20. Grayson
20
GRAYSON
I squinted at the couple on the other side of my desk, trying to follow the back-and-forth argument.
The man glared at the woman, not bothering to hide the anger in his tone. “Could you be any more of a nag? All you do is complain and whine about my job.” He frowned at me. “A job that pays for all the ridiculous hobbies Mandy has. Do you know how many there’s been in the last year alone?” He started ticking them off on his fingers. “First there was crocheting. Then there was painting. Tennis. Pickleball. Rug weaving. Oh, and let’s not forget when you made me recreate that scene in Ghost with the damn pottery wheel!”
She huffed out an irritated snort. “We were supposed to be trying to date each other! It was supposed to be romantic, but of course you complained about the feel of it, and how you didn’t like that it was cold and sloppy and staining your perfect fingernails.” She too turned to me. “And frankly, I wouldn’t need all the hobbies if he wasn’t sticking his dick in his receptionist instead of coming home at night.”
“Better he stick his dick in his receptionist than in the pottery wheel, I guess,” I mumbled, pretending to write something down on my notepad.
“What?” the woman snapped.
I made a show of checking my watch. “Sorry, you two. Our time is up for today. But this was good. We’re definitely opening up some old wounds that we can work on next week.”
“Clyde is better at opening up the old, withered legs of his receptionist than wounds if you ask me,” Mandy accused.
“Only because your old, withered legs are permanently closed!”
And that was about all I could stomach of them today. I herded them toward the door, reminding them to make another appointment with reception.
Fuck knows they needed it, though there was no doubt in my mind that no amount of counseling was going to help. They were headed straight for divorce court.
I closed the door to my office and slumped down in my chair. Listening to married people fight over the stupidest shit had not exactly been what I had in mind when I’d specialized in psychology. Though it paid the bills so I knew I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
At least that had been the last appointment of the evening.
I opened the email account I’d been neglecting all day and answered a couple of the most important queries, one from another doctor within the hospital needing to confirm a patient diagnosis. Another from a drug rep who wanted a meeting.
I skimmed over the rest of the emails, my finger hovering over the close box, when my gaze snagged on the name of one sender.
My heart rate picked up as I clicked on it and read the short, one-sentence message.
Another body was found last night.
I breathed out slowly and then deleted the message, checking it was removed from the trash folder too. I shut down the computer and gathered my keys and wallet from my desk drawer and locked the office behind me.
My offices were on the psych floor of the hospital but closest to the elevator, so private patients could attend their appointments without wandering their way through the entire floor full of rooms and beds for those here on longer stays. I said goodbye to my receptionist and then stuck my head down the hallway to call a goodbye to the nurses at their station.
I went through the motions, the same as I always did, but my thoughts were already across town.
In the morgue.
I hurried across the parking lot and into my car. Normally after work I would have hit the gym, or stopped somewhere for some food, or maybe even caught a movie. But tonight I drove straight to the ugly building with the “Saint View Morgue” sign attached to the chain-link fence.
I turned into the driveway and stopped my car alongside Ron’s but eyed the unfamiliar plain white van parked on the other side, along with the two cop cars parked by the door .
“Fuck,” I mumbled. Ron hadn’t said there’d be anyone else here tonight. Let alone that there were cops hanging around.
Two guys in biker jackets leaned on the outside wall, to the left of the entrance. One was younger, probably in his early twenties, skinny with light-colored hair. The other was almost the complete opposite. Tall and thick, his brown skin a complete contrast to his friend’s pale white. They both had cigarettes between their fingers, and they eyed my car with distrust.
The big guy dropped his smoke to the ground, stubbing it out with his boot and pushing off the wall to walk my way.
Clearly, I wasn’t going to just be sitting in the car waiting for them to leave like I’d hoped I might. I opened the door, pulling out my briefcase with me, even though I’d never bothered to bring that in with me before.
The door to the morgue opened at the same time though.
A third biker, a huge guy with a messy blond ponytail, escorted a tiny, dark-haired woman out of the building. He took one look at me and shouted back over his shoulder, “Hawk! Heads-up. We’ve got company,” before leveling me with a warning expression as he led his girl into the white van.
A fourth biker, Hawk presumably, followed out behind them with another woman, this one slightly taller and a hell of a lot curvier.
I sucked in a deep breath so fast and sharp it was clearly audible across the parking lot.
Hawk cast a glance my way and froze, twisting so the woman was protected behind him .
“Who the fuck are you?” he called out, voice deep and full of suspicion.
I held up my briefcase, desperately trying to see past him to get a better glimpse of the woman. “I’m a doctor. Fredderick Grayson.”
The man shook his head slightly, like he didn’t believe me. “You one of Josiah’s people?”
I frowned. “Who?”
He narrowed his eyes, but the woman peeked out from behind him.
My heart thundered.
It wasn’t her.
Of course it wasn’t.
But fuck, she looked so much like her I was having a hard time accepting it. Everything in me screamed to save her in the way I hadn’t been able to for a different woman years before.
“Back up, asshole.” The man in front of her let out a low growl.
I’d unconsciously walked several steps toward her, and Hawk clearly wasn’t happy about it.
I froze, reminded that although I’d done enough fighting in my time that I could probably take one of these guys head-to-head, three, or four if the guy in the van decided to join in, was a recipe for disaster.
I didn’t exactly fancy becoming a stiff in the morgue alongside the victim I’d come to see. If these guys were from an MC, there was every chance in the world they were carrying more than just a packet of gum in their back pockets.
I put my hands up in mock surrender and backed up. “Sorry. I don’t know any Josiahs. ”
“Kara?” He didn’t take his eyes off me. “You know this guy?”
She peeked around him again.
A wave of familiarity hit me once more. Fuck. Big brown doe eyes framed by dark lashes. They were red-rimmed, like she’d been crying, and everything inside me screamed to know why. To protect her from whatever it was that had hurt her.
But clearly I wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Her bodyguard blocked my view of her again, stepping in closer, a warning on his tongue marked by short, sharp words. “Don’t. Fucking. Look at her. Look at me.”
My fingers instinctively closed into fists, and my muscles tightened, preparing for a fight I knew I’d lose.
The man ran his gaze down my body, centering it on my closed fists. He let out a slow laugh. “Really, bro? You’re real fucking brave posturing like you want to throw that fist into my face. I’d like to see you try.”
The woman grabbed his arm. “Stop it! He’s not one of Josiah’s people.”
Hawk didn’t lower his gaze from mine for another ten or fifteen seconds, but eventually, he grinned, shook himself visibly, letting go of the tension in his body and stepping back, his hand holding the woman—Kara—behind him. “Let’s go, Little Mouse. You just saved this guy his teeth.”
He herded her toward the van, and the original two members who’d been guarding the door followed. They both shot me dirty looks when they passed.
I ignored them, watching Kara disappear into the dark interior of the van, my gaze clinging to hers until the very last second the shadows ate her up .
Leaving only Hawk to glare at me as he slammed the sliding door.
I stood there watching until the tires spun out on some loose gravel at the top of the drive before finding traction again.
“You okay, sir?” one of the cops asked me.
I hadn’t even seen them leave the building or been aware they’d been watching the altercation.
I forced a smile at him. “Sure.” I cleared my throat because I absolutely was not okay. Not even a little bit.
His partner eyed me. “The morgue is closed for the night.”
Ron called out from inside, the overhead lamps shining on his balding head. “It’s okay, Officers. We have a meeting. He can come inside.”
The officer nodded, and I passed him with a mumble of thanks.
Ron kicked out the stopper and closed the heavy glass doors, locking them from the inside. We both raised a hand in farewell, the officers climbing inside their cars.
Ron turned to me. “You’re early,” he accused, leaning one hand on the countertop like he needed it to hold him up.
I checked the cops had actually left the parking lot. “I came as soon as I finished work, like I always do. I didn’t know you’d have cops here. What did they say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, as usual. They’re being very tight-lipped about it all.”
“But you think it’s our guy?”
“No doubt in my mind. You want to see her?”
I nodded and followed him down the hallway .
Ron pointed at a door halfway along. “She’s still in the viewing room. That was the family.”
I glanced over at him with interest. “The men or the women?”
“Women. They were the victim’s sisters.”
That explained her tears. I swore low under my breath as we entered the viewing room. Ron flicked on the lights, and a sickly yellow glow washed over the sheet-covered victim on the table.
The dead girl was way too much like her sister for my comfort.
It took me a second to put my doctor’s hat on. This wasn’t my area of expertise, but I’d been through med school. I knew enough.
Ron was a talker and commentated on everything he knew while I studied the body without touching her.
“There are strangulation marks on her neck. Restraint marks around her wrists and ankles.”
“She’s dark-haired. Late teens or early twenties, I’m guessing. Just like the others,” I added.
Ron agreed.
“Where did they find her?” I asked.
“In a city dumpster. Some poor schmuck from a café found her when he was taking out the trash this morning.”
I shook my head, anger filling me. “Dumped her like she didn’t mean anything.”
“Cowardly,” Ron added with a sigh. “You should have heard the cries from her sisters. This girl was loved.”
I lifted the sheet and covered the dead girl’s face respectfully. “And in an instant someone just took it all away. ”
“I’ll never understand how someone can do it, you know?” Ron mused. “I mean, the dead bodies don’t bother me. I see them every day so it would be a bit of a problem if they did. But they’re already pale and lifeless when they come to me. I can’t imagine watching the color fade from their face or hearing them struggle for breath.” He grimaced. “That’s messed up.”
“I agree.” I didn’t know how a man could do it. How he could put a cord around a woman’s throat and pull while he stared her in the eye and watched the life drain out of her.
But I knew men who did.
“There’s a pattern developing.” I pulled out my phone and the magnetic stylus from the pocket of the case. With quick fingers, I scrawled notes across the screen, letting the phone turn my scrawls into text. “Do the cops even realize that?”
Ron shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I shook my head. “The other victims were sisters.”
Ron looked over at me slowly. “You think that’s a thing for this guy?”
My heart thundered, thinking about Kara.
Kara who was so much like this dead girl beneath the sheet.
Bile rose in my mouth at the thought of standing here next month, staring down at another lifeless face. This had to fucking stop.
Everything inside me revolted at the thought of this happening again.
It was only made worse by seeing Kara in the parking lot, and knowing this killer preyed on women who looked just like her.