructions for the test, Cal stared at it dubiously.

  “I have a chest injury,” she said, with a small motion toward it. “It hurts to take a deep breath.”

  “You’re going to have to do it anyway, or I’ll be writing you up for refusing to give a sample. Or the EMT here can draw blood.”

  “You’re a real hardass, aren’t you?”

  “When it comes to idiots—excuse me, citizens—drinking and driving and putting everyone around them at risk and costing taxpayers thousands of dollars, yeah, I am. Now blow.” He handed the mouthpiece to her.

  Cal breathed normally a few times, testing her lungs and the pain in her chest. Then she followed the directions he had given her, taking a deep breath and blowing into the tube for as long as she could, waiting for the green light to come on. Her chest burned, heart palpitated painfully, and she was seeing bright flashes in front of her eyes.

  There was a beep. Cal pulled the mouthpiece away and gasped.

  “You okay?” the medic asked, putting his stethoscope on and putting the diaphragm on Cal’s chest.

  Cal focused on breathing through the pain, filling her lungs up with oxygen. “Shit, that hurts.”

  The medic nodded, still listening to her heart. He looked at the CHP officer. “You got what you needed?”

  The CHP was looking unhappily at the readout on the machine. “Nothing.”

  “Then I would guess she passed. I’m not letting her repeat it.”

  The cop took it back to his car, scowling.

  “We need to take you in,” the paramedic told Cal. “You’re experiencing abnormal rhythms. Add to that your concussion, any soft tissue damage from this accident…”

  “No. I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed. No more hospitals.”

  “This is serious,” the man said earnestly. “Look what just happened to you. How do you know the crash wasn’t helped along by your condition?”

  The crane put Madge down on the pavement, settling gently onto all four wheels. Workmen moved in to remove the chains. Cal was relieved to see her little Mustang on horizontal ground. She would need body work and the brakes repaired, but Madge would be okay.

  Bob joined the workmen removing the chains, and Cal was surprised to see him scoot underneath with a work light for a quick inspection. When he returned a few minutes later, he motioned the CHP officer back over and spoke to him in Cal’s presence.

  “Brake lines are cut halfway through in two places, not broken or torn out. That was no accident. Tool marks on the emergency brake cable as well. Looks like whoever did it didn’t have time to finish the job.”

  “So…it would take a while to lose all the fluid, and the pressure with it.” She tried to figure out when it might have happened. Not in Sergei’s garage…so, maybe in her own, at her house. Picking the lock on the garage door couldn’t be all that hard. “Thanks.”

  Bob looked at the hill. “If you hadn’t decelerated, you’d have rolled for sure. In an old convertible like that…”

  The cop glanced at Cal with a little more sympathy, and sighed. “I’ll call for a crash investigator. Guess I’m here for the duration. Lady, you just cost me a lot of paperwork.”

  Cal shrugged. “Sorry. At least the CHP is good for the overtime. SFPD was crap. When I was on the job, anyway.” There. That should seal the deal.

  “You were a cop?”

  “I was. Until this happened.” She pulled back her hair showing the bomb scars. She felt manipulative doing it, but she needed him on her side right now.

  The patrolman finally turned sympathetic. “Ouch. Okay, we’re good to go now. Sorry for the third degree.”

  “Thanks, officer.” Tenuous bonds of blue brotherhood established, face saved and rough spots smoothed over, Cal nodded and closed her eyes, letting the man withdraw.

  When Bob—Robert Stevens, he made sure she knew—learned Cal refused to take the ambulance back to the hospital, he offered to give her a ride home. Insisted on it, in fact, though Cal said she could call a cab. She rode in his fire truck back to the station, and then transferred to his car, where she once again had to refuse a trip to the hospital.

  She closed her eyes while he drove. She’d been tired after her sleepless night at the hospital. The pain added an extra layer of heaviness and exhaustion. The emotional encounter with Sergei and the adrenaline of the car accident had wrung out every last drop of energy she had left.

  “We’re here.”

  Cal opened her eyes and looked out the window. She stretched and covered a yawn, which led to the discovery of a trail of drool down her cheek and into her collar. She wiped it away, mortified. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to fall asleep!”

  Bob chuckled. “My scintillating personality wasn’t enough to keep you awake? I’m hurt.”

  She winced as she stretched. “No, I’m hurt, believe me.”

  He mimed a friendly punch in the shoulder. His tone light but his expression serious, he said, “And now you’re home, and you can relax and not worry about anything else. Take some time to recover.”

  “Yeah. I will. Swear to God.”

  Bob crossed himself. “Don’t say things like that if you don’t mean them.”

  “I know. My dad was Catholic.”

  “That means you are.”

  “Not really.”

  “Christened and confirmed?”

  Cal closed her eye, took a deep breath and reopened them. “Okay, tiger. No energy for this rabbit trail today.”

  “I’m just saying, maybe someone was looking out for you today.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” Even if it was only her own better judgment talking to her.

  He walked Cal up to the front door, which was a good thing, because she was a little unsteady on her feet. “You take care of yourself.”

  Cal nodded and closed the door. She shot the bolt and moved to the window to watch him walk to his car, shaking her head. Men. Especially firemen and cops, always looking for someone to rescue. She didn’t need rescuing. Okay, today she had, but only physically, and she hadn’t been kidding. She was on her last reserve of strength, with no interest in flirting or even making nice.

  “Mom?” She didn’t expect an answer. Lately, since her kidnapping, Starlight would be up and checking every noise in the house, especially when Cal came in the front door.

  The sofa in her mother’s living room was right there and her bedroom was all the way up the stairs. It wasn’t much of a contest. After shoving the dogs gently away, Cal reclined on the couch as gingerly as possible, feeling every twinge. She grabbed one of Starlight’s shawls that had been left draped over the arm and drew it over herself, pulled off her boots and closed her eyes, letting herself spin into the blackness.

  She didn’t constantly waken and fall back asleep like she had at the hospital, with all of its noise and interruptions making sure she was still alive. Nor did she lie worrying and trying to sort through leads on Jenna Duncan’s case. The void was deep and dark and she fell right into it.

  A couple of times, she surfaced enough to be aware of the room around her, to shift stiffly into another position, and then she fell back to sleep. She left her cell phone’s ringer turned off. The house phone rang a few times, but she let it go to voicemail.

  Sometime during her twilight, Snowflake jumped on top of Cal, kneaded at her for a while with his front paws, and then finally cuddling up with her. His warm, soft body was familiar and comforting.

  The Pekes eventually woke her up. She d
idn’t know how long since Chloe and Kira had been walked, and they needed to be fed again. Starlight cared for the feelings of all living creatures, but she wasn’t always so attentive to their physical needs when she had something else on her mind. Cal let them out, fed them, and after her own ablutions and a large glass of water, lay back down again.

  After the dogs ate, they came to the sofa and investigated as if everything were a surprise to them, snuffling at Cal’s hand hanging over the edge of the couch, yapping at Snowflake, and grumbling about the room looking for any further sign of food or foxes or whatever Pekingese dogs had been bred to hunt. Mostly, scraps dropped from plates, she suspected. Eventually, they too climbed up on the low couch, settled in around Cal, and started snoring.

  Cal groaned. “Can’t you shut up? For little dogs, you’re buzz saws.” She covered her head with a throw pillow and managed to muffle the noise enough to go back to sleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cal awoke to someone else moving in the room. She tried to force her groggy eyes open and to focus on what was going on. Had Starlight returned home to take care of the dogs? Or had she sent a neighbor over?

  But when Cal managed to pry her eyes open, the shadowy figure was not Starlight or one of her friends. It had a man’s tread.

  Cal reached for her Glock, but it wasn’t there. Of course, the M&Ms had it. But her backup gear should be on the floor in a pile where she’d dumped it.

  She reached down stealthily and felt for a weapon.

  The dogs snored on. How many times had she heard how a dog was better than a burglar alarm? Not these guys. They slept like rocks. Snowflake lifted his head, though, and peered with interest.

  He was almost silent. But not quite. There was something familiar about him. A whiff of masculine cologne, too expensive for the M&Ms, or Tanner Brody. She knew that walk, that body language before. But it was the aroma that clinched it. She knew who it was the instant before he spoke.

  “It’s out of reach, Cal. I didn’t want you to panic and do something regrettable.”

  She could barely breathe, and it wasn’t because of her chest injury. “Thomas?”

  He knelt beside the sofa and bent in to kiss her cheek. Cold and dry, not the soft and warm of her imaginings.

  Cal wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her. She’d missed him. The heat of his touch, his smell, his taste. Every movement she made hurt, but Cal wanted him in her arms again. Close against her, with no daylight between them.

  Thomas pulled away. Cal’s reaching hands fell short as he sat in the nearby overstuffed chair.

  “Shall I turn on the lamp?”

  “Go ahead.” Cal breathed, trying to slow her pounding heart. “You might want to pull the blinds.” The sun had gone down already. She’d slept the whole day.

  Thomas took his time shutting the window coverings, unfamiliar with the room, not able to see what he was doing until the light was on.

  His face seemed thinner than she remembered. Harder and more chiseled. He would have had a more difficult time disguising himself as a woman, as he had during past cases. Or maybe not. The starving look was always in vogue.

  He peered down at Cal, shaking his head. “Can’t look after yourself without me around?”

  “Look after myself? I’ve been looking after myself just fine without you,” Cal snapped, remembering all of a sudden that she was supposed to be angry with him. He’d caught her off-guard, and in her groggy state she forgot for a few seconds how furious she was for his disappearing and not giving her any way to contact him. “Where the hell have you been?”

  His cool eyes blinked, and he folded his hands, relaxed and placid. “I had work.”

  “Yeah?” She sat up stiffly. “Who’d you off this time?”

  “Cal, Cal, Cal. You know I do more than that. I’m a problem solver. A troubleshooter.”

  “Who and what trouble did you shoot this time?”

  He chuckled softly and sat beside her.

  Cal didn’t reach for him. Instead, she folded her arms across her chest. “Did you scatter rose petals on my bed?”

  “Not me. Some other boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have another boyfriend.”

  “Tanner Brody?”

  “Nice guy. No spark. Friend zone.” Cal kept her arms crossed and glared.

  Thomas cocked his head. “You’ve changed your mind about being happy to see me?”

  “Yes. You have to stop breaking in here, just showing up whenever you feel like it. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you before I realized who you were.”

  “I didn’t break anything. You really need better locks, not that they would do more than slow me. And I have a great deal of experience with armed people, though you’re in no shape to defend yourself. Besides, I was under the impression that you would welcome my presence. Do I need to re-evaluate?”

  Guilt at her treatment of him seized her. She really wanted to tell him to come and go as he pleased, but that would make her look weak and dependent. She tried to compromise, take the moderate path between anger and surrender. “There is this thing called the phone, you know. You can call when you’re coming into town. Or keep in touch while you’re away. You can let people know what your plans are. How you’re doing. How you feel about them.”

  He seemed distracted, staring off into the distance. He sighed audibly. “I was worried about you. I had to make sure you were all right. It wasn’t a planned stop. In fact, if my employer knew I was here, he might not be too happy.”

  “Why would you care about me? I’m sure you have a girl in every town.”

  “No, I don’t. You know I care about you. Deeply.”

  “Hard to guess it. Last time I saw you, you were nearly dead in my arms. You disappear from the hospital without even a goodbye?”

  “You’re one to talk about disappearing from hospital,” Thomas said, smiling slightly. He shifted position on the couch, his body pressing into hers.

  Cal caught her breath, blaming the sudden pain in her chest on her injury. “I didn’t disappear. I signed myself out and came home. If I had a way to contact you, maybe I would have told you. We’ll never know now, will we?”

  “I can’t always make myself available, Cal. I need to stay out of sight. I can’t be in contact while I’m on a job. It puts both of us at risk. You’ll have to get used to that.” He again looked away from her, grimacing as if in pain. “Or not.”

  “Are you okay?” Cal asked, softening in spite of herself.

  “Of course. I’m perfectly fine. You’re the one I’m concerned about. Gallivanting around, getting into sword fights and driving your car off cliffs. Stirring up trouble. How do you ever get anything done, charging around so indiscreetly?”

  “I didn’t drive my car off a cliff,” Cal said hotly. “I drove it up a—a hill. And that’s because my brakes were cut and I was trying to avoid killing anyone! And charging around indiscreetly? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  His face seemed an unreadable mask, but Cal guessed he hadn’t been surprised by her statement. He’d been goading her for a response, perhaps knowing that she would tell him more in anger than if he just asked her what happened straight out.

  “Who cut your brake lines?”

  “If I knew that, I would have stopped them from doing it. Obviously, I’m getting too close to someone.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about the case?”

  “Is that what you’re here to do? Help me with a case? Rescue me from trouble? Like I can’t do my own damn job?”

  He pursed his lips. “I’m here to see you. The rest is helping out. That’s what friends do.”

  “Oh, now we’re friends?”

  “With benefits.” He stroked her cheek. “I’ve always thought there was nothing so valuable as a friend. Lovers come and go, and one can’t get away from family, but friends are chosen, and are all the more valuable for it. Now, please, tell me.”

  She sighed. “I do want to talk about it
. You’re the one who doesn’t want to answer my questions.”

  His voice turned calm and precise again. “I told you. I was on a job. I cannot discuss the details of that with you. I’ve told you much more about myself than anyone else. If you can stay away from asking about the specifics of my work, I’ll do my best.”

  “Your best to what?”

  “To talk about myself. About us. You said you wanted to get in touch, so you must have wanted to talk. Well, here I am.”

  Cal shook her head, which reminded her how much her head still ached. “Like you said, if we’re friends…I wanted to talk to my friend. I don’t have that many, you know. Some people say I’m…”

  “Difficult?”

  “Dad always called me a handful.”

  “At least two.” He winked. “Well, here I am. Shall I break out the drinks and we’ll have a nice visit? How are you, how was your day, dear?”

  “Neither of us is that domestic.”

  “God, no.” He brought his hand up and brushed over her forehead. “You’re looking rather drawn. About due for some painkillers? Or a drink?”

  “Or both. Haven’t had anything all day.” Well, since her morning vodka breakfast with Sergei that had almost gotten her in deep shit. She checked her watch. After six. “Food, either. These damn animals are better off than I am.”

  Snowflake mrowed almost silently, as if he knew she was talking about him.

  Thomas rubbed the cat’s head. “Good Lord. Either you’re a lot tougher than I thought, or you’re not as badly hurt as I was led to believe.” He immediately climbed the stairs to Cal’s bathroom, where she could hear him rattling pills in her medicine cabinet. He returned a few moments later with several bottles. “Some of these are expired, but you may as well make use of them.”

  Another quick trip into the kitchen returned him with a glass of water. He resumed his place on the couch, pressed against her, and fed her the pills one at a time. Cal saw him looking at the information on the bottles. “These are three years old. From your…previous incident.”