Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (33 page)

Glassy-eyed and panting, Spencer filled the closet doorway. “You should have stayed, Bella,” he growled.

“Never.” She grabbed the antique marble-top bedside table that had been hers. She tilted the table, dumping the light onto the floor.

The bulb exploded.

The table was bulky, awkward to lift, but she heaved it into the air. Clutched the top to her chest, the legs aimed at the glass door.

“No!” he shouted.

She closed her eyes and charged through the door. Glass exploded, raining down small, tempered bits. She crashed onto the porch, fell across the table, landed hard on her hip. Scrambled up. Fighting to draw breath, she ran into the street.

“Call nine-one-one!” she screamed. “Someone call nine-one-one.” Her cries were answered by the wail of sirens.

Two squad cars screeched to a stop in front of her, their lights swinging through the night air. She bent down, holding her stomach with both arms and fought not to cry.

44

Greenville, South Carolina

Schwartzman pressed the back of her hand to her bleeding lip. She didn’t take her eyes off Spencer’s house.

He was inside.

A third car tore up to the curb, and Harper Leighton jumped out. “You guys make sure MacDonald doesn’t go anywhere,” she shouted to patrol.

The officers started for Spencer’s door.

Then Harper was beside her. “Are you okay?” the detective asked.

“How in the world are you here?” Schwartzman responded.

“I called in a favor from a friend down here. He works for a local security firm. I asked him to do a drive-by for your car.” Harper motioned to Schwartzman’s face. “He hit you?”

Schwartzman touched her lip, saw blood on her fingers. “A few times.” She wiped it on her pants, looked back at the detective, who still wore the dress from Frances Pinckney’s service. “I’ve only been here twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. It’s a three-hour drive from Charleston.”

“I had a hunch you were coming here.”

“So you drove three hours?” Schwartzman asked. Was she worried that Schwartzman had planned to kill Spencer? Or was she worried that Spencer might hurt her? It didn’t matter. Either way, that was going way beyond the job. Schwartzman felt a deep surge of gratitude. Instead of facing a group of strangers, she had an ally.

“There was something about the way you were at the Pinckneys’ house.” The detective paused. “That and Hal Harris wouldn’t stop calling me.” Harper nodded to the house. “MacDonald inside?”

“Yes,” Schwartzman said, shuddering at the memory. “He recorded me in Ava’s garage. Not the attack itself, but he’s got video of me in the garage. Can we use that?”

“Yes. Proves he was there.”

Unless he has another explanation.
Which he would. Spencer would have a story about how he’d found her there. He had admitted to her that he had killed Ava. No one would ever hear it, but she had. She knew.

Let him try to explain the evidence she had planted.

Tightness in her gut. Planted evidence.

She didn’t make him kill.

She flinched at something touching her.

“You’re shaking,” Harper said, wrapping a jacket across Schwartzman’s shoulders. Harper waved to a man in a suit. “Tom.”

“Harper,” he said, raising his hand to her. “Long time.”

“This is Annabelle Schwartzman,” Harper said when the man joined them. She turned to Schwartzman. “This is Tom Overby. He’s a detective with the Greenville PD.”

Overby motioned to the house. “You want to tell me what happened in there?” he asked Schwartzman.

Schwartzman drew a shaky breath. She wanted to leave, to be as far from here as possible.
Soon,
she told herself. “Spencer was—is my husband. We’ve been separated for seven years. He killed my aunt Ava and another woman in Charleston. And I’m pretty sure he was involved in a death in San Francisco. The lead detective out there is Hal Harris.”

Overby nodded to Harper. “Detective Leighton caught me up on the theory.”

Schwartzman was keenly aware of the intensity of Harper’s gaze. She kept her eye on the Greenville detective. A man she didn’t know. Would never know. “I wanted him to tell me he did it. I wanted to hear him say he killed them. And I thought there was a chance that I could find some piece of evidence to link him to their murders.”

“So you decided to drive up to Greenville from Charleston and show up at his house?” Overby flipped open his notepad. “This man you suspect murdered your aunt and two other women?”

Schwartzman risked a glance at Harper. “We’re burying Ava tomorrow.” She looked back at Overby. “Ava is my aunt. I had to try. We know how she died, but I thought maybe I could discover something more, something I could tie back to evidence on her body. Some evidence to prove it was Spencer. Before we buried her, I had to know I hadn’t missed something.”

Schwartzman felt the fear settle lower in her chest. She could do this. There was no doubt between her and God that Spencer was a murderer. That he’d killed them. All she was doing was making the justice happen.

“And did he confess?” Overby asked.

“Would it make a difference?”

“Not unless it’s recorded,” Overby said.

She shook her head. It was not recorded. “He has video footage of me in the garage of my aunt’s home, where I was attacked.”

“He showed you this film?” Overby asked.

She cleared her throat, pushed past the sound of the baby’s beating heart. “Yes.”

The detective looked at the house. “We need probable cause to go in.”

“Look at my face,” Schwartzman says. “He hit me. He was holding me against my will. I had to throw a table through the sliding glass door to get out,” she said, hearing her voice rise. “And he used a stun gun.” She pulled up her shirtsleeve to show him the mark. Two small red burns. She ran her finger over them, grateful for their presence. They would probably scar. She would have a lot of scars. She took a deep breath. “He locked the bedroom door from the inside. He’s added this area by the closet—it’s like a kind of prison.” And there the fear rose again, into her throat.

Overby nodded. To Harper, he said, “It’s enough to hold him for a few hours, take a look around the house. But I don’t know how much more—”

“It’s enough,” Harper said as though she knew what was inside. Could she know? Schwartzman glanced at the detective. She had faith.

Schwartzman had lost that. Overby instructed one of the patrol officers to go in for Spencer. “Tell him he’s being held on assault and battery and unlawful imprisonment. And read him his rights.”

Schwartzman watched the officer walk to Spencer’s door.

“Will you excuse us for a minute?” Overby asked Schwartzman as he pulled Harper to the side.

Schwartzman watched the backs of the two detectives, wished she could hear them. Overby motioned to the house, to the street. Was he changing his mind?

Would they let Spencer go?

“I’ll have your badges for this!” Spencer’s voice.

Schwartzman jumped at the sound.

“This is private property. She’s the one you should arrest. Her! Right there!”

Schwartzman wanted to look away. She forced herself to look at him, to watch as the officers led him to the patrol car. His eyes narrowed on her, but they weren’t frightening. She held her chin up, her eyes steady.

I’m not afraid of you. Not anymore.

The officer opened the door to the patrol car, put his hand on Spencer’s head as he was lowered into the car. The door closed behind him. Schwartzman watched every second of it.

Harper returned to Schwartzman, put an arm around her shoulders. “The paramedics are here, Detective Overby. If there’s nothing else you need, I’d like to get her checked out.”

“Go ahead,” Overby said. “I’ll call out the Crime Scene Unit, and we’ll see what we can find.”

Harper led Schwartzman away from the detective. They made a loop around to avoid walking by the patrol car where Spencer sat shouting. Schwartzman wanted to ask what the detective had said. At the same time, she didn’t want to know.

“You should have told me you were coming,” Harper said.

“I know. I wanted to see if I could find anything. I—” She stopped. She wanted to curl into a ball. It was almost over. Wasn’t it? She stood straight and wiped her hands across her pants. She turned to Harper, who waited patiently. “How did you get the police to come? I tried to call them from inside the house, but he had a jammer. The calls never went through.”

“I got nervous,” Harper admitted, then lowered her voice. “In the end, I told them that you had called me for help. That was enough to get them over here.”

“I was . . . h
e has this room—” Schwartzman felt the throbbing pulse of her baby’s heart. The sobs just broke free, and she struggled to contain them in her belly and chest, to hold them back.

Harper wrapped her arms around Schwartzman and led her past the ambulance, out of view of the patrol car.

“He told me,” Schwartzman said. “He told me that he killed them—that he had to because I wouldn’t come back to him.”

Harper exhaled and pulled her into a hug. Schwartzman didn’t fight. She rested her head on the detective’s shoulder and let the tears come. “We’re going to get him,” Harper said. “We are.”

Schwartzman didn’t answer. What more could she say?

As the tears slowed, Harper moved her ever so gently to the ambulance. A paramedic helped her sit on the wide bumper. The adrenaline fading, she began to shiver in earnest. A second paramedic wrapped a blanket over her shoulders while the first started to clean up her lip. They put ointment on the burn from the stun gun. “You’ve got a nasty bruise up here, too,” he said, grazing her temple.

She flinched at the pain. Was that where he’d hit her? Or where she struck the wall? It all ran together.
It’s over,
she told herself. Pressed her eyes closed to let that sink in.

“We’re going to want to photograph those injuries,” Harper told them. She touched Schwartzman’s arm. “Hang tight while we get someone to do that.”

Schwartzman wondered if the police would find the other evidence linking Spencer to the crimes—the knee pads, Ava’s hair, the fur from Pinckney’s dog. The film from Ava’s garage connected him to her attack but not necessarily to the murders. She wasn’t counting on it, but it would be nice if he’d slipped up somewhere along the way.

But he
had
slipped up.

He had slipped up by thinking he could get away with murder, that he was somehow above the rules.

“I’m not going to bandage anything until we get those photos,” the paramedic said. “Can you hold on awhile?”

Schwartzman nodded. The paramedic joined his colleague and the two began packing up their supplies. Her jacket and phone were still inside. The glove was in the jacket pocket. She had to go back. She looked back at the house, hesitating. It was just a house. The paramedics were talking as she slid the blanket off her shoulders and walked toward the house. Head back, shoulders up, a last good-bye.

She would never come here again.

She hesitated at the porch. Glass strewn across the concrete pad, sprinkled over the lawn furniture, the chaise lounge where she used to sometimes sit and read while Spencer was at work.

An escape to all of this.

The patrol officers had Spencer outside. The crime scene team had yet to arrive. Without being seen, Schwartzman stepped back through the broken glass door and across the carpet in the bedroom. Saw the picture of them as newlyweds on the bureau.

She reached out to touch the marble edge where she’d lost her baby. Held her hand back. Pressed it instead to her belly. Felt the grief tug at her spine.

She flipped on the light and banished the shadows from the room. It was still yellow.

She would always hate yellow.

The brightly lit closet was just a closet again. He’d kept her clothes to make it look whole. It was too empty, half lived in. She picked up her jacket, checked that the glove was still in the pocket, then bent down to look for her phone. Pushed aside the long dresses that had been hers in another life. Dust floated into the air as they swayed. She found her phone and glanced in the direction of the prison Spencer had built for her. Fought not to turn away.
It’s just a room.

She forced herself to step across the threshold, found the light switch, and turned it on. Three white walls, blank. Sad-looking without the terrifying projections. One wall was painted dark gray. A twin-size bed stood along the gray wall. The bed linens in lighter grays and whites. A small black bookcase, lined with books. She didn’t look closely enough to tell which ones. The throw rug. A well-appointed prison. What would the crime scene team make of this?

Closing her eyes, she could hear the baby’s heartbeat. It would always be there. She let out her breath, released everything she could from the room, and turned away again. Back down the hall, through the bedroom, out through the broken glass door.

Lying on its side was her bedside table. The marble was cracked, and one piece had rolled into the grass. One of the legs was in two pieces. The drawer had fallen free, and its contents were scattered. Pens and a familiar notepad, one she’d kept by the bed. A bottle of Advil. Probably also hers from all those years ago.

He had tried to preserve her in these things.

Failed.

As she moved past, she spotted something on the bottom side of the drawer. Clear and silver, it might have been a sticker of some sort. She used her toe to turn the drawer upside down, leaned in.

“Anna,” Harper called.

“I’m here,” she responded as Harper came into view.

“What are you doing?” the detective asked.

Schwartzman pointed at the bottom of the bedside table. “Look.”

Harper crouched beside her. “What is it?”

A small bag was taped to the bottom of the wooden drawer. Through the clear plastic Schwartzman could see a thin silver chain with a pendant. “It’s a turtle,” she said, her whole chest welling with the words. “A sea turtle.”

“You recognize it?” Harper asked.

Schwartzman’s eyes filled with tears. “Ava.”

Harper stood and called out, “Overby!” She put her hand out to Schwartzman. “Don’t touch it. I want to preserve any prints.” Harper’s phone rang on her belt.

Schwartzman took a last look at the necklace. Of course it would be the turtle. She had shared that story with Spencer—she and Ava and their matching sea turtles. She stood and turned toward the street, ready to leave this place behind her. To leave Spencer behind her.

“She’s right here,” Harper said, handing the phone to Schwartzman. “It’s Hal,” she added. “He’s been a little worried.”

Schwartzman took the phone and brought it to her ear as she walked toward the street. “Hi, Hal.”

There was an audible breath. “You scared the crap out of me, Schwartzman.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I’m sorry.”

His voice dropped. “You’re okay?”

“Now I am.” She saw Spencer in the back of the patrol car. His face red, his mouth moving though she couldn’t hear him anymore. “Actually I’m better than okay, I think.”