Chapter 16 Abi
ABI
Olivia Pearce is still waiting for me the next morning.
I drag her out of the refrigeration unit and pull back the plastic I covered her with, trying to hide the mess of her body. Then I wait for the panic and nausea to hit.
It doesn’t come.
I transfer her to the autopsy table and go about the ritual of setting up my supplies, moving by rote.
I’m exhausted. After my shower last night, I sat on my bed, listening for some proof that my killer was downstairs, that he was still in the house at all.
But it was unnervingly quiet, and I eventually went downstairs even though he told me not to.
The body was gone.
The foyer was clean.
The only evidence that anything had happened at all was the front door, with its shattered window and broken hinge. And even that, he had fixed into place rather than leaving everything open to the warm night.
After that, I took an overdose of melatonin that sent me to a dark, dreamless oblivion for exactly four hours.
I shuddered awake this morning, my whole body vibrating, and found more texts from Chloe and Penelope on our group chat, most of them dumb memes.
My two best friends both believed the lie I told them, a thought that makes guilt knot in my chest.
Now, I’m here. At work. Olivia Pearce is still dead, but so is the man who mutilated her body. Who raped her and killed her.
I feel nothing for him. No guilt for my involvement in his death. Only a sick, coiling uneasiness that said death will be traced back to me, and I’ll be punished for it.
And yet, when I start the recording on my laptop and begin my visual report, I don’t get overwhelmed.
I describe the wounds, as awful as they are, with a calm, clinical detachment.
My voice doesn’t shake when I give the probable cause of death, and when I pick up my scalpel to begin the internal evaluation, I’m able to make the cuts as easily as if this were the body of a stranger.
I tell myself I don’t know what changed, but of course that’s a lie. I can do this because I saw the face of her killer, and I know he got what he deserved. Honestly, he got better than he deserved.
It takes me two hours to complete Olivia’s autopsy, to take her body apart like a doll and examine the inside of her.
I feel numb to the whole process, the way I do when I’m examining someone I don’t know.
And while I do a thorough job, I don’t have the weight of expectation on me to find that key piece of evidence that will lead to the killer’s identity.
Because he already confessed to me.
And now he’s dead.
I don’t find anything anyway. No semen, no loose hairs, no clothing fibers. And as I sew her back together, I realize I’m grateful for what happened last night.
Grateful that my killer was here to save my life, and avenge hers.
When I’m finished, I clean up and head into my office to prepare my report. The light on my office phone is blinking, though. A message.
For the first time since I woke up, anxiety tightens through me.
I play the message over the speaker phone, my eyes fixed on the map behind my desk. Seven red pins marked with letters.
“Hey Abi, this is Lorraine from the Sheriff’s Department. We’re sending a body your way. John Doe. Looks like someone slipped and fell while they were drinking over on Pier Fourteen.”
Relief flushes through me. A run-of-the-mill death, then. We usually get a couple of these a year.
Lorraine gives me the rest of the details, telling me the body should arrive around 11 A.M. When I check my clock, I see that’s in fifteen minutes.
I start typing up my findings about Olivia Pearce, my emotions numb the whole time. I’m only about halfway through when the bell chimes, letting me know someone’s at the back entrance.
I move to close up the report but get stalled, staring at it until the words blur together on the screen.
I wish there were some way I could tell Olivia’s husband that her killer paid for what he did.
I’d like to tell Ms. Staunton, too. Because I know, for the rest of their lives, Olivia’s unsolved death will be a wound that never gets to heal.
That’s my biggest regret about last night, I realize.
The bell chimes again, jarring me out of my thoughts.
I push away from my desk and make my way to the back entrance, where I slam my palm against the button to make the door roll up.
It creaks on its chains, letting in the sweltering, humid sunlight and revealing Hector piece by piece.
He’s leaning up against the refrigerated truck, squinting at me.
“Wasn’t sure you were here,” he says.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just finishing up that—“ My voice wavers, and I swallow it down. “That murder from yesterday morning.”
“Jesus.” Hector shakes his head. “Bad fucking business. You find anything?”
I smile thinly at him. “You know I can’t answer that.”
He laughs, lifts his hands. “You’re right, you’re right.
Just not used to that kind of shit around here.
” He unlocks the back of the truck, pulls out the stretcher.
“Good news, though. This one’s not bad. Probably an accident, but the cops wanted to be sure.
You know. After—” He tilts his head sideways. Toward downtown Rosado, I guess.
“They were found on Pier Fourteen?” I’m changing the subject because I don’t want to hear anything more about Olivia Pearce.
“Yep. Usual story.” Hector drags out the stretcher and drops it on the cement driveway with a clank. The body bag jostles a little on the frame. “Poor guy drank too much, fell, broke his neck on the rocks. Seems open and closed to me.”
As soon as Hector says broke his neck, my whole body goes rigid. Despite the sweltering heat and glaring sun, goosebumps rise on my arms.
“Broke his neck?” I ask lightly. “Didn’t drown?”
Hector grins at me. “Well, I mean, that’s really for you to figure out, isn’t it? But yeah, guy’s neck is broken for sure. You ready for him?”
I nod and step aside so Hector can roll the body into the hallway. I trail behind him, my heart pounding.
Think of it as a test, Abilene.
And suddenly, I realize what my killer meant when he said that.
In my haze, I had just assumed he was going to get rid of the body completely.
Dismember it, weigh it down, throw it in the ocean.
Because surely someone like him, someone who has killed so many times, knows that it’s better for a body to disappear than to be found.
But no. I see it now. He’s roping me in. Making me participate in our shared cover-up.
I swallow down a surge of bile as I follow Hector into the autopsy room. He looks over at me expectantly.
“On the examining table there.” I manage to keep my voice calm as he does the transfer. Manage to keep my hands steady when I sign off that the delivery’s complete on his tablet.
“Good luck,” he says. “See you around, Abi.”
I nod, force myself to smile. My heart feels like it’s going to explode, it’s beating so fast.
I suddenly wish I had some way of contacting him, my killer. It’s not fair that he knows who I am, but I don’t know who he is.
As if fairness has anything to do with this.
I stand in the doorway of the autopsy room and wait until I hear the entrance door slide and lock back into place, until I know Hector is gone for good. Then I close the examination door behind me and stare at the body bag on my counter.
It won’t be him, I think, walking over to it with slow, trembling steps. It will be someone else.
I draw the zipper down, my breath tight in my throat. Just enough to see the face.
I gasp and jerk my hand away, my adrenaline spiking. Because of course it’s him. Olivia’s killer.
I suck down a deep breath of air and force myself to pull the zipper down further. There’s no sign of the stocking that my killer shoved into his mouth, and his shirt and gloves are gone, too. Still wearing his black black trousers, which are wet and heavy from the saltwater. No shoes.
I play back what Hector told me, that the victim had been drinking.
How did he know that? There must have been evidence at the scene.
Liquor bottles or some such. I’m sure there’s a report waiting in my email, and if not, I can ask for it.
But I don’t move. I just stare down at the body of Olivia’s murderer, nothing but cold meat in a half-open body bag.
This feels like a challenge, like my killer is drawing me deeper and deeper into his world. A challenge, or an invitation.
I snap on my gloves and work the body bag away from the corpse, my thoughts tumbling over each other. It’s standard, in cases like this, to order a tox report. But I already know that it won’t show the level of intoxication they’re expecting.
He wants me to fake it, I think with a sudden, violent jolt. That’s the test.
I drag the body bag away and let it float down to the floor.
Then my eyes settle on the ID tag dangling from the corpse’s toe.
I pick it up, flip it over. John Doe. Of course, Lorraine mentioned that in her message, didn’t she?
I usually run the John Does through the database to see if I can find a match.
And suddenly, my killer’s test feels more like a gift. A chance to find out who the hell murdered Olivia Pearce.
I stumble backward, feeling dizzy. The corpse of my attacker lies unmoving on the table, his head still twisted sideways, his body bloated and pale from being in the water overnight.
A gift, I think numbly. What if this is supposed to be a gift?
What exactly does that say about me?
I curl my hands up, my skin already sweating beneath my medical gloves. I should not be as okay with this as I am. I should be horrified, actually. I should turn myself in, tell the police everything. It’s not like I killed him, and even if I did, it would have been self-defense.
It was self-defense with Blake Fletcher, too, and plenty of people didn’t give a shit about that. Include Sheriff Kaplan.
The body lies there, waiting for me. Fingerprints. That would be the first step to finding out who he is. See if he’s in the system. Dental work comes next. He doesn’t have any tattoos that I can see. No other obvious distinguishing marks.
And somehow, I get to work.