Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (2 page)

“What happened?” Hailey Wyatt appeared in the doorway.

Just hours earlier they had been talking about Spencer. She had opened up to Hailey and the others about Spencer. She’d told Hailey about being trapped in that marriage. And now . . . Schwartzman hugged herself to fight the shaking.

“My God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost, Schwartzman,” Hailey said. “Are you okay?”

If only Spencer were a ghost. But he was all too real. The victim’s dress was yellow. She wore no jewelry. These were just coincidences.

“Shit. Did you know her?”

“No. It’s not her—” She pressed her palm to her chest. Hers was there. She felt suddenly exposed. As though by speaking of Spencer at dinner, she had conjured him into being right here. She had allowed herself to open up about him, and here he was.

“Why would you think she’d know the victim?” Hal asked.

“I don’t know, but they look alike,” Hailey said. “The wavy hair, the shape of the face, the nose. It must have freaked her out.”

They did look alike. God, how had he managed to find a woman who looked like her? She wasn’t imagining it. The lack of jewelry, the dress, the flowers. It was all him.

“No,” Hal said. “She didn’t freak out until she saw the necklace.”

Schwartzman remained against the wall. Her bare hands pressed to the skin on her neck. It was icy cold and also slick, like a body coming out of the morgue refrigeration unit after being washed down.

“It’s a cross with the Star of David on it,” Hailey said. “And a little gemstone in the star.”

Would they think she was crazy when she showed them? She had spent months building up their trust. It took so little to break it.

What choice did she have? She couldn’t hide the pendant from them.

Schwartzman forced herself to lower her hands. “It’s a Christian cross with a Star of David on it,” she said, struggling to get the words out. “The Star of David is placed exactly where the heart would be if the cross were a woman. A tiny diamond in the center of the star.”

Schwartzman fingered the chain on her neck, located the pendant under her tank. To celebrate their first wedding anniversary, her father had designed a pendant for her mother.

The room tipped, and Schwartzman closed her eyes.

A pendant identical to the one on the dead woman.

3

San Francisco, California

“Schwartzman!” The voice was urgent and female. Schwartzman had to pull herself back to focus on where she was. She saw beige carpet, a green duvet at eye level. Above her, Hailey and Hal were staring down. She was on the floor, her back to the wall.

“Help me get her up,” Hailey told Hal.

She flinched at Hal’s huge hands on her shoulder and back, but she was on her feet quickly.
Compose yourself.
She wasn’t some distraught female. She was a doctor, a scientist.

“Can someone get me a bottle of water?” Hailey shouted into the hallway.

Hailey and Hal. She could tell them. They needed to know. “I’m fine.” Schwartzman cleared her throat. “Really. It was startling is all.”

They would think she was crazy. That was always her mother’s response—that she was overreacting or making something of nothing.

This was not
nothing
. Or maybe it was. She was overreacting. She needed time to calm herself, to think about it before she spoke up. Never predict an outcome, a lesson of her field. She was a scientist. Follow the evidence. The body would provide the answers.

“The necklace?” Hailey asked.

“It’s unusual.”

Hal and Hailey exchanged a glance. It was a necklace. Just a necklace. And of course there would be others like it. That she had never seen another one herself meant nothing.

One of the crime scene techs, Naomi Muir, entered the room, carrying a bottle of water. She gave it to Hal.

He cracked the top and pressed the bottle into Schwartzman’s hands. “Drink this.”

She lifted the water to her lips, took a sip. The cold jolted her, bringing her focus back to the room, the case. She handed it back. “I’m better.” She unzipped the Tyvek suit, released the hot air. “I just overheated a little.”

Hailey watched her with a suspicious gaze. Schwartzman felt herself shrink. She needed them to believe her. What would she do if they didn’t? San Francisco was supposed to be her fresh start, her clean slate. How she wanted to just start over. But she knew better.

She shook the Tyvek suit at the zipper to force in some fresh air, then zipped it back up.

Donning a fresh pair of gloves, she returned to the body. She studied the slight bump in the victim’s nasal bridge and ran her fingers across the cartilage for signs of a break. There was none. Like Schwartzman, Victoria Stein was born with rounded septal cartilage that gave her a traditional Jewish-looking nose.

Schwartzman’s mother had offered her a nose job on her sixteenth birthday, hoping her daughter might decide on something straighter and more patrician, more like her own.

“Find something?” Hal asked.

Shaking her head, Schwartzman moved on from the nose to probe the jaw and cheekbones. Nothing to explain cause of death. Finally, she opened the victim’s mouth and peered into the teeth. Regularly whitened, straight.

Nothing to suggest trauma.

Schwartzman stood back and inspected the area around the victim, then studied the victim head to toe for contusions or signs of trauma, measured the core temperature, and bagged the hands to preserve evidence. “I can’t give you cause of death without an autopsy,” she said as she removed her gloves. “No obvious lacerations or contusions, no evident injuries at all to suggest what killed her.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t natural,” Hal added.

“No. Definitely not.”

Schwartzman found Hailey looking back and forth between her and the victim. Hailey was comparing them. The dark hair, the length, their height . . . they might have been sisters. “So there’s no reason to draw any connections between you and the victim?”

“Not without being paranoid.” The comment was as much, or more, for her as for them. She would not be paranoid. That was what he wanted, to remain at the front of her mind, where every little thing reminded her of him. She would not do that. San Francisco was a fresh break, a real start. “The victim does look like me. She is holding a bouquet of yellow flowers . . .”

“They look familiar?” Hal asked, and she felt the weight of his stare.

Of course Hal knew about the flowers. Roger would have shared that with him.

They had talked about her. It felt like an intrusion, but it shouldn’t have. They were protecting her. As colleagues. She would do the same for them. “The flowers are different. The ones I got were more formal.” She wondered if Roger was still working on them. “Is Roger here? I was going to ask him if he found anything on the ones I received.”

“I haven’t seen him yet, but I’ll check in with him when I do,” Hal said.

No doubt the lab was overwhelmed with real cases, but Schwartzman had hoped they would expedite the flowers. “These are more like wildflowers than the bouquet that came to my apartment.”
The dress is something he would have picked.
She couldn’t force herself to say the words aloud.

That was not evidence, and conjecture was not useful.

“She’s from the town next to the one you grew up in,” Hal went on.

“There are more than sixty thousand people in Greenville and probably another forty thousand in Spartanburg. It’s not like we all know each other, and I have no idea who this woman is.”

“Okay,” he conceded.

“Anything else you want to add to this, Schwartzman?” Hailey asked.

Schwartzman straightened her back and touched the hollow of her neck. It was as though Hailey could see she was holding something back.

Hailey would be connecting their conversation to Schwartzman’s admission that she was still afraid of Spencer. As an investigator, this line of thinking would come naturally.

Schwartzman freed her necklace from under her tank top. Meeting Hailey’s gaze, she made the decision to trust them. “There’s this. My father designed it for my mother on their first anniversary.”

Hal leaned in. “I’ll be damned.”

Before anyone could comment further, she went to pack up her case. “I’ll do the autopsy first thing.”

Hailey put a hand on her shoulder. The touch gentle, a reassurance that they were friends. “You mind if we take your necklace?” she asked. Hailey was on her side. They were all on the same side. Finally she had allies against Spencer. “To compare them?” Hailey pressed.

Schwartzman fingered the pendant that had hung on her neck since her father’s death. “How would that help?”

“It might not,” Hailey said. “But we might be able to get something from yours that we can’t from hers.”

Schwartzman felt sick about taking it off. She’d worn that necklace every day, the one physical thing that connected her to her father.

It was only a thing. An object. They needed it to catch him.

She didn’t see how she could refuse, so when Hailey offered up an evidence bag, she unfastened the chain and let it drop into the plastic sack.

“I’ll make sure you get it back as soon as possible,” Hailey promised.

After handing over the necklace, she was eager to leave, to get some distance from the scene. She forced herself to slow down, removed her Tyvek suit, and returned it to its plastic sack to be entered into evidence.

The floor vibrated beneath her feet as Schwartzman made her way through the house.

Her house with Spencer had been like this. Flowers and soft tones. Everything always in its place. A chameleon, her ex-husband could change on a dime. He was charming, sensitive, the kind of man who walked on the street side so that if a car splashed through a puddle, the water would hit him rather than her. The kind of man who chose expensive throw pillows that matched the drapes.

At the same time, he was the kind of man to throw his pregnant wife across the room if things weren’t kept just so.

He’s not your ex.

He was still contesting the divorce. South Carolina was protective of the institution of marriage.

Good Southern women did not leave their husbands.

Back in street shoes, she left the building, anxious for cool air. Her bag was too heavy, her heels too high. She was both cold and hot at once.

She wanted desperately to be home but also didn’t want to be alone anywhere. She pressed her arm across her stomach, held it tight so her ulna was against her diaphragm. Took slow breaths and fought against the memories.

The way he had manipulated her from the start. How easily she’d played into his hands.

Arriving on their first date in seersucker pants and a navy blazer, he’d brought her mother flowers. A bright bouquet of yellow flowers. Not something so large as to be gauche. Just the right touch of respect and something to brighten her day.

During dinner at his country club, Schwartzman had felt like some sort of celebrity. The way he’d reached out to touch her hand, she was the centerpiece of the entire room. The envy in the eyes of the women who passed their table had been obvious. Spencer MacDonald was sought after. Wealthy, gorgeous, powerful, he was Greenville’s prize bachelor.

That night, when Spencer suggested a nightcap, she’d accepted. There had been champagne and wine at the club, but the real buzz came from him.

Back in his home, he’d poured a second nightcap only minutes before he pinned her down and raped her on the expensive Persian rug in his den.

The sex, her first, was painful and rough as she had struggled against him for its duration. But as soon as he had finished, he’d smiled and cupped her face for a kiss as though the act had been loving and consensual. Then he’d led her, bleeding and crying, to the bathroom and ran her a bath. He had insisted she soak, lit a candle, brought her ice water and Advil, which she did not take.

Afterward, he’d delivered her home, clean as new.

“Doc? Hey, Doc?”

Schwartzman turned her head and saw Ken. The ugly reality of Spencer softened into Ken’s kind face.

She was safe. Spencer was not here.

But she couldn’t shake him. He had never felt this close.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She forced herself to swallow, nod.

“You’re a little pale.”

“I feel a little sick,” she said honestly. Exhausted most likely. It had been a long night. It was late. A little sleep and she’d feel fine.

“You want me to drive you home?”

“No.” Relying on others had stopped feeling safe. The only true comfort was in being alone. She walked slowly toward the street. “Thank you,” she added, not wanting him to worry. “I’ll feel better with a little air.” The fog gave each breath the sensation of chewing on something light and cool.

Ken said something about a Mediterranean place. She caught
dolma
.

She thought of
dolor
, the Spanish word for “pain.”
Qué dolor.
A homeless woman used to frequent the clinic where Schwartzman worked during medical school.

“Qué dolor,”
she would say, cradling her head. The head. Dorsal funiculus. Composed of two ascending fasciculi—gracilis and cuneatus, one descending fasciculus, the comma fasciculus. Then there was one more . . .

“Doc?” Ken shook her firmly.

She started. Blinked hard. Focused. Taking in his face, she had the overwhelming urge to yawn.

Yawning was linked to stress. Athletes yawned before competition, paratroopers before a drop. Part of the flight or fight, linked to the hypothalamus.

It was part of the fear.

“I think I should drive you home,” Ken said.

“Absolutely not,” she told him, fighting the physiological reactions. Fear was preferable to dependence. She took care of herself. “I’ll be fine.” Her eyes rattled in their sockets, making it difficult to meet the intensity of Ken’s gaze.

“Okay, but only if you call as soon as you’re home and let me know you’re okay.” He held up her phone. “I’m going to program my number in your phone.” She recognized the black-and-white-checkered case, though she had no idea how he’d come to possess her phone. He passed it back to her, clinging to one end. “I’m listed under Ken Macy. But you can search under Ken, too. You really—”

The rest of his words slid over her as her mind wandered back to the scene. She fingered the place where her necklace always lay flat against her manubrium.

Identical. The two necklaces weren’t just similar; they were the same.

When he stopped talking, Schwartzman put the phone in her jacket pocket. She clasped her case in front of her, gripping the handle with both hands. Her legs resisted motion, and it felt like breaking through a barrier to propel herself forward.

Then she was at the car. It was open.

Ken lifted the case in the trunk and opened the driver’s side door for her. Leaned in. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nodded again, not trusting her voice.

He stepped back and closed the door for her. He stayed beside the car for several seconds before turning back to the scene. Watching over her. But he did walk away.
Good.
She waited until he was gone. Her fingers fumbled to slide the key into the ignition, but she didn’t turn over the engine.

She was afraid to go home.

She should leave before her colleagues noticed. She was not someone to sit around. She was efficient, professional. A scene was not a place to have a meltdown.

And yet she didn’t want to leave. There was something soothing about a crime scene—the banter, the group all working around one another. It made her feel safe.

At her apartment, there was only silence.

She gripped the wheel with one hand. Fingered the pulse in her neck with the other. Throbbing. Like an extra heartbeat, like the volume of her blood had doubled and was at the same time coursing through her body at twice its normal speed. Her cheeks were flushed from the constriction of peripheral blood vessels, her muscles constricted. Ready for flight. The reaction was her sympathetic nervous system kicking into gear.

This is just panic.
Physiological fear. An instinct.
You can control it. Breathe. He’s not here. He can’t be here.

Adrenaline washed through her veins in another flood of heat.

Get home, where you can manage your emotions in private.
She turned the key in the ignition. Flipped on the defrost, the AC, and the heat. Without the AC, the heat merely fogged the glass. She buckled her seat belt and put the car in drive. Her breath raspy and loud. As if she’d been running. As if it was the first time she’d ever driven.