Resurrection Blues

by James, Harper

  Evan nodded as if he knew what it was like, so many cadavers, so little time.

  ‘But you said you’ve been expecting me, or someone like me, to come calling about this particular case ever since.’

  Ivanovsky’s lips compressed into a tight line, the muscles of his jaw working. He folded his arms tightly over his chest, his long fingers digging into his arm. But it wasn’t Evan’s impertinence at questioning his story that made him look as if the ageing vulture was back, annoyed that the critter in front of him wouldn’t just hurry up and die.

  ‘I don’t remember every detail of the case,’ he said pointedly, ‘but I do remember the fat investigator.’

  ‘Ryder.’

  ‘Yes, Ryder’s attitude.’ He paused, contemplating Evan as if he was weighing something up in his mind. There must have been something in the way Evan had said Ryder that tipped the balance. A hint of a smile appeared on his lips. ‘When I said earlier I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him on the slab, I might as well have said that I wouldn’t have minded seeing him on it.’

  Chewing the side of his mouth didn’t cut the mustard this time. A shocked laugh exploded out of Evan’s mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ivanovsky said, uncrossing his arms and wiping his palms on the side of his pants, ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  Music to my ears, Evan thought but said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ instead, with a no-big-deal wave of his hand.

  ‘I hope he’s not a friend of yours.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Evan said, the words riding out on the remains of his laughter. ‘He wasn’t happy about you putting it down as an accident?’

  ‘No. He made that very clear.’

  The word very spoke volumes. Evan saw sausage fingers jabbing the air, saw a doughy face dangerously red with anger and frustration, felt the spittle on his chin. He’d been there, he’d be there again.

  ‘He wanted it recorded as undetermined.’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  Ivanovsky’s reply didn’t carry the force of conviction that Evan would have expected. Ivanovsky saw the confusion on his face.

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been natural causes or homicide, but it could have been suicide.’

  It wasn’t an option that had crossed Evan’s mind, made him wonder if it had crossed Levi’s. It would explain the absence of skid marks, of any attempt to stop the car going over the edge. But it would take a very unbalanced mind to choose such an uncertain means of ending your own life.

  ‘However,’ Ivanovsky continued, ‘that seemed unlikely. If it had been suicide, I’d have expected the toxicology tests to show signs of alcohol or drugs. In my experience, it’s very unusual for a person to commit suicide stone cold sober. Most people need a little something to prepare themselves. And there was nothing in this case.’

  Evan was amazed by the remarkable turnaround in Ivanovsky’s memory. Suddenly he had every last detail at the forefront of his mind. Ivanovsky smiled knowingly.

  ‘You’re thinking, how come I suddenly remember every detail.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  Ivanovsky took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He turned away from the window and dropped into a leather easy chair. A cloud of dust rose up, dancing in the sunlight. Evan sat on the arm of the chair opposite. When Ivanovsky spoke again any residual anger was gone from his voice.

  ‘That’s because I do. It sounded to me earlier that you were questioning my professional judgement.’

  Evan went to speak, to deny it wholeheartedly. Ivanovsky held up a hand to silence him.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to. But it took me back—’

  ‘Ryder.’

  ‘Exactly. He was very definitely questioning my professional judgement.’

  ‘That’s not why you retired shortly after?’

  Ivanovsky shook his head.

  ‘No. Definitely not. It was annoying at the time and’—he allowed himself a small smile—‘it still gets my goat when it’s brought up now, but I wouldn’t have allowed it to effectively force me out of the job.’

  ‘Why is it that you remember all the details?’

  Something passed behind Ivanovsky’s eyes.

  ‘Because it was so sad. A young woman dying like that in such a tragic accident. It’s a horrible way to die.’

  Evan felt as if a cold hand had gripped his heart and squeezed.

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘She was knocked unconscious? She was. But before that . . . imagine what it must have felt like to fly off the edge of the road, to be thrown around inside the car as it bounced down the hillside. Everybody’s watched too much TV, seen too many movies where the car does exactly that and the driver burns to death. She didn’t know she was going to be knocked out. She spent the last moments of her life hoping to God she didn’t die in unspeakable agony.’

  Evan pushed himself off the arm of the chair and stared out of the window, Ivanovsky’s words echoing the thoughts that had gone through his mind as he sat leaning against the tree an hour earlier. Ivanovsky joined him and they stood side by side, in silence, looking out of the window. Suddenly the Corvette didn’t look like so much fun anymore. Ivanovsky didn’t have any more questions about its performance either.

  Evan waited for Ivanovsky to break the silence. It seemed as if he’d broken the cardinal rule in this case. He’d allowed something other than detached, professional considerations to enter his mind. And heart.

  ‘Not very professional, eh?’ Ivanovsky said, as if he was a mind reader.

  There wasn’t a lot to say to that. It happens would have been too trite, too flippant.

  ‘Maybe that’s why I retired,’ Ivanovsky said more to himself than Evan. ‘Maybe I was worried that it wouldn’t be the last time I viewed the corpse in front of me as something more than a piece of dead meat.’

  ‘There is one other strange thing,’ Evan said.

  Ivanovsky looked up sharply.

  ‘I couldn’t find any official records on file. No death certificate, no autopsy report.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I signed them both myself.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen them.’

  ‘It’s an administrative error then.’ He laughed without any humor. ‘At least it’s only the paperwork going missing. I could tell you a thing or two. Bodies going missing. And worse—’

  He stopped abruptly, studied his shoes, embarrassed as he caught himself about to engage in idle gossip with a perfect stranger, the sort of thing a mortuary technician might do in a bar, not the behavior of the Medical Examiner.

  ‘You’d be horrified if you knew what goes on.’

  It seemed like an appropriate time to go. They moved into the hallway. A photograph on the wall made Evan stop momentarily.

  ‘That’s my namesake,’ Ivanovsky said, pointing at the portrait in an ornate frame. It was an old, sepia-tinted photograph of a bearded gentleman from the Victorian era judging by the style of his clothes and the constipated expression on his face. ‘Dmitri Ivanovsky. He was a Russian microbiologist credited with discovering the existence of viruses. I used to get called Dmitri at medical school as a result.’

  ‘Are you related?’

  Ivanovsky shook his head.

  ‘No such luck. Someone found it in a junk shop and gave it to me for a joke.’

  Evan nodded politely, noticed that a different picture had previously hung in its place. He saw the discoloured outline of a wider, shorter picture, a landscape or a group photo.

  Ivanovsky saw him looking. He licked his finger and wiped at the outline, smearing it, making it worse.

  ‘I’ve got no excuse for not re-painting now I’m retired,’ he said with an apologetic smile as he saw Evan out.

  ‘So how do you spend your time—’

  ‘Drive carefully,’ Ivanovsky said, shutting the door firmly in Evan’s face.

  Chapter 19

  EVAN DROVE LIKE A pussy on the way back. He was glad Guillory wasn’t in the car with him
. He stopped again on the shoulder where Lauren’s car had gone over the edge, for no reason other than it was convenient and he needed to think things through.

  He’d learned two things and neither of them got him anywhere. Ryder hadn’t been happy to have the death recorded as an accident, but there wasn’t a chance in hell of him sharing his concerns. He’d automatically see any questions Evan might ask as questioning him personally. And Ivanovsky had been affected personally by Lauren’s death, his professional detachment slipping, despite so many years in the job, so many tragic deaths, men and women who died too young, their whole lives ahead of them, no doubt children as well.

  He called Levi planning on giving him an update over the phone. At the last minute he changed his mind, asked him if he was free to meet for lunch. After his morbid thoughts about autopsies, he suddenly didn’t want to sit at the side of the road where Lauren booked the appointment for hers.

  ‘Did you find my laptop?’ Levi asked as Evan sat down opposite him.

  A strangled laugh slipped through Evan’s lips. With everything that had happened, he’d forgotten about the laptop, the reason for going back to the van in the first place.

  ‘No.’

  The hopeful look on Levi’s face slipped off. His shoulders slumped.

  ‘Damn.’

  Evan pulled the van keys out of his pocket. He put them on the table between the two of them, then put the thumb drive next to them. Levi picked up the keys.

  ‘These are the keys I gave you.’

  Evan nodded, tapped the table next to the thumb drive.

  ‘And that’s the thumb drive that was on the ring with them. Between Elvis and the bottle opener.’

  He watched a range of emotions chase each other across Levi’s face—confusion, understanding and then embarrassment. Levi picked up the thumb drive.

  ‘They copied the documents onto this. I had it in my pocket the whole time.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You didn’t need to go back to the van at all.’

  ‘Exactly. And I didn’t need to nearly get killed by the two guys who abducted you.’

  Levi managed to keep the grin off his face as Evan told him about the fight in the mall parking lot the previous day, how he’d come within a hair’s breadth of wiping out a child and her mother. By the time he was finished, his palms were as slick as they’d been at the time.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’

  Levi turned the thumb drive over in his fingers, shook his head.

  ‘To think I almost dropped the whole lot down the drain.’

  ‘Lucky you didn’t,’ Evan said.

  Strangely enough he didn’t bother adding that he’d very nearly done the same thing himself.

  ‘So, everything’s on here,’ Levi said.

  ‘I don’t know about everything, but I’ve seen the death certificate and autopsy report.’

  ‘Now you’ve seen them,’ Levi said slowly as if he was formulating his thoughts as he spoke them, ‘you really do think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

  Evan shook his head, just not convincingly enough.

  ‘You do! I can see it in your face.’

  ‘Have you got Lauren’s bracelet on you?’

  Levi pulled it out of his pocket at the same time as Evan got out his phone. He found the image of Lauren and the mystery man. He pointed to the bracelet visible on Lauren’s arm. Levi snatched the phone out of his hand and squinted at it. He picked up the bracelet and compared it to the image.

  ‘You think it’s the same bracelet?’ he said.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Which would mean it’s an old photo.’

  Evan didn’t say anything, let the logic of his own words sink in. Levi continued comparing the bracelet and the image, holding them both at arm’s length, then close-up again.

  ‘She must have bought another one,’ he said at last.

  Evan didn’t bother asking why she might have done that. All that would have done is give Levi an opportunity to demonstrate the lengths to which his imagination could stretch.

  ‘Do you remember where you bought it,’ he said instead. On balance it was a more useful question. It at least had the chance of an answer based on reality.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Levi snapped as if Evan had called into question the depth of his love for his wife. He opened the web browser on Evan’s phone and found the site of a high-end jeweller, passed the phone back to Evan.

  ‘Okay, I’ll check it out,’ Evan said. ‘See if they recognize her.’

  Levi looked at him expectantly as if he was going to open up the contact page and give them a call.

  ‘And I’ll need to borrow the bracelet.’

  That sure as hell wiped the hopeful smile off his face.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  It was a lot to ask. He knew what he’d felt when Adamson dropped the Zippo lighter into his pocket—and he didn’t even know for sure if it was Sarah’s or not.

  ‘I’ll get it straight back to you. Or we can go together. We could go now.’

  The bracelet flew across the table towards him, shot off the edge and dropped to the floor under the table. Looks like I’m going on my own, Evan thought as he retrieved it.

  ‘How do you explain this?’ he said, holding up the thumb drive. ‘The death certificate and autopsy report.’

  Levi shrugged. He leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, staring at the table top.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘How did you get hold of the originals?’

  ‘They were mailed to me, I think. By the coroner or whatever they’re called. Or maybe it was at the funeral home. One or the other, I can’t remember.’

  ‘I talked to the Chief Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy,’ Evan said. ‘Went to see him, in fact.’

  Levi’s head snapped up.

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Being thorough.’

  It didn’t seem an appropriate time to bring up any of the matters that they’d discussed. Levi would frogmarch him straight to Ryder if he mentioned his misgivings.

  ‘Did that thoroughness produce anything useful?’

  ‘Not really.’

  They were going around in circles. Time to come at it from a different angle.

  ‘Tell me about Lauren.’

  The question seemed to take Levi by surprise. It took him a minute to collect his thoughts, trying to cram the whole of a person’s life into a few words.

  ‘She was born September 7, 1988 and christened Lauren Darya. She’d have been thirty this year. Her parents were Jake and Kristina Kincade. That’s pretty much everything I know about them. Her mother died when she was young. I think Lauren was ten at the time.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘No idea. It was a long time ago. She wouldn’t talk about it.’

  There was an uncharacteristic bitterness in Levi’s voice. His eyes had lost focus.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Evan said.

  ‘It’s not important. It’s just talking about her family. It was the only time we ever got into a fight. If I asked her about her parents. In the end I gave up asking.’

  ‘It was painful, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought you were meant to be able to share things like that with the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with. But it was the one part of her I couldn’t get to. And now I’ll never know.’

  It wasn’t a good or productive avenue to go down. Levi looked about ready to slide into a pit of self-pity.

  ‘Her father brought her up?’

  Levi shook his head woodenly, his mouth turning down even more at the corners.

  ‘No. He ran off after her mother died. Couldn’t handle the responsibility. Her aunt and uncle took her in, raised her.’

  ‘Any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No, just her.’

  ‘What are the aunt and uncle’s names?’

  ‘Eva and Arturo Rivera.’ />
  ‘Your wife’s family are Hispanic?’

  Levi’s forehead creased in confusion.

  ‘No. That’s his name, her married name. I have no idea what her maiden name was. It’d be the same as Lauren’s mother’s, but I don’t know what that was either. I told you, Lauren didn’t talk about her family much.’

  ‘Are they still alive?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  Levi gave an apologetic head shake.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they are. They weren’t a close family even when Lauren was around. Since then . . . you know how it is.’

  Evan knew exactly how it was. The speed with which Sarah’s folks had dropped contact with him had stunned him at the time. He’d come to realize later that they blamed him for the disappearance of their daughter. Once you’ve realized something like that, you don’t tend to call so much yourself either.

  ‘I’ll want to talk to them anyway.’

  Levi got out his phone and found Eva Rivera’s contact details. Evan copied them into his own phone.

  ‘Did the Riveras have children of their own?’

  ‘No. I got the impression they couldn’t. That’s why they were happy to take Lauren in.’

  ‘What about the father? Did Lauren ever have any contact with him after that?’

  The question got a smile out of Levi, the first since Evan sat down opposite him. The reply told him more about the family dynamic than all of his other answers combined.

  ‘Not unless he wanted his cojones cut off by Auntie Eva.’

  ‘Okay,’ Evan said, stretching it into a three-syllable word, thankful for the heads up on the strength of the opposition. ‘Did he even come back for the funeral?’

  He’d have been surprised if he didn’t get some kind of a reaction to a question about the funeral. Shoulders slumping, head falling forwards, maybe not a sob after five years, but something along those lines. Instead Levi reacted like he’d sat on a hot coal. His mouth dropped open. Evan saw something pass behind his eyes. It looked a lot like an aha moment.

  ‘What?’

  Then Levi’s mouth clamped shut again. He shook his head, nothing.

  Evan didn’t push it, he’d ask the aunt about the funeral instead. Even though he hadn’t met her yet, he reckoned he’d get more out of her than Levi any day. He changed the subject.