Chapter 8
Dominique
How is the case?
Four simple words.
It would open a conversation. Break the ice.
Yet, I couldn’t type them because they would open a conversation and break the ice.
Cosette’s slack body lay sprawled against my chest. Her cupid’s bow mouth formed an O, parted lips glistening with saliva as she slept. A tangle of chestnut brown ringlets stuck to her sweaty forehead and cheeks. A growing puddle of drool dotted my shirt.
She’d been woken by a bad dream earlier, so I’d brought her into the living room to calm her down.
Admiring the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree usually worked, but not that time.
She’d cried for fifteen minutes straight before falling back to sleep, nestled against my heart.
It took another fifteen minutes for her hitching breaths to calm.
Semi-reclined and with my feet on the coffee table, I browsed files, no longer able to work properly with her weight pinning me down. I could have returned her to bed, but I wasn’t ready. Her comforting weight grounded me.
A stack of folders sat on the cushion to my left. To my right, the taunting cellphone, with Kobe’s number in the contact list, waiting for me to get brave.
How is the case?
That was all I needed to type, yet I couldn’t seem to do it. Part of it had to do with the child in my arms and the implications brought on by a conversation with the good-looking detective.
I hadn’t spoken to Kobe since late Wednesday evening.
He texted to update me on his interview with Fatemeh Kordestani and the discovery of an inheritance.
We’re looking into it, he’d said. He mentioned a will.
We chatted about ways to identify perfume, and I told him I might have a contact back in Quebec who could help.
We had quickly run out of things to say, and after too many awkward pauses, Kobe had signed off, claiming he needed to shower and sleep.
Since then, crickets.
Had I blown it?
Did I care?
It was my fault the conversation faltered. Apart from work-related topics, I struggled to know what to discuss. If I wanted to build anything with Kobe Haven, I needed to step up my game and stop being afraid.
I stared at the phone, then at Cosette, then at the open folder on my left.
An image of Navid Kordestani stared back at me.
Living, breathing Navid. The unsmiling photograph enhanced his grave features and corresponded with all Kobe had shared.
A real asshole, the detective had claimed. A heartless bastard.
Who was I to disagree?
The rest of the images in the file had been taken at the lab after his death.
Injuries and organs. I meticulously reviewed them, looking for oversights, before scanning the report I’d written almost a week ago.
I’d shared all I could with Kobe but was unable to shake the feeling that if I looked closer, I would see something I missed.
I set the folder aside and opened another, studying the living, breathing profile picture of another unlucky sod.
Cosette snorted and smacked her lips, turning her face against my chest and wiping more drool and snot onto my shirt. I pushed her hair off her face when it stuck to her lips. She was a hot sleeper, and two rosy circles burned high on her cheeks.
Careful not to wake her, I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. She smelled like bumbleberry shampoo, something she’d picked out during a shopping trip a few weeks ago.
“I should put you to bed and find my own, ma belle. It’s late.”
The following day was Sunday, and I dreaded what it entailed. You don’t have to do this anymore, my conscience whispered. You can stop. She won’t know. She’s long gone from the world.
But I’d promised. I’d fallen to my knees with a newborn baby in my arms and swore on her grave that I would not forget.
The drive to Cimetière Saint-Francois de Sales in Gatineau took twenty minutes. Perched in her booster seat, Cosette babbled nursery rhymes and sang songs as she looked out the window. Her self-selected bouquet of chrysanthemums rested on her lap. Yellow again. Always yellow.
If she could have chosen dandelions, she would have.
A light dusting of snow dotted the ground, barely enough to cover the brown winter grass in the field.
The frosted tips crunched with each step.
Cosette stomped, making a path of boot prints as she crossed the cemetery, weaving among headstones, and repeatedly glancing over her shoulder with a wide grin.
“Suis-moi, Papa.”
“I am following. Watch where you’re going.”
I carried her flowers that morning, since bulky mittens compromised her grasp. After dropping them twice and veering toward tantrum territory, I’d offered to help. At two and a half, Cosette rarely accepted assistance, but that morning, she relented.
The bare branches of the deciduous trees creaked and moaned as they bent and swayed in the breeze, but the sky was an endless stretch of blue.
No snow in the forecast. The holiday approached, and with it came festivities abound.
Skating on the river, markets, and parades.
Most people wished for a white Christmas, but I was content with scarce flurries. I didn’t need more.
Celebrating hurt. I did it for Cosette but would much rather have skipped Christmas altogether.
Our routine was the same as it was every Sunday morning.
Cosette arranged her flowers on the headstone, chatting and singing.
She traced the letters in her mother’s name, mixing up a few.
When she wandered to find treasures, I had a moment alone with Angelique.
Ordinarily, I use that private time to say what I needed to say, except that morning, I found myself devoid of words.
Kobe remained forefront in my mind. Speaking his name felt like a deception. I buried a hand in my pocket and clutched my phone, recalling our brief text exchange.
The conversation, drinks, and food we’d shared at the Apothecary all came back to me.
I couldn’t explain to Angelique what I was doing because I didn’t know. Guilt and fear consumed me.
Before Cosette tottered back with her treasures, I whispered, “I love you, Angel,” and “I’m so sorry.”
My thoughts were insidious, but I couldn’t stop them.
I closed my eyes and pictured Kobe. As he analyzed a crime scene. As he asked questions in the autopsy suite. As he smiled with dimples over a candlelit table, hope blossoming in his eyes. The press of his leg against mine. The sound of his voice as he shared stories about his little brother.
My phone rang, shattering the images, and I startled.
Cosette was several rows away, stomping snow paths again and singing as she brushed the white dust from the headstones along her journey.
My heart thundered as I pulled out my phone, half wishing I would find Kobe’s number on the screen but knowing I was wrong.
Work.
A combination of relief and trepidation filled me as I answered the call.
It took longer than I expected to snag a last-minute babysitter, so I arrived late at the Sandy Hill Outdoor Rink. Several police cars lined the surrounding streets, their lights flashing and painting the nearby trees and buildings crimson and blue.
A crime scene investigator tied one end of bright yellow caution tape to a tree as I approached the park. She waved with a smile. I didn’t recognize her, but she clearly knew me.
“Good morning, Doctor. You’ll be happy to know I’ve managed to keep the pesky detectives away from your crime scene. They’re not happy, but they know the rules. I have two colleagues photographing the area. Otherwise, we just got started.”
“Thank you. I didn’t catch your name.”
The woman offered her hand. “Erin Nevermore.”
“Thank you, Erin.”
I found the officer responsible for the sign-in procedure.
As I collected protective gear and ducked under the tape, I surreptitiously scanned to see who was present.
A few members of the CSI team were familiar.
The constables dealing with crowd control were not, but it was the detectives I was most interested in finding.
Had the PD sent detectives? I’d been told on the phone that it was definitely a homicide, so I assume they had been dispatched.
Erin had mentioned them. Where were they?
Then I saw him. The cold day no longer touched me as my heart skipped.
I didn’t like the way I continued to react to the young detective.
No, the not-as-young-as-I-thought detective.
Kobe was older, more mature—despite his playful edge—and incredibly intelligent.
He sponsored an underprivileged boy and coached baseball in his free time.
He smiled with dimples and ventured to underground jazz clubs.
Kobe stood beneath a nearby tree on the other side of the police tape, bouncing on his toes and hugging a takeout coffee between his palms. An OPD beanie sat low on his brow, covering his ears and the mop of unruly brown hair I’d admired. His partner paced nearby, talking on the phone.
Rue Hayashi noticed me first. I earned a not-so-subtle once-over before she smacked Kobe’s arm and pointed in my direction.
The moment Kobe spotted me, the boyish grin I remembered all too well appeared, carving brackets into his cheeks. It was that smile and the look in his eyes that was the cause of my initial assumption about his age.
Leaving his partner to her phone call, Kobe abandoned his coffee in a nearby bin and closed the distance with a hop in his step. The officer guarding the crime scene halted him with a hand to the chest and only let him through after earning a thumbs-up from me.
Kobe logged his badge number and fit covers over his winter boots before tugging on a pair of nitrile gloves.
As he approached, the shy countenance I’d witnessed the previous week returned.
The poor guy had no idea how to act around me, and I could hardly blame him since I’d been wishy-washy about his advances.