For the first time in a long time, Cynthia smiled at him.
She said, “It’s much too late for that, Isaiah.”
Driving to Stoneridge the long way with the radio off and the windows down, Izzy pondered Cynthia’s fatalism, her insistence that the hurt she experienced would never leave, never ebb. He recalled feeling that way once, a long time ago, when he was a boy. Eventually, things improved. He knew he could never be someone those things hadn’t happened to, but by adulthood he’d become determined to never let that define him. That determination never abandoned him, but he wished he could impart some of it to his friend.
On North Lamar, between Airport Boulevard and the interstate, he caught sight of a half-sized billboard above a liquor store. It was newer than most, not yet peeling or faded, and prominently featured a stone-faced man with a receding hairline in a gray suit. Beside the staring face were the words hector gutierrez, attorney-at-law. The advertising campaign of an ambulance chaser, but the eyes of something much worse. Izzy knew. He’d looked into those eyes many times, in a former life, and denied to himself what he saw there. With a shiver, he reverted his attention to the road and switched on the radio.
Three
He was still thinking about Cynthia—about the marks on her arm, the squatting situation—when the ER went from relatively quiet and contained to an all-out clusterfuck shortly after two PM.
FNDI Forbes still hadn’t come around, so Izzy stayed put and helped out where he could. By the time the storm arrived, they were understaffed even with him.
Izzy did not know the situation when triage sent four patients in, most with extensive injuries plainly evident at first glance. Dan Jarvis, the ER’s head physician, sprinted in after them, sweat already beading on his high, freckled forehead. One of the patients was an adult male with what looked like a gunshot wound in his right temple. Another was a young girl, maybe seven or eight. She wore an oxygen mask and made no overt signs of response. Izzy decided on his own she was first priority.
He helped wheel her to a curtained bay where he and another nurse, Shannon Delfry, worked on the girl’s vitals. Someone said, “He’s not going to make it.” Izzy assumed they meant the man with the head wound.
“What happened here?” he asked of no one in particular.
“Family of four,” Shannon said. She’d assisted the triage. “Dad driving, Mom in the passenger seat. Two kids in back.”
“He got shot?”
“He shot himself,” she said. “At sixty miles per hour.”
“Jesus Christ,” Izzy said. “Know her name?”
“I’ll find out.”
She waited until the girl was relatively stabilized, then spun away from the bay while Izzy narrowed his eyes and examined the child from her pigtails to her small, bare feet. Bruised, battered, lacerated everywhere he looked. The phone in his pocket buzzed, which he ignored by way of course. Too many HIPAA violations in recent years to risk checking his phone in the ER, and whoever it was could wait.
When Shannon popped back in, she gestured with her head at the child and said, “Kaylie. Kaylie Stein.”
“Hi, Kaylie,” Izzy said. The girl’s eyelashes fluttered, almost imperceptibly. “I’m Izzy. We’re going to take care of you, okay?”
The father, Joseph Stein, didn’t die immediately, but he was declared braindead by Dr. Jarvis shortly after admittance. Stein’s wife, Lisa, died at 1600 hours due to severe lacerations to her head, neck, and abdomen, as well as a punctured lung. Kaylie’s brother Ronny was transferred to the ICU, along with Kaylie herself. Both kids orphaned in an afternoon, and Izzy struggled to comprehend it all while he watched the little girl sleep, doped up as she was.
Her face was small and round, cherubic despite a swollen black eye and various contusions framing her eyes and brow. A tracheal intubation snaked out of her mouth, assisting her breathing.
“Not much to the why, really,” said Forbes behind him.
Izzy turned to see her entering the ICU, all decked out in a pinstriped suit. He raised his eyebrows at it.
“Court day,” she explained, examining herself uncomfortably. “Went a lot longer than I’d planned.”
“What do you mean about the why?”
“I mean that people are always looking for answers to horrible circumstances like this, but what they’re really doing is looking for something to make sense within their own emotional context. Hell, I do that, you do that. What this is, it’s a partially successful murder-suicide. That guy wanted to die and take out his family with him. Happens all the time, though I admit this is a more creative way to do it than I’ve usually seen.”
“Creative,” Izzy said.
“Yeah, I know. I’m an ice queen.”
“I was going to say cold bitch, but we’ll go with that.”
Forbes smirked.
“I do care, Bishop,” she said, sauntering up beside him and crossing her arms. “But you’ve got to maintain a certain degree of professionalism. Of distance. I’ve seen a lot of nurses burn out, in all disciplines. Some after years, some after months. These are people, but this is also a job. We have to find the sweet spot.”
Izzy sighed, turning his gaze back to Kaylie.
“I asked Shannon to do kits on both kids,” he said. “Doesn’t seem far-fetched that they might have been abused before today.”
“You didn’t do it?”
He shook his head.
“You won’t get SANE certified reading textbooks,” Forbes said.
He didn’t respond. He just kept watching Kaylie sleep.
“Look,” she said, taking his arm and leading him into the hall. “You want to be an NDI. I want you to be an NDI. But it’s not all corpses, and it’s not all adults. You have to deal with the living, too. Survivors—quite often survivors of unimaginable trauma. We see a side of people and life most don’t, and it will get to you. Not might. Will.”
Izzy scratched his chin and marveled at the silence compared with the excitement of a few hours ago.
“You’re a terrific RN, Bishop,” Forbes said. “I hear you’re terrific in the crisis center when you choose to do that, and you’ll be a terrific forensic nurse if you keep on that path. But—and listen to me, please—but you don’t have to. That’s not a weakness. It’s just heart. I thought about going into the service after high school and decided not to because it’s not in my heart to hurt anybody when it comes right down to it. If it’s not in your heart to—”
“It is,” he said. “All of it is.”
“I’m going to go follow up on those kits,” she said, patting Izzy’s shoulder. “But you should have done them. And you should have collected evidence from the driver, too.”
He opened his mouth, but she kept on.
“It got done. It’s pretty sewn up how it all went down. But step up your game, my friend. I want to see you do well, but I don’t do favors.”
“Okay,” he said, and Forbes click-clacked back down the hall in her court heels.
As he was leaving for the night, Izzy spotted Shannon with the department’s digital Nikon and two brown paper bags stuffed under one arm. The kids’ clothes, he assumed.
“How’d it go?” he asked her.
“About as bad as imagined,” Shannon said.
Izzy closed his eyes and breathed through his nose for a moment.
“I don’t mind saying they’re better off with their old man gone, but the rest of this is such a shame,” she continued. “Those kids have a long road ahead of them.”
“Longer than most,” Izzy said, and for the first time since the Steins arrived at the ER, he thought about Cynthia.
“Advocate’s here, though,” Shannon said. “I’m just taking this and all the chain of custody paperwork to the officers, then I’ll catch her up.”
“Chen?”
“No, Laurie Fredericks. She’ll start working with both the kids when they wake up in the morning.”
He nodded, started back to the sliding doors, but th
en stopped and said, “Thanks, Shannon.”
“It’s hard sometimes,” she said.
He gave her a forced smile and went out into the night. An ambulance idled at the curb, a couple of paramedics lingering nearby smoking cigarettes and trading dirty jokes. One of them raised a hand in greeting, which Izzy returned in kind. He vaguely recognized them, but didn’t know their names. He guessed he’d seen them around a lot over the years, but Izzy rarely bothered to get to know people when it was unnecessary and avoidable.
Halfway to his car in the employee lot, he fished his phone from his pocket and squinted in the dark at the bright lock screen. There was a missed call from Trish, some social media updates, and a text from Cynthia Ramos.
Once he reached the old second hand Mazda, Izzy climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine, and checked the message.
Isaiah: party tonight. Going but not thrilled. I would feel safer with you. Text/call if interested. C.
He glanced at the clock in the dash. 11:46 PM.
“Distance,” he said aloud, belatedly parroting Alana Forbes—and considering what Trish would think. It had been an emotionally taxing day, and he didn’t honestly think the sort of party that would appeal to Cynthia would appeal to him. In fact, there really weren’t any sorts of parties that appealed to Izzy Bishop.
He texted back: Long day, heading to bed. Have fun.
And he drove back home.
Four
The young woman on the slab was almost as tiny as a child. Vaguely pretty but gaunt and disheveled, her almond-brown eyes half open and thin lips parted in such a way she looked like she was whistling, or trying to. Her hair pooled around her thin, oval face, a liquid mass of curls blacker than magpies. She was completely naked, exposed, but the dead never minded.
Forbes stood opposite the door, behind the table at the body’s midsection, beside Marty Dalecki, the County Medical Examiner. A uniformed policeman stood close by, fidgeting with his belt. When Izzy entered, she said “Good morning, Bishop.”
Izzy said, “Oh god,” and collapsed in a heap on the tiled floor.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, waving Shannon Delfry away as though she was a gnat. She hovered all the same, shooting anxious glances at the FNDI.
“You passed out,” Forbes said.
“I know her,” he explained. “I was—surprised.”
“You know who?” Dalecki said. “The decedent?”
The ME pushed his glasses up and stood directly beneath one of the ceiling lights, creating a soft halo around his wavy gray hair.
“Yes,” Izzy said. “Cynthia Ramos.”
“Well,” Forbes said, pulling up a plastic chair, “she’s not going anywhere. Explain.”
“She’s—Cynthia is a friend. She was a patient, then a friend.”
“Patient?”
“Sexual assault case,” Izzy said. “February of last year. She was—shit. She was hooking at the time, and the guy, his name is Luke Osborn, he picked her up, drove her out into the country, tied her up and raped her. Beat her up pretty bad. Left her there.”
“That’s awful,” Shannon murmured.
“I was in the ER when she came in,” Izzy said. “She’d managed to hitch a ride back into town, but she was in bad shape. I did the kit on her, took all the photos, collected samples. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to ID’ing the guy. He’d done it before.”
“Sounds like NDI work to me,” Forbes said.
“I testified. Helped put him away. Probably the thing that made me want to go into forensics. No—definitely the thing. Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus.”
He hung his head, and blinked rapidly, trying not to cry in front of Shannon and Forbes. Shannon put her hand on his knee. Forbes knitted her brow and cracked her knuckles. Marty Dalecki went back to the body on the table, peering at it dispassionately.
“I’ll handle it, then,” Forbes said. “Perfectly understandable. I’m sorry to have given you a shock like that, Bishop. That’s not how you ought to have found out.”
“No,” Izzy said, rising from his chair. “I said I’m fine.”
“Bishop…”
“I have insight into this you don’t,” he said to Forbes. “I knew her.”
Forbes heaved a sigh.
“How did she die?” Izzy asked after a long silence between them.
“That’s what we’re about to find out,” she said.
The responding officer was a tall man, thick around the middle with steel gray eyes. He kept his thumbs hooked into his belt the whole time he spoke, and pointedly kept his gaze on either Izzy or Forbes—but never Cynthia.
The tag on his short sleeved dark blue shirt read woorten.
“You know those old houses they turned into offices on South First, east of 35?”
Izzy nodded.
“Most of those are empty and getting knocked down now—regentrification and all that. It was a Mexican lady runs one of those piñata shops who saw her, the body I mean. It was behind the building next door, used to be an immigration attorney but it’s vacant now.”
“Just lying there?” Izzy asked.
“Leaned up against the back of the house, like she’d just nodded off,” the cop said. “I noticed track marks.”
Izzy frowned.
“Sure you don’t mean self-harm injuries?”
“Those too, but those are mostly on the right arm. I’m guessing she was left-handed, because those are all pretty deliberate. The track marks are near the inside of the elbow, on the left arm.”
“If she was left-handed,” Forbes put in, “why would she shoot with her right?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said the cop.
Izzy drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, swallowed hard, and turned to look at Cynthia’s left arm. He snapped on a pair of blue surgical gloves and gently turned the arm to get a better view of the area around the inside of the elbow. There were several puncture marks, seven in total, all deep purple and ringed with reddish petichiae. Razor scratches were also present up the forearm, like the right, but much fewer and not as deep.
“It’s still not the best neighborhood, where we found her,” the officer said. “Looks to me like she hunkered down back there to shoot up and OD’ed.”
“We’ll do a tox screen,” Forbes said. The cop shrugged.
Izzy set his jaw tight and said, “A lot of bruising. Knees are all banged up. Looks like some kind of laceration on her right hand.”
“Defense wound?” Forbes wondered aloud.
“Defense?” the cop said. “That’s really not consistent…”
“Let’s just have a look,” Forbes interrupted.
The patrolman scowled, but Forbes and Izzy both went around the table where she turned Cynthia’s hand toward the light, palm up, to find a four or five inch wound running diagonally across.
“That could just be climbing around back of that house,” said the cop. “Lot of overgrowth there, brambles and such.”
“We’ll collect for that,” Forbes said. “Maybe determine if she died where you found her or was dumped there.”
Izzy’s breath hitched.
Forbes said, “Bishop?”
“I’m all right.”
“Dumped?” the cop said. “Listen, why are you so determined to make this a homicide? We find a dead junkie in the barrio and you want to turn it into Princess Diana or something.”
“The forensic evidence will not lie,” Izzy barked at the policeman. He’d lunged forward a step and cords were standing out in his neck. Forbes grabbed his elbow. “Hang around for the chain of custody, but keep your opinions to yourself.”
“Such bullshit,” the cop complained. “There’s only one law enforcement officer in this room, kid. And you’re not him.”
Dalecki glanced up, his expression registering something like mild offense.
“Leave it,” Forbes whispered.
Izzy stared down the cop for a moment, then went back to her side at the table. She handed him the chart
and said, “Let’s begin.”
“The decedent is Cynthia Fernanda Ramos, Hispanic female, twenty-six years of age,” Izzy said into the digital recorder in his hand. “Abundant evidence of self-harm on both inner forearms, substantially more pronounced on the right than the left. Dozens of small, superficial lacerations, one to two inches in length, presumably self-induced. Numerous scars from the same type of cut or laceration from both wrists well up to the bicep areas.
“Evidence of intravenous drug use on left arm only, around and above inner elbow, seven punctures. Still awaiting tox screen results.
“Contusions on both knees, approximately six and a half millimeters in diameter. Consistent with a fall from standing position, though the body was discovered seated and leaning against an outer wall.
“Decedent weighs approximately ninety-six pounds at a height of five foot two, suggesting malnutrition. This also supported by delay in the healing of lacerations…”
“Getting assumptive, Bishop,” Forbes warned.
He clicked off the recorder.
“I saw her less than two days ago,” he said. “The cuts look worse, infected.”
“Go on.”
He clicked it back on.
“Postmortem sexual assault examination reveals no presence of sperm, foreign hair or skin, or any recent sexual activity, consensual or otherwise,” he continued, his voice breaking. He drew his brows into a tight bunch and went on, looking up at the officer in the corner for a moment. “Examination of three and a half inch laceration on the right palm consistent with a defensive wound. Decedent known to be right-handed, as evidenced by using her right hand to deflect a possible attack.”
The cop rolled his eyes.
“No other outward signs of violence or struggle apart from the aforementioned,” Izzy added, reluctantly. “The body is moderately emaciated, which can also explain the intermittent bruising and associated petichiae, as well as possible anemia. Cause of death not immediately evident.”
The Irish Goodbye (Izzy Bishop Book 1) Page 2
