9. Look at Me
Look at Me
Vedder
“I’m sorry!” She teetered on the edge. If I didn’t grab her, hold her, embrace her, she would fall. “I’m sorry.”
“Baby, you have to look at me.” I reached out, stopping short of clamping my hands on her shoulders. “Come on…”
Come on, sweetheart, look at me.
“Don’t call me that!” she wailed.
Call her what? I rewound what I’d said. She didn’t like to be called Baby? Okay.
My cheek stung, but it was fine. I needed her to look at me. I needed her to come back from whatever haunted nightmare she’d plunged into.
“Ma’am, we need you to confirm that’s Luke Gray.”
I was glad this medical examiner worked with the dead, because the woman had no sympathy for the living.
She whimpered again, tears streaming down her smooth cheeks.
“Melody, look at me, please,” I barked, panic seeping through my voice, desperate to get her back.
Her eyes widened as she collapsed into my arms, nose sniveling into my chest and soaking my flannel with snot and tears. Her fingernails dug into my shirt, pulling me into her as she clung on.
“Ma’am, we need you to—”
“Can you give her a minute?” I snapped at the examiner, glaring at her from over Melody’s head as I rested my chin on her crown and wrapped her up in my arms. “She just needs a second!”
The woman rolled her eyes and picked at her nails. Again, I thanked the gods that she only worked with the dead.
“Melody,” I whispered into her hair. Once she gave an answer, we could get the fuck out of here. “Sweetheart, you’ve gotta tell us if that’s him. Can you do that for me?”
I ran my hand up and down her back, feeling her trembling frame through both my jacket and her thick, buffalo plaid shirt.
“Melody?” I wanted to call her darling, baby, sweetheart, lover…but I couldn’t. Not until I knew what had set her off.
She shivered in my arms, so I held her tighter. Willed my blood to flow faster so I could keep us both warm, rocking her back and forth as she cried.
“It’s him,” she whispered.
“Great!” exclaimed the examiner, looking annoyed from the display of normal human emotions at the sight of death. She covered him up and shut the drawer with a definitive clang that would have been off-putting to most. “You know your way out?”
She left without waiting for an answer, as if absolutely irritated by the unfortunate display of grief.
Was it grief, though?
No. It was fear. She was terrified of him. Like she was afraid the guy was going to wake up from death and attack her. Maybe she was religious—or belonged to whatever kind of spirituality believed in ghosts and zombies? No, I’d never had that impression of her.
My layman’s opinion, and my own experience, pointed to one thing.
PTSD.
Which meant it was not the time to get giddy at the fact she trusted me enough to run into my arms. I placed the tender, recently smacked, side of my face against the top of her head, feeling the curls of her hair on my cheek.
“You’re alright. I’ve got you.” I meant it with my entire being.
She held on to me, and for a moment, I forgot why I had insinuated myself into her life. Why had I pushed into her existence? That I was getting paid to be here, right now. With her.
Melody wasn’t a murderer. I knew it in my bones.
But how did someone prove a woman was innocent? I’d seen the files. She’d had no alibi. She said she went for a walk the morning of his disappearance, and when she came back, Luke Gray’s car was gone, and the boat with it. She assumed he went fishing like he always did.
Thing was, no one saw her that morning. Her brother and sister were at the big Graystone Manor with the rest of the family for the holidays.
No one saw go on her walk. No one who traveled that road in the early mornings saw her on the side of the highway.
And walking in the middle of winter? That was suspicious at best, especially when I knew her tendency to get cold.
But no body, no crime.
Now we had a body, and I still wasn’t convinced there had been a crime.
The way she’d reacted in fear and pain—not grief—made my head swirl. Questions about their relationship emerged and disappeared like fog on a humid day, and I was left asking: What the fuck did he do to you?
And what did you do to him?