Open Season

by Linda Howard

  “You didn’t know where, or how, he was living?”

  Karen sensed his hostility, though he kept his face impassive, his eyes hooded. Detective Marc Chastain definitely disapproved of her for some reason, but if he pursued the insurance angle, he would hit a dead end. Maybe he expected her to start screaming at him because he obviously wasn’t working very hard to find out who had murdered her father. But she hadn’t expected an all-out effort. She was a nurse; she saw all too often what happened when a homeless person was the victim of a crime. Police departments nationwide worked with limited resources, and they couldn’t waste their precious time or money on useless causes. Hospitals did it all the time. Triage was necessary, or everyone lost.

  She could have told him that, but she was too hot, too tired, and too stressed to care what he thought. Her head was pounding. She felt as if she were about to fly apart in all directions, her emotions roiling, and the only way to handle it was to stay in control. That was the way she did it at work, when a patient died no matter how conscientious she was in her care, no matter how good the doctor was, no matter that it was a sweet-faced child or a lively old lady with a sparkle in her eye. People died all the time. She had learned how to handle it.

  “He didn’t keep in touch,” she finally said.

  “He was a Vietnam vet.” Statement, not a question.

  “Yes.” She knew where this was leading. The disturbed vet, in need of psych care, cast out and ignored by his family because he was too much trouble, too much of an embarrassment with his moods and rages and unpredictability

  But Detective Chastain didn’t say it; he didn’t have to. Karen read it in his cool, narrow-eyed gaze.

  “He walked out on us when I was a child,” she said sharply, more sharply than she had intended. She could feel her control frazzling, feel the jagged edge of some pain she refused to let herself identify, and sternly fought her emotions back in line. There would be time enough for that later, when she was alone and this hard-faced, dark-browed man wasn’t looking at her with veiled contempt.

  She didn’t owe him any explanations. She didn’t have to reveal the pain and anger and fear of her childhood, just so he would think better of her. All she had to do was get through the next couple of days, then return to Ohio and go back to work, to the silent, empty apartment that wasn’t home yet despite having lived there for four months.

  “What do I have to do to claim the body?” she asked after a moment, her voice once more cool and composed.

  “You have to identify him, sign some papers. I’ll walk you through it. Have you made arrangements to take him back to Ohio?”

  Karen sat there stunned. She hadn’t thought of that. She had been focused on getting through the funeral, but not where the funeral would be. She didn’t have a plot in Ohio where she could bury Dexter. There wasn’t room next to her mother’s grave—not that she wanted that, anyway, but Jeanette would have.

  Karen’s hands twisted together as she tried to control the sharp jab of pain. She had let her mother down. Jeanette had asked very little from her and had given everything, but Karen had let her own resentment of her father prevent her from doing what her mother would have wanted.

  “I—I didn’t even think—” she said, then wished she hadn’t. His expression was as lively as a rock’s, but again she sensed that wave of disapproval.

  Regret speared through her, not because of what Detective Chastain thought of her but because she had wasted so much time feeling bitter, letting it cloud her thinking. No more.

  Chastain gave a brief shrug, broad shoulders moving in a gesture that was oddly Gallic. Karen thought that maybe because she was in New Orleans, she expected everything to have a French flavor. And maybe she was even more stressed than she had realized, if she was letting unimportant details distract her. She had been trained to keep her mind on the job in front of her, not on trivia such as how a New Orleans cop shrugged.

  “If you can’t handle the expense of taking him back, I can help you find a burial plot here,” he offered, though she could tell he hoped she would refuse. “Not in the city, that would be impossible, but a few miles out of town. Or you might consider cremation. It would be cheaper.”

  Cheaper. He thought she would have her father cremated because it was cheaper. She didn’t have anything against cremation, if that was what someone wanted, but she couldn’t help thinking of Jeanette again. Dexter should be buried beside her. She had to deal with this now, but when she got back to Ohio, she would start making arrangements to have her parents buried together. She would have to locate two plots side by side, deal with the legalities and technicalities of moving the bodies—oh, God, she couldn’t think of her mother as a body.

  She couldn’t think at all; her mind was growing number by the minute. And whatever Detective Chastain’s private opinion of her, he had at least offered his assistance. She was uncomfortable accepting his help, knowing he didn’t like her, but right now she desperately needed it. “Thank you,” she forced herself to say, her voice unusually husky. “I’m not usually so disorganized. My mother died just a few months ago, and I’m still not—” She stopped, looking away, appalled that she was making excuses for herself.

  He stood and retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair. “I’ll drive you to the morgue now, if you feel up to it.”

  She didn’t, but she stood anyway. She stared at him, wondering how he could stand wearing a jacket in this heat. She felt dizzy, both too hot and too cold at the same time, sweat trickling down her spine and raising a chill. The lazily turning ceiling fan merely stirred the warm air. She didn’t understand it; she had dressed in the coolest suit she owned, but she might as well have been muffled in wool instead of cotton.

  Then Detective Chastain’s hand was on her arm, a warm, hard hand. She felt the calluses on his fingers, smelled the light lemony tang of his aftershave, and she had the blurred impression of a big body standing very close to her, too close, almost as if she were leaning on him. An arm was around her back, and the hand holding her arm forced her back down onto the chair, the strength in his grip somehow reassuring. “Sit here,” he ordered quietly. “Put your head down, and take deep breaths. I’ll get you something cold to drink.”

  She did take the deep breaths, but she thought that if she bent over to put her head down, she would just keep going until she was on the floor. So she sat motionless, her eyes closed, as he left the small office. From beyond the open door, she could hear people talking, telephones ringing, papers rustling. There was a lot of cursing, some of it sharp and angry, some uttered in lazy, liquid accents that almost made her forget the content of the words.

  Cops. Nurses who worked the emergency and trauma units were around a lot of cops, but except for some periods of training, she had always been a floor nurse, so the world of a cop was alien to her. Her mind drifting, she listened to them talk: hard, profane, callous, and yet curiously concerned. Cops and nurses had a lot in common, she thought, sleepily. They had to harden themselves against heartbreaking details but still care about the overall situation.

  “Here you go.”

  She hadn’t heard him return, but suddenly an icy soft drink can was pressed into her hand. She opened her eyes and blinked at it. Usually, she drank decaffeinated diet soda, but this was the real stuff, chock full of sugar and caffeine.

  “Drink it,” he said. Evidently, it was an order, not a suggestion, because he lifted her hand and tipped the can to her mouth.

  She was forced to swallow, childlike, and flashed him a look of resentment. He met it with a sort of bland insistence that once again made her think of a rock. Detective Chastain was about as yielding. With a flash of insight, she thought that he would be relentless when going after something he wanted. She would hate to be a criminal with Chastain on her trail.

  The soda fizzed on her tongue, tart and sweet at the same time, and it was so cold she could feel it slide down her esophagus. He made her take another swallow before deciding she co
uld manage on her own, but even then, he moved less than a foot away to prop against the edge of his desk. He stretched out long, muscular legs clad in lightweight olive slacks, his loafer-shod feet just inches from her own much smaller shoes. She pulled her feet back a little, oddly disturbed, her stomach clenching in a reaction that was almost like fear, which was ridiculous. She didn’t fear Chastain; despite his attitude, she was even grateful to him.

  “Drink all of it. The humidity’s kind of like altitude,” he said easily. “Both of them can sneak up on you and knock you flat. For a minute there, your eyes weren’t focused. Feeling better now?”

  She was. Karen realized she had almost fainted at his feet. She was a nurse; she should have recognized the signs. By not eating that day, she had all but set herself up for a faint, and the heat and humidity certainly hadn’t helped. Every thread on her felt clammy. How embarrassing it would have been if she had sprawled on her face.

  Given his veiled dislike, she wondered why Detective Chastain hadn’t let her do just that. But he’d been both alert and unexpectedly kind, and she remembered that swift sense of security she had felt at his supporting touch.

  “Thankyou,” she said, looking up at him again. This close to him, she realized with surprise that his eyes were a pale, crystalline gray, with dark charcoal, rings around the outer rims of his irises. Given the darkness of his hair and brows, his olive complexion, she had thought his eyes would be dark, too. Or maybe she had been on the verge of fainting before she walked into his office, because how else could she not have noticed such a glittering color? Her stomach clenched again, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “I’m ready to go to the morgue now.”

  Whatever his thoughts, she couldn’t read them on his face. “You don’t have to actually view the body,” he explained. “The medical examiner’s office uses videotape for identification purposes. It’s easier on families.”

  Evidently, he thought the prospect of the morgue, of viewing her father’s body, had gotten to her as much as the heat and humidity. “I’m a nurse,” she heard herself saying. “The sight of a body isn’t likely to make me go to pieces, but still—” Still, she was glad it would be on videotape.

  He put his hand on her arm again, cupping her elbow in an old-fashioned gesture. “Then we might as well get it over with, hadn’t we?”

  © Brian Velenchenko

  LINDA HOWARD is the award-winning author of nine New York Times bestsellers, including Open Season, Mr. Perfect, All the Queen’s Men, Now You See Her, Kill and Tell, and Son of the Morning. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.