Alone (A Bone Secrets Novel) (13 page)

This isn’t happening.

“You don’t understand. I can’t abandon the baby. We need to be together to raise her.”

The pounding sounds in her head escalated. “You don’t have to abandon the baby. You can be there for the baby. You might be the biological father, but Jennifer ruined any relationship the two of you could have together,” Victoria whispered. “She cut the ties. Why start again with her?”

“She wants me in the baby’s life.”

“Of course she does. You’re the money. You can support them. She’s panicked because this other guy has left her and now she doesn’t know where to turn. You’re a great guy. Any woman is going to want you to be the father of her baby!” Her voice rose and people turned to stare, but she didn’t care. She could feel Seth slipping from her and she had to stop it. Her inner foundation rocked, crumbling.

Misery radiated from his face. “Tori, I’ve made up my mind. I told you what my father did to my mother and me. I can’t do that to a child.”

“But Seth—”

“I told you, I have to do this. It’s the right thing to do. I won’t let a kid grow up wondering why her father isn’t with her.”

“You can still be a part of this child’s life—”

“No. I have to
be there
. I never had a man in my life until my uncle came along. I’ve told you the difference he made for me
growing up. I can do that for my daughter. Eden is my daughter.” Amazement touched his eyes as he said the words. “I have a daughter, Tori, and the most important thing is that she grows up feeling loved and wanted. I can provide that.”

“But what about Jennifer?”

“We can make it work. We did once.”

Every connection between them snapped in half, stinging Victoria. “You’re dumping me for a woman who left you? Who cheated on you? What about medical school?”

“I’m applying to the University of Arizona.”

“That’s not Stanford. It won’t be the same,” Victoria argued.

“It doesn’t matter. I can go to medical school and Jennifer can still be near her family, who will help us raise the baby.”

What about me? What about us?
Victoria shrieked in her head. She stared at Seth. She couldn’t say the words out loud. What weight did an eight-month relationship have versus a baby? And Seth’s issues about his father’s history were heavy on his mind. They always had been.

He’s leaving you. He’s walking out on you. Exactly what Jennifer did to him.

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re choosing an unknown over everything we’ve planned together.” She grasped at straws. The look on his face said there was no changing his mind.

“School gets out in six weeks. I’m going back to Arizona for good,” he stated.

Victoria stared at him. His eyes were dead. The life and love that usually shone from them had vanished.
How had he changed overnight? Was this the true Seth?

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

“How am I not to see you when you’re a TA in my class?”

He winced. “I’ve asked the professor if it’s okay if I’m not present for lectures. I’ll be working out of his office more.”

He’s already made plans how to avoid me.

Her shoulders slumped under the colossal weight. Seth had already emotionally disconnected from her and made the necessary plans to cut her from his life. Her stomach heaved and she swallowed hard. She could cry. She could break down right here in public and make a scene.
She wasn’t that type of woman. If this man no longer wanted to be with her, she was going to let him go. She wasn’t going to humble herself as a ploy to keep him from his daughter.

“Why here?” she whispered. “Why did you have to do it in public?”

He shifted in his seat, guilt flooding his face. “I couldn’t do it at one of our places. If we were alone and things got too emotional, I was afraid…”

He was afraid they’d end up in bed.

Their sex life was good. There was no getting around it. Lying in bed with Seth on a rainy afternoon was heaven. They’d spent hours talking and making love. He’d been her first and had opened a whole new world of intimacy and sharing for her. In the beginning, it’d simply been explosive and exciting, but it’d grown into a tender, loving experience.

And now it was over. No more.

If she could get him in bed, maybe…

She rejected the thought; she wasn’t a manipulator. She wasn’t that kind of woman and she wasn’t about to start. She was strong. Seth was done with Seth and Victoria. And her logical brain screamed at her to accept it.

She stood up, shoved her books into her backpack, and pushed in her chair. Slinging her pack over one shoulder, she
stared Seth in the eye. “I loved you. I loved you
a lot
and was committed to the future we’d planned together. Good-bye, Seth.” She strode out of the coffee shop with her chin up and her heart in pieces on the floor.

Never again
.

Seth noticed Lorenzo Cavallo had managed to rake his leaves in his yard before he died. Lorenzo’s home looked like every other small Portland home from the fifties. The entire street had one-story white homes with single-car garages. Only the yards were marginally different. Some with bushes, some with trees, some with nothing. A shiny classic Chevrolet stood visible in Lorenzo’s garage. Someone had opened the garage door and the vehicle gleamed against the dreariness of the wet day.

The clouds had been high and gray during Seth’s commute to the office. Enough to make him wonder if the day would actually be dry. But his hopes were dashed as black clouds rolled in. Dr. Campbell had assigned him to visit the Cavallo death,
doling out assignments among his deputy examiners and himself. It’d been less than a week, and Seth felt like he belonged in the Portland office. His working interview time was almost up. If he was offered the job, he was taking it. No question. He liked Portland. It was quirky, and the ME’s office ran like a smoothly oiled machine.

A uniform held a log out to him at the front door. He signed and slipped on a pair of sanitary booties, studying the young officer out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t look green or ashen, so hopefully the scene wasn’t a bad one. Detectives Callahan and Lusco had already signed the log. It didn’t feel like ten hours had passed since he’d parted from Callahan at the bar.

Seth moved down the narrow hall of the house toward the voices in the kitchen. He smelled the familiar odor of death. The coppery scent of blood and the stench of released bowels. A wave of sadness washed through him as he stepped into the kitchen and examined the body on the floor.

Lorenzo Cavallo was covered in blood from head to toe. He wore what Seth thought of as old-man underwear. The white stretchy tank top and baggy white undershorts. Neither had been truly white in a long time; instead they were a bad yellowing cream color. Browning blood stained Lorenzo’s silver hair. Detectives Callahan and Lusco leaned against a counter in the tiny kitchen. A female uniformed cop nodded at Seth, and a crime scene tech snapped scene photos.

“Morning, doctor,” Callahan greeted him. “Welcome to the party.” His grim expression belied his words.

“Morning,” Seth answered.

“As soon as you can get us a time of death, we’d appreciate it,” Lusco added.

Portland was no different from Sacramento. The cops always wanted that fact first.

Seth stepped over to the corpse, carefully avoiding the blood, and squatted down. Now closer, he could see the tears from a knife through the old man’s shirt. And a spot at his temple that looked… sunken. Seth scanned his surroundings, looking for a baseball bat or similar weapon. Callahan noticed his gaze.

“Whatever he was stabbed and hit with, the killer took with him,” Callahan stated.

“Can you get a picture right here?” Seth asked the photographer as he pointed to a spot just below the ribs on the right side of the body. The old man’s tank was ripped wide open as if it’d been prepared for Seth to take his liver temperature. The tech snapped a shot, and Seth made a half-inch slit with his scalpel and slid a thermometer in four inches. He waited and the tech took a shot of the inserted thermometer. Looking around, he noticed Lusco watching in fascination along with the female cop, but Callahan seemed focused on making notes in his pad.

“We just talked with him yesterday,” Lusco offered.

“What for?” asked Seth.

“He came in to offer a lead on the old Forest Park case. He thought his sister might be one of the victims,” said Lusco.

Seth looked at the body. The old man had been brutalized.
Did someone not like him talking to the police?
“You think it was related to the killings from the other night?”

“Don’t know,” stated Lusco.

“A neighbor was walking by about seven this morning and noticed his door was wide open,” Callahan added. “She came up to the door, rang the bell, yelled his name, and finally entered the house when no one answered. She immediately backed out when she saw he was dead and called nine-one-one.”

Seth didn’t ask why the neighbor didn’t physically check to see if Lorenzo was dead. It was obvious. This was a case of overkill. Seth saw multiple blows to the head and too many stab wounds to count. Any of them could be the cause of death.

Seth took a long look at the furnishings of the little kitchen. “He lived alone?”

“His wife died six years ago,” stated the female cop.

“Yesterday in our interview, he didn’t mention that. He talked about his life as if his wife was still alive,” Lusco said. “We haven’t been able to get ahold of any family yet, and the neighbors don’t seem to know anything about his sons. I’m a bit surprised. He acted like they were all very close.”

Callahan nodded in agreement.

The home showed the touch of a woman, but of a woman who hadn’t been around in a long time. The floral prints of the sofa were faded, the picture frames showcased thick dust, and the ashtray overflowed. The house was utterly quiet. It had an aura of waiting for someone. Maybe waiting for the grandkids to pay an overdue visit. Or waiting for the female heart of the house to return.

“I still have guys questioning the neighbors,” said the female cop.

Seth took a closer look at the policewoman. Her badge was Portland Police Department and read Goode. Callahan and Lusco were with the state police. There were some police politics at work here. No doubt this had been Portland’s crime scene and investigation until someone had discovered the victim had been interviewed by the state police. Goode was keeping her hand firmly on the scene, but allowing state to have its look.

Seth knew from experience that most local departments didn’t care to have a different agency step in to lend a hand or take over a case, whether it was the FBI or a state police agency.
Callahan had told him that the Forest Park teenage girls’ case had been turned over to OSP, but it’d mainly been a matter of timing. The Portland Police Department was recently overwhelmed with a gang war that had consumed their local resources. OSP didn’t have the gang expertise that Portland did. But they knew murder.

Seth’s gaze went back to the small plate of ashes on the tiny table in the corner of the kitchen. He sniffed at the body. The usual overwhelming odor of a smoker didn’t emerge from the body. “Did you find cigarettes in the home?”

“No. I looked for those,” Goode answered. “No cigarettes in the cupboards or drawers of the kitchen. Bedside table drawer is empty. That’s a dish from an old china set in the cupboard, not an ashtray. A smoker would have several ashtrays in the house.”

Callahan walked over to the ashtray on the table. Seth noticed it didn’t have butts left in the pile of ash. Who removes the butts? Goode was right; it wasn’t an ashtray. It was a thin china saucer with a bit of worn gold trim on the edges.

“What else did you notice?” Callahan asked Goode.

“He lives alone,” she said. “He eats like a bachelor. Lots of white flour and white sugar products. Red meat and frozen dinners. Tons of family pictures on the walls, but they’re old ones. Going by the hair and clothing styles, no new photo sessions in at least two decades. He reads Louis L’Amour and Tom Clancy. Sinks were dry when we arrived. No one appears to have cleaned up their bloody hands at them. Hand towels are hanging neatly in place along with bath towels. Same with the kitchen towels.”

“What’s the room temperature?” Seth asked as he pulled out the thermometer.

“Sixty-five degrees,” said Goode.

No heating vents blew directly on the body. Seth did some fast math in his head. “I’ll estimate ten to seven hours ago for your time of death. I can narrow that with the lab work. Got all his front photos?” he asked the tech, who nodded. “Help me roll him onto his side.”

The two men shoved and pulled to balance Lorenzo on his side. Seth did a quick scan of Lorenzo’s back. The tech backed up and snapped more photos of the purpling back tissue. Seth pressed a gloved thumb against the darkened skin. “Livor mortis is fixed.” No surprises there based on his time-of-death estimate. The back had no stab wounds.

Seth leaned over the body, distracted by the colored plastic in the corpse’s ear. A hearing aid? The color was awfully bright… and the shape was wrong. He reached out with the end of his ballpoint pen to carefully move some of the blood-stained hair out of the way. And froze.