Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (13 page)

19

Charleston, South Carolina

Sam was standing outside the victim’s bedroom door, his arms crossed, as Harper came up the stairs. She could tell it was bad. He didn’t meet her eyes. She suspected this was difficult for him. The first ones were always the hardest. Two in a row, in such quick succession, made it worse.

She wished he’d say something. They could have both used a break from the mood, and she would have liked a little pep talk. Or humor. Something to break up the emptiness she felt.

Those were Andy’s traits, not Sam’s.

Andy was supposed to be on the scene, too. She would find him later.

First, the body.

She reached the top of the stairs slowly, dreading what was waiting for her. Frances Pinckney was someone she’d known all of her adult life. Ava Schwartzman was not. But she was someone Harper had sat down with, face-to-face, only days before, and that made her death more personal than was comfortable. Not to mention that the word
serial
was starting to get tossed around the department. A serial killer in Charleston. That was downright terrifying.

“Ugly?” she asked Sam.

“Worse than that,” he answered.

From inside the room came the flashing lights of the crime scene analyst’s camera. Though Harper rarely saw the face hidden behind the cyclops of the camera, the tech was distinctive for the strawberry-blonde ponytail that snapped left and right as she pivoted from shot to shot.

“Almost, Burl,” said the tech as Burl inched ever closer to the body. He occasionally complained about the number of photographs the crime scene techs took these days. When Burl started with the department, they took maybe twenty. Film was expensive and not high quality. Digital film was cheap, cost of development, zero.

For some of the inside scenes, techs took as many as seven or eight hundred photographs.

For Harper, clicking through those images was an important part of putting the puzzle together.

Staying out of the tech’s way, Harper stepped into the room, which might have been staged from 1920s Charleston. The furniture was dark wood and heavily carved. A large Persian rug occupied the center of the room and ran under the bed and bureau. The wear suggested the rug had been there for some decades. The room was lit only by two bedside lamps. Eyelet window shades let in the sunlight, but the room was especially dark as she moved toward the bed.

Harper fought back the intensity of her own reactions.

The woman lying on the bed was nothing like the Ava Schwartzman who Harper had met. Seated in the police conference room, Ava Schwartzman had been composed. Strong, elegant, even a little intense.

Now she seemed small and terrified and much, much older.

While her eyes remained wide-open, her mouth was tightly closed, the muscles of her jaw bulging in her cheeks. She was a thin woman, but in her sleeveless nightgown she looked emaciated, almost sickly. Her arms were stretched above her head. Each wrist was bound with a red bungee cord, which had been hooked around the bedpost.

“If he wasn’t wearing gloves, we might find epithelial cells in the cord,” Harper said. It could be that easy.

“Yep,” the tech agreed. “We’ll test ’em.”

The victim’s feet had been bound by regular white rope. A square knot. Nothing fancy there. “And—”

“Yep,” the tech said, cutting her off. “The rope, too.” The young woman continued her arc of the victim, finger depressed on the shutter release.

Finally, she appeared from behind the camera. Narrow brown eyes and brows that were the same pale reddish-blonde as her hair. She scanned the victim and glanced up at Burl. “All yours.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Burl said, even though the tech probably wasn’t much older than Lucy. His case already open, his hands already gloved, Burl moved right in and inspected the victim’s eyes and face. He shined a penlight across the skin, shifting his angle as he searched.

Burl had told her he’d once found a perfect thumbprint on an eyelid. Boy killed his aunt because she wouldn’t give him thirty bucks. Afterward, he closed her eyes and left a print. Swore he’d been out all night, but the thumbprint said otherwise. They’d gotten a conviction on that one.

“Petechiae,” Burl said, waving her over.

She rounded the bed and stood across from him.

“See it here.” He lifted Ava’s lower eyelid to display the red dots associated with strangulation. “And also here, around the mouth.” He moved the light down her face.

“Some sort of asphyxiation.”

“Looks like it.”

Without fanfare, Burl unbuttoned the victim’s nightgown and exposed her chest.

Harper forced herself to study the body. This wasn’t Ava Schwartzman. This was the victim. Just below her breasts were two oval bruises about 50 percent larger than chicken eggs.

“Perimortem,” Burl confirmed. “You can tell because the edges are well defined. The injuries did create bruises—that doesn’t happen if the victim’s already dead—but the blood didn’t spread into the surrounding tissue, so she wasn’t alive long.”

“What caused those?”

“If I were gambling man, I’d say knees.”

“Knees?” But as soon as she’d said it, she pictured the victim’s killer mounted on top of her small chest.

“She was burked.”

Harper had never seen a burking victim, but she was familiar with the term. Normally, burking involved two killers. One to hold his hands over the victim’s mouth and nose to prevent breathing while the other sat on the victim’s chest to press the air from the lungs.

In this case, the evidence suggested that both parts were accomplished by a single killer. With her hands and feet bound, the killer was able to use his hands to cover her mouth and nose and his knees to prevent her chest from rising to draw in air.

Burl studied the victim’s hands. “No defensive wounds.”

“You think he surprised her?”

“Can’t imagine he could get her tied up without waking her,” Burl said.

“Could have threatened her with a gun to get her to comply. Once she was tied up, there wasn’t much she could do to fight him. I’ll have patrol check with the neighbors and see if they heard anything.”

“Not sure she put up much of a fight,” Burl said.

“Why do you say that?”

“If she struggled, I’d expect to see more bruising.”

Harper hated the idea that Ava didn’t fight her attacker but said nothing. But what about Pinckney? What would have kept her from fighting? “Chloroform?”

“Would make sense. I’ll test for it.” He used the penlight to illuminate the chest bruises and moved his head to see them from different angles. “Hmm.”

“What?” she asked.

“You notice anything in those bruises?”

Harper stared at them. “They’re oval.”

“Maybe I’m just seeing things. Here, take this.” He handed her his flashlight.

Harper shone the light across the bruises, left, then right, and back again. There were a series of ridges, slightly lighter than the rest of the bruise. “It’s like there are lines running down the bruises.”

“So you do see it.” Burl used his finger to identify the same three ridges on the opposite side. “Right here?”

“I saw it on the other side first, but yeah, I see that, too.” She handed back the flashlight. “What is it from? Was there a design on her nightgown?”

Burl moved the gown back across the victim. Aside from the small row of buttons, which would have been between the two bruises, there was nothing on the gown that would explain the ridges.

“The seam of his pants, maybe?”

“Don’t think so. Not in the middle of the knee.”

She tried to imagine a pair of pants with seams down the knees. He was right. She couldn’t picture it.

“What about a knee pad?” he said.

“You mean for skating or something?”

“I was thinking more for carpentry work.”

Harper nodded slowly. “Like the padded ones. Nice work, Burl. If we get that tech back in here to take some images, we could probably identify the brand.”

“Don’t call the paparazzi,” he said. “I can take the photographs myself.” He stooped to his bag. Harper expected him to pull out some ancient Kodak, but the camera he brought out was as sleek and modern as the tech’s had been.

“Nice,” Harper said.

Burl frowned. “Just because I appreciate things that have withstood the tests of time doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the benefits of modernity.”

“Deep,” she said and was about to tease him about his attachment to Bessie the van when Andy called her.

“You should come see this, Harper.”

She followed him as he jogged down the stairs in a one-two, one-two rhythm like a trotting horse while she tried to keep up without tripping and falling. Andy led her into the kitchen. There, on the counter, was an old-fashioned phone with a long spiral cord. It was light yellow. She hadn’t seen one like it in decades. Even the phone in Frances Pinckney’s kitchen was cordless.

“Here,” Andy announced, stopping beside the tech.

“It’s an old phone,” Harper said, trying to figure out if the tech was young enough that she’d never seen one.

“Not the phone,” Andy said. “Hey, Sylvie, can you move for a second so I can show Detective Leighton what we found?”

The tech lowered the camera and walked away.

A list was tacked up on the wall above the phone. “You have a glove?” she asked Andy.

“Sylvie, we need gloves.”

Sylvie returned to pass him a pair of gloves without a comment.

“One pair?” he called after her. “We’ve each got two hands.”

The tech rolled her eyes.

“One will do,” Harper said, taking a single glove and pulling it onto her right hand before peeling the list off the wall and setting it on the counter.

Judy

7/2—7/9 wtr lr, ktchn, mstr, Cody am

9/8—9/20 wtr “ “

Frances

8/1—8/12 Cooper here, 2x wtr prch

Okay 8/30—9/4, Dallas

Some sort of list. Multiple strips of tape at the top of the page suggested it had been pulled down and posted up a few times, and the writing was in several different colors of ink. “Cooper was Frances Pinckney’s dog.” She glanced over the words again. “These are arrangements to take care of someone’s house. Judy must be another friend.”

“And WTR LR?”

“Water. Living room, kitchen. MSTR is master. There must be plants in those rooms.”

“Cody is Judy’s dog?”

Harper shrugged. “Or a cat. A goldfish? Who knows. Some pet Ava was supposed to take care of in the mornings. We can figure out Judy’s last name and contact her.”

Andy looked back over the list. “Okay, but pet and plant sitting are hardly motive for murder.”

Harper studied the last item on the list. “Okay Dallas” was unlike the others. No description of what she was supposed to take care of. Maybe Ava was the one traveling and Frances was doing the housesitting. It made sense that they would housesit for each other.

Harper reached for the drawer under the phone and found a line of spatulas, a whisk, a garlic press, a grater. She pushed it closed and tried the one to the left. Silverware.

Then on the right.
Bingo.

One side of the drawer was occupied by a bulky phonebook. On the other side were two rectangular wire baskets, the kind people used to organize drawers. One contained a dozen or so pens. The other held a neat line of keys, a small colored circle with a label on each. “House,” “Office,” “POB.” Her post office box. Spare keys. The drawer stuck, so Harper wiggled until it yielded. Farther back was a small red carabiner with three additional keys. Harper flipped the tags over one at a time. “Judy.” “Evelyn.” The final one read, “Frances.” Harper exhaled loudly.

“She had a key for Frances Pinckney’s house,” Andy said.

Harper turned to Andy. “I need you to go back over to Pinckney’s house and see if you can find Ava’s spare key.”

“Sure. You think it will be there?”

Harper said nothing.

Andy let it go. “I’ll call you when I know.”

She didn’t expect that Andy would find a key to Ava’s house at Frances Pinckney’s. She almost hoped he didn’t because its absence would explain how the killer got in. More than that, it would be their first real evidence to connect the two crimes. If Frances Pinckney’s copy of Ava’s key wasn’t there, it suggested that getting that key had been the killer’s motive to go to Pinckney’s house. The fact that he had come with chloroform to knock out Pinckney meant the attack was premeditated.

But killing her? Had that been part of the plan, or had something gone wrong? When the dog wouldn’t stop barking? Or when Kimberly Davies showed up? Had he planned to kill Frances Pinckney all along? Were they dealing with someone so comfortable with murder?

Harper set the keys back in the drawer and bumped it closed with her hip. The discovery was something, a small step in the right direction.

But if this was the right direction, it was terrifying to think where these crimes would take her.

20

San Francisco, California

Schwartzman sat in the small viewing room and watched Hal and Hailey interview Ken Macy. The crease in his brow deepened as Hal slid the bagged napkin across the table. “We found this in the victim’s trash.”

Ken Macy stared at it blankly.

“It’s got your prints on it,” Hal explained. “And wine from the victim’s house.”

“Her trash?” Macy repeated.

He looked miserable. Schwartzman felt miserable. It had to be some sort of a trap. Didn’t it?

“Did you throw something away in the victim’s kitchen?”

“No. I wasn’t even in the kitchen.” Macy rubbed his face. “Fischer and I arrived together. The sister was standing in the lobby, freaked out. She took us up, and we went into the bedroom. I followed procedure and checked for a pulse while Fischer called for backup. Then the two of us cleared the stairwell and returned to the lobby, where the victim’s sister was. Fischer took her to the hospital, and I remained on the street to wait for backup.”

Hailey and Hal exchanged a glance. Schwartzman assumed they could read each other, but she couldn’t read them. Did they believe him? She did. Eyes wide, mouth dropped open, he appeared to be experiencing a heavy rush of adrenaline. He looked genuinely upset.

Surely if he were guilty, he would be prepared for these questions.

“We pulled your patrol rounds that night, and you and Fischer split up for about an hour that evening.”

“Yeah. We did.”

“That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?” Hailey asked.

“It is. And in the end, it was some kind of screwup.”

Schwartzman winced at the words, watching as Macy’s shoulders dropped. The rounded slope of his trapezoid muscles appeared genuine. He didn’t appear to be faking.

“A screwup?” Hal echoed.

“I got a call from Dispatch that Fischer was needed in the vicinity of Bay and Taylor, where there was an accident with injuries. I was to drop him off and report to a different location. The address was on Vallejo, where it dead-ends before Montgomery.”

“The call came in on the radio?” Hal asked.

“No. My cell phone actually.”

“But it came from a departmental number?” Hailey pressed.

Again Macy shrank down in his chair. “It came in unknown, which I thought was weird, but it sounded like Dispatch.”

“You mean the voice was familiar?” Hailey clarified.

Schwartzman had learned long ago to be wary of unknown numbers. Every call that came in to her phone was suspicious. Ken wasn’t like that. He was trusting. It was one of the things she liked most about him. But he was a cop. He was supposed to be aware of the possibility of being deceived. She hated watching him get interrogated like this.

“I don’t know if it was familiar. There are a lot of different operators. It seemed right. Nothing about the call seemed weird.”

Schwartzman felt him digging himself deeper. She wanted to leave but couldn’t pull herself away.
Come on, Ken. Stand up to them.
He was doing his job. Didn’t they see that? She had never witnessed an interview, and it made her uncomfortable. Did they feel any guilt that they were interviewing one of their own?

No. Of course not. This was the job. They had to ask the tough questions.

“So you went to this address?” Hal asked.

“Yeah. I dropped Fischer and went straight over there. It’s a storefront, so I assumed there had been some sort of break-in. I walked the perimeter, checked the doors and windows for signs of entry. Then I checked the neighboring buildings. I called Dispatch a couple of times during the process, trying to get them to find out what the code was.”

“And could they tell you?” Hailey asked.

“The first time, they put a call out to officers responding to that address, asking for a callback for an update.”

“I take it no one called?” Hal guessed, his tone sarcastic. Ken had followed directions. Nothing about the call was out of place, so of course he had gone to the address. He was tricked. Surely Hailey and Hal saw it the same way.

“No,” Ken admitted.

Schwartzman watched Hal’s expression, saw the slight shake of his head. Was he just frustrated or did he think Ken was lying? She couldn’t tell.

“So you called Dispatch again?”

“I called three times in total. No one had any information about why I was there. Figured it was just a miscommunication at Dispatch.”

Something lodged in Schwartzman’s throat. This didn’t feel like a screwup or some random mistake. This felt like a plan.

A Spencer plan.

Did that occur to Hailey or Hal? Did they imagine Spencer might be behind this, too?

Why would they?

And why would he frame Macy? She pressed at the tightness in her chest. She thought of running into him on the street, the randomness of it. But that was after the murder. Had Spencer somehow made that happen, as well? It seemed impossible. She had left the apartment of her own free will. He hadn’t invited her.

“I confirmed there were no signs of B and E and called Fischer,” Macy went on. “He was finishing up, helping out with the accident, so we pulled up the cones and waited for the tow truck to come, and then we went back to the beat.”

“Where did you have dinner that night?”

“We didn’t. Fischer’s wife packed him a sandwich, so I ate a few bites, but we got called to the murder before we could stop.”

Again the look between Hailey and Hal. Schwartzman’s phone buzzed in her lap. Her mother. Her mother had called earlier. Before Hal called. After Dr. Khan called.

You have cancer. Invasive lobular cancer of your right breast. Invasive. Cancer.

She answered the phone.

Without warning, tears filled her eyes. She had cancer, and her mama called. Her mama knew.

She wasn’t alone with cancer.

Schwartzman caught the flood of tears against the back of her hand. How would her mother know? Had the doctor called her? No. It was impossible. She couldn’t know. So, why was she calling?

“Mama?”

“Oh, Annabelle. I am so glad it’s you. I called earlier, but I didn’t hear your voice on the recording,” her mother said, her voice breathless.

Schwartzman sat up in the chair. If it wasn’t the cancer . . .

“I didn’t even know if this is your number,” her mother went on. “Oh, Lord, what if it hadn’t been your number? You’re always changing your phone number.”

She had changed her number three times in seven years, and every time Spencer had gotten ahold of the new one within a few months. “It’s me, Mama. It’s my number.”
I have breast cancer, Mama.
She was desperate to say the words, to cry with her mama. To be held and told it would be all right. Everything would be all right.

“Hello,” her mother said again.

“It’s me, Mama. It’s—” But then she didn’t want to hear her name out loud. Annabelle Schwartzman had cancer. Annabelle Schwartzman had a husband who wouldn’t let her go. Annabelle Schwartzman was weak and gullible, a child who lost her father and married the first man to pay her any attention. She didn’t want to be Annabelle Schwartzman.

“Thank God,” her mother cried.

“What is it, Mama? What’s happened?” She tried to sound confident, but there was fear in her own voice, as well.

“The police just called me. It’s Ava, Annabelle.”

Annabelle pictured the statuesque woman with her father’s eyes. “Aunt Ava?”

“I’m afraid she’s—”

Ava. Ava, the smart, together woman Schwartzman wanted to be. Ava, the person Schwartzman modeled herself after. Ava’s house, the home where she’d spent weeks each summer until after seventh grade, when her mother refused to let her go for longer than a few days. At that age, girls began to come into society. There were cotillions and parties, weekly lessons at the country club about manners and etiquette, things that, in her mother’s view, were crucial to her success. Her father conceded to her mother’s wishes.

“What is it, Mama?”

“She’s passed, Annabelle.”

The air vanished from the room. Her insides pooled into her stomach and lungs. She couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t speak.
No. No, no, no.
She shook her head, fought to draw in air, tears already streaming down her face. “No!” The word erupted from her chest.

“It happened Friday, but I went down to Savannah for the garden show, and I didn’t get the message until I got home this morning. The police came right to the house to tell me.”

The tears streamed harder. She’d been thinking of Ava just—was that yesterday? She had planned to call her. What had stopped her? Why hadn’t she called? So often she thought of her aunt, wished she could see her, go stay in the house on Meeting Street.

But something always stopped her. Some other voice that said to wait until things with Spencer were resolved, until she could finally go home again. And now it was too late. Ava was gone. “How?”

“Oh, God. I don’t even know where to start,” her mother continued. “They found my name in her address book. She didn’t have any family. We’re all she had, Bella.”

Schwartzman shuddered at Spencer’s nickname. How often did Spencer see her mother? Fill her head with poison?

“How soon can you be in Charleston?”

Schwartzman’s hand instinctively clamped onto the base of the chair. “No.”

“What do you mean?”

No way.
No way was she going out there. “I can’t come out, Mama.”

“You have to come. She was your family, Annabelle. Your father’s sister.”

She fought against the desire to shout at her mother.
I have cancer. My husband is evil.

“Annabelle.”

Her mother wouldn’t listen about Spencer. She never had. “It’s work, Mama. It’s too busy.”

“You can deal with the deaths of other people’s family, but you won’t take time off for your own?”

Schwartzman didn’t answer.

She would never have missed her father’s funeral. Couldn’t imagine missing Ava’s. But the biggest draw of her father’s funeral was Ava, being there with the woman she was closest with in the world, the one woman who loved her father the way she did. Her mother loved her father, but she loved him for taking care of
her
, for loving
her
. Or that was how it felt to Schwartzman.

“How would your father feel if he heard you say you couldn’t get away from work to help bury his sister?” her mama said in the same hard how-dare-you-cross-me voice as always.

Schwartzman exhaled. Guilt, too. Her mother’s favorite tool. And so effective. Because Schwartzman would never disappoint her father. The fingers that held the phone trembled.

She would not go. Her father knew why she couldn’t.

But it was Ava. Dear, sweet Ava.

How could she not go? If only to see her one last time, to touch what remained of her aunt. How was it possible that she would never see Ava again? At least burying her would create some sense of closure.

She was swallowed by a tremendous sense of loss. Ava was gone. Why hadn’t she reached back out to Ava? Why hadn’t she let herself lean on her aunt? Wasn’t that what Ava wanted?

“Annabelle Schwartzman,” her mother snapped.

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

“I cannot believe I have raised a daughter who would miss her aunt’s funeral. You’re going to have a lot to sort out down here, you know? Who do you think will inherit Ava’s house? Her things? What am I supposed to do? That’s
your
job.”

Inheriting the house? In Charleston? Ava had no one else. Ava holding her tight at her father’s funeral. Making her promise to come stay in Charleston. The old house on Meeting Street, the one that had been her grandparents’. The place where she’d hidden out after the miscarriage, while she planned to go finish medical school. How she’d longed to stay longer. If only Spencer weren’t so close. But now, without Ava, what would Schwartzman do with a house in Charleston?

Her mother made an uncomfortable noise. There was something else. Something she wasn’t saying. “Mama?”

“You should know that she was—” The sound of her mother’s voice catching on something. “Her death wasn’t natural.”

“Wasn’t natural?” Schwartzman repeated.

Her mother said nothing. There was a beep as another call came through.

“Mama, are you saying she was murdered?”

“I hate that word.”

Murdered.
Ava was murdered. Grief pulsed through her like waves of electricity.
Spencer.
The phone pressed to her ear, she pulled her knees to her chest, tried to close herself in a ball. As though she could cut off this new reality. Make it disappear. But it was real. What better way to force her to come back to South Carolina than to kill her favorite person?

“You call me as soon as you book your ticket, Annabelle,” her mother said. “The moment you book it.”

“Mama, you’re not listening. I’m not—”

But the line was dead. Her mother gone. Schwartzman pressed the phone against her chest. Held it there. She had breast cancer. A woman here had died because of her. Ava was dead. Because of her. She had lost Ava. Gone without a second’s notice. How desperately she wished that she’d seen her one last time, or called.

Would he just keep killing people until she came home? Would he target anyone who showed concern for her? Was it even worth the fight? She could stop fighting it all. Go home and be with him. Let him handle her cancer and her surgeries. Live in the yellow hell. At least then no one else would get hurt.

For as long as the game lasted. Surely he would tire of her. He would tire of a wife who couldn’t be perfect. He just wanted her back. If she gave him that, he won. If she went home, maybe he would just give up. Divorce her. Because what else could he possibly imagine would happen?

Shivers ran through her. She’d spent all these years fighting to get away. She was a doctor. She had a life. She was not going to South Carolina. He could not make her go. Cancer was not a death sentence, not necessarily. Going to South Carolina was a death sentence. Hadn’t enough people died?

She wondered who would perform the autopsy on Ava. Had it already been done? She wanted to be there, to watch and make certain nothing was missed. To watch over her.