Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (12 page)

17

San Francisco, California

Hal set a box of Kleenex in front of the woman across from him. She pulled out a handful, using one to dry her swollen eyes. Her shoulders shook in the way of women crying. Her eyes pleaded with him to offer her some alternate possibility.
Say it isn’t my daughter.

He remained silent.

He had hoped Hailey would join them, but after five minutes of waiting, he assumed she had been called out on something else. He settled down into his chair, making himself as small as he could, before speaking. “I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Feld.”

Hearing about Terri Stein crying in Schwartzman’s office, Hal had wondered if the grief was real. He’d wanted to see for himself if the crying was part of some act. Sitting across from Rebecca Feld, he had not a shred of doubt that her pain was genuine. He used to think that saying he was very sorry for the pain people were feeling was a worthless gesture, stupid even. That there had to be a way to offer the families something more.

There wasn’t. Those seven thin words and his solemn promise that he would do his best on behalf of whatever loved one had been killed, that was all he could offer. Anything else was false, a lie. He felt the deceit, and they did, too.

“I know this is difficult, but I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He spoke the words carefully. This first step was like tapping on an eggshell. He wanted to open it up enough to get at what was inside without breaking it completely.

She nodded.

Hal opened his notebook. “When was the last time you saw Sarah?”

Rebecca Feld blotted her eyes and lowered her hands to the table. “The holidays,” she said. “Sarah came home for Christmas.”

“Where’s home, ma’am?”

“Placerville.”

“So Sarah didn’t live in Placerville.”

“No. She was down in Los Angeles.” A tiny cast of spit flew from her mouth with the words.

“I take it you’re not a fan of LA?”

“I don’t have anything against the town,” she explained, regaining her composure. “But it was no place for a smart girl like Sarah.”

“Had she been down there long?”

“Oh yeah. She went down about five minutes after finishing high school. It’s almost fifteen years now.”

“And what did Sarah do in LA?”

“Little bit of everything. Bartending, waiting tables, a couple short secretarial-type jobs, but they didn’t last long. Got in the way of her auditioning.” Again with the spit.

Sarah had gone to LA to pursue acting.

The story was common enough, and he might have jumped past all the background and gotten right to the questions about roommates, boyfriends, and recent jobs, but in his experience, there was a lot to be learned about a child from how her parents spoke of her. “Sarah was an actress?”

“Actor,” Rebecca Feld corrected. “She wanted to be called an actor. Said that the word
actress
was sexist. They were all actors. She and her dad used to really get into it over that one.”

“Her father,” Hal said, making a note. “Does Sarah have a relationship with him?”

“He passed. Last October. Colon cancer. Sarah didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so it was just her and me left. Now it’s just—” She stopped talking.

He gave her a moment before pressing on. “Do you know what she was working on?”

Mrs. Feld shook her head. “Used to be Sarah would call and tell us about everything. Auditions, of course, but every little detail, like if she met someone in the business or saw a movie that was what she imagined for herself. Or one she hated and thought she coulda done better. Back when she first went down, she called most days.” Rebecca Feld stared down at her hands folded in her lap.

“Over time, she did that less.” Her expression filled with the excruciating guilt reserved for the parents of victims. “I guess we didn’t always take how much she loved acting serious enough. It was hard, too. We wanted her to have a normal life. Like we did. You know, have a husband and a family.”

Hal had no idea what it was like to have a normal family, but he understood the mother’s desire. His mother had the same one for him.

“But she came home different at Christmas.”

He shifted up in his chair. “Different how?”

“She had money, for one. She never had money.”

Hal had talked to Sarah Feld’s landlord in LA the night before, once the Sacramento sheriff had called back to confirm her identity. Her rent and utilities had been prepaid for six months. Fourteen thousand paid in a single deposit by a holding corporation out of Florida.

Florida again. Victoria Stein from Florida. Spencer’s mother in Florida.

The holding company that had paid the rent was in Miami. Forensic accounting was working to follow the paper trail, but the company had been dismantled, which meant it would be difficult to locate the parties involved. He also had someone digging for any possible connections to the holding company and Victoria Stein of Pensacola or Gertrude MacDonald of Palm Bay.

Nothing yet.

There was no connection to the various pieces.

“But she didn’t tell you where the money had come from?” Hal asked.

“She sort of pretended that she was the same old Sarah. But she sure wasn’t. Her clothes were different—she looked more like someone working in an office than she ever did before. Usually she came home in those tight yoga pants and running shoes. This time she wore nice skirts and blouses. She even had a pair of shoes with red soles. They had some fancy name. You know which ones I’m talking about?”

“Afraid not,” he told her. “Women’s shoes aren’t really my thing.”

She cracked a sad smile. “Well, I can’t think that Sarah woulda known what they were last summer, but at Christmas she sure did. She took things to be dry-cleaned. She never used a dry cleaner in her life. She was more . . . sophisticated, I guess. Her hair was straightened and a little wavy, even after she washed it. She always had real frizzy hair, like her daddy. But she had something done to tame it down. She said it was a kind of South American treatment. It looked good. She brought Christmas presents—some fancy chocolates and some whiskey she said a friend introduced her to.”

There it was. The friend. Was that Spencer? If he had paid for her apartment, there had to be a trail that led back to him. Hal made a note to find out if MacDonald had access to any cash businesses, something that enabled him to move money without it showing up in his accounts. “Did she tell you about the friend?”

“She swore he wasn’t a boyfriend. She hadn’t even met him in person.”

Hal wrote that down. “Did she tell you how she met him?”

“Some online talent search. She was going to be the star of some new reality show.”

Had Spencer reached out to Feld by posting an acting job? “Did she mention the name of the show? Or of anyone else who was involved?”

Rebecca Feld pressed the tissues to her eyes as the tears flowed again. “All that was top secret. She said she didn’t even know much about the job, but that it was going to be huge. Bigger than
Survivor
.”

Hal knew almost nothing about reality TV. He got enough reality in his job, so he opted for sports on TV. “Was the show going to be like that one? Some sort of physical competition?” he asked.

“I have no idea. She wouldn’t give any details. Either she didn’t know or she didn’t want to share.”

Hal tried to think of another angle. “You ever hear her on the phone over Christmas?”

“She didn’t talk to anyone. Texting. She did a lot of texting.”

Hal flipped the page in his notebook. “Would you write down your daughter’s phone number for me?”

Rebecca Feld took his pen and wrote down a number with a 310 area code. “But I think she had a new phone, too.”

“A new phone for this number?”

“She was texting her friends at home on her old phone. It was nothing fancy, one of those where the top slides up and there’s a keyboard underneath so you can text. But she had a new iPhone, too.” As her voice drifted off, her gaze settled on the wall behind Hal. “It’s like she was some kind of double agent.”

Hal couldn’t believe that Sarah hadn’t left some clue about her new life when she was home for the holidays. It was starting to feel as if what she did on that visit was his only chance to find out who she had become involved with.

Or to confirm it was Spencer MacDonald behind this whole ruse. But not alone.

That didn’t seem possible.

Which meant they were still missing another piece.

Who was paying for her rent, buying her new clothes and phones? And for what? What was the purpose of paying for her to live there for six months if the plan was simply to kill and stage her for the police to find? “Did she see any old friends when she was home for Christmas?”

“A few. She went out with some friends from high school a couple of nights.”

Okay.
Maybe there was something. “I’d like to get their names and numbers so I can talk to them and see if Sarah told them anything else that might be helpful.”

“You think this new job is the thing that got her killed?”

“The more I know about what Sarah was doing when she died—her work, her friends—the better the chances that I can find out what happened to her.” Hal slid the notebook back again. “Can you write down some names for me?”

Feld wrote three names. “These are maiden names. I’m not sure what names they go by now.”

“I should be able to find them.” Hal opened the manila folder and pulled out the composite sketch of Terri Stein that they had been circulating. “One last question, Mrs. Feld. Do you recognize this woman?”

“No. I’ve never seen her before.”

Hal did his best to mask his disappointment. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t going to be that easy. “I appreciate you coming in.”

She hesitated before standing from the table; then she opened her purse and pulled out a plastic sack, placed it on the table. “Maybe this stuff will help you.”

Hal turned the bag in his hands. He saw a passport and California driver’s license in the name of Sarah Feld. Behind those was a folded paper, which he drew out and opened. He recognized the blue paper. Her birth certificate. He returned the paper to the bag. “You can keep these, Mrs. Feld.”

Standing from her chair, she shook her head. “I can’t. Please take them.” She motioned to the bag and started crying again. “She got that passport while she was home. Planned on going to Spain in the fall when the show was done filming.” Mrs. Feld adjusted the strap of her purse up on her shoulder. “I don’t want any reminder of what my baby girl will never get to do.”

Hal understood the torture of parents whose roles were cut short by the death of a child.

A parent was supposed to die first. It was a child’s job to look back on her parent’s life to appreciate what she had accomplished and even where she had fallen short.

A parent who lost a child never had that kind of peace. The child’s life would always feel truncated, opportunities stolen.

Mrs. Feld struggled to maintain her composure, and, when she got control, she said, “If you don’t mind getting me a ride to the bus station, I’d like to go home.”

18

San Francisco, California

Schwartzman shut off the shower. The phone was ringing. She wasn’t working today, so the call was likely from Hal. Or maybe it was Macy, asking her for a date. Or something benign, like the dry cleaner. She dried efficiently, moving gingerly around the site of the breast biopsy. The places where they entered to biopsy her adrenal glands didn’t hurt, but the one on her breast was tender. She put vitamin E on the healing wound before pulling on her robe, taking her time.

The phone would be there. She had all day to waste. May as well draw it out.

Though it was Sunday morning, it felt like a second Saturday. Every third Monday she was off to make up for the weekend shift she took every six weeks. It was one of the perks mentioned when she’d applied for the job. People loved having a weekday off. It was a time to go to all the places that were only available while working people worked—the post office, the dentist. Or to be at the grocery store or the gym or Nordstrom without the weekend crowds.

Schwartzman was not one of those people. She didn’t mind the sea of people at the Marina Safeway on Sundays or the fact that there were always people on her favorite trails. Those bodies created comfort, safety. She was most comfortable in a crowd as long as she was on the periphery. Schwartzman normally dedicated these days off to the stack of medical journals and forensic pathology reading that piled up when she was working. This morning, though, she was off to a slow start.

In the kitchen, she poured a cup of coffee, then returned to the bedroom. The phone sat silently on the bedside table. She moved to the closet, nudged aside the small vintage brass iron that kept the closet door from opening on its own. Several months before, she had fixed the latch so that the door would stay closed properly, but sometime in the past few weeks, it began to open on its own again. She hadn’t mustered the energy to fix it a second time. So the iron resumed its place as a doorstop. She found a comfortable pair of workout pants and a slouchy sweater in the closet and took her coffee back to bed.

The day would go faster if she could sleep longer, but she never had any luck staying asleep past seven. Just one of the scars from her life with Spencer. Who would have called on a Sunday morning before eight?

Hal had been working all weekend. She’d received a brief text from him yesterday about the interview with the victim’s mother. The message included three pieces of information, and only one was remotely helpful. Hal said he had a lead but didn’t say what it was. He also admitted that he hadn’t learned anything more from the victim’s mother about why her daughter was living in a barely furnished apartment in San Francisco. But he told her that Victoria Stein’s real name was actually Sarah Feld. That last bit, at least, was of interest to Schwartzman.

A Google search of the name revealed a series of head shots and a single commercial credit for Feld.

It made sense that Spencer had hired an actress. She’d been hired to play a part. How much did she know beforehand? Had she signed up to play the part of a victim without realizing how realistic the role would be?

Schwartzman rarely saw the victims before they ended up on her table and found it intriguing to study the woman’s images. Her face had been more angular in life, the masseter muscle in her jaw overdeveloped. Stress most likely. The orbicularis oculi muscles around her eyes indicated that she’d recently gotten Botox on her crow’s-feet. It wasn’t relevant to the case, but Schwartzman made a mental note to tell Hal.

When she reached for her phone, she saw another missed call and a voicemail from a San Francisco number. Not a department number and not Hal’s cell phone.

She set the phone down, then picked it up again. There was no good reason to wait. It wasn’t like she was avoiding working. She pressed “Play.”

“Dr. Schwartzman, this is Renu Khan. I hope I’m not waking you. I saw Dr. Fraser when I was doing rounds yesterday at UCSF and pathology had the results of your biopsy.” A beat passed, and Schwartzman used it to suck in a deep breath. “I wanted to get the information to you as soon as possible, so you can determine next steps. The biopsy confirms the presence of invasive lobular cancer in your right breast. I know Dr. Fraser’s office will be in touch with you directly, but I wanted to give you my cell phone number as well so that you can contact me. I know it’s Sunday, but I’m around today if you would like to talk.”

Dr. Khan started to recite her phone number when the phone rang again in Schwartzman’s hand.

This time she knew the number.
Hal.
She pushed herself too fast upright in the bed. Dizzy and nauseous, she lay back down. “Schwartzman,” she said into the phone.

“It’s Hal. Good morning,” he said, though it didn’t sound like it actually was.

“Good morning,” she responded with approximately the same lack of conviction.
Cancer. Invasive cancer. Lobular.
She tried to dredge up memories of med school.

She caught the tail end of something Hal said.

“Sorry, Hal. I think my other line was ringing through. I missed what you said.”

“No problem. Do you need to go?”

“No, it’s fine,” she said quickly, blushing at the lie.

“Was wondering if you’re coming in today? I know it’s Sunday.”

“I can,” she told him, sensing the edge in his voice. “What’s going on?”

“I’m interviewing a suspect at nine o’clock. You might want to watch, if you’re available.”

“A suspect? Did you locate the sister?”

“No, and you were right. They’re not sisters. Sarah Feld doesn’t have any siblings.”

She had let that woman go. She’d known something was off, but she hadn’t acted on it. Worse, she had actually entertained her questions, let her sit in that chair and watch her, all the while knowing—whatever she knew.

“Who are you interviewing?”

Hal sighed. “Ken Macy.”

Schwartzman was upright again. “Macy wouldn’t have—”

“I like him, too,” he agreed.

She was stunned. “It’s not a matter of liking him. It’s just—” But then she couldn’t say what it was. He was trustworthy, honest. Good. Decent. After Spencer, she was cautious—overly cautious. She had a strong sense of people, and Ken Macy seemed as upstanding as they came. Or maybe Hal was right. She liked him, considered him a friend. “Why?” she said finally.

“They found his prints at the scene. On a napkin in the victim’s trash.”

Schwartzman pictured Macy’s easy smile. “His prints on a napkin? So he accidentally threw something away in her trash. That doesn’t mean he killed her . . .”

“The napkin is also stained with the wine she was drinking.”

“Isn’t it possible that the wine got on the napkin in the trash?”

“By the location of the stain, Roger doesn’t think so. The napkin’s not enough for a warrant, let alone an arrest, but I’ve got to bring him in for questioning.” The words came out harsh. “He’s agreed to come down.”

“Does he know about the evidence? The napkin, I mean?”

“No,” Hal said. “I thought I’d tell him in person.”

“Sure,” she said.

“How well do you know him, Doc?”

They’d had dinner the other night. She had bumped into him on the street. How unexpected. She was sick. “I don’t know him, but—”

“But what?”

“I did have dinner with him on Friday.”

“You had dinner with him Friday night? Like a date?” he asked, curiosity in his voice.

“No,” she said quickly. “Not like a date.” A date meant they were involved. She was not ready for that. Maybe she would never be. “It’s not like that. He’s always telling me about good new ethnic restaurants that are opening up. It’s one of the things we talk about when I see him at a scene.”

“And he invited you to dinner?”

“No . . .” She went through how it had happened. “He sent a text about a new place down in the Marina. It doesn’t have takeout yet.” The yellow waiting room at Fraser’s office. The biopsy. Friday, the cancer had been only a chance. Now it was reality. People waited a week or longer for the results of a biopsy. Hers had been fast-tracked. Because it was serious? Because she needed to act quickly? Or because Dr. Khan’s sister-in-law was an inspector in the department’s special investigative division on hate crimes?

Whatever it was, a call on a Sunday morning was special treatment.

“Schwartzman?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“You okay this morning?” Hal asked.

“Still half-asleep I guess. Sorry. Say it one more time?”

“You said that the place didn’t have takeout?”

“Right,” she agreed.

“So what does that mean?” Hal prompted.

“Well, I don’t eat out often,” she said. “I usually have something delivered.” Even she heard the unspoken part. She was alone. Without friends. Without a partner. “Friday, I needed to get out of the house, so I decided to go down there for dinner.”

He didn’t ask if it was just her. He understood that she would be alone. “And Macy just happened to be there?” he asked, the skepticism clear.

Schwartzman felt a renewed urge to defend Macy. But how could she? What did she really know about him? Before their dinner, she hadn’t known anything other than his name and his job title. “I don’t see how he could’ve known I would go,” she said finally.

“Safe to assume you two talked over dinner?”

“Yes. About him mostly. His family, that kind of thing.”

“You talk to him about your ex?” Hal asked.

Hal always referred to Spencer as her ex. Technically, they were still married, although she had thought of him as her ex-husband for years. She kept telling herself she would point it out. And then she didn’t. It was humiliating that they were still married. And frustrating. And not relevant.

“Schwartzman?”

“No. We didn’t talk about him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I don’t even think I mentioned where I’m from. I might’ve told him I’m an only child. That’s it.” As she spoke, she replayed the evening in her mind. She had been so relaxed. She had actually relaxed in the company of a man—a man she liked—and now he was a suspect in the murder of a woman who could have been her twin. “I didn’t tell him anything important,” she added.

“It’s okay,” he told her.

She took a deep breath in response to his words. It wasn’t okay, and the panic filled her anyway. “I’ll see you at nine.” Before he could say anything else, she ended the call. She dropped the phone on the bed and let herself slide onto the floor. Her back pressed to the bed, she watched the shadows of the sun move through the clouds through the dark blinds.

The emptiness was like hunger and indigestion, all tucked up under her lungs. She was reminded of her father’s death. The call she had taken that evening in her tiny med school apartment, her mother telling her that he was in the hospital. She had not changed clothes or told anyone she was leaving. Took her purse and keys and drove straight to the hospital.

She was shocked when she entered that room—the sheen of his face, the ashen tint of his skin, his body so much smaller in that bed. The infection raced through his body. The doctors’ optimism shifted into tenuous hope and then acceptance that there was nothing they could do.

He died in the night.

The days she had passed at home were a blur, but months later, back in something like normalcy, she had woken one morning with this same pain. At the time, it was like being devoured from the inside out.

Something had shifted in her that morning. The realization that her father was truly gone felt both sudden and complete. She was stunned at how gone he was.
I keep looking for traces of you, and you are just so absolutely gone,
she had written in her journal that day.
There should be more of you lingering. I should feel you, know that you are with me. It’s just absolute, stark absence.

She still felt the anger of that day, the idea that his silence was an affront. She had meant more to him than that. Everywhere she went, she wanted to scream out to him to show himself, but it was all just the normal, silent world staring back at her with no sign of him in it. She was desperate to tell him that she was not going to be okay without him. Not ever again. She was grateful for what he had given her, that he was her father, but with him gone, she was left with this forever hole in her heart because he was so much of her life. And it just didn’t make any sense that there was a world without him in it.

It never quite went away, that feeling. She eased herself off the floor and drew the shade just as the sun slipped again behind a gray cloud.

None of this would have happened if you had stayed.

And, as always, she knew it was true.