Skies of Ash

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Brooks shrugged. “Chloe had almost twice the amount of Valium in her blood than Cody, but he died sooner—rigor mortis was more established in him than his sister.”

  “Cody’s bedroom was closer to the point of origin,” I said. “Right next to the bathroom.”

  The door to the chamber opened. Brooks’s assistant Big Reuben, a black dude as large as Mount Rushmore, filled the tiny foyer even though he had only poked out his head. “We need you in here, Doc. What’s up, Detective Norton?”

  “On the hunt,” I said.

  Colin looked over to us and cocked his head.

  I gave him a quick wave.

  “You late,” Big Reuben said.

  I nodded. “I’m aware.”

  Big Reuben said, “All right, then,” and backed out of the door.

  “I’ll give Taggert the swabs and clippings and all of that once we’re finished,” Brooks said, handing me the folder he’d been holding. “But this is for you right now. After you read this, you may want to talk to her doctors.”

  “I found her planner last night,” I said. “She had appointments back on Thursday, Monday, and yesterday with an ob-gyn. Was Juliet pregnant?”

  “According to my blood tests,” Brooks said, “no, she was not.”

  A necessary question—“killed by their lovers’ hands” was the leading cause of death for pregnant women.

  I read the words on the report, and all feeling left my face. “Oh crap.”

  “Yeah. I’ll print pictures.”

  I muttered, “Crap,” again.

  He opened the door to the chamber. “Kinda changes things.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Again, I suggest you talk with her doctors,” he said. “You’ll probably need a warrant first.”

  “I’ll do that now.”

  “Let me know about that 911 call,” he said.

  An administrative assistant let me nest at an available work space that boasted a wobbly chair and a broken ceiling light. As I sat, my phone vibrated.

  A text, and then another text, from Syeeda. Where are you? I officially have questions. Why haven’t u called me back???

  I typed one word—WORKING—then shoved the phone into my bag.

  In less than twenty minutes, I had received from Brooks autopsy photos for the murder book and had prepared warrant requests for Juliet Chatman’s medical records along with records for Chloe and Cody. I faxed those requests to Judge Keener for approval.

  Minutes later, I slid back behind the wheel of the Crown Vic.

  Had Juliet known about her condition?

  Is that why she saw her doctor twice in less than a week?

  If so, what had been her reaction?

  And how had Christopher Chatman reacted?

  The suitcases.

  My stomach clenched as a horrid thought formed in my mind.

  Had she poisoned Cody and Chloe because she knew…?

  Or had the fire merely been a coincidence? God’s way—or the devil’s way—of finalizing her wish to die—and to die with her children.

  15

  THE MEDICAL OFFICE OF OBSTETRICIAN-GYNECOLOGIST MARIA KULKANIS WAS located in the seaside town of Santa Monica, just a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean. I parked on the quiet tree-lined street in front of an Italian restaurant, a block away from the outdoor shops of the Third Street Promenade. The sun had slept in, leaving behind soupy gray skies.

  Judge Keener had approved and faxed my search warrant requests while I was en route to Santa Monica. With the expandable case file tucked beneath my arm, I quickly stepped into the building and rode the elevator up to the third floor. A moment later, I entered an empty, softly lit waiting room that smelled of potpourri. The sound track to Cats whispered over the sound system.

  I approached the reception desk and badged the Latina woman sitting there. “I’m here to talk with Dr. Kulkanis.”

  “One minute,” she said, immediately picking up the phone.

  I stepped away, feeling my fingers and toes thaw from the chill.

  On one wall hung a poster of a smiling woman in soft focus, childless thanks to the long-sounding pill name she had been taking. On the other walls hung more posters of smiling women as they cradled bellies—swollen and healthy with a little help from Vita-Life and Estro-Natal.

  Childless, pregnant—both versions made me sweat. Technically, by now, I was supposed to be one of those tummy-clutching mommas to be. Back in the spring, I had planned to go off the Pill—I was thirty-seven years old, my mother wanted grandkids, and I probably wanted her to have them. But women’s intuition had whispered in my ear, “Gurl. Keep poppin’ them pills. Shenanigans are afoot.”

  Indeed, Greg had been diddling the Japanese skank.

  I had immediately refilled my pill prescription, although not smiling as broadly (or at all) as the poster lady passively praising the wonders of that long-sounding contraceptive name.

  But I forgave him. (You took him back. Again, you took him back.) That meant, in the near future, a baby could still happen.

  Dr. Kulkanis was ready to talk to me, and I tripped down the hallway to a large office with a view of the Italian restaurant across the street. I sat across from the older white woman with fresh-scrubbed porcelain skin and a wild silver bob. No posters on these walls. Just Christmas and Hanukkah cards, framed diplomas, and pictures of babies, more babies, and babies with their parents. Even the mug near her hands had a picture of a baby on it.

  After banter about her practice, I slipped the faxed court order on her desk.

  “On Thursday, Juliet thought she was pregnant,” Dr. Kulkanis told me. “She didn’t seem happy with that. I’ve been her doctor for over twenty years, and so I know her. Knew her.” The doctor’s breath caught, and her blue eyes filled with tears. “She kept saying that she couldn’t be pregnant, that it was impossible. But she was experiencing drowsiness, lethargy, nausea. The muscles in her arms and legs hurt, and her last period came before Halloween.

  “I asked her if she’d had sex with her husband, and the look of revulsion on her face…” The doctor shook her head. “One time: that’s what she told me. She’d had sex with him once since the summer. And I laughed and asked if she needed a refresher course on how pregnancies occurred.”

  “She hadn’t been on birth control?”

  “Seems like you may need one, too,” Dr. Kulkanis said. “Yes: Juliet had been on the Pill. Remember, though: there’s still a one percent chance that you can get pregnant.”

  The sound of rushing blood filled my ears. Something (my ovaries) jabbed at my abdomen. Their way of saying, “Damn, Lou. Maybe you should take two pills a day, eh?”

  “What about the Valium prescription?” I asked.

  “I had prescribed five milligrams twice a day for her anxiety. But she told me she’d stopped taking them back in the summer, once she had started to feel drowsy and fatigued.”

  “Dr. Brooks found excessive amounts of Valium in her blood,” I said.

  The ob-gyn lifted the mug to her lips and sipped.

  “And he found a lot of Valium in the children’s blood, too.”

  I let my inference hang in the air as she sat the mug back on the desk.

  “Juliet had been distressed,” Dr. Kulkanis said, “but she wasn’t suicidal. Nor was she homicidal. She’d never…” She swallowed, then met my gaze.

  My body went cold as a “best of” list of murderous moms scrolled through my mind.

  Susan Smith.

  Andrea Yates.

  Marybeth Tinning.

  “Her visit on Thursday,” I said. “Anything strange about it?”

  Dr. Kulkanis reached for a tissue box on the corner of her desk. “She, umm…” The doctor blew her nose into a sheet, then sighed. “She had lost seventeen pounds since her appointment back in May. Her blood pressure was low—ninety over fifty. I did a blood draw, which—in addition to the urine test—confirmed that she wasn’t pregnant.”

  “Anything else happen on
Thursday?” I whispered.

  “I examined her and felt a large mass on her right ovary. I told her that it could’ve been a cyst—she’d had those before. So I performed an ultrasound.”

  “To look at what you were feeling?”

  “Correct. The most typical cysts are usually filled with fluid—she’d had those. But on this visit, the ultrasound didn’t show what it typically did. Instead, it showed a large mass on her ovary and black spots just like it all around her uterus.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “I told her that I was concerned and wanted better imaging to know what I was seeing, that the tissue could’ve been benign. Fibroids, for example.”

  “And Juliet’s reaction?”

  “Still had pregnancy on the brain. She kept saying, ‘I can’t have another baby. I don’t want another baby.’ And then she said—her exact words were—‘Another baby would trap me.’ ”

  “Trap?”

  The doctor nodded. “I scheduled a CT scan at another facility for first thing this past Monday morning, and then a follow-up appointment with me for Tuesday. Yesterday. Both of which she missed.”

  I cocked my head. “Do you know why she missed them? She was alive on Monday.”

  The woman shrugged. “She didn’t call—she just… didn’t show up.”

  I wrote a note. Why did she skip her appts? What had been more important than those black spots growing inside her?

  “When I sent her for imaging, I knew what our conversation would be, and I had planned to tell her in person during our appointment. Not knowing about the fire, I left her a message yesterday afternoon, when it was clear she wasn’t coming in. I asked her to call me and…” The doctor’s voice broke. “At the time, I didn’t know she had also missed the CT. I thought that today…”

  I pulled out three autopsy pictures from the file: Juliet Chatman’s abdominal cavity was congested with cancerous tumors that resembled pieces of raw, fatty rump roast. “The medical examiner took tumor samples to analyze, but he thinks ovarian cancer.” I handed her the photos.

  With a shaky hand, Dr. Kulkanis studied each picture twice, then whispered, “I agree.”

  Ovarian cancer: a mean disease that will not tell you it had arrived until the hurt became too explosive to ignore. By that time, the cancer had grown past the ovary to contaminate other organs. Doctors throw surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation at the disease. Patients and their loved ones add prayer, lots of prayer. If you are blessed with an early diagnosis, you can make plans past five years: see your daughter married, watch your son march across a stage for his diploma, take that cruise to the Bahamas. Women with advanced disease, though, women like Juliet Chatman… Their families would experience those life moments without them.

  The doctor’s face darkened as she pushed the pictures away. “I’m not an oncologist, but I’ve been a gynecologist for thirty years, and if what I’m seeing… With advanced disease like this… This Christmas would have been Juliet’s last.”

  16

  JULIET CHATMAN WAS DYING.

  And she had no clue that cancer was killing her.

  A house fire, though, would kill her first.

  Last Thursday, December 6, out into the world she went. It had been a crisp winter day in Santa Monica. On any other morning, maybe she would have stopped by the spa for a massage or a manicure. Eaten lunch at Shutters, sitting at an outside patio table despite the cold to watch waves crash against the shore. Maybe she would have ordered a Bloody Mary or three. Flirted with the cute waiter. Wandered the aisles of Fred Segal afterward in search of a cute blouse or an interesting hat.

  But on that Thursday, she had learned that something inside of her wasn’t right.

  It was now half past twelve, and even though I’d gobbled two strips of bacon and an English muffin, I was plagued with shaky hands that came from hunger. But I wobbled past the cafés and bakeries of Santa Monica beckoning me from the sidewalks with their clean round tables and bud vases and lazy twists of steam wafting from pots of fresh-brewed coffee.

  Twenty-seven hours had passed since I had caught the Chatman case, and I still couldn’t answer one question: Who killed a mother and her two kids?

  The Crown Vic was as cold as a museum, and stinky. No matter how many times I sprayed “crisp linen” air freshener around the cabin, the stubborn odors of man sweat and pickles hung around like an ex-boyfriend with my house key.

  I turned the ignition and pulled away from the curb.

  My iPhone rang from my bag. A picture flashed on the screen: a big-eyed, brown-eyed woman with caramel latte skin and a smile as crooked as Lombard Street. Syeeda McKay and I (along with Lena Meadows) had been friends and sorority sisters since college. As a member of the fourth estate, though, Syeeda officially chapped my ass. Talking to her often left me limp—and my insides feeling as though they’d been shredded by a metal hook. All good detectives know, though, that one of the best weapons to have is a reporter. Still: I tasted my own blood whenever Syeeda and I had to push our friendship aside to do our jobs.

  “Please tell me this case is a domestic dispute,” she said, “and not an arson turned murder.”

  “I don’t know what this case is about yet, and good afternoon to you, too. Interesting that you want my opinion as a police officer now even though—”

  “But you all haven’t told the public anything about the arsons. I’m filling a void—”

  “With fluff and crap.”

  “My last article—”

  “Was fluff and crap. Well written, however.”

  “Fine, then. Tell me: Should my mom, who lives a half mile away from the Chatmans, freak out? Should she buy a gun, cuz that’s where she is right now? Has the Burning Man upped the ante by killing people—children—in their beds now?”

  “Sy. Take a knee. And tell your mom to take a knee, too.” Then, I told her the bare bones of the case.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she screeched. “Some… crunked-up psychopath killed two kids and their mom on purpose?”

  “Is that a journalistic term? Crunked-up?”

  “What about the autopsies?”

  “Ongoing.”

  “Off the record.”

  “Ongoing, girlfriend.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “Yeah, cuz I’m busting up right now.”

  “Any suspects?” she asked.

  “Not right now. We’re in the process of interviewing friends, family, and neighbors.”

  “Your first thoughts?”

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Whoever did this is the most disturbed, fucked-up, hell-bound motherfucker outside of an institution, and when I catch him—”

  “Or her—”

  “I will shove my size seven Cole Haan loafer so far down his throat—”

  “Okay, so I only have five hundred words.”

  “Hey: Do you know the Chatmans by any chance?”

  “No.”

  I inched onto the 10 freeway eastbound. Cars, cars, cars, bumper to bumper like a junkyard. Behind the steering wheels, people texted (illegal), people talked on cell phones using their hands (illegal), people lipsticked-blushed-mascaraed in vanity mirrors (not totally illegal, but bitches, please).

  “How about Ben Oliver?” I asked. “He’s an insurance attorney—”

  “Who’s representing one of the families with a burned-down house.”

  “So you know him?”

  “No,” she said. “I read. It’s fundamental.” She paused, then said, “Are you asking me to…?”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. “That is all.”

  “No, no, wait. Off the record.”

  I paused, which was her answer. Then, I said, “Call your mom, Sy. Tell her not to worry.”

  “What am I looking for specifically?”

  “Don’t know, but whatever you find, I’ll need receipts.”

  “Got it. So I stopped by your house this morning. I wanted some of your
busy eggs for breakfast.”

  “That would’ve been good,” I said. “But I’m out of green onions. And bell pepper. And eggs. Rain check. I’ll throw in cinnamon rolls.”

  She cleared her throat. “So…”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I saw your husband a few minutes ago. At the Marina Starbucks with some white girl who was making googly eyes at him.”

  Pow! Her punch landed in my midsection. My head snapped forward. Bursts of light twinkled before me, and I almost rear-ended the chick in the Honda who needed to replace that mascara wand with a magic wand.

  I took a breath, then said, “Starbucks, huh?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “He see you?”

  “Can any man not see me?”

  “So he saw you. Did he turn to stone?”

  She chuckled. “No, but his posture changed.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Probably nothing.”

  A thick pause, seconds drowned in cold molasses.

  “You okay?” she asked. “Should I have kept that to myself?”

  I shook my head. “I wanna know. Thanks.”

  After ending the call, I exited the freeway and tried to take deep breaths, but I couldn’t—a result of the rabbit punches Syeeda had just dealt. Taking guppy breaths (the only kind available), I pulled into a gas station and parked.

  I hadn’t used Bust-a-Cheat for more than a day. Now, though… My clammy hands shook as I tapped the app.

  The car felt too hot now. I punched off the heat button and rolled down every window in the car. The roar of traffic overwhelmed me, and I rolled up three of the four windows.

  The RECENT CALLS log loaded.

  Pinballs clanged from my now-vibrating phone.

  Greg’s picture—three-day growth, pecan-colored eyes—brightened my screen.

  “Hey,” I said with forced cheer.

  “I’m out on the bike,” he said, shouting over the whir of hydraulics and the clank of tools. “Martinez needs to put on new brake pads. I was just thinking about you.”

  “I was just thinking about you, too,” I said, my chest tight.

  “Saw Sy this morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  “At Starbucks. I was there with Kelly.”