Chapter 22
MINKA
Raquel
Boss, I’m not saying you hurt my feelings or anything, but I waited for you on Tuesday because you wanted me to pull your blood.
You stood me up.
Then you said you’d come find me yesterday. That didn’t happen either.
Now it’s Thursday, so…
Guilt pulses in my chest due to my poor communication skills, but I lock my phone without replying and study the shiny steel elevator doors in the George Stanley lobby.
I loiter by the front desk and wait for Sylvia’s arrival.
But while I’m here, I can’t not see the horde of media crews battling each other for space on the sidewalk outside.
They shout their questions and point their cameras this way.
Harrison stands guard by the revolving glass doors, mercifully inside the cool air and out of the burning sun.
He looks ready to go to war, to drop bombs on heads and destroy expensive cameras if a single reporter takes even a single step wrong.
Fortunately, he won’t have to. Because, although the George Stanley is a city-owned building, it’s not a publicly accessible space, which means reporters don’t get to come in without being slapped with trespassing charges.
“They’re really excited about the Gloria Donohue stuff, huh?” Exhaling a tired sigh, I push away from the front desk and wander forward, stopping on Harrison’s left. “They really want me to go out there and make a statement about that case in New York.”
“I strongly suggest you don’t.” He doesn’t wrap his hand around my arm, but I catch the flex of his fingers. The readiness, just in case. “They keep citing the Freedom of Information Act, but that doesn’t mean they can demand a statement from you, Chief Mayet.”
“I have no plans to go out there.” I look straight down the barrel of a camera pointed this way and know, despite the tinted glass fronting this building, they’re probably getting something.
Grainy, maybe. Dark. But something. So I turn on my heels and give them nothing.
“Do they approach you when I’m not with you, Mr. Harrison? ”
He casts a wary glance toward the revolving doors, then he spins and follows me toward the unmanned front desk, where Sophia’s crew removed the old computer and plopped a new one down, but haven’t even peeled the plastic off the side.
“They approached me once.” He stops in front of me and uses his broad body to keep me off the news.
“Just one time. And then they realized their cameras mysteriously stopped working, their recorders somehow went on the fritz, and they didn’t have proof of the promises I’d made to disembowel them if they came near me again. ”
Piqued, I bring my eyes up to his.
“My threats were quite graphic and could’ve gotten me in trouble with a judge. It sure is too bad their method of proving such an incident occurred malfunctioned when they needed it most.”
“Shame.” Snickering, I peer across as the numbers above the elevator illuminate and make their way down.
From five to four. To three. To two. It blows past one and stops in the underground parking garage.
“Looks like my next meeting has arrived.” I step away from the desk and cross the sparkling lobby floor, then I tap the call button so that on her way up, Sylvia Ryan will stop here, and I can join her.
While I wait, I glance over my shoulder and watch my guard’s beady stare burn the dozens of people outside. “Mr. Harrison?”
He peels his eyes from the windows and brings them across to me. “Yes, Chief?”
“Has my husband asked you to keep notes on my health today?”
Confused, his brows wing high. “Chief?”
“Water intake. Coloring in my cheeks. If I look weak, or sick, or stressed, or like I might be bleeding in a way I shouldn’t. Has he asked you to ask me how I feel every twenty minutes?”
A gentle smile crosses his lips, but he drops his gaze and shakes his head. “No, Chief. He hasn’t. But, uh…” He brings his eyes up again. “How are you feeling?”
I cough out a fast snicker, but as the elevator dings its arrival, I school my features and refuse to show a grieving woman my smile.
“I’m well, thank you, Mr. Harrison.” Turning to the thick steel doors, I wait as they open and meet the red-rimmed, dangerously puffy gaze of a woman whose entire world was stolen from her this week.
“Sylvia Ryan?” I step into the elevator and select the second floor.
“I’m Chief Mayet. I’ll take you to your daughter. ”
Weak, she swipes her nose with a handful of tissues fisted in her hand. “Thank you.”
I tip my chin in farewell to Harrison, and as the doors close, I study the woman’s reflection in the shiny exterior.
“You look a lot like her, you know?”
She weeps.
“Or, well… she looks a lot like you.”
“Did she suffer, Chief Mayet?” She chokes down a pained sob and wipes her eyes, then, as we stop on the second floor and I gesture her ahead, she stumbles across the threshold on shaking legs. “You can tell, right? You’d know if she was in pain before she… before…”
I lead her straight past the desk we would normally log in at, since Preston Danes sits there and fusses with the computer. Instead, I merely tap the heavy glass door and wait a single second before Aubree draws it open.
“This is Doctor Emeri.” I coax the woman through and follow her into the room filled with individual cubbies assigned to each new DB for the duration of their stay.
Some only stay for a couple of days. Some, for a couple of weeks.
In one case, we have a body that’s been here for seven years already.
A case the former Chief M.E. couldn’t solve, or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered.
Josey’s cubby is already open, her body lying out on a steel stretcher with a white sheet pulled all the way to her chin.
“Please answer me.” Trembling all over, Sylvia turns to me with fat tears tracking over her cheeks. “Please tell me if she was in pain.”
“She wasn’t,” I answer gently. Truthfully. “Her death was very quick, Ms. Ryan. Her wound was clean and smooth, and would’ve resulted in a fast loss of consciousness. I honestly doubt she even felt it when it happened. I believe she simply…” I shrug. “Went to sleep.”
“Like when she was a little girl.” Her chest and shoulders bounce with her grief.
Stepping forward, Aubree does what she does best: brings comfort to those left behind, while I consider myself the bringer of comfort for those who no longer live.
She wraps her arms around the woman and hugs her tight.
“Josey was afraid of the dark all the way up until she was fourteen years old,” she cries.
“I worked so damn hard to keep a roof over our heads, and most importantly, to make sure we always had a home with two bedrooms. I felt like not having those two bedrooms would make me a bad mom.” She brings her soaked eyes up to mine.
“She didn’t even sleep in her own room until she was a teenager, but I made sure there was always a second room waiting for her anyway.
” Weak, broken, shaking, she brings her hand up.
“The dark scared her, so she’d lie beside me every single night, and I’d help her get to sleep by stroking her nose. ”
“You were a good mom,” Aubree croons. “Not everyone gets one of those, but Josey did. She got to feel safe, even in the dark, because she always had you to depend on.”
“Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children,” she whimpers. “That’s not how life is supposed to be.”
“No. It’s not.” I steel my spine and inch a fraction to the left. “Would you like to visit with her?”
Watery eyes shoot across the room.
“You can hold her hand,” I explain. “You can stroke her nose.”
“Is she…” She stumbles closer to her daughter on shaking legs. “Her neck…?”
“You can look if you want to.” I step ahead to Josey’s tray and stop on the opposite side, so when we all meet up again, I’m close enough to grab the sheet and allow the devastated mom a second longer to really think this through.
“By law, you have that right. But you can’t touch anywhere except her hand or her face. ”
“You’re entitled to look,” Aubree repeats softly. “But looking is a little like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Once you’ve done it, you can’t put the paste back.”
“Y-you don’t think I should?” She gulps. “Is it really bad?”
It’s actually one of the cleanest, least traumatic death injuries around.
But still… “Looking only hurts you, Ms. Ryan. It serves no purpose but to assuage a little curiosity, and right now, you’re not emotionally capable of making such a decision and processing the consequences that will come of it.
You can look,” I lower my chin. “But I don’t think you should.
It’s an image that will stay with you for the rest of your life. ”
“The rest of my life…” Sobbing, she lowers into a crouch and hugs Josey’s hand between both of hers.
She hardly even notices the way Aubree spins and grabs a rolling stool, or how she slides it beneath her backside so the woman doesn’t simply melt to the floor.
“The rest of my life seems like a really long time,” she weeps. “If I don’t have my baby…”
Like someone shouted her name, Aubree’s eyes swing across the room and stop on the door. A mere second later, a gentle knock announces our visitors.
Showoff.
I cross the refrigerated room on fast, silent feet, and inching the door open, I reveal Archer closest of all, then a half-dozen steps behind him, Detective Banks.
“Hey.” I drag the door wide and say nothing about the gentle brush of Archer’s fingers against my hip as he passes.
When Drake crosses the threshold, I nod.
While Sylvia’s cries echo from wall to wall, her grief pouring through the doorway so even Preston glances up from his work, I lower my chin in acknowledgment, then I close him out and trap her pain in here with us.
Finally, I turn to stand between the detectives.
“She arrived only a few minutes ago. She hasn’t said anything yet that I think bears documenting. ”