Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (28 page)

38

Charleston, South Carolina

As Schwartzman drove back toward Charleston, her mind weaved the tiny idea into a plan. She was disappointed she hadn’t thought of it sooner. If she had, he might already be behind bars. The miles ticked by, and she made a mental list of all the pieces she would need. Others that would be helpful if she could get them.

Ava was easy. Frances Pinckney would be tougher.

It would mean calling Harper Leighton.

Schwartzman hesitated. She didn’t want to bother the detective until she knew exactly what she was asking for, and how she was going to explain her reasons for needing it.

She stopped only once on the way back to Charleston, pulling off near the tiny town of Harleyville to dump the gun and the remaining ammunition in a small tributary off 7 Mile Road. Instead of dinner, she ate the food she’d bought earlier in the day—part of a baguette, grapes, and almonds. She was too excited to be hungry. Only as she was pulling into Charleston did Schwartzman contact the detective. She needed two things. One she might get. The other she likely would not.

“Anna?” Harper said in lieu of a greeting.

“Yes,” Schwartzman said. “I hope I’m not calling during dinner.”

“No,” the detective assured her. “Not at all. Jed and Lucy aren’t even home yet. She’s got volleyball practice, and Jed’s picking her up. Is everything okay? Someone’s at the house, right?”

“I’ve been out for a bit, but I’m sure someone is there. It’s not really necessary.” She didn’t want someone at the house. She couldn’t anticipate Spencer’s next move, but she suspected it wouldn’t happen in these next few days. He’d made quite a splash, and he had to know he was being watched. Better to lay low.

Then again, Spencer had his own way of seeing things.

“No. It’s absolutely necessary,” Harper countered. “There will be someone on that house, at least through Ava’s service.”

That gave her two more nights to make this happen. She wanted this done before then. She wanted to stand at Ava’s coffin and know that justice was being served. She had a lot to do.

“But you didn’t call about the patrol car,” Harper said.

“No,” Schwartzman agreed.

“What can I do for you?”

Schwartzman drew a quick breath. “I’d like to see Frances Pinckney.”

Harper remained silent.

“Examine her, I mean,” Schwartzman clarified.

“She’s been released for burial,” Harper said. “The services are tomorrow.”

Schwartzman swallowed. She pictured Frances Pinckney at the mortuary, dressed and ready for service. Or maybe she’d been cremated. Harper said burial, not cremation. “Is she at the same place Ava is?”

“She’s not. If she were at Woodward’s, I could call T. J., but I don’t know these folks. Is everything okay, Anna? Is there something we should be looking into?”

“No,” Schwartzman said. No arousing suspicion. “I guess I just wanted to see his other victim. That probably sounds weird . . .”

Harper didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think anything about grief is weird,” she said. “Everyone does it differently.”

Schwartzman felt tears burn her eyelids.

“Why don’t you come to the service tomorrow?” Harper suggested. “I suspect it will be closed casket, so you wouldn’t get to see her, but maybe being there would help.”

Schwartzman considered the offer. Of course she would go. “That would be great,” she said. Wings batted against the inside of her belly. Fear and excitement, possibility.

“Of course,” Harper said. “She was a good friend of your aunt’s. I’m sure the family would welcome you.”

Harper was giving her access to Frances Pinckney’s DNA. “Thank you.” She thought of Roger. He would know the best places to isolate a home owner’s DNA. She’d never thought to ask him. For her purposes, hair would be the easiest to obtain.

“It’s at two in the afternoon. I’ll text you the address.”

She could pull this off. She could put Spencer behind bars. “Thanks again, Harper. There is one more thing,” Schwartzman said.

“Sure.”

“I’d like to go over the images in Ava’s file.”

“You mean the crime scene photos?”

“Actually, I’d like to see the coroner’s pictures,” Schwartzman said.

“Is there something specific you want to see?” Harper asked.

She thought about the images of the bruising on Ava’s chest. She could not give away what she needed. She could not take the risk that Harper would take notice, that it would come out later.

“No.” She spoke the word firmly. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just want to look again, just in case.”

“Burl’s been over the body, Anna,” Harper said. “He’s good. I don’t think looking at those images again is going to get us anywhere.”

“I have to try,” Schwartzman said. “You understand, don’t you?”

A beat passed. “Of course.”

“If I could just see them one more time.” She held her breath, prepared to beg. She needed access to those images. It was the only way. “Please.”

“They’re uploaded into secure storage,” Harper told her. “I can share the file with you electronically. The link will only be good for twenty-four hours. Is that enough time?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, trying to imagine where she would go to view them. She didn’t have a computer with her, and she needed an anonymous place where she could search the Internet without it being traced back to her.

“I’ll text a secure log-on and password to your phone,” Harper said. “Probably take me about thirty minutes.”

“That’s fine. Thank you, Harper.”

“This is between you and me, okay?”

“Absolutely,” Schwartzman agreed. “My lips are sealed.”

“Get some sleep, Anna. I’ll see you at the service tomorrow.”

Schwartzman pulled to the curb on the next block and used her phone to search for an Internet café with computers for rent. They were harder to come by these days. She didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Farther down the screen, she found a place listed as Concierge Café, computers and concierge office space for rent, hourly. She dialed the number.

“Concierge Café,” said a young man’s voice.

“I’m in town for business, and my computer won’t boot. I need to rent a computer for about an hour. You have computers for rent?”

“We do. We’re open at seven tomorrow morning.”

“And what time do you close tonight?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Schwartzman glanced at the clock on the dash—seven forty-five. “Nine tonight?”

“Monday through Saturday,” he said with the brusque shortness of young people. “Sundays we close at six.”

Schwartzman thanked him and disconnected the call as she pulled from the curb in the direction of town. The address was close, traffic light, and she was in front of the café in six minutes. She parked, locked the rental car, and went inside, where she signed up for computer time and a cup of coffee. She took her cup of black coffee and went to the farthest cubicle. She’d paid for ninety minutes of computer time even though the coffee shop closed in just over an hour.

She’d take what she could get.

Evidence was not her forte, and she wished she could call Roger. He would have been able to enhance the pattern of the injuries to Ava’s chest to identify the knee pads. She would be working in the dark.

You can do this.

The link from Harper had dropped into her text messages, and she found the site easily. Setting down the steaming cup, Schwartzman scanned through the thumbnails. Grief struck her midsection, rattling her spine. She pressed her fist under her rib cage and started to click through the images. Finally, she narrowed on the ones of the body preautopsy.

The head, arms, fingers, and then chest. There were several of the entire torso, but she chose one with a close-up of the pattern in the skin. One side. Ava’s right breast.

She studied the perimortem bruising. Some sort of diamond pattern across the oval of the knee pad, but only the very center of the pattern was discernible. The bruises would continue to develop for several days after death, but the coroner had taken only one set of images. She considered returning to the mortuary, seeing Ava again. The idea made her feel empty, slightly nauseous. Zooming in on the pattern on the skin, Schwartzman launched a new browser and ran a search for carpentry knee pads. She clicked on “Images”: 173,000 results.

She scanned the first pages, moving deliberately across each row. Clicked to the next. Scanned. She lifted the coffee mug and took a long drink. Searched the rows for the diamond shape. Every few lines, she returned to the image of the bruising for comparison.

“We’re closing in ten minutes,” the barista said, and, when Schwartzman didn’t answer, he rapped his knuckles on the edge of the cubicle.

“Okay,” she told him without taking her eyes off the screen.

She’d been through hundreds of images of knee pads, and none of them was quite right for the patterns in Ava’s skin. Ava was approximately five eight, which put her chin at about five feet high and her breasts at approximately four feet. The bruising ran from the bottom of her breasts, which was probably three foot nine or ten when accounting for her age, and reached almost to the manubrial-sternal joint. The joint was approximately eight inches below the chin. Schwartzman jotted down the numbers. It meant the knee pads were approximately six inches long.

She stared at the number she’d written. He didn’t make the knee pads. He was too arrogant for that. He had simply purchased a pair at a hardware store. In their old neighborhood in Greenville, there were a few Home Depots, an Ace, and a McKinney Lumber.

He preferred McKinney, which was smaller than the Home Depots. He always said the people were smarter there, not just a bunch of high school or college kids working for ten bucks an hour. But he wouldn’t want to be remembered. That made Home Depot the safer bet.

She scanned through the first page, then the second. More of the same ones she’d seen.

She clicked again, and her eye was drawn to one in the center of the page. Frozen, she glanced between the image of Ava’s injuries and the knee pads.
No.
It wasn’t quite right. The pattern was close, though. The right design, but this one had more lines in the pattern. Was it possible they didn’t show up in the skin? Could these be the right kind?
Damn it.

If she went to Greenville, she could go to the local hardware stores. He wouldn’t have driven out of state to buy them. But there were a dozen hardware stores in Greenville, not including the specialty ones. She didn’t have time to look at all of them. She scanned the rest of the page.

“Five minutes,” the barista called out as though making an announcement to a room full of people, although Schwartzman was the only one left.

She clicked forward, feeling desperation mount. What would she do if she couldn’t find them? She could plant gloves. She would need to get his epithelial cells inside, which would be trickier. She made her way down the page.

Then she saw them.

She let out a little laugh. They were perfect. The same diamond pattern. Six inches. The appropriate oval shape and size. She went back and forth between the picture of Ava and the knee pads. These were definitely the right ones.

She clicked on the image. Tough Freight X was the brand. Style 8020.

She wrote it down on a piece of paper. Tempted to take a picture with her phone, she hesitated. There could be nothing to trace back to her.

Now she just needed to find them. They were offered at Lowe’s, True Value, and Home Depot.

“I’m afraid I’m closing up, ma’am,” the barista said.

She nodded. “I just need a couple more minutes.”

“It’s nine o’clock, ma’am,” he said with a little huff. “That’s the time we close.”

“My uncle is very sick, and I need to let my family know. Five minutes.” She met his gaze. “Please.”

“I’m real sorry about your uncle, but I’ve got a lot of schoolwork left to do and I need to—”

“Fifty bucks,” she said, cutting him off.

His mouth dropped open. “What?”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars for five more minutes.”

“Okay.” He turned to head back to the counter. “You can have ten if you need it.”

Schwartzman didn’t respond but returned to the computer. She started to type in a search for hardware stores in Charleston but stopped.

No.
She couldn’t buy them here. And she wasn’t going to Greenville.

She stared at the ceiling, thinking. Savannah, Georgia, was the closest large city. A couple of hours away. In Savannah there were at least two Home Depots. She clicked on the links. They opened at six.

She could be there and back before Frances Pinckney’s service.

She took a long drink of the cold coffee and went into the search engine to clear her history. Then she logged out of the site with the autopsy photographs and took the single piece of paper she’d written her information on and folded it into her pocket. As an afterthought, she took the next three pages on the notepad, too, and folded them into her back pocket. Finally, she gathered her purse, went to the desk, counted out two twenties and a ten, and slid them across the desk.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Appreciate the extra time,” she said and turned for the door.

“No problem,” he said as though it hadn’t earned him fifty dollars.

Only then did she hear his accent. A damn Yankee.

A Southerner would have done it for free.

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” he called as she reached the door.

Well, maybe he was learning something about Southern manners.

She stepped out into the night sky. It didn’t matter. She got what she needed. And she could go to sleep tonight knowing that she was one step closer to putting Spencer MacDonald exactly where he belonged—behind bars.

39

Charleston, South Carolina

Schwartzman woke up at three and couldn’t go back to sleep. Ava’s burial was in thirty hours. Tomorrow.

Today was her last day to ensure Spencer was in jail when Ava went into the ground.

By four, Schwartzman had showered, eaten breakfast, and was standing in Ava’s room, staring out the window. She held a cup of strong, black coffee—her second—and waited at Ava’s bedroom window for the sun to banish the shadows from between the houses. She was ready to head to Savannah, but it was too early to leave. If she started for Savannah now, Home Depot would just be opening when she arrived. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was the patrol car parked in front of Ava’s house. Leaving at four in the morning was suspicious and, while there was a chance she could get out of the house without being seen, it was not a risk she was willing to take.

If she was going to pull this off, there was no room for error.

Cumulus clouds floated across the sky, taking shape as they moved. A rabbit, the left lobe of the brain, one in the shape of the appendix. A beautiful day, the winds were light. It would make for easy driving.

She took a long, deep breath and let the air slide out across her lips until her diaphragm was relaxed in an arch beneath her lungs. She gave a final exhale to push out the remaining air. It was impossible to empty the lungs fully. She drew the air back in, filled them again. Oxygen flowed into the bronchi, then into the smaller bronchioles and into the alveoli. Two adult lungs were the home to some three hundred million alveoli where the oxygen dissolved into the moisture-rich covering of the alveoli and diffused into the blood. She could feel the oxygen moving through her body as she worked to harness the terror into something productive.

Despite the breathing, she was both cold and hot at once, her body set in a constant series of shivers as though she were fighting the flu. This was the sensation she recalled when she lived with Spencer, days where every movement was in anticipation of a potential explosion. It was hard to focus, to think straight, and impossible to sleep.

It’s almost over. Thirty hours and it will all be over.
She had to believe it was possible.

She set the coffee cup down and went to Ava’s bureau. Aside from finding Ava something to be buried in and borrowing clothes for her own purposes, Schwartzman had yet to go through Ava’s dresser.

In a search of socks earlier, Schwartzman had seen the small boxes and glass dishes lining the center of Ava’s top bureau drawer. She recognized earrings and rings, bangle bracelets, things she had seen on her aunt over the years. On the left side of the drawer, Ava’s underwear and bras were neatly folded, on the right her socks were neatly matched and stacked. Without a second look, Schwartzman had grabbed a pair of socks and pushed the drawer closed.

Now she stood before the bureau and ran her fingers across the curved mahogany drawer. She slid the drawer open and stared down at the jewelry. She reached into the drawer and removed the first box. An aquamarine rhinestone necklace that looked to be from the 1920s. Too flashy. She dismissed several others that were too big. It had to be something that Ava might have worn under a sweater or her coat. Ideally, something that people who knew her might recognize. But Schwartzman didn’t know which things Ava wore regularly.

She hadn’t been around.

She stared down at the jewelry. If she planted a souvenir from Ava, then she’d need one for Frances Pinckney, as well. That meant stealing from a dead woman. She tried to imagine doing that. Her stomach tightened at the notion. What if she took something that Pinckney’s kids had already seen? If they knew something was taken after their mother’s death, the theft would point to Schwartzman. The whole thing would fall apart.

Or what if Pinckney’s kids didn’t recognize the necklace she planted? What if they told the police that the piece wasn’t their mother’s? That would be just as bad.

The evidence would be enough. DNA evidence was stronger anyway. Jewelry was circumstantial. But no one could deny DNA.

Focus on the science. She slid the bureau drawer closed.

She pulled on the pair of yellow cleaning gloves she had found under the kitchen sink and the box of Saran Wrap from the cupboard and crossed the room to Ava’s bed. There, she stretched the plastic wrap about two feet across the floor, then stood to pull back the quilt and blanket, exposing the sheets.

The acrid scent of sweat and fear filled her nose, and she had to stop and slow her breath to keep going. She did not allow herself to avert her gaze. Every stain, every scent was a reminder of what Spencer had done, what he had to pay for. With clenched teeth, she tore off a strip from the roll of packing tape she’d found in the utility drawer and pressed it across Ava’s pillow. Pulled the tape free and pressed it down again, lower across the pillow. Then a third time.

Lifting the tape toward the light, she saw the skin particles. Carefully she stretched the strip of tape across the Saran wrap, pressed lightly. She had tested to make sure the tape could be peeled back from the Saran Wrap. The process of laying the tape on the cotton sheets reduced the adhesive so it could be pulled back off the plastic wrap. Schwartzman repeated the process with four additional strips of packing tape, then used a baggie to collect strands of Ava’s hair from the brush on her vanity.

Careful to return everything in the room to its place, Schwartzman packed a large Ziploc with the wrap with the strips of packing tape and the baggie of hair and slid it all under the mattress of Ava’s bed.

At six fifteen, Schwartzman walked out of the house, stopping to say good morning to Andy, who sat in his patrol car on the curb. When she told him she was going for a walk, he didn’t seem the least bit suspicious. She supposed she might have looked like the kind of woman who walked for exercise though she was not. She wore a baseball hat. A reasonable choice, to keep the sun off her face. Beneath her jacket, she wore yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Another hat in a different color was rolled into one pocket. Cash, credit card, license, keys to the rental car, she had everything she needed.

About a block from Ava’s house, she turned back to see Andy’s cruiser pull away from the curb. If all went well, she wouldn’t see him again. After a quick stop in a coffee shop to grab a latte to go, she walked to the city parking lot where she had left her rental car. She arrived there before six thirty. Cell phone powered off, she drove out of Charleston.

She knew exactly where she was going. No navigation, no cell signal, no trace.

She set the radio to the 1950s station, drove at sixty-three miles per hour, and stayed in the slow lane except to pass and then only occasionally.

Along the way, she heard a couple of her father’s favorites. Otis Redding sang “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.”

The drive took two hours and twelve minutes.

When she arrived at Home Depot on Pooler Parkway outside Savannah, there were easily thirty cars in the lot. She parked in the farthest row and tucked her hair up under the plain brown ball cap she’d found in the back of Ava’s coat closet. An ugly thing, it had to be something she’d gotten as a giveaway. The hat had no visible logo, which made it perfect. She would leave it in a trash can on the ride home. She shrugged out of her coat and emerged from the car, wearing only her sweatshirt. The thin leather gloves covered her hands. It might have been a little strange, but she crossed her arms and pretended to be cold as she strode into Home Depot.

She walked with purpose, as though she knew exactly what she needed and where in the store to find it. Which she did not, but she wouldn’t risk being remembered for asking a question. Her first stop was the tools department. If that failed, flooring. If they weren’t there, she had two more Home Depots in the area. Failing that . . . 
no.
That wasn’t an option she would allow herself to consider.

When she had reached the middle aisle of the store, safe from view of the cashiers, she slowed down to read the signs. She passed power drills and a massive display of saws and found the knee pads on the bottom row beneath the electric sanders. She scanned the boxes, searching for Tough Freight X brand. Her pulse ricocheted unevenly in her throat.

“Can I help you find something?”

She jumped at the voice. She turned her head in the direction of the voice, careful to keep her chin down so that her face was hidden under the hat. “No, thanks.”

He moved closer, his feet only a couple of feet away in her peripheral vision. “If you’re in the market for a power sander, I think DeWALT is the best brand.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she said.

The crackling of his radio from his belt. “Customer service to flooring.”

“Have a good one,” he said and she watched his boots vanish around the aisle.

She turned back to the display and her eye caught the red
X
of the Tough Freight brand. She dropped to her knees and picked up the package, scanning for the style number. Flipped it over: 8020. She exhaled, closing her eyes. Held the box close. She’d found them.

Next she found a roll of plain gray duct tape.

On the way to the front of the store, she passed a display of blue latex gloves. As an afterthought, she picked up a box in medium.

Spencer was proud of his delicate hands. These would be useful.

As she approached the registers, she scanned the people working and veered toward the one farthest from the door, the youngest-looking cashier. Male. Early twenties. Someone who was not likely to pay her any attention. To him, she was another old woman. Perfect.

He barely looked up. “Sixty-seven ninety-eight.”

She handed him seventy dollars in cash, took her change, and, wearing her gloves, she took her sack and walked out the front door. As she went, she balled the receipt in her hand and dropped it in the trash can. Next she threw away the handwritten note with the brand and the three blank pages she’d taken off the notepad in the café.

She kept the hat pulled low as she crossed the lot to the rental car and got inside. She started the engine, checked the area around the car carefully, and backed out of her spot. She drove straight back toward Interstate 95.

Thirty miles out of Savannah, she stopped at a gas station, put twenty dollars’ worth in the car. Also paid in cash.

Then she drove to a strip mall that included a McDonald’s, a gym, a nail place, and a video rental store and scanned the parking lot until she found what she was looking for—a spot far enough from the buildings to avoid any surveillance cameras.

Parked, she unwrapped the duct tape and pulled several feet of tape from the roll, balling it up. She opened the box of rubber gloves and pulled out two pairs. These she pushed into the bottom of the Home Depot sack. She removed the knee pads from their packaging and put them in the plastic sack with the extra gloves and added the roll of duct tape.

She gathered the trash—the balled-up duct tape, the box of gloves, and the packaging from the knee pads—and dropped the bundle into a trash can on the curb between the McDonald’s and the gym. Glancing down, she saw the box of blue gloves was still visible, so she reached into the trash and lifted two discarded McDonald’s sacks and laid them on top so the items could no longer be seen.

With one final look around, she returned to the car and started the drive back. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

Plenty of time to get home for Frances Pinckney’s service.