Roulette

by C. D. Bradley

  “The ache . . . I have suffered the corrosive pain of your absence for a lifetime. Just when I thought it would consume me, there you were. Now my love, you are mine.” He entered her in one slow deep motion, taking her fully as his own. Olivia closed her eyes and let her heart explode with her body. With all the beauty and rage of a hurricane he claimed her. Every touch a lightning flash. Each thrust a wave that crashed over her and threatened to rip her apart. Closer to the abyss she sailed. Fully aware of the danger ahead she dug her nails into his back. The waves grew to twenty foot swells that tossed her tiny vessel to the brink of existence. Unable to hold on any longer she let go and crashed into bliss. Her ship would be lost at sea.

  THE ROOM WAS still dark when Olivia awoke. What the hell had she done. She looked over at the man sleeping beside her. His beautiful face was so peaceful, his body warm and comforting. She had never felt this connected with a man in her life. She could tell last night he felt it too. Fuck, but this was a one-night stand. She made that crystal clear last night. He had readily agreed. But now what?

  Just like any other man in her life now that the conquest was over he would be gone eventually. What did it matter? He was some manwhore book model. Book boyfriend to thousands of women. She was fucking kidding herself if she thought for one second it was anything more.

  She took another look and panic set in. She had to get out of there before he woke up and she couldn’t leave. There was nothing between them. Anything she thought she felt last night was just a fantasy. She just needed to check on Piper and get back to her life. I am a lawyer damn it. It’s not like she would ever see him again anyway. Olivia took one last look and slipped out of the bed.

  Quietly she dressed and collected her things and left the room. She still had Piper’s key so she peeked in on her and left the key and a note on the dresser before slipping out. She caught a look at herself with her disheveled hair and wrinkled blouse. At least her jeans didn’t look so bad she lied to herself and set out for the inevitable morning after walk of shame.

  While she waited for valet to bring her car she sipped a cup of coffee from the lobby and couldn’t help thinking about the beautiful man sleeping on the sixth floor. Part of her, the stupid vulnerable side, just wanted to run back up there and crawl into his warm arms. What did it matter if he was a male model? The rational part of her realized he was a player and not someone she could trust. He could wrap any woman around his finger. Like the spider to the fly if she stayed he would overtake her and she would never leave.

  The car pulled up and Olivia was thankful to see her Audi. It was like a gateway back to her normal life. Fuck the rabbit hole, she was going home and not looking back. She slid into the familiar seat and adjusted it. Before she could fasten the belt her phone rang. Olivia panicked. Who was calling at five a.m. on a Sunday? Piper had been out cold. She glanced down at her phone and it was Mr. Davis. What the hell? She snatched it up and answered quickly.

  “This is Olivia,” she answered.

  “Hey, Olivia, glad you’re up. The police located a woman you may have been trying to work with. Does Gwen Robertson ring a bell?” Mr. Davis’ tone was grave.

  “Yes, she is a witness and a domestic violence victim. I have been trying to reach her. She missed two appointments to meet with me. Did the police pick her up? Is she okay?” Olivia set the audio to the car and put it in gear. She figured that she would be going to the police station.

  “The police need you to go identify her at the morgue,” he answered. “Sorry, Olivia, they found her this morning. The only thing she had on her besides her driver’s license was your card. They haven’t been able to locate any family yet. If you can make a positive ID it will really help.”

  Olivia hit the brakes. “She’s what?” Olivia couldn’t believe her ears. That poor woman was lying on a cold metal table in the morgue. The guilt hit her like a ton of bricks. Maybe if she had been more diligent she could have saved her.

  “She’s dead, Olivia. I’m sorry. Detective Shaver is going to meet you over there. A chill ran over her as she turned her car around and began to drive toward the city morgue. Olivia hated that place. Yet as a prosecutor for the violent crimes division, she spent her fair share of time inside those grim walls.

  “I am already downtown I’ll be there in less than ten minutes,” she reported as the knot in her stomach grew. The two-mile drive would only take about seven minutes at this time of the morning but Olivia knew she would need a minute to collect herself before she walked in.

  “Oh, great, he will meet you there,” he answered. “Hey Olivia, don’t beat yourself up over this. You can’t save them all.”

  “Sure, boss.” Olivia let out a big sigh as she hung up. She could see Gwen sitting in her office. Her chestnut hair slightly disheveled. The dark circles under her haunting eyes told the story of a hard life. Olivia’s heart hurt for her. So tragic to suffer and fight all that time just to end up losing in the end.

  Life was too short to spend it unhappy and alone. She pulled her Audi into the morgue lot and sat staring at the door. There was no sign of the detective yet. She knew she could go on in. Most likely Andy would be working the desk this morning but she couldn’t bring herself to get out of the seat. The sun was just starting to think of coming up. A sunrise Gwen Robertson would never see.

  Olivia steadied herself and prepared to go in and face her. The tap on the window startled her and she jumped. Detective Shaver stood waiting. His scowl permanently etched on his face. Olivia opened the door and jumped out. He was not a patient man. He was only about five inches taller than Oliva and his rotund frame added to the bulldog illusion. Only in this case Olivia suspected his bite was actually worse than his bark.

  “Good morning,” he huffed in a voice that told her he would rather be doing literally anything else.

  “Could be better,” she said with a half-smile and tried to take her mind off what she was about to do. They walked side by side to the door of the concrete block building. Olivia willed her feet to keep walking. They stopped at the desk and Andy checked them in.

  “Hey, Olivia,” Andy greeted her. “Detective Shaver. How are you both this morning?”

  “Well, we are at the morgue before the butt crack of dawn. How the hell do you think we are doing?” the detective barked and Andy jumped.

  “Dr. Mattis is already waiting for you,” Andy replied nervously.

  Little man syndrome. Olivia thought and rolled her eyes. They trudged down the hallway like pirates to the gallows. Each room they passed led them closer to the inevitable. This was a part of her job, but it never got easier. Dr. Mattis was already hard at work cataloging every mark when they arrived.

  Olivia swallowed hard and entered the room. The odor of ammonia slammed her in the face. Instinctively Olivia raised her hand to cover her mouth and nose. Gwen’s lifeless form lay exposed on the metal table. Stringy chocolate waves lay in a matted mess around her dirty and partially decayed head. The green hue to her skin indicated that she had been submerged for a period of time. Dark brown ligature marks with red bands on either side were present around her neck. Her hands were covered in scratches and small cuts. A dark substance and dirt were present on her hands and nails. In a futile last ditch effort to save herself, she had fought back.

  Bile rose up in Olivia’s throat and her heart began to race, not from the horror that had befallen her witness but from how blind she had been. How was she just now seeing the resemblance? The hair, the almond shaped hazel eyes that stared lifelessly into the abyss, the frame of her nose and chin, and now the manor of death were all the same. Olivia began to tremble.

  Dr. Mattis turned and looked her over with sympathetic eyes. “Are you okay? Olivia if you could just identify her you can go. I understand you may have known this girl.”

  Known her . . . Known her . . . She had been her best friend, her worst enemy, her partner in life. Grace was everything to her.

  “That girl kinda looks like you,” Detecti
ve Shaver blurted with the tact and grace of a discombobulated mule.

  She is me, or was. Olivia no longer saw the cold and broken body of her witness. She was transported by shock back to the heartache of that cold and lonely morgue ten years ago where she stood with detectives and identified what remained of her twin sister Grace Melody Wilson.

  She took a slow deep breath. It was all the same. The ligature marks, the submersion, the defensive wounds. Was she just too sensitive? No the detective saw the resemblance too. Olivia leaned in to get a better look. Suddenly Gwen’s arm began to move and Olivia let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Bloody fucking hell! What is that shit?” the detective yelled and Dr. Mattis leaned in for closer inspection.

  It wasn’t her arm as much as the skin on her arm that began to move. “You two might want to step back,” she instructed. She took a scalpel and opened the moving skin. Fat larvae crawled out of the wound.

  Olivia stepped back, the room became dark and began to spin. The last thing she saw was Detective Shaver vomiting in the trash can.

  OLIVIA AWOKE ON the cool tile floor. Dr. Mattis waived an ammonia stick under her nose. She coughed and sputtered. The last thing she wanted to smell was more ammonia. Olivia sat up and waved Dr. Mattis away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She rubbed her forehead with her hands. “I’m usually fine with these situations. This is my witness, Gwen Robertson.”

  “Don’t feel embarrassed it’s much harder when you know the person,” Dr. Mattis offered and helped her stand up. “I just want to make sure you are okay.”

  If you only knew. “I’ll be okay. What was her cause of death? Olivia dusted herself off and looked around for Detective Shaver. He was nowhere to be seen. “Where did Shaver go?”

  Dr. Mattis began to laugh. “He needed some fresh air,” she answered with a smirk. The tough as nails detective must not be a bug fan. “If you are up for it we can continue but if you’re not that’s okay. We could wait till later.”

  “No, I’m good we need to do this.” Olivia squared her shoulders and mentally prepared herself for what she feared would be an ugly trip down memory lane.

  Dr. Mattis picked up a clipboard and started going over her findings. “The victim is a Caucasian female in her late twenties. Cause of death appears to be strangulation. She has ligature marks around her neck approximately seven millimeters thick. Petechiae in her sclera and mucous membranes are consistent with strangulation. She has defensive wounds noted on her hands and forearms as well as contusions on her knees and lower legs. There are also two very curious circular burns on her mid back that occurred ante mortem. This could have been caused by a cigarette or a branding iron of some type.”

  The burns had always plagued Olivia. It was bad enough that someone had murdered her sister with such callous disregard to the spectacular person that she was but to have burned her, to torture her made Olivia’s blood boil. The police had worked for months on Grace’s murder. They had arrested a drifter with a prior record but the evidence was circumstantial and they were never able to make it stick. He was killed in an armed robbery a few years later. For Olivia there was no closure. He had Grace’s ring on when he was killed and the police called it case closed but he never paid for what he did to Grace. Olivia became obsessed with the law after that. She was determined to get justice. But no matter how many people and families she helped, nothing could fill the void left by Grace. Her twin, the other half of her life, gone.

  Dr. Mattis continued talking but Olivia couldn’t stop staring at the body. There were too many coincidences with Grace’s murder. After all this time. Why? What did it mean?

  “The variety of decomposers are what puzzle me the most.” Dr. Mattis paused collecting another specimen and placing it in a jar.

  “Why is that? You see bugs on bodies all the time. Isn’t that part of how you guys quantify the amount of time a body has been dead?” Olivia looked at her puzzled. Her sister had been filled with and partially devoured by something . . . Olivia racked her brain trying to remember what it was. Some kind of weird . . .

  “Soldier flies,” Dr. Mattis said unwittingly completing Olivia’s thought. Dr. Mattis held up a large wiggling grub. “You see, the thing is, soldier flies are not usually present until the later stages of decomposition. You typically start to see them around twenty days’ post mortem. I thought Mr. Davis indicated she was in your office two weeks ago.”

  Soldier flies. Olivia stared at the fat little larvae. It wiggled in its little glass prison. For months after Grace’s death she had seen them in her sleep. The little wiggling army of destruction had devoured a great deal of her beautiful sister. Olivia had a serious insect phobia ever since. She gagged and looked away. Dr. Mattis was still talking. Joining Detective Shaver for some air sounded really good.

  “The thing is these look odd. I called in a favor at Langley just before you guys got here. They are going to send someone to help,” she said as she tagged another specimen.

  The room was getting really warm. Olivia did not want to take another spill. She needed to get some air and fast. “I’m just going to go check on Shaver,” she interrupted and took off down the hall. There were too many parallels. She had to get outside. Olivia pictured the ligature marks on the two women and felt the air slip out of the building. The hall seemed to stretch on forever. The defensive marks. Both women had fought back. The dirt under their nails. Images flashed through her mind. A decade of nightmares came flooding back.

  She had failed Grace. She was not going to fail Gwen. Olivia was determined to find out who did this. She approached the glass doors and saw her reflection walking toward the light. For the last ten years Olivia avoided looking at her reflection as much as possible because she never saw herself, only Grace. Those dark eyes haunted her like a soul trapped on the other side of the looking glass. Today she did not look away.

  Olivia pushed the door open and stepped into the sunshine. The warm July sun caressed her face. She took a few deep breaths and looked around for the detective. He was pacing back and forth talking on his phone. The scowl on his face deepening by the minute.

  “Fucking feds,” he said hanging up and shoving his phone in his pocket.

  “What’s going on now?” She hustled to catch up as he was already storming toward his car. Could this day really get any worse? “Hey, wait. Where are you going?”

  “Back to the unit for a team meeting. They’ll be calling you in a minute too. Dr. Creepy in there called in the feds. They fucking take over everything. What I want to know is what is so special about this dead tramp that the feds are getting involved.” He got in the truck and slammed the door. She could see him through the glass as he pulled out still cursing the feds.

  Olivia went back inside and got the preliminary report to take to the meeting. In this case she was thankful for all the help they could get. She knew that Detective Shaver was going to be unbearable though. The little man syndrome would be in full effect with someone stepping on his toes throughout the investigation. Whoever they sent couldn’t be that bad. Hopefully they would be a big help.

  When she got back to the car, she looked in the rearview mirror. Shit. She still looked like hell. She did her best to fix her hair into a presentable bun. Straightened her white blouse and jeans. She really wished she had taken time for a shower. Certain ways she moved she could still smell Dominic on her skin.

  Back at the office, Olivia hustled to the sixth-floor conference room. Detective Shaver was already there arguing with his captain and another officer on the case. The violent crimes division worked in investigative teams. She was the prosecutor assigned to this team. Olivia was perhaps more involved with the investigative side than some of her colleagues. But her track record proved her methods. No surprises when you are involved from square one. Her brain began wrapping around the mystery of the case the moment she laid eyes on the victim.

  This case was different though. It was personal in a way she wasn’t
ready to share with any of the people on her team. The specialist was not there yet so they got started with what they had. Olivia detailed the preliminary forensic report and the interview she had with Ms. Robertson two weeks ago.

  Gwen Robertson had been a domestic violence victim from her longtime boyfriend Jake Ramirez. The police had arrested Ramirez two weeks ago on charges related to a prostitution ring and tried to get Robertson to testify. Olivia had conducted an interview with her and tried to persuade her to go to the women’s shelter.

  Detective Shaver took over explaining the prostitution ring and that it had ties with several organizations.

  “We are investigating ties to a charter flight that takes high rollers to Harrah’s in Vegas. It appears they are offering more than just transportation,” he began. The flights went from several cities in Virginia to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They mainly transported Harrah’s gamblers who had comped trips. The ring was suspected of prostitution and drug trafficking along these routes as well.

  “Before she was killed, we believe Gwen was a stewardess/escort on one of these flights. Ramirez is a small-time dealer here in Norfolk. We believe she was bringing drugs back with her on the flights.” As he spoke everyone took notes. “We are working closely with narcotics on this as well.”

  Mr. Davis spoke up. “Okay, Shaver and Michaels you two are the lead detectives on this case. Let’s establish a timeline. Olivia I’m sorry I missed the approximate timeframe of death in that preliminary report.”

  “Dr. Mattis didn’t issue one yet,” Olivia answered. “There were some odd findings with relation to the insects present in the corpse. She called in a specialist to help. In light of the details so far I think we can use all the help we can get.”

  “I don’t know why we need some glorified bug catcher coming down here and sticking his little dick in our business.” Shaver huffed like a three-year-old who had been told he would have to share.