In Death's Shadow (16 page)

"Let's," I said. "Just to make sure."

I followed Cindy down a narrow hallway, past a powder room no larger than a phone booth. At the end of the hallway was a swinging door, like on a Wild West saloon. Cindy pushed through the door, faltered, and took a step backward. Her hands flew to her face and a horrible keening sound—half scream, half moan—leaked out from between her fingers.

It had to be bad news.

I elbowed Cindy aside and stepped into the room.

It was worse, far worse, than anything I could have imagined.

Gail Parrish lay on her left side on the white tile floor, curled into a fetal position. Next to her was an overturned chair.

I couldn't pretend Gail had merely fainted. Under her body, a pool of blood had spread, running downhill on one side until it disappeared under the washing machine. On the other, where a filing cabinet and a table leg met the floor, the blood had formed a puddle. Small white boxes and cotton squares seemed to be floating like tiny boats on the incarnadine sea, and the floor all about was littered with computer printouts, bubble wrap, padded mailers, and packing tape, as if someone had made a clean sweep of the tabletop. The whole obscene pool was beginning to darken and dry at the edges.

Gail had to be dead. Nobody could lose that much blood and survive.

"Call 911!" I screamed. "Now!"

I knelt down and pressed my fingers to the vein in Gail's neck, praying for a pulse. Nothing moved under my fingers, and Gail's neck was rigid and cold. Her face was turned to one side so that her hair fell softly over her cheek. Instinctively, I reached out and smoothed it back behind her ear, like I might have done for a sleeping child, but regretted the gesture at once. Beneath that curtain of lustrous, mahogany hair, Gail's eyes stared, vacant and unseeing.

My head swam alarmingly, and I fell back against a table leg, my blood pounding in my ears so loudly that it nearly drowned out Cindy's moaning.
Breathe in, breathe out!
Gradually, as I got my breathing under control, I realized that the moaning was coming from deep within my own throat, not Cindy's.
Poor, poor Gail!
What had she done to deserve this?

By then I was practically huddled under the table, but from that vantage point I could see the cause of all the blood: a small, round hole near Gail's left breast. I'd never seen a gunshot wound before, but I was certain that was what it was. If what I'd seen on TV was any indication, a small hole meant a small caliber bullet, probably at close range.

I glanced around quickly, but didn't see a gun. That didn't mean there wasn't a gun; it could very well be hidden under the mess of printouts and bubble wrap, but I knew better than to muck about with a crime scene any more than was necessary in order to give aid to the victim. Not that there was anything I or the paramedics could do to help save Gail now.

Except for the whine of an attic fan, the house was oddly silent. I'd almost forgotten about Cindy. "Have you called 911?" I yelled again.

Cindy's answer was a wail and the sound of painful retching coming from the powder room. I'd have to make the call myself. I found my purse where it had fallen to the floor, pulled out my cell phone and punched 911.

The 911 operator was a pro: calming me down, soliciting details, and issuing instructions all at the same time. Once she had determined that Gail's assailant was no longer in the house, she said, "Don't move, don't touch anything. The police are on their way."

Don't move.
I wouldn't,
couldn't
, leave my friend.

Too stunned to cry, I sat on the floor next to her, knees drawn up and pressing into my chin.

Don't touch anything
. Who's to know? I thought. I reached out and took Gail's ice cold hand in mine, almost believing that if I held it tightly enough, rubbed it briskly enough, I might coax some warmth back into those frozen fingers.

Was all this my fault? Had Gail been killed because of something she was going to tell me? Did somebody intend to silence her . . . forever?

A tear ran hotly down my cheek. Then another. And another.

"Ma'am? Ma'am?"

Who the hell was that? It took me a moment to realize that the operator was still on the line, trying to get my attention through the cell phone pressed to my ear.

"Yes? I'm here."

"The police are turning into your street right now," she said.

"Uhhhhhh," I managed. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the table leg, willing the nightmare away.

"They're on the porch now," she advised. "The next knock you hear will be Officer Tracey."

I turned my head toward the swinging doors, imagining Officer Tracey moseying through, strong, silent, and dependable, like Gary Cooper in
High Noon
.

But Tracey didn't knock, he buzzed, and at the front, not the laundry room door. The raucous sound seemed a vulgar intrusion in the otherwise respectful silence of the house. It must have taken Cindy by surprise, too, because

she screamed an interminable, bloodcurdling,
Friday the 13th
kind of scream. Even today, it haunts my dreams.

"It's okay, Cindy!" I screamed back. "It's the police. Please, go let them in!"

After a moment I heard Cindy's rapid footsteps receding down the hall, and I began to relax
. Officer Tracey will be here soon. Officer Tracey will help me. Officer Tracey will find out who killed Gail.

And then I saw them: paw prints. Kitty prints, to be precise. Kitty prints that meandered through the gore, circled the overturned chair, trotted over a computer printout and faded, step by bloody step, before disappearing into the hall.

That wasn't mud I had been working out of Nitro's toes, it was Gail's blood.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Blood. Gail's blood. It seemed to be everywhere.

Paul led me up to the bedroom and waited while I stripped. He wrapped me gently in a multicolored beach towel, hugged me for a long minute, kissed the top of my head, then stuffed the ruined slacks and sweater I had been wearing into a plastic garbage bag. "Bath," he ordered.

I eyed the bag. "My clothes?"

"Do you really want to keep them?" Paul asked.

I shook my head.

Paul chewed his lower lip, a sure sign he was worried about something. "The police—" he began.

Somewhere in my paralyzed brain comprehension dawned, and I finished the sentence for him. The police might want to examine my clothes for evidence. I stared at my husband and tried desperately to swallow around the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my throat.

"Bath," Paul repeated, taking hold of my shoulders and turning me in the direction of the bathroom.

This time I obeyed.

Shut away in the womblike comfort of our master bath, I turned on the tap, dumped in some lavender bath salts, and crawled wearily into the tub. I lay down, closed my eyes and waited, enjoying the sensation as the hot water rose up my neck, crept over my cheeks, and covered my ears. When only my nose was exposed, I used my toes to push the tap off. In the relative silence beneath the water I could hear nothing but the air moving in and out of my lungs and, faintly, the sound of the television downstairs.

With my hair floating and swirling lazily around my head, I tried to wipe my mind clean, to fill it with nothing but white space. It was a losing battle. It would be a long time, I thought, before I would be able to close my eyes and visualize anything but an image of Gail Parrish curled up on a white tile floor in a pool of her own dark red blood.

Could I try TM? After my cancer diagnosis, Ruth had insisted I learn Transcendental Meditation; she'd even paid for my lessons. TM had helped lower my stress, but I'd never achieved that altered state of consciousness that Ruth had rambled on about so passionately.

I relaxed, hands floating by my sides, breathing in and out, repeating the mantra I had been taught:
Hirim. Hirim. Hirim. Hirim
.

A disorganized army of lights and shapes floated aimlessly about the interior landscape of my eyes, my breathing slowed, and I drifted away on an undulating wave, alternately both radiant and dark.

I was awakened by Paul knocking gently on the door. "Hannah?"

"Mumph."

"You okay in there?"

I lay in the tub silently, collecting my wits.

"You have to eat something," Paul said.

I rallied enough to answer. "I can't. I'll be sick to my stomach."

"Mind if I come in?"

I grunted.

The door swung open, followed by Paul, who perched on the edge of the tub. He wrung out a washcloth and used it to wipe the perspiration from my face. "You have to eat something, Hannah."

I grabbed my husband's hand, washcloth and all. "What if it's my fault Gail is dead?"

"It's not your fault, Hannah. It's the fault of whomever pulled the trigger."

"Please! Save the NRA platitudes for somebody who gives a damn!" I dropped his hand. "Of course I could be responsible! The other day when I was talking to Gail on the telephone, it was clear she had stumbled onto something. “ “That's odd,' she told me. She was supposed to call me back. She never did."

"There could be all sorts of reasonable explanations."

"That's what I kept telling myself when I couldn't reach her today, that there was a reasonable explanation why her phone was constantly busy." I took a deep, shuddering breath. "She was working on eBay, Paul. Somebody shot her before she could log off."

"And do you have a theory as to who that somebody might be?"

"I think that Gail uncovered something when she was compiling that list of Ginger Cove residents for me. Maybe after she hung up, she went digging around in Jablonsky's files. Maybe he caught her at it and fired her. Or, maybe she simply panicked and quit."

"That would explain the substitute receptionist," Paul said. "But not the murder."

"My theory is that Gail quit. I also think that Jablonsky figured out
why
she quit and decided he couldn't trust her to keep her mouth shut. I think he had her killed to keep her from blowing the whistle on him."

"Enter Nicholas Pottorff," Paul said.

"Exactly. Jablonsky is far too fastidious to get his own hands dirty."

"Have you shared your theory with the Annapolis police?"

I nodded.

"Do you want to talk to Dennis, too?"

"God, no! I'm still embarrassed by what I said to him last night. I've been lying here thinking about it, and you know, Dennis is right. Maybe that's why he made me so angry. I know he can't interfere with cases in other jurisdictions, and it's not fair for me to ask him to."

I glanced up at my husband through lowered lashes. "Besides, Dennis thinks I'm a pain in the ass. He's only being nice to me because he's married to your sister."

"That's not true! Dennis likes you."

"Hah."

"Well, I'm not going to argue with you about it. I think you're being pigheaded and foolish.
Of course
we should call Dennis. Things are different today than they were last night. Gail's death has changed everything."

"Particularly for Gail," I said.

Paul frowned. He was only trying to be helpful, and I'd hurt his feelings.

I sat up in the tub and opened the drain. "I'd rather not bother Dennis, if you don't mind, Paul. He already thinks I'm a kook. Besides, I have confidence in Officer Tracey. He seemed a take-charge kind of guy. I don't think he's going to drop the ball."

Paul pulled a towel off the rack and handed it to me. “Tell me about Tracey."

I dried myself briskly. "He was a prince." I lowered my head, wrapped the towel around it and twisted the ends under. "I swear to God, I've never seen anybody work so fast," I said, looking up. "In the two minutes between the time he got there and the arrival of the paramedics, he corralled Cindy and had her sitting in the living room with a female officer, coaxed me out from under Gail's computer table and sat me down on the sofa next to Cindy, and cornered Nitro—that's the cat—and shut her up in the powder room."

"I told him everything," I added. "And he gave me his card. I have a feeling I'm going to need it."

I turned, reached under the sink for my dryer, and began working on my hair. I didn't mention it to Paul, but I was grateful, too, that Mike Tracey had escorted me to my car, running interference with the reporters who had materialized on the scene and were crawling all over it like ants at a picnic.

"You okay to drive, ma'am?" he'd inquired as he closed the car door after me.

I had nodded.

Then he'd gone back to sit with a distraught Cindy until her mother arrived to take her off his hands.

In the mirror, I saw Paul was still standing behind me, watching with an amused smile as I worked mousse into my hair and began fluffing it with my fingers. "Go away, now," I told my husband. "Find a good DVD. I need some cheering up."

After Paul left the bathroom, I finished drying my hair, dressed in my flannel pajamas, and wandered downstairs to the living room, where he had cued up
Ruthless People
, our favorite "feel good" movie. He aimed the remote at the TV and clicked the movie on.

"Sit," he said, pointing to the sofa. When I sat, he handed me an afghan. I tucked it around my legs.

Paul disappeared into the kitchen and returned a minute or two later with a steaming bowl of oatmeal he'd apparently cooked up while I was passed out in the tub. He'd dotted it with butter and sprinkled it with brown sugar, just the way I like it.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the spoon he was dangling in front of me.

Paul watched me while I ate, then took the dirty bowl to the kitchen.

When he rejoined me on the couch, I stretched out my legs and lay down with my head in his lap, and we watched the movie, laughing ourselves silly, which was the whole point. When it was all over, I felt let down, as if I'd been holding a big, red balloon and it had suddenly deflated.

"What do you want to watch now, honey?"

"It's almost eleven," I said. "Turn on the news."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded, the denim on his leg moving roughly over my cheek. "Uh-huh."

We watched the final credits of a popular TV drama crawl by, minimized and distorted to unreadability in order to make room on the screen for the bronzed face and bleached buzz cut of the news anchor, cheerfully giving us a "heads-up" on what to expect at the "top of the hour." Gail Parrish's murder was the lead story.

Anne Arundel County Police are investigating the murder of an Annapolis

woman who was found shot to death in her Eastport home earlier this

afternoon. The body of the woman, a thirty-two-year-old receptionist, was

discovered by neighbors who grew worried when they saw her car in the

driveway and she didn't answer the telephone. Police have no suspects.

Release of the victim's name is pending notification of next of kin, but TV6 has

learned that the house is owned by Ian and Judith Fraser and that the Frasers

are presently out of the country. Neighbors tell us that the victim was house

sitting for the Frasers.

Before the anchor had finished reading the story, I was astonished to see myself appear on camera, emerging from the Frasers' front door—still red, still with that ridiculous knocker—accompanied by Officer Tracey, with Cindy tagging along behind.

As Tracey hustled us down the sidewalk, dodging cameras, a reporter was thrusting a microphone in my face, and I was waving it away as if I were Demi Moore or Madonna or something. But unlike Demi Moore, I looked like hell. My face was the color of grits, the subtle lines at each side of my nose had deepened to ravines, and since when had those railroad tracks been carved into my forehead?

After failing with me, the reporter tried to interview Cindy, but she merely gazed stupidly at the camera, sobbing uncontrollably.

Perversely, the reporter seemed pleased with that. "The neighbors are clearly shocked by this senseless act of violence in what has always been a friendly, quiet neighborhood," he was saying as the camera panned from his well-coiffed head to a view of a house across the street, where a youngster was shooting hoops in the driveway.

I thought I was going to barf. "Turn it off," I said.

Paul took aim with the remote and obliged. "I warned you."

"Why do they have to turn everything into a goddamn circus?"

"It's their job," Paul said reasonably.

We were discussing what movie to watch—I voted for
Overboard
, while Paul argued for
Goldmember
—when the telephone rang.

Paul raised an eyebrow. "Let the machine pick up?"

"No," I said, thinking about Officer Tracey. "Nobody calls after eleven at night unless it's important."

Paul let the phone ring once more before he answered it. He listened for a moment, then held the receiver out to me. "It's Dennis."

"I don't want to talk to him," I whispered. “Tell him I've gone to bed."

"I think you'll want to hear what he has to say."

Two against one. I was outnumbered.

I took the receiver from my husband's outstretched hand. "Hi, Dennis," I said, and before he could say anything, I forged ahead. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said to you last night. I was a little tipsy."

"I figured that. Don't worry about it. I didn't take it personally."

"Are you sure?”

“Yup. But that's not why I called. I just caught the news. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you on TV. Was that the woman you were telling me about? Works for Jablonsky?"

"Worked. She either quit or was fired last week. Why, I don't know. That's one of the things I was going to ask her."

"How did you end up discovering the body?"

Body
. I cringed. Already the living, breathing Gail was being reduced to a thing. I cleared my throat and tried to explain about Google and the phone number, about Cindy and the house key. "The Annapolis police were great, Dennis, but they aren't telling me anything."

"Who's handling the case?"

I told him. Then I shared my theory. "I really think Gail was killed to prevent her from talking to me."

Dennis grunted. "But how would the killer have connected Gail with you?"

I hadn't really thought about that.

"Is it possible Nick Pottorff recognized you when you and your father went to Steele's office?" Dennis continued.