Regrets Only (13 page)

Jack nodded to indicate they’d viewed the body long enough. As the tarp was replaced, Dr. Reese’s haunting one-eyed gaze disappeared behind the blackness.

“Has her family been notified?”

“Family hasn’t been identified. Her home telephone is unlisted.”

Lucy paused before mustering the courage to speak the words that would reveal her personal involvement. It wasn’t something she wished to share, but she had no choice. She took Jack’s arm and pulled him away from the body. Suddenly she didn’t feel professional at all. “Archer . . . my boyfriend . . . this is his mother,” she stammered.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She shook her head, wishing for a moment that she was.

Jack put his arm around her shoulders. The strength of his grip felt good. “Let me get you home. Lieutenant Sage can contact next of kin.”

“Don’t make me go. Not yet.” She wanted to say the right words but knew her suddenly timid voice and tear-filled eyes revealed her struggle to maintain composure. “Let me finish here. Let me go back to the precinct and do the paperwork.”

“O’Malley, you don’t have to be a hero. The case can be reassigned. It’s your boyfriend’s mother.”

“No,” she blurted. “Don’t do that. Please.”

She didn’t know Jack well enough to confess her true thoughts: that she was beginning to care deeply for Archer and that she was going to learn everything she possibly could about his mother. She’d never known what actually happened with Aidan and it haunted her a decade later. Information—the truth—might help Archer and his father. And at the heart of what they would need to know was who murdered her. Although she had no doubt about her commitment to the task, for the first time in her law enforcement career, Lucy dreaded what she might discover.

“Please,” she said again.

Jack paused before patting her shoulder gently. “I may be making a huge mistake here, O’Malley, but I’m not going to second-guess my partner’s judgment about her own objectivity. You say you want this case; it’s your call. Just promise you’ll let me know if and when it gets to be too much.”

“I promise.”

He sighed. “Okay, then. We’ve got a ton of work to do. Let’s get going.”

8:12 a.m
.

Lucy struggled to climb the narrow steps to her apartment. As she pulled herself up the banister, she felt as if her legs couldn’t possibly carry the weight of the news she was about to deliver. Archer had dropped her off at the crime scene suspecting nothing. He’d kissed her good-night only a few hundred yards from the body of his dead mother. He’d no doubt returned to her apartment and slept peacefully, perhaps without even a dream to stir his slumber. How would he react now?

She stood on the landing and fished in her bag for her keys. It was only eight in the morning and she was surprised to hear the radio playing. The kettle whistled. Archer was awake already. She couldn’t postpone the inevitable.

Lucy turned the lock and opened the door slowly. He stood beside the stove, stirring a tablespoon of honey into a steaming mug. Then he returned to the cast-iron frying pan in front of him and mixed the contents with a wooden spoon. As he cooked, he hummed along with the Beethoven concerto. From the threshold, she could see the line where his tan back met his very white bottom, a line revealed by the loose pajamas that hung low on his hips. The familiar smells of his breakfast—scrambled eggs, sausage, and fried apples—filled the small room. It was a Sunday morning ritual.

“Welcome home,” he said, as he noticed her enter. “You must be wiped out.”

She nodded, dropped her purse, took off her thin jacket and patent leather loafers, and sat in a chair. He’d lit a fire in the wood-burning stove. Several back issues of
Granta
were piled on the kitchen table. Without thinking, she picked one up and stared at the cover, an abstract arrangement of colors and faces.

“I didn’t realize I’d have company for breakfast so I was going to do some reading. But this is much better.” He smiled, and placed a mug in front of her. A mint smell emanated from it. “Are you hungry?”

The toaster popped. He removed the two slices of crisp wheat bread and put them unbuttered on a plate. Then he added two new ones. “What happened?” he asked, as he lifted the frying pan from the flame and scraped the scrambled eggs onto a platter.

She looked over at him. Her eyes welled with tears.

Archer came over to her and wrapped his arms around her neck. “In all honesty, I can’t imagine how you do this job, face death day in and day out.”

“It’s not that. It’s not the work . . . this is not the work. I’m not upset about . . . This has to do with you,” she stammered.

He took a step back. “Why? What’s wrong?” Then he shook his head. “I know you were surprised about my father, about the house. I probably should have given you some more information. Maybe it wasn’t fair. I just didn’t want it to take on significance that it doesn’t hold for me.”

She shook her head. “This has nothing to do with last night or dinner. Archer—” She reached out and clasped his hand in both of hers. “It was your mother. The victim was your mother. She’s dead.”

He sank down onto the floor and sat cross-legged with his head in his hands.

“I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?” he asked without looking up.

Lucy described what she’d seen and what little she’d learned.

“So it wasn’t suicide?”

“No, but we think her killer wanted it to look that way.”

He pushed himself over to where she sat and rested his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair. She could hear the sausage crackling in the pan and smell the apples starting to burn, but she didn’t move. As a police officer, she felt frustrated to sit with the next of kin and know that there were no questions to ask. Archer hardly knew this woman except by name. He wouldn’t be able to explain who Avery was, or why Dr. Reese might have been at Fairmount Links, or who might have had reason to kill her. She was more a mystery to him than to anyone. And because he hadn’t accepted the invitation to lunch, hadn’t responded to his mother’s overture after nearly thirty years, he’d lost the opportunity to hear what she might have had to say. Lucy knew that he would be thinking of that more than anything else.

After several minutes, he stood, moved back to the stove, and turned off the flames. He leaned against the counter. “I can’t miss her. I didn’t love her. I didn’t know her,” he recited, as if he needed to remind himself. “And yet I still feel this emptiness.” His voice cracked. “I only hope that Dad finds some relief. He’s been waiting for her to walk back in the door ever since she walked out. Now at least he can abandon that hope and move on.”

The sentence struck Lucy as callous, although it was a phrase she’d heard so many times before.
Moving on.
Confirmed information that a loved one was dead allowed the family to move on. Friends and relatives of a missing person were relieved when a body was discovered or when a defendant was convicted. She’d never understood why that was easier than living with uncertainty; uncertainty allowed for hope to be sustained. But she knew from everything she’d read and heard and seen that closure, even horrible closure, was universally welcomed. Maybe that’s why Aidan’s death still haunted her. There were too many open questions to move on.

“Are you going to investigate?” Archer asked.

She nodded. “Unless you don’t want me to. The case is assigned to me and Jack, but my Lieutenant would let me off if I asked.”

“No,” he replied. “I want you to do it. But I want you to make me a promise.”

“Anything,” she replied without thinking.

“Don’t hide information from me. Don’t try to protect me or my feelings or my family. I want to know . . . everything.”

She shuddered, realizing the predicament she was in. But she understood his sentiment completely. That had been all she’d asked for ten years ago and she hadn’t gotten it. “I promise.”

10

10:13 a.m.

J
ack Harper stood on the front steps of the Joseph W. Spelman Building, a drab, yellow brick structure with a few narrow, rectangular windows on one side that housed various divisions of the Department of Public Health, including the Medical Examiner’s offices. He had his hands in his pockets. His Phillies baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes and he wore dark glasses. It was the belt-and-suspenders approach to keeping out the Sunday morning glare.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lucy said, tucking her white shirt into her khaki pants. She still hadn’t slept, and had barely managed to shower and change her clothes before heading to University Avenue. She’d stayed at the kitchen table with Archer until the last possible moment, reluctant to leave him with only Cyclops for company. Although she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was attending his mother’s autopsy, he must have sensed where she was going because he didn’t ask.

“Ladd will be in a bad mood whether we’re prompt or not. No doubt he’s none too pleased to have had his Saturday night ruined, and now his Sunday breakfast interrupted. Speaking of which—” he said, producing a crumpled paper bag from the pocket of his nylon jacket. “Have you eaten? I bought you a Boston crème just in case.”

“Thanks. But I’m not sure even I could stomach that at this moment.”

“A few more months on the job and you won’t give it a second thought.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Lucy had never seen an autopsy before and would have been just as happy to keep it that way. Although she wasn’t a squeamish person and had certainly dealt with enough violence and blood over the past eight years, watching Morgan Reese be cut open and have her vital organs removed and weighed was enough to turn her stomach several times over. She would have much preferred to get the report and photographs and meet with the Medical Examiner—as she’d done numerous times before—but Jack had insisted that they watch this one live. With a prominent Caucasian female victim, Lieutenant Sage was sure to be keeping close tabs on their investigation.

“And you never know what might come out verbally or visually that never makes it into the report,” he’d said as she had left the station to break the news to Archer. “Not that I’m impugning the integrity of our ME’s office. Never. But it’s happened to me before that when I’m looking at something on a body, a mark, a bruise, who knows what, I learn something that no picture or typewritten word is ever going to teach me.” He’d smiled and tweaked her cheek. “I’ve been at this job a lot longer than you. Just for a moment let me pretend to know something you don’t. Indulge me.”

“Bring it on then,” she’d said, referring to the autopsy.

But now that the moment had arrived, whatever bravado she’d mustered had disappeared.

“You’re sure about this?” Jack asked, offering one more opportunity for her to beg off. She nodded. “Okay, tough guy. Here we go.”

They registered at the front desk, showed their badges, signed a visitors’ log, and were given clearance for their firearms from the security officer. Lucy followed Jack as he headed down a circular staircase to the basement. She appreciated that he knew his way around without having to ask. Even after five months in Homicide, she felt lost as soon as she stepped inside the Medical Examiner’s office. Perhaps it was the overwhelming odor that disoriented her—the unique scent that Jack had described as a “sweet version of soured milk.” Now that smell of death filled her nostrils.

“By the way,” he said, as he pushed the door open. “Crime Scene recovered a bullet from the soil just beneath where her body was found. It was a thirty-five caliber. Thing appears to have gone straight through her.”

Ladd stood by a stainless-steel sink scrubbing his forearms. Hearing them enter, he shut off the water, dried his hands, and removed a pair of latex gloves from a box by the sink.

“Let’s get started,” he muttered. “Ellie’s already done the preliminaries.”

The preliminaries referred to the collection of digital photographs of the corpse both clothed and undressed before the medical examination had begun. They documented patterns of blood splattering and tears and burns on fabric, as well as the external condition of the body, any bruising, cuts, or abrasions. From an investigative standpoint, these often yielded the most information.

Ellie Montgomery, a short, athletic woman, was the photographer for the Medical Examiner’s office. She’d taken the job as a way to finance her artistic career, but after more than twenty years on the squad, any distinction between the two had disappeared. Her reputation for perfection and precision was well known throughout the police department. Although she frequently testified at trial if the defense didn’t stipulate to the admission of her photographs, in one notable case the integrity of her picture had been challenged. It was that case that made her a legend. She’d been on the stand under heated cross-examination and, according to all accounts, hadn’t been the least bit shaken. “My work is my art and I take my duties extremely seriously. My allegiance isn’t to the judicial process. My loyalty is to these bodies,” she’d explained. “Besides, there’s no need to alter them. They’re absolutely beautiful just the way they are.” The defense attorney hadn’t known what follow-up question to ask, and had slinked his way back to his seat.

Now Ellie stood in one corner, loading a cartridge into her digital camera.

A stainless-steel gurney—one of three in the large room—held the body of Morgan Reese. She was naked but for an identification tag attached to her big toe by a wire. Beside her was a narrow stand on wheels, the top of which was covered with metal instruments—scalpels, knives, ladles, spreaders, tweezers, and a saw—as well as a tape recorder and a clipboard. Her skin appeared to have a violet hue under the fluorescent lights, and her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. Exposed, with her pelvic bones and ribs protruding, she appeared even smaller than Lucy had remembered from the night before. Part of her left breast had been shot away by the bullet’s trajectory; a large nipple and areola seemed to cover most of her tiny right breast. Her hair was matted against her head by blood, and her hands were encased in plastic bags.