“Me?” Emma held her glass of lemonade in both hands and tried not to stare at Jason as he played. She’d been trying not to watch him ever since he’d picked her up this afternoon, trying not to reveal the case of nerves that had come over her when she’d realized that she’d committed herself to exploring her attraction to him.
But there was more to it than the fact that she hadn’t dated in years. There was the secret of what she could do. If their relationship did grow into something meaningful, how could she explain to him that she spent part of each day talking to the dead? And if she didn’t explain…
Could she calmly come home to him after a night like last night? Four teenage girls had decided that two six-packs of beer wouldn’t impair anyone’s driving skills. Not only had their drunk driving killed the girls but it had also killed a family of three. Despite the fact that two other medical examiners had assisted, somehow Emma had ended up listening to all the spirits at one point or another over the course of the late night. By the time she’d gotten back to her apartment at sunrise, she’d been physically shaking from the experience. And mentally? Well, no intimate companion would have missed it.
Veronica lifted her heavy hair off her neck with one forearm. “I suppose he told you about his sister?”
“Yes.” Emma ran her hands over her damp glass. “What a tragedy.”
“Jason has been obsessed with finding the driver who killed Rose.” Letting her hair fall, Veronica sighed. “He does nothing but work.”
Glancing at Veronica, Emma wondered how much information the woman might be willing to divulge about Jason. It struck her that while she had no trouble getting information out of the dead lately, the living were another matter. The dead wanted the truth to be known but the living had reasons for secrets.
“I’ve heard he has quite an active dating life,” she said quietly, wanting someone else to confirm what Jason said about putting a stop to his excessive dating. “That he likes to go from woman to woman.”
“Such stories were true at one time and Jason would be the first to admit it.” Veronica’s eyes softened in sadness as she watched Jason. “He’s also the first to insist on his own atonement.”
Emma frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Jason blamed himself for Rose’s death, believing it was a direct result of his ‘active dating life’.”
“What did his dating have to do with his sister’s death?”
“That’s a story he will have to tell you himself.” A secretive smile curled the other woman’s lips as she looked back at Emma. “And I believe he will.”
Emma traced a fingertip down the condensation on her glass. “Why would he tell me? We’re barely friends.”
“Friends?” As her gaze ran over Emma’s face, Veronica’s smile turned to surprise. “You haven’t realized that the man is in love with you.”
“Love?” Emma’s pulse quickened and her mouth went suddenly dry. “We hardly know each other.” Of course, there were those kisses…
“Sometimes love blooms quickly. Can’t you tell by the way he looks at you?” Veronica gestured toward the men with her glass of lemonade. “Now, for example?”
Emma looked up. Jason stood at the far end of the yard, his gaze fixed on her. The dark gleam in his eyes sent a thrill of satisfaction shooting through her. He desired her. She’d known that for a while. But Veronica’s words made her aware of more than desire dancing in his expression. She saw a longing that echoed within her own heart.
But they barely knew each other and much of their relationship revolved around his suspicion and her secrets. And yet those things didn’t seem to matter in that dark gleaming gaze, in that intriguingly sexy smile.
Maybe. Just maybe, he could accept everything about her. If she took the time to explain it the right way and not just blurt it out as she’d done over his sister’s photograph.
Suddenly, Charlie raised one hand. “Hold on, guys,” he called to Jason and Ricci. He pulled his chirping cell phone from its case on his hip and flipped it open.
Veronica slumped against the back of the swing. “I guess our evening is over,” she murmured as her husband, speaking into the phone, gestured toward Jason. “The life of a cop’s family.”
“It can’t be worse than the life of a doctor’s family,” Emma replied, wondering if they could possibly work it out. Did she really want to? She’d gone from divorced and not wanting to risk losing herself in a relationship to considering life with a man who might very well consume her. All in a space of a few weeks.
Charlie ended the phone call, spoke in hushed tones to Jason and then gestured to his son. “Ricci, will you get my blue jacket off my bed, please?”
“Sure, Papa.” Clutching the Frisbee to his chest, Ricci ran into the house.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” Charlie said as he and Jason approached the swing. Both men looked grim. “We have a case.”
“Oh, Charlie.” Veronica touched her husband’s hand as he stepped up beside the swing. “I’m sorry too.”
As Charlie kissed his wife’s cheek, Jason stepped around the couple. “I’ll give you a lift,” he said to Emma.
“Ricci and I will see that Emma gets home,” Veronica offered. “You and Charlie go on.”
“Emma isn’t going home. She has to work too.” Jason tugged her to her feet. The dark gleam in his eyes had become something desperate. “This one’s going to be bad.”
* * * * *
Hours passed before the police received the body. At just after one o’clock Monday morning Emma looked at the little girl on the table and knew that Jason had underestimated the case. “Bad” didn’t begin to cover it. Amy Benson was a tiny eight-year-old, with the thin limbs and gaunt facial features of someone who had been ill for a long time. There was a mark on her right temple that looked as if she may have been struck.
“She had leukemia.” Skitch studied the file in his hands. His eyes shimmered as they shifted toward the little girl. “Poor kid.”
Emma ached for him. Skitch took it harder than most whenever the deceased was a child. Few of his coworkers knew but Skitch had fathered a child when he was a teenager. The child’s mother, refusing to marry him, had neglected the child. The little boy had died before reaching his second birthday, forgotten in the bathtub one evening by his own mother.
Putting the file aside, Skitch leaned over the small, still body and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that fishy smell? Wasn’t she in the hospital when she died?”
“No.” Emma paused, remembering what little Jason had told her on their way to the scene. She looked her assistant in the eye. “She died in a pond.”
Skitch went very still and his hands clenched at his sides. “Look at her arms and legs. This kid wouldn’t have been able to walk, let alone swim. What was she doing in a pond?”
“That’s what the police want to know. It was a koi pond in her backyard. Her father built it a couple of years ago.”
“Koi? You mean those giant goldfish everyone keeps these days?” His voice turned sharp. “How did she wind up in a pond full of fish?”
“No one knows.” Emma spoke softly, understanding her assistant’s anger. She considered the frail little body. “Her father was the only one at home with her at the time. Her mother had gone to the grocery store.”
“So her dad was in charge?”
“That’s right. Mr. Benson told the police that Amy was in his bedroom on the first floor. He left her tucked in the bed while he went into the kitchen to get her some juice. He says he was gone only a few minutes but when he came back, Amy wasn’t there. The French doors leading from the bedroom to the backyard were open.” Emma paused. “He found her in the pond.”
“Oh man.”
“She died in less than two feet of water. Even given her small size and weakened state, she should have been able to drag herself out if she’d fallen in.” Bile tickled the back of her throat. “The police think that she didn’t fall in.”
When Skitch didn’t respond, she loo
ked up to find him staring at her with hollow eyes. Quietly, she went on, “Mr. Benson was having money problems.”
Skitch looked back at the child. “And the cops think he killed her? Her own father?”
“Yes.” Anger surged past the bile. “But I don’t agree. Why would a man kill his own child?”
“There are all sorts of reasons.” His voice fell almost to a whisper. “And sometimes no reason. Maybe, in this case, the life insurance.”
“No agency would have insured a child in this condition. And the family has no health insurance.” She paused again and her next words tasted more bitter. “The police think Benson may have wanted out from under Amy’s medical bills. They had already hit the half-million mark.” She looked down at the tiny face, sweet even in death. “What father could do that?”
Skitch lowered his voice. “You know lots of fathers—or mothers—could do it, Doc.”
Skitch would certainly know and Emma feared she would hear exactly that from Amy’s spirit. Still, she’d seen Amy’s father on her way in. He’d appeared inconsolable. But did that mean he hadn’t taken a step he felt was necessary to relieve himself of the financial burden of caring for a child who couldn’t be cured? A child who was fated to die soon anyway?
“There’s another theory floating around.” She touched her fingertips to the cold metal table. “Amy overheard her folks arguing about bills a few days ago. Mrs. Benson is afraid that maybe Amy did it herself, to save her parents the money.”
Skitch stared at Emma. “A kid this young couldn’t possibly think like that.”
A sob wedged its way into Emma’s throat and for a moment she couldn’t speak. She looked down at the peaceful curl of the child’s tiny mouth, at the lush lashes so dark against thin cheeks that should have been healthy still with baby fat.
“The Bensons are Catholic,” she finally went on. “A suicide—even a child with good intentions—you can imagine how upset they are.”
Skitch made a strange sound in his own throat. “Yeah.”
Emma took a deep breath. In a moment, she could find out the truth and perhaps give everyone involved a measure of peace.
Or she might have to prove a murder or suicide.
Gently, she lifted one hand off the steel table and placed it on the crown of that blond hair. “Amy,” she whispered. “Tell us how you died.”
Something moved at the corner of her vision, on her left, down low. Aware of Skitch’s attention on her, Emma shifted her eyes without moving her head. A small figure stood beside her, a girl whose head barely reached Emma’s hip.
“Dr. Emma?” The voice was as tiny as the child.
Still not moving her head, Emma stroked the soft blond hair of the child lying on the table. She waited as the spirit moved nearer and its presence chilled her.
“Daddy told me to stay away from the pond,” the petite spirit went on. “But I felt better. I wanted to see the fish. I got out of Mommy and Daddy’s bed and walked to the pond. I sat on the rocks…and I felt funny. Then the little girl fell in the water. I told her to get up but she wouldn’t.”
“No way was she strong enough to walk out to the pond on her own, Doc.” Skitch shook his head, obviously trying to forget his own sadness and focus on the case. “I’ll bet she could barely sit up without help. But that mark on her temple…” He leaned closer. “No blood. No bruising. It looks like it happened after she died.”
Emma studied the mark. Then, looking up, she watched the small figure fade away. She drew her hand away from that soft blond hair. “I don’t think she drowned, Skitch.”
“But her father found her in the pond.” Skitch looked up at Emma. “Of course, she drowned.”
“No, she didn’t.” Emma lowered her face shield as relief settled inside her. “And we have to prove it.”
* * * * *
Jason sat at the rear of the chapel in the Medical Examiner’s building, arms folded over his chest. Frank and Iris Benson, the little girl’s parents, sat in the front pew, arms wrapped around each other. Their heads were bowed together and their sobs echoed quietly in the cool, still air.
As he watched them suffer together, his own sense of loss and loneliness deepened. In the time he’d spent with Emma last night and this afternoon, he’d felt himself climbing out of the abyss of his grief. Now, seeing what had happened to Amy Benson and its affect on her family had reawakened his anguish with bitter force. He had a long way to go before he would get over what had happened to his sister…or to Tyrone and Brian.
Jason hung his head. He hated these cases. Everyone was a victim, from the deceased to the perpetrator to the cops who investigated. But that little girl… To think that her own father might have…
“Mr. and Mrs. Benson?”
At the familiar voice, Jason lifted his head and saw Emma enter the chapel. She didn’t notice him and he resisted the urge to go to her, to draw the comfort from her that he so desperately needed right now. The Bensons, he knew, needed it more.
Not that she would offer comfort to him anyway. She hadn’t said much but he knew she’d been angry when he suggested that Amy’s death had resulted from the father’s financial trouble. It had been a theory to investigate and he’d just been theorizing out loud. It was part of his process. He couldn’t not do his job to spare Emma’s feelings.
The grieving parents stood up as she approached them. Frank Benson glanced at Jason before fixing his attention on Emma. His big body tensed and his bleak expression intensified, as if whatever she had to say would determine the rest of his life.
Which it would, Jason thought grimly and hated himself for having to think like a cop yet again.
“I’m Emma St. Clair, one of the medical examiners.” Emma offered her hand to Frank Benson first and then gently shook Iris’ hand. “I’m so very sorry about Amy.”
She spoke with a soothing voice that stroked Jason’s raw nerves. The medical examiner who’d talked to him about Rose had spoken with a soothing voice too. But Jason had not been comforted by it then. The Bensons, he knew, would not be comforted by it now. Nothing could take away a pain that deep.
“I know this is hard for you,” Emma continued. “Please, let’s sit down and I’ll explain what I’ve found.”
Jason’s attention shifted to Frank Benson as the man eased his wife back down onto the pew. Although he was barely thirty, Benson moved like an old man who’d just taken the weight of the world onto his shoulders.
“The police think Frank might have…” Iris Benson’s mouth pinched and her mottled cheeks flushed crimson. “Or that Amy… But she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”
“Neither of those things is true.” Emma sat beside Iris and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I know that you believe she drowned but that isn’t the case. The leukemia took her. She died peacefully, watching those fish her daddy kept for her.”
“But she was so weak,” Iris said. “How could she walk out to the pond?”
“I found her. She loved to sit there…” Frank’s voice broke and he had to choke out the words. “How did she get out there when she could barely walk?”
“Sometimes a very ill person will appear to regain her strength during the last few minutes or even hours of her life. I believe that’s what happened to Amy.” Emma smiled gently. “I imagine that she felt better and she wanted to see the fish. She walked outside to sit beside the pond, as she loved to do and then she simply went to sleep.”
“And fell in after she…” Iris’ raspy voice broke and a moment passed before she could go on. “You mean my baby didn’t drown? No one did this to her? She wasn’t scared?”
“She wasn’t scared at all. There was no water in her lungs, no evidence of drowning.” Emma squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “Amy is at peace now. She doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Sobbing, Iris threw her arms around her husband. Frank shuddered and buried his face in her prematurely gray hair.
Emma stood up. As she did so, she caught sight of Jason. The anger that
had darkened her eyes earlier had vanished. Now, he saw only a soft expression of sympathy, as if she understood that he’d just been doing his job. As if she understood that he’d had to explore every possibility no matter how awful it might be. As if she understood how this case might have affected him.
Her apparent understanding didn’t ease his guilt much. His “suspicion” had only added to this couple’s hell.
Leaning over, Emma put her hand on Iris Benson’s shoulder again. “I’m going to explain this to Detective MacKenzie.”
“Thank you.” Iris’ voice grew thick as she answered for herself and her sobbing husband.
Turning away from them, Emma walked up the aisle toward the door. Jason rose and met her there. He saw the redness in her eyes and guilt hit him again. These cases affected her too.
And how much more, he wondered, considering her apparent obsession with death?
“I didn’t want to believe that he did it,” he said before she could speak. “But we had to know for sure. Still, I should’ve been more sensitive. Saying what I said—in front of them—I’m sorry.”
She placed her fingertips against his chest and then lowered her hands to her sides. “You heard what I told the Bensons?”
“Yeah. The disease killed her. She fell into the pond after she died.” Jason took a deep breath of his own and released it slowly. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She glanced over her shoulder at the grieving parents and then back at him. “The Bensons can go home now?”
“Yeah. I’ll see they get there all right. God, they’ll never forgive me for being such a jerk.”
Emma lifted her hands to his chest again. This time, she left them there. “You were insensitive, Jason but you’re no jerk. You responded with your own honest emotion for a dead child. Give them time and they will forgive you. Right now, you should forgive yourself.”
“That might take some work.” He placed his hands over hers and felt his heart beat against her palms. “Can you forgive me?”
Her gaze locked with his and a slight smile touched her lips. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
Final Words Page 20
