Edge of Black (3 page)

This wasn’t how her new life was supposed to begin.

Is it possible to ever really start over? To find yourself after a tragedy? How do you measure the pain you’ve experienced, and know what is appropriate and what isn’t? Sam had lost her husband and her twins in the Nashville floods two and a half years ago. And lost part of herself, too. She’d come to D.C. the shell of a person, one going through the motions of a daily life, a breathing ghost. More loss had led her to Xander, and her path back to the land of the living.

She had to admit she felt a little snake-bit. Nashville, and her life there, had been decimated. She’d run to D.C., and now it, too, was under attack.

She could only hope that the damage would be minimal. To all of them.

Chapter 4

Another hour passed. Sam was just about to start stamping her feet and demanding answers when the nurse who’d run the initial triage came down the hall.

“Is everyone feeling all right?”

There was a chorus of affirmations.

“You’ve been cleared to leave. Please come back immediately if you have any unusual symptoms. Use your masks until you get home.”

Sam couldn’t wait to get out of there. If she’d been stuck much longer, fretting and worrying, she might not be able to control her anxiety. And losing it in a group of strangers wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.

They broke off into packs and left the hospital through the emergency room doors. A corridor had been created for their exit, and they were able to leave unmolested. Sam tried to look for the kids but didn’t see them. Hopefully, they’d been released much earlier.

The scene had calmed considerably since her preliminary foray outside. The bright summer sun beat down on the asphalt, making waves of heat shimmer in the foreground. News trucks had replaced the first responders, though there were still a few HAZMAT trucks parked at the curb.

Sam turned her phone on the second she was clear of the doors. She had two messages—both from Fletcher.

She played them in order.

“Saw you called, I assume you’re wondering about what’s going down. Call me back when you get this.”

The second was more abrupt. “Where the hell are you, Owens?”

Ah, that was sweet. He was actually worried about her. Fletcher was a good man. A good man, but not her type. They were destined for friendship only.

Sam hiked up to 23rd Street, found a bench and called Fletcher back. He answered on the first ring, obviously annoyed.

“Where have you been?”

“At the hospital, Mom. One of my students got extremely ill and I took her to GW, then got caught in the decontamination fuss. I’ve been sitting in a hallway for two hours. They made me turn off my phone.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. What’s going on? I talked to Amado and he told me—” she glanced around then covered her mouth with her hand “—it’s a biological attack.”

“We don’t know yet. Total clusterfuck. People sick from all corners of town, we can’t trace it down, and the entire city is on alert. Homeland Security raised the threat level. They are in a dither.”

“That’s to be expected. What can I do to help?”

“Nothing.” Fletcher sounded horrified at the idea, which hurt Sam’s feelings a little.

“I can’t just sit here, Fletch.”

“You most certainly can. Better yet, get home and stay there. I have to go, but I’ll call you later. Don’t interfere, Sam. Just let us do our jobs. It’s our town, we know how to handle things.”

He hung up, and she felt stung all over again. Dismissed like a civilian. It was her town now, too.

She stowed the phone in her pocket and started the walk home. It would only take fifteen minutes or so on a normal day, but the sidewalks were crowded with people, and the traffic was a snarled nightmare.

As pissed and upset as she was, she reminded herself again that she was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of law enforcement. And that had been her choice. A choice that until this very moment she thought she was content with. Instead, here she was, a victim again. Caught in an attack, unable to do anything to alter her course. She started itching for some hot water, satisfied the urge with a dollop of antibacterial gel.

At Washington Circle she turned left on Pennsylvania Avenue and followed the throngs of people trying to get out of the city on foot. She’d worn sandals today, thank goodness. Hiking all the way home in heels would have been brutal. It was bright and sunny, warm, but without the summer humidity that usually choked D.C.’s air from May until September. All around her people were talking, worrying, panicking, preening, many on cell phones relaying their close call with...something. They didn’t know for sure what. A fever of excitement and nervousness permeated the crowds, overlaid with an overwhelming sense of fear.

Fear of the unknown. Of what could be happening. Of getting home and finding out that someone you know, someone you love, was involved. Was hurt. Or worse.

Sam remembered that awful feeling from 9/11, the hours of uncertainty, the unanswered phone calls, the nightmarish quality of the news reports, almost as if Hollywood had decided to drop a CGI green screen against the Manhattan and D.C. backdrops and shoot a heart-wrenching action sequence. She’d lost several friends that day: two who were in the towers when they fell, one on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Even one casualty was too much.

When she arrived at her house on N Street, it was just after 2:00 p.m. Four hours had passed since Brooke’s swan dive in class. Four interminably long hours. She was exhausted. She just wanted to take a long, hot shower, and wait for Xander to get back within cell range.

Sam took the steps to her front door, inserted her key. The door was unlocked.

She thought back, trying to remember if she’d locked it this morning when she left for class. Of course she had. She always locked her doors.

She heard her best friend’s voice mentally admonish, “Back out, and call the police.”

Sam shook homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson out of her head. There was a perfectly legitimate reason for her front door to be open. The only problem was the timing. She turned the knob and pushed the door open with her foot.

“Xander?” she called out.

“Sam!” Xander came barreling out of the kitchen. She was struck by how handsome he was, even with worry lines creasing his forehead. His dark eyes locked on hers. He reached her in two long strides and pulled her to his chest.

“Jesus, I’ve been worried sick. You weren’t answering your phone.”

She let him hold her, just reveling in the normalcy of it, how warm his skin was beneath his T-shirt, how she could just reach all the way across his tightly muscled back, his scent, woodsy and clean. He’d showered recently; the edges of his dark hair were still damp.

She pulled back.

“What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer, instead kissed her, long and soft, so sweetly that she nearly forgot everything that had happened this morning. Nearly everything.

When he released her, she smiled up at him. He topped her by several inches. He made her feel downright dainty.

“Trying again. Why are you here, Xander? Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but I thought you were fishing.”

He draped an arm across her shoulders, walked her into the kitchen.

“There’s tea. It should still be warm. And I did go fishing. My guy never showed, and nothing was biting so I decided to head back to civilization and check my email. I heard about the attack and started down here immediately. I called as soon as I got here. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Sam reached into her pocket. She opened the phone and saw a blank screen. It must have run out of battery on her walk home.

“Whoops. It’s dead.”

“That’s a seriously cheap-ass phone, lady.”

“It’s a seriously old phone, and I should probably get a new battery for it. Otherwise, it does its job.”

His playful tone changed.

“How bad is it?” He didn’t need to say more.

“I don’t know yet. Fletcher blew me off and Nocek said there were no casualties yet. It’s a biological agent of some kind. What’s the news saying?”

“Multiple contradictory accounts. I’m so glad you’re home. I was worried about you. Are you...okay?”

Sam knew what he was talking about. Since the flood, since she lost her family, these kinds of events had a tendency to shake her. Natural disasters—tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods—fed her anxiety and caused her to relapse into obsessive hand washing. She tried not to sit up nights watching the Weather Channel, but sometimes succumbed. She felt that the only way she could ever move past the fear was through immersion. If you’re afraid of spiders, you spend time letting tarantulas crawl on your arm. If you’re afraid to fly, you get on airplanes as often as possible.

If you’re worried a terrible flood might sweep your life away...

It wasn’t necessarily a healthy choice, but it worked for her.

Xander, on the other hand, spent his time avoiding all things that could remind him of his own stormy past. He didn’t understand her need to watch, to experience, to relive. To punish herself through others’ pain. He’d served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, seen things she could only imagine in her worst nightmares. He’d lost friends. He’d spent nights under fire, days in armored carriers driving IED-laden roads, weeks on foot in the desert, not knowing if each breath was his last. When he got out of the Army, he went to ground, alone in the woods, cut off from everyone and everything. Until Sam.

They were a perfect fit. Each damaged, each desperate. Each so very alone.

She considered his question. Was she okay? Strangely, she’d only had a few moments today where she wanted to wash. Instead, she’d been slightly jazzed by it all. She took that as an encouraging sign.

“I’m good. I promise. I was worried about you, too. I’m really glad you’re here, Xander.”

She poured a cup of tea, and they settled in the living room where Xander already had the television on. Every channel was in full-on breaking-news alert. Sam had enough experience with emergency situations to know that half of the information was wrong, and the other half would change fifty times before the end of the day. What they could glean so far wasn’t much more than what Sam already knew.

She flipped channels while Xander used her computer to surf the internet, searching for anything he could find. As a former Ranger, he had a different set of contacts than Sam. When the news broke another piece of the story, Xander would confirm or deny based on what his military brethren were saying across their message boards and chat rooms.

By 5:00 p.m. things had boiled down to a set of certainties no one could deny. Someone had released an airborne toxin in the Washington, D.C., Metro. It caused a progressive pulmonary distress. And two people were confirmed dead.

Everything else at this point was just speculation. The tests were being done on the toxin; so far they’d ruled out some of the obvious—the ones that would have created different symptoms. Sarin, ricin. Anthrax was still high on the list of possibles. The words made chills slip through her system.

The problem was, testing took time.

Just the idea of that made her skin crawl.

Sam decided she’d had enough. She went to the kitchen and began making dinner. She’d just unwrapped a head of butter lettuce when her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID, saw Fletcher’s number. She pretended not to notice the uptick in her pulse as she answered.

“Fletch? Everything okay?”

“No. I need you, Sam. I’ll be there in five minutes. Meet me out front, we don’t have much time.”

“Need me for what?” she asked, but he’d already hung up the phone.

She replaced the receiver and put the lettuce back in the refrigerator.

Xander was on the laptop in her office. “Hey,” she said. “Anything new?”

“No. Same old shit—speculation and fear mongering. No one has a clue what’s going down.”

“I have to go. Fletcher just called. He’s picking me up in a few minutes.”

He rolled back in the chair. “Go where?”

“I don’t know. He just said he needed me and to meet him outside.”

“Why don’t I come with you?”

“I get the sense I may be a while. He sounded totally stressed-out. They might just need some extra hands.”

“But there’s only two dead.”

“Xander, I have no idea what he needs. I would assume it’s my services with the sharp end of a scalpel. Come out to the street with me, let’s see what’s happening. I’m sure he’ll tell us when he gets here.”

She grabbed her bag and her phone, tossed a light sweater over her shoulders just in case. Xander held her hand as they walked down her front steps to wait for Fletcher. She appreciated that he didn’t nag her about running off with another man. He was special, he knew it, and he was comfortable with his place in her world.

They didn’t have to wait long, Fletcher arrived with a squeal of tires a moment later. He put the passenger window down.

“Get in, Doc. We gotta go.”

She stuck her head in the window. “What’s up?”

He shot a glance at Xander, who was leaning in as well, over her shoulder. His face tightened imperceptibly.

“Classified.”

“Come on, Fletcher. He has the right to know.”

“Sorry. This one comes from above. You can call him later. Now, Sam. I’m not kidding.”

She turned back to Xander, who had a frown on his face. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Don’t worry, okay?” She kissed him lightly, then got in the car before he could protest.

Fletcher slammed the gas and the car leaped from the curb. Sam grabbed the seat belt and jammed it into the lock.

“Jesus, Fletch. What the hell?”

He didn’t move his eyes from the road, spoke grimly.

“Congressman Leighton is dead.”

Chapter 5

Sam recognized the congressman’s name, but that was all. She told Fletcher that. He glanced over at her and barked a small, humorless laugh.

“You’re probably the only one in D.C. who doesn’t know everything about him. Peter Leighton is the head of the Armed Services Subcommittee. Four-term congressman from Indiana, Democrat, big-time dove. He’s been shooting down the military for years, authoring bills to cut spending, shutting down VA hospitals, the works. But lately, he’s had a change of heart. He authored an appropriations bill that will give more funding to the military. It’s a massive reversal. He’s been under fire.”

“Now I’ve got him. Xander isn’t a fan.”

“I can’t imagine why not,” he said drily.

“So what’s the story?”

“He collapsed in his office on the Hill about two hours ago. They said he was having trouble breathing. He was dead on the scene but they transported him anyway. Called it at GW half an hour ago.”

“And I’m racing with you where, why?”

“Morgue. Nocek wants you to help post him.”

“Why me?”

He glanced at her again. “I may have asked if he’d be cool with having you come in.”

“I’m flattered. Again, why me?”

“Because something isn’t right with the congressman’s death. I want to move fast, and I trust you to take an unbiased look. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“Cloak-and-dagger doesn’t suit you, Fletch.”

“Just trust me, okay?”

“Was he on the Metro this morning?”

“Undetermined.”

“God, you sound just like Xander when he doesn’t want to give up information. One word grunts. Come on, Fletch. I can’t do my job if you don’t give me the facts.”

He sighed. “They’re still running air-quality tests in the Metro. Nothing is registering. It’s not ricin, sarin or anthrax. It made over two hundred people really sick, but only two are confirmed dead. They were on the Metro early this morning, so the thinking is they were exposed directly, soon after the toxin was released. More could die—there are a few in medically induced comas and a couple in critical. We need to find out what the cause was, and fast, so the injured can get proper treatment.”

“Shouldn’t I be posting the two who died then?”

“Nocek is on it. He and his team finished the two from earlier and have run all the samples to the labs. But Leighton is different.”

“Different how?”

“Just...trust me.”

They were screaming up Constitution now, heading toward the Capitol. Even in a disaster, the view was stunning. The lights of the city shone brightly on the eerily empty sidewalks. The corners were manned by police in full armor, weapons at the ready. No one was on the streets, an unnerving sight. She’d never been able to travel so quickly through the city before—Fletcher had his mounted light going, was blowing through the stoplights like they didn’t exist. Sam was getting the sense that something much, much bigger was going on than just the death of a congressman.

* * *

The morgue was as depressingly bland and old as it had been the last time she’d been forced to visit—to do a secondary autopsy on her former boyfriend, Edward Donovan. Donovan’s murder had led her directly to Xander, who had been, at the moment she met him, the police’s prime suspect. Things worked out for the best, but she hadn’t held a scalpel over dead flesh for three months.

Would she be rusty? Would she be compelled to wash? Would the stillness overwhelm her and make her run away?

She didn’t like not knowing how she was going to react. It made her anxious. And her anxiety triggered all kinds of demoralizing, embarrassing tics.

She hadn’t been like this before the flood. She had never considered herself a strong woman, that was Taylor’s job. But Sam was steady. Reliable. Rational. She saw herself as a skilled forensic pathologist, nothing less, nothing more. She wasn’t a people person to start with, had few friends she truly trusted, but now she got to add in a dead husband and a lost family. She’d been systematically pushing people away for two years, and at the moment, their invisible absence stung.

Jesus, Sam. Way to go, feeling sorry for yourself in the middle of someone else’s crisis.

She shook her head slightly to dispel the melancholy, and followed Fletcher into the morgue.

A small, young woman with lively green eyes was waiting for them.

“Detective Fletcher? Dr. Owens? I’m Leslie Murphy, death investigator. Dr. Nocek is waiting for you. The press hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Sam turned to Fletcher in surprise. “You’ve managed to keep this quiet?”

He gave her a smug grimace. “I told you it was classified.”

Sam shook Leslie’s hand. “Let’s get me suited up then.”

“Right away, ma’am. Follow me.”

“Please don’t call me ma’am. Sam is fine.”

The girl looked back over her shoulder. “I’m Murphy then. My mom’s the only one who calls me Leslie.”

“Gotcha,” Sam said.

The doors opened into the antechamber that led to the autopsy suite, and Sam was pleased by her reaction. She felt relaxed, comfortable. The tension bled from her shoulders.

Home. You’re home
.

Moments later, gloved and prepped, she entered the nave of her own personal church.

The smells were right. The air, cold and dead, whispering from the vents. The warm musk of blood, the slight meaty scent of open bodies. Metallic notes from the stainless tables and scales, overlaid with the squeaky markers used on the whiteboards. Thin scents of bleach and formalin, worn linoleum, and sweat.

The normal aromas of the autopsy suite, as comforting and natural to her as fresh roses in a vase.

Sam heard Fletcher curse softly under his breath. She caught his gaze and understood immediately.

A small boy lay in full rigor on a table off to the side, against the far wall. Out of the way. Eight, maybe nine years old. A quiet hush went through her, perhaps a prayer, maybe less than that. Her own son hadn’t gotten out of his second year; she had no way to compare the real with the might-have-been—the length of bone in the femur, or the shock of dark hair, only slightly mussed. The marble pale flesh of his body, unmarred for the moment.

Nocek caught them staring. “Such a saddening case. He was hit by a car while on his bicycle. He was not wearing the helmet, and as such suffered a traumatic brain injury. They took him off life support last night. We will do a partial autopsy, there is no doubt as to his cause of death.”

A partial autopsy—an exterior examination, X-rays, a vitreous fluid sample and blood draw. No cutting. Small mercies.

Sam felt a flash of anger—such a perfect boy, his brain damaged but his organs intact and usable, yet his family had not chosen to allow him to help others through donation. She chided herself for the thought.
Who are you to judge, Sam?

She turned away from the child, touched Fletcher once on the shoulder in comfort. He had a son, a live one.

“I’m ready. Where is the congressman?”

“He is separated from the rest. Please, follow me.”

Nocek led them to a door to the right of the main room. “Let us take a few extra precautions. I would request that you double your masks and wear them at all times. We have set up special ventilation for the room. We are still unsure as to what the situation may be.”

Sam washed her hands again, thoroughly, even though she could hardly give the dead man her germs. There were levels of prevention based on the situation at hand. Because of the nature of the investigation, she wanted to be as sterile as possible to ward off any hint of cross-contamination and potential problems down the road. She had to wear special protective gear as well, also just in case. Which was fine, but it got in her way.

Once she was finished and they were all gloved and prepped, they entered what Sam knew to be a decomp suite: every decent-size morgue has a separate room for the decomposed bodies that come in to be posted. For the most part, the natural effluvia of fresh bodies wasn’t terribly offensive to the olfactory system, especially once you grew accustomed to the smells. But decomps were a different story. By isolating them, several things occurred: chain of custody remained intact; special precautions could be taken; evidence collected could be kept separate from the rest of the suite. Blowflies could be isolated; they had a pesky tendency to colonize decomposing bodies. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But before that could happen, the biological chain of command kicked into high gear. Blowflies and maggots and larvae, oh my. Sam knew several forensic entomologists who lived for decomps.

Sam noticed several desiccated fly husks near the drain, under the table. Hatchlings, with no food to sustain them. Not unusual.

More interesting was the man lying on top of the stainless tray. Mid-fifties, silvery-gray hair, probably five-ten or so, naked, which was where it got interesting: he was as smooth and hairless as the eight-year-old boy on the other side of the door.

Sam circled the body, absorbing details. There were classic marks on his chest where someone had tried to revive him. His flesh seemed doughy and dented easily, which led her right to excessive edema. The cavities of his mouth and nose were red and irritated, his throat slightly ulcerated. Petechial hemorrhaging in his blank, bluish eyes gave her even more bits of the story.

It hadn’t been an easy death, that was for sure.

She looked closer at his legs, groin and chest, ran her fingers along his calf. The stubble there was no more perceptible than Sam’s was at the end of the day, several hours after she shaved her legs during her morning shower.

The congressman shaved his legs. And everything else, besides. This took manscaping to a whole new level.

“He shaved. His whole body. Thoroughly. Regularly. And practiced. Why?”

Neither man responded, and she started to get a glimmer of why she’d been asked to come in and do the post on the congressman. Discretion was needed. Real discretion.

“What was he into?” she asked.

“We don’t know for sure,” Fletcher answered. “There’s been scuttlebutt about him for years, but really subtle stuff. A couple of the girls in town might have mentioned in passing that he enjoyed trying on their clothes. Primarily their underclothes.”

“Seems harmless enough. He wouldn’t be the first cross-dresser in the government.”

“And a couple of the boys might have mentioned he liked to have a few cameras around while they did their thing.”

Sam met Fletcher’s eyes. “A bisexual cross-dresser with film? Anyone ever gotten their hands on it?”

“I haven’t seen it. And a few of them have said he’s gone a bit too far before.”

“Too far how?”

“Choke and revive. People being asked to play dead. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds like you have more than rumors to go on,” Sam said.

“Listen, Doc. This guy is a really big deal. Former dove, now an outspoken proponent for the military, looking for funding from every quarter. Served for years, a decorated veteran. He has a kid in Afghanistan. He had a presidential run in mind. His proclivities get out, it’s embarrassing for a whole bunch of people, you know?”

“He’s just a study in contradictions.”

“Sam...”

“That’s fine, I understand. But why all the secrecy around his autopsy?”

“Because of this. A text that came to the congressman’s phone. His office reported it about an hour ago.”

Fletcher pulled his notebook from his pocket and read the text verbatim.

Dear Congressman Pervert,

You messed with the wrong people.

Today’s attack is on you, shithead.