Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) (24 page)

That was what she had wanted. A regular appointment with Melanie O’Connell.

Melanie had chosen oncology when Schwartzman chose pathology, and so the two of them had stayed close while their classmates wondered why on earth they wanted to face cancer and dead people when there were choices like pediatrics and family medicine or big-money options like orthopedics or plastic surgery.

When Melanie O’Connell walked through the door, she looked exactly as Schwartzman remembered her. Trim, petite, freckled, with brilliant red hair always in a ponytail. Like a grown-up orphan Annie. Only the new wrinkles around her hazel eyes belied her youthful appearance to suggest the passage of time.

“Hi,” she said with Schwartzman’s chart in front of her. The one with almost no true information. “I’m Dr. O’Connell.” She glanced up to shake hands and stopped. Looked back down at the chart and then up again. She laughed. “Kate Victor. Our bitchy senior resident.” The name Schwartzman used on her paperwork.

Melanie flipped the chart closed and set it on the counter. “Jesus Christ. Schwartzman!”

Schwartzman stood from the chair as Melanie moved across the room to hug her. “Hi,” she whispered when they embraced. Tears welled, and Schwartzman fought them.

Melanie pulled her back, held her shoulders. “I can’t believe it. Did Karl put you up to this?”

Schwartzman shook her head. “Karl?”

The smile disappeared. She waved a hand. “My husband. He’s always trying to surprise me on my birthday.”

“It’s your birthday.” Schwartzman remembered when they had celebrated Melanie’s thirtieth birthday together on a private cruise in Elliott Bay with a group of graduating med students. One of their classmates had access to an incredible yacht. They’d had champagne and watched the sunset, one of those times when it felt as if everything would be fine.

“Forget it. Please. It’s so great to see you. You look amazing. As tall and tiny as ever.”

Schwartzman forced a smile. “Happy birthday.”

Without letting go of Schwartzman’s hand, Melanie grabbed the rolling stool from across the room and brought it over, nodding for Schwartzman to sit again. Her friend studied her face, and Schwartzman knew that she’d already figured out that something was wrong. Melanie was always like that. Able to read her body language, call her bluff. “What’s going on?” she asked. She paused only a beat before adding, “Still him?”

Schwartzman exhaled. “Yes and no. Yes. But that’s not why I’m here.” Again Schwartzman had a fleeting thought—maybe more of a hope. “Or it might be.”

“Explain.”

“I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer.” It was the first time she’d said the words out loud. Like a gauntlet falling, like a death sentence, they felt so final. She wanted to stand up to it, to be strong, but the weight of the diagnosis was so overwhelming.

Melanie’s expression didn’t change. No reaction. No nonsense, no pity. Not like that sickening cheerleader in Dr. Fraser’s office. “Do you have details?” Melanie asked.

“Invasive lobular cancer, right breast. Slow growing. Grade one. Less than two centimeters.” As she spoke, Schwartzman reached into her purse and pulled out the reports she’d gotten from Dr. Fraser.

Melanie studied them, flipping through the pages and back again a couple of times.

“Does the cancer look real?” Schwartzman asked.

Melanie frowned. “Real? What do you mean?”

“I mean, is it possible that this isn’t right?”

She read over the pages. “The reports look normal.” Her eyes widened. “You think he could have . . .”

Schwartzman said nothing.

“How could he have accessed your medical records?”

“How did he find me in that bar in Seattle?”

“I don’t know . . . faking the record would mean switching out the records with someone else’s mammogram and biopsy. It doesn’t seem possible.” Melanie spread the photocopies across her desk. “But maybe.” She studied the scans. “I can do a mammogram. The biopsy is a little trickier. We can compare these images to your breast tissue. Breasts are like fingerprints. No two are alike. I just don’t know if we’ll be able to make a good comparison using these printouts.”

Schwartzman reached into her purse and found the thumb drive with the digital images. “The images are here.”

Melanie swiveled the chair toward the door and stood, crossing quickly. She cracked it and stepped out for a second. “Angela, will you ask Dr. Thomas to check on room four? He said he had a cancellation. Then I need you to do a scan on a new patient. And will you please have Patty bring me my computer from my desk?”

Schwartzman exhaled as Melanie turned back into the room, grabbing the chart off the counter where she’d left it. Sitting again, she flipped it open, pulled the pen from her coat pocket, and began to write in the familiar backward left-hand scrawl. Watching her made Schwartzman tired. How many years had passed since she’d first made fun of Melanie for the strange way she held her pen?

In all those years, how little in her own life had changed?

Melanie rolled over to her. “Okay, I’ve got to check on a couple of patients. In the meantime, I’m going to have Angela do a new mammogram. First off, we’ll confirm that the breast with the mass is, in fact, your breast.”

“Thanks, Mel.”

She nodded as if it were nothing, as if friends reemerged after seven years to check on falsified mammograms all the time. “I’m entering them under the name you left—Kate Victor—so when Angela asks you to confirm your name, use that one. Also, your birthday is today, 1979. I’ll be back as soon as I can get away again.”

Schwartzman closed her eyes during the mammogram. She didn’t want to be tempted to look at the images. Maybe she could compare them herself, but she didn’t want to guess. She didn’t want to spend these last minutes worrying.

Here, with Melanie, she could relinquish responsibility.

She was safe here.

Almost two hours passed before Angela retrieved Schwartzman from the exam room and led her to Melanie’s office. Before she sat, she studied the pictures on her desk. Two little towheaded toddlers—boys—and a girl who was maybe four with red hair and freckles. Another picture with a tall blond man. Karl, she guessed. Beside that was a picture of the whole family in a canoe, on a lake, the kids in bulky life vests.

The kind of life Schwartzman might have dreamed of once but had not dared to dream of in years.

Schwartzman knew the answer when she saw Melanie’s eyes. Knew it as her old friend slid off her doctor’s coat and displayed the gorgeous red blouse and black skirt beneath. Was certain as Melanie pulled her chair out and sat down.

“I’ve got breast cancer,” Schwartzman said to save her the need.

“Yes.” Melanie hit a button on her keyboard and spun the monitor so Schwartzman could see. Two scans, side by side. “This is the scan from your doctor’s office—Dr. Khan.” She pointed to the left. “This one is from today.”

Other than a small section that Schwartzman knew was the biopsy, the two scans were identical.

“So, maybe he just switched the results on the biopsy. Maybe I have something benign.”

“I called Dr. Fraser.”

“What?”

“You signed the waiver to let me talk to him,” Melanie said, laying her hand flat on the file on her desk. “I didn’t want to come in here until I was sure.”

“And?”

“You have to know what you’re dealing with,” Melanie continued. “If it’s him or if it’s real, so I called.”

Schwartzman exhaled. “And you know for sure?”

Melanie stood and walked around her desk, sat in the chair next to Schwartzman. “He checked the sample images he took with those he got back from the lab. They’re identical. These are your results.” Melanie reached out to touch her hand. “You have cancer.”

All the energy she’d expended to stay strong, to hang tightly to the hope, all of that was gone. All that remained was an empty husk. As she had all those years ago, Melanie sensed it. She put her arms around Schwartzman, and she, in turn, let herself lean into her old friend and confidante.

She did not think about next steps, about getting away, about the cancer, or about Spencer. For these minutes, Schwartzman allowed herself to simply fall apart.

34

San Francisco, California

Hal kept his phone in his back pocket, willing it to ring. All morning he experienced phantom vibrations and pulled the phone free only to find there was no call, no text. No word from Schwartzman or from the hospital about Macy. He’d been up since five, reviewing all his case notes over three cups of coffee and making the last of the phone calls to Sarah Feld’s high school friends.

Her friends agreed that Sarah was different when she was home for Christmas. She had money, nicer clothes. She seemed happy. But she was also secretive. No one knew where the money and clothes had come from. Several suggested she had a married boyfriend. An ex-boyfriend suggested maybe she was into high-price prostitution. She hadn’t even told them about the TV show.

With no leads left to follow, Hal had released the scene of her murder. He would have loved to find a way to preserve it, but nothing in his notes gave him cause to fight to hold the scene. Especially not when the building’s management company was threatening a lawsuit. It came down to money. The apartment was too pricey to remain vacant.

Knowing it was his last visit, Hal took his time in the building where Sarah Feld was murdered. He went back through the rooms in her apartment, first without referring to his notes and then with them. He walked the corridors of the other floors, the stairs, and into the basement to the laundry and the trash room. He walked the stairs, twice. Sometimes this kind of exercise proved enough to pull something loose, to fire some piston in his brain, connect some wire that would illuminate the whole thing. Today he got nothing.

Standing back in the foyer in front of the victim’s door, he studied the crime scene tape. He could pull it down. It would probably be a nice gesture. He wasn’t feeling very nice. Instead he crossed the foyer to Carol Fletcher’s door and rang the bell.

“Who is it?” came her voice from inside.

“Inspector Hal Harris. We talked the other day.”

There was the sound of locks turning, and the door cracked open.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, opening the door as she worked to tie her sweater closed. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

“I’m sorry to come by unannounced,” he said. “I came back to release the crime scene and was hoping to ask you one more question.”

“Sure. Of course.” She hesitated, then let the door fall open. The dining room table was covered in papers. She motioned to them. “Sorry for the mess. I’m working on a deadline.”

“I’ll get out of your hair, then. I just wanted to ask about your interactions with your neighbor’s sister. Had you met her before?”

“No. I’d never met her.”

“Had Ms. Fe—” He caught himself before he called her by her real name. “Had Ms. Stein mentioned a sister?”

“Maybe. I knew she had a sister, but I don’t know if Victoria ever told me anything about her. I’d seen the pictures of the two of them—the ones Victoria had in her place.”

Carol glanced over his shoulder at the other apartment. As she did, the entry light shifted on her face, and the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced.

“I appreciate your help. Are you doing okay?” he asked.

She looked a bit startled. “Having a little trouble sleeping,” she admitted, motioning into the living room. “Plus the deadline.”

“There are some good local support groups if you want to talk to someone,” Hal offered. “I can send over some information.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate that. And I’ll be in touch if I think of anything useful about Terri.”

Hal thanked her and left her apartment. Maybe he looked as bad as she did. He wouldn’t be surprised. He felt like shit. Across the foyer, the yellow tape on the victim’s door caught his eye again.

“Ah, damn it all,” he muttered and crossed the foyer to tear the crime scene tape down.

Hal waited for Roger in the small interview room. The plan was to outline everything they had on the whiteboard to try to pull the case together. Hal could buy himself only another day or two on this case before he would need to shift it off his priority list and get caught up on the new ones. Hailey and Naomi joined them in an effort to make it happen quickly.

Hal had drawn in the timeline for the San Francisco events in black. In green he added the events in South Carolina, though there was no evidence to link the deaths. Beside him, Hailey posted the images of the victims—bios, possible connections, dates and causes of death. Roger and Naomi filled in columns beside each victim with the key evidence they had collected.

Written next to Sarah Feld, the first item was “pendant.” It was not identical to Schwartzman’s. The variations suggested the two were crafted by different jewelers. The police had yet to trace either to a source. Line one amounted to nothing.

Next there were prints. Macy’s print on the napkin led nowhere. The prints on the glasses and the bottle in the kitchen were the victim’s, so nothing from them either.

Three, the lavender seeds from Feld’s lungs. No good lead from those.

Four was the BOLO out on the woman posing as Terri Stein. Again, nothing yet.

Five, the security system failure at Sarah Feld’s apartment was the result of a virus. The IP address came back to Feld’s own apartment, which gave them nothing either.

Hailey stood beside him as he rubbed his head. “Not a lot to go on,” she commented.

“Nothing to go on.”

“We’ve got some traffic cam images of the person who entered Schwartzman’s apartment before Macy was attacked,” Naomi offered. “I think you saw these—right, Hal?”

“Roger sent me one.”

“Let me take a look,” Hailey said. She took the tablet and held it so Hal could see over her shoulder. The time stamp on the first was 11:09 p.m. The woman in the photograph had wavy, dark hair, shoulder length, partially hidden under a plain black baseball cap. She wore a black coat, tied at the waist. Black pants, but it was hard to tell if they were real slacks or the yoga kind women loved so much. Tennis shoes. She carried a black bag in her right hand, like a small duffel bag. Hal felt the same way as when he first saw the picture. It could be Schwartzman, or it could be someone else.

Hailey skipped to the next image, then the next. They all showed more or less the same thing. The woman never looked up. The cap covered her face in every shot. Her hands were under the coat sleeves. They literally had no clear image of her.

“What do you think? Is it her?” Hal asked Hailey.

“I can’t tell,” Hailey admitted.

“Not likely,” Roger answered, walking through the door with a cup of coffee in hand.

“Why do you say that?” Hal asked. The hat was wrong for Schwartzman, but that wasn’t enough. Roger would have another, more substantial reason.

Roger set his coffee down and pulled his phone from his pocket, handed it to Hailey. The image was a clear shot of Schwartzman’s face behind the windshield of her car. “We have her entering the garage at 6:52,” Roger explained. “She checks her mail at 6:56 and lets herself into her apartment at 6:59. She doesn’t emerge again. The cameras inside the building are functional until 11:17 p.m. By that time, we’ve got this other person on the traffic cam.”

“So no way it can be Schwartzman,” Hailey said.

“Right,” Roger agreed.

Hal studied the image. With the hat, the coat, the person might have been a man or a woman. There had to be something in these films to help them. He couldn’t believe anyone could be that careful.

Somewhere there had to be a mistake.
Find it.
“Can we trace her back to where she starts walking?” Hal asked.

“We tried,” Roger said. “She comes from somewhere down by the water. We pick her up about eight blocks from Schwartzman’s apartment.”

“If it’s a ‘she,’” Hailey said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Naomi agreed.

“How tall is she/he?” Hal asked.

“We estimated somewhere between five eight and five ten.”

“Could be a man or a woman,” Roger said.

Hal turned his attention to the board.
Go through the timeline again; review what you know.
He felt so close to some realization, some clue that would break this thing open. He just had to knock it loose. “So there’s an alarm in the basement at 11:39 p.m. Desk clerk follows procedure and locks the front door and goes to check the alarm. Comes back three minutes later and clears the code. What happened in that three minutes?”

“That’s where we have a problem,” Roger admitted. “From the desk, everything was working, but the system stopped recording, so nothing was captured. The guard didn’t see anyone go by him, so our best guess is that the person posing as Schwartzman entered the building while the front desk clerk was in the basement.”

“How did they get in the building?”

“That’s the clever part,” Roger said.

“I don’t like clever,” Hal said.

“Explain,” Hailey told him.

Roger nodded to Naomi. “The alarm code in the alarm was for the exterior door. Shutting off the alarm requires a system reboot. The whole system goes down for about twenty seconds,” Naomi explained. “There’s no built-in redundancy to cover that time.”

“Wow,” Hailey said. “So the whole thing was planned to the second.”

“Not necessarily,” Roger countered. “It looks like the person on the street is holding a smartphone.” Roger took the iPad and scanned through the images, pointing out a black blob that might or might not have been a phone. “The way she’s got it in her hand, I’d guess it’s a phone.”

“And if it is? How’s that help?” Hal asked.

“She—or he—could have set off the alarm from the phone. Easily.”

“What about Schwartzman? She was inside the apartment.” He could not stop thinking about her. Down in South Carolina . . . where was she this minute? Where was Spencer? Was she safe? Was Harper watching out for her?

Damn this whole thing.

“Halothane,” Roger explained. “It’s a general anesthesia, pretty readily available.”

“Like laughing gas?” Hailey asked.

“Right. The gas was piped into her bedroom through the vent. There was a pressurized tank in the wall at the back of her closet. Controlled remotely. We don’t know how long the tank has been there. The gas would have knocked her out pretty quickly.”

“A tank in the closet? How the hell is that even possible?” Hailey asked.

“We think it happened from the neighbor’s apartment,” Roger explained. “That unit was rented about two months after Schwartzman’s was. Security deposit was put down, lease signed, but then the rental fell through about a week later. It could have been done then.”

“I’d like to see a copy of the lease,” Hal said.

“Sure.”

“Also,” Hailey asked, “do we have security footage?”

“No. We don’t have anything,” Hal said, cutting them off. “Even if Schwartzman is passed out, doesn’t explain how they got into her apartment.”

Hailey nodded. “And Macy? How did they get him to Schwartzman’s place?”

“Text message,” Hal said, hearing his own frustration. He already knew this. They were literally following this thing in circles. Every clue led to a dead end.

“Schwartzman sent Macy a couple of texts. Around ten fifty p.m.,” Roger explained.

“How did this person know that Macy would even get those?” Naomi asked. “Someone texts me that late on a workday, and my phone’s on silent. I don’t hear a thing.”

“Who the hell cares?” Hal said, his voice exploding off the walls of the small room. “It was a text. Macy got the text. He showed up there. He got stabbed eighteen damn times.”

He crossed the room to the table and pulled out a chair, slammed his body into it. “Sorry.” He was so angry, so frustrated. Terrified. The thing that made him angriest was the fear. He had no idea what she’d be facing down in South Carolina, how dangerous it was. If Spencer could manage to stab Ken Macy eighteen times without leaving South Carolina, Hal didn’t want to imagine what he could do with her right around the corner. How had he let Schwartzman leave this town? How was it possible that they had nothing at all on Spencer MacDonald?

There was a knock, and the interview room door cracked open. Another inspector in Homicide poked his head in. “Harris, there’s someone here I think you’re going to want to talk to.”

“We’re sort of busy—” Hal stopped when he caught sight of the woman standing behind the inspector. Her short red hair threw him off, but the rounded nose, the wide-set eyes—they were the same ones in the artist sketch Macy had done of the woman posing as Terri Stein. “You—”

The woman tried to shrink back, but the other inspector stood behind her, leaving her no way to escape.

Hal felt a surge of anger, the rush of relief. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “I came as soon as I found out that Sarah was really dead.”

“What do you mean when you found out she was dead? You were the one who found the body,” Hal charged.

“Why don’t we let her come in,” Hailey suggested, pulling gently on Hal’s arm before reaching out her hand and introducing herself. “I’m Inspector Hailey Wyatt.”

“Stephanie. Stephanie O’Malley.” She stepped into the room, and her gaze found its way to the whiteboard.