The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (2 page)

I turned off the phone, abandoning the unpacked groceries, assuring Luke that he was finally going to eat. His whimpers had escalated, turned into complaints. Poor baby had been patient all morning, riding around snuggled against my belly, tied to me by a long hand-woven shawl-like sling my friend Karen had given me as a shower gift. He’d kept me company on this weirdly warm, foggy April day while I’d shopped and picked up the cleaning. He’d nuzzled me peacefully while I’d met with Anna to taste pastries and appetizers for the reception. But now, he was finished being Mr. Nice Guy. Suddenly, he let out a howl, bellowing as fiercely as his eleven-week-old lungs would allow. And, on command, automatically, my body responded. Milk welled up and spilled from the swollen spigots that were my breasts.

“Okay,” I pleaded. “Lunchtime, Luke. Just a second.” Normally, I changed his diaper before feeding him, but he was wailing. The diaper, like the groceries, could wait. I hurried down the hall to the living room, Oliver snapping and nipping at my heels with all of his purebred herding dog instincts. I cooed to Luke, but he was inconsolable. He’d smelled lunch and, red-faced, tight-fisted, he let his fury rip.

Pulling up my sweater, I plopped down onto my purple velvet sofa and popped right up again, tossing an iPod onto the coffee table. Tony, one of Nick’s brothers, had been camping on my sofa. Living on it, actually. Making a tiny home there. I shoved aside an afghan, removed a library book and a crumb-covered plate and, as Luke let loose with a shrill, spine-piercing shriek, sat back down and opened the cup of my nursing bra. Luke lunged, sucking ferociously, and distracted by I didn’t care what, the puppy finally released the hem of my jeans.

I leaned back, settling in, closing my eyes. Peace at last. I sank against the cushions, felt the soreness in my breasts ease as Luke drank. Breast-feeding was intoxicating. It made me sleepy, maudlin and sappy; it made thinking about anything but the baby impossible. The world around us dissolved away. All that existed was Luke’s downy head, sweet skin and soft smell, his purring as he nuzzled possessively against me, his sweaty, passionate breathing as he suckled. As always when I nursed him, I floated, lost in hormonal bliss. I felt cozy and brainless, fulfilled, as if my entire reason for being was to provide nourishment for this precious tiny creature. Usually, a full stomach made Luke drowsy. After I fed him, both of us tended to doze.

But peace that Friday was brief. No sooner did I drift off than Oliver began yelping. I cracked an eyelid, saw him digging on the mat by the sliding door to our tiny backyard. Maybe he was asking to go out? Picking this particular moment to get housebroken? Amazing. Oh well. He’d have to wait. I couldn’t let him out while Luke was nursing. “Easy, Oliver,” I pleaded. “Hold on for a little bit.”

I shut my eyes again, determined to reclaim my bliss, hoping Oliver would not leave yet another puddle to mop up. But Oliver kept yipping, scratching at the glass of the sliding door. Maybe there was a squirrel out there. Or a cat. Or a UFO. I didn’t care; I just wanted it to leave so Oliver would quiet down. But he didn’t.

His high-pitched barks persisted. Finally, I’d had it. Unable to stand the yipping anymore, I opened my eyes and shouted, “Oliver, no!”

He stopped barking and looked at me, head tilted, baffled, clearly wondering what was wrong with me. How could I just sit there? Then he turned back to the door and barked. I followed his gaze, saw no movement. No rodent. No feline. Nothing. And still, he barked.

“Oliver,” I commanded, “enough. Shut up.”

Deliberately, I leaned back and shut my eyes. If I ignored him, he’d eventually quiet down. But my mind must have unconsciously registered some abnormal detail, because without knowing why, I sat up and took another, more careful look at the sliding door. And there, on the concrete, on the right side of the glass, I saw something that made no sense. Something that simply couldn’t be there. Something that looked like five plump, pink toes.

L
UKE DIDN
’
T MISS A
gulp. He stayed firmly attached to my breast, sucking, as I rose and approached the door for a closer look. I moved slowly, not believing what I was seeing. Toes? Yes, toes. And a foot. Attached to a leg, which led to a thigh with some pants pulled down around it. And above the thigh, where a pelvis and belly should have been, a jumble of torn, lumpy tissue and coagulating blood, pooling around what must not long ago have been a woman. I gawked, frozen, taking in details. She’d been sliced open, her insides emptied out of her body, onto the deck.

For an immeasurable dizzying moment, I clung to Luke and blinked. What I was seeing could not be real. It was unimaginable. First of all, nobody came into our backyard patio. It wasn’t locked, but there was a gate. It was a private, family space where Molly played with the puppy, where Nick grilled burgers. But no matter how I tried to deny it, the gory intruder remained, insisting that she was, in fact, still there. Still filleted, still gutted like a tuna.

A vision flashed to mind, another woman I knew. A patient at the Institute—a psychotic. Bonnie Something-or-other. She’d cut pregnant women open—four or five of them—to steal their unborn babies. But she was irrelevant—she’d been in the Institute for decades. This body had nothing to do with her. The slicing, the gaping abdomen, might resemble her work, but Bonnie hadn’t done it. Someone else had.

Oddly, it didn’t occur to me to run. I stood aghast, mesmerized by the bloody display on my back patio. A blue, blood-drenched sweatshirt draped the woman’s neck, covering one nipple. There was a diamond stud in her nostril. She wore too much blue eye shadow. And her platinum hair had been pulled into a loose pony- tail. Who was she? What had happened here? Suddenly, I felt embarrassed for her, awkwardly aware that I shouldn’t be seeing these intimate, internal parts of her body. Nobody should. But her organs lay out in the open air, like exposed secrets. Oh God. A wave of nausea rose through me, and I turned away. Breathe, I reminded myself. I inhaled and smelled Luke’s diaper, absurdly remembering that I still had to change it. Somehow, that realization snapped me back to reality. Finally, my survival instincts kicked in.

Stumbling over Oliver, I held on to Luke, who was still at lunch, and letting my sweater flop onto his face, I flew.

M
Y MEMORY OF THE
next few hours is spotty. I recall isolated moments. Like sitting on the front stoop, waiting for the police, feeling the fog creep under my clothing and cling to my skin. The fog had held on, refusing to burn off even as the sun rose high and noon arrived; it lingered, a clammy blanket of gray that clouded my thoughts and blurred the row houses across the street. I remember noticing how still and heavy Luke was in my arms. Sated, indifferent to the world around him, he slept soundly in his sodden diaper. Oliver lay beside us, leashed and finally quiet. I sat, waiting for the police, listening for sirens, thinking that the air was too moist, too warm, for early April, almost sixty degrees. I thought about global warming, wondered if we’d ever have winter again. If Luke would ever see snow. I thought about the blood pooling on my deck, and the dead woman’s nose piercing, how conventional piercing had become.

I don’t know how long I sat there, my mind bouncing from thought to disconnected thought. Probably, it was just a few minutes, but time had clogged like the wet air, become sluggish and stuck. It seemed that the police would never arrive. I remember how grateful I was that Molly wasn’t home, how worried I was about what to say to her. In her six years of life, she had already encountered far too much crime. When Luke was born, I’d promised her that our lives would be more peaceful. But now, just eleven weeks later, a dead woman lay in our backyard. How was I supposed to explain yet another murder to my child when I couldn’t explain it even to myself?

And then I wondered why such grotesque events kept popping into our lives. I wasn’t in the crime business, not a mobster or drug pusher. I was a forty-one-year-old mom, an art therapist. I was about to remarry. Corpses and criminals had no business in my life, yet they kept appearing. Why? Was I doing something wrong? Somehow attracting violence? Was I some kind of murder magnet?

The thought was bizarre, but it shook me nevertheless. I needed to connect with someone familiar who would reassure me. I made frantic phone calls, reaching nobody, leaving messages. I called Nick several times; apparently, he’d turned his phone off. I called all my friends, including the ones I knew weren’t around: Susan, even though she was in the middle of a murder trial. Karen, even though she was at a Pilates class. Davinder, Liz. Nobody answered. And nothing moved on the street. No cars, no pedestrians, passed. I peered through tendrils of mist, searching for another human being, watching for a stranger lurking with a scalpel or maybe a long, sharp hunting knife. But I saw no one. Even the killer had vanished. Absurdly, it occurred to me that everyone—the entire rest of the world—had disappeared into the fog. The police would never arrive; there were no police. There was nothing and no one. I was alone, forever trapped in gray haze with baby Luke and Oliver the puppy. Oh, and the dead woman on the patio.

At some point, though, my cell phone rang, shattering the silence. I pounced on it as if for a life raft, hoping it was Nick. But the caller ID screen said: “Bryce Edmond.” Damn. Bryce? Now? I stared at the phone, debating whether or not to answer. Bryce was at least alive and real, a voice that could link me to the world beyond the fog. Maybe I should take the call and talk to him. But then, maybe I shouldn’t. After all, what could Bryce do about the corpse on my patio? The phone rang three times, four, and then, just as I decided to answer, I thought I heard wailing in the distance. I put down the phone and listened for sirens, watched for headlights emerging from the mist.

And suddenly, with great commotion, help arrived. Four police cars and an ambulance double-parked in front of the house, blocking the street, their lights flashing red and blue haloes into the haze. Officers ran around, in and out the door, talking on radios, asking repeatedly what had happened and whether Luke and I were okay, ushering in detectives who asked the same questions. The press had gathered beyond a barricade up the street, clamoring for details. I could barely see them, but I knew they were there, saw the glow of their lights, heard an officer complain about them.

I have no idea how long I remained on the stoop or how many times I replied, “Fine. I’m fine.” Or, “I don’t know. When we got home, she was just lying outside.” I stayed there, watching the police and holding on to Luke and Oliver, until, finally, a man emerged from the fog, running, shouting my name.

“Nick—” I called to him.

“Zoe? Zoe, what the hell’s going on? Are you okay?”

Oh wait. It wasn’t Nick.

“Tony?”

Tony was Nick’s youngest brother. His body, bursting out of the fog, moved like Nick’s. His face, frowning with concern, looked like Nick’s. And his voice, asking what had happened, why the police were here, sounded like Nick’s. He raced up the steps, lifted me to my feet and wrapped Luke and me up in strong arms that felt safe and warm. Almost like Nick’s.

T
ONY DIDN’T ONLY HUG
like Nick. Tony could have been Nick’s clone, only younger. In fact, all the brothers—Sam, Tony and Nick—had basically the same features, except that Nick’s face had been scarred and partly paralyzed by a bullet wound. Standing together, the three looked like different versions of the same man at various ages and weights. Their eyes were all the same disarming shade of ice blue, their jaws cut at the same square angles. Their cheekbones jutted ruggedly; their hair was the color of desert sand, their legs strong, shoulders broad, grins wide and contagious. One by one, they were disarming. Three of them together were overwhelming.

There was a fourth brother, Eli. But he hadn’t shown up. Sam and Nick had e-mailed him about the reunion, but they hadn’t heard back, didn’t know if he’d show. Eli, apparently, was elusive, a freelance photographer, always on the move. Sam had shown me an old photo of the four of them about nine years ago, the last time they’d all been together. Eli seemed to be yet another variation of the others, more muscular than Tony, taller and leaner than Sam. But it wasn’t Eli who’d captured my attention in the picture. I’d been captivated by Nick, by how he’d looked before he’d been shot. His face had been unmarred, confident. Strong. I’d realized then how drastically the shooting had changed Nick’s appearance and wondered how much he felt the loss. I’d studied not the brothers so much as the photo of the man I loved, of a face I’d never see. Eli remained an unknown to me, a name. And while it would have been lovely to meet him, having two of Nick’s brothers visiting was enough for now.

Even without Eli, it had been a happy reunion for Nick. With both his parents dead—his mother from stepping on a poisonous sea urchin and his father from a heart attack—Nick’s brothers were his only family. Sam, an investment banker living in Connecticut, newly divorced from his second wife, was three years younger and looked like Nick two inches shorter and sixty pounds beefier. Sam smoked cigars, growled when he spoke, wheezed when he laughed, flashed wads of cash around, told stupid jokes and wore a mammoth diamond pinkie ring. Always on his cell phone or his laptop, finalizing some deal or softening some potential client, he seemed to assess everyone he met according to how much they had to spend, what he might sell them. Except women—he judged us by other standards. When I met Sam, he stood at my front door, visually measuring my body parts, blatantly checking out my legs and postpartum belly and bust. He all but examined my teeth before he reached out, grinning, and pulled me in for a bear-like embrace.

Tony, the baby, was twenty-nine. A perpetual student, he did postgraduate work in computer science at Berkeley. When I asked him what he did, he blanched and answered in terms I only vaguely understood. Gradually, I gathered that he was working on software designs for security systems, but Sam later explained that nobody but Tony really understood what Tony did. Tony, according to his brothers, was a genius. Whether he actually was or not, he definitely looked like one. His features were more delicate, his body more slender than Nick’s. A track star in high school, Tony moved with a weightless, unselfconscious grace, as if floating above the physical world, his mind preoccupied with abstractions. He couldn’t be bothered with the material, leaving laundry wherever it fell and dishes wherever he’d eaten, oblivious to the clutter. And he moved silently, startling me more than once by appearing behind me without making a sound.