Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (9 page)

“
She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s dead!”

Belinda sank to her hands and knees. She was past thinking, past caring what other people thought. As she rocked back and forth, her denim skirt rode up until it was almost as high as her black leather jacket, exposing the uncertain flesh of her thighs and the bottom edge of her flowered cotton panties.

Some of people in the room jumped to their feet and ran toward her. Others shrank back in their chairs. Claire noted that she and Dante were the kind of people who got to their feet. Tyler had gone home an hour ago, so they had no one to turn to but themselves.

Jim Prentiss asked the question everyone was afraid to. “Who’s dead, Belinda? Where?”

“
She!” The words were a bark. Belinda sat back on her heels. She put her hands to her throat and began to stutter. “She, she, she, she...”

Dante cut through the knot of people around Belinda and knelt in front of her. He put his finger under her plump chin and lifted her head so that she was forced to look him in the eye. The sight of a stranger’s face seemed to calm her.

“
I saw you leaving here a few minutes ago, right?” Dante’s voice was calm, unhurried.
Belinda nodded. Her breath came in jerks.

“
And then ... you went out in the parking lot?”

She nodded again, more slowly.

Step by step, he continued to lead. “And then did something happen when you were walking to your car?”

A final nod, her eyes wide and frightened. Her breathing began to speed up again.

“
What happened, Belinda?” His voice was a priest’s or a counselor’s, inviting confidences.

Her shrill voice was in the present tense, as if Dante had hypnotized her and she was seeing it all play out again before her eyes. “I see something lying on the ground. At first, I think it’s a doll, a big, big doll. I go over to look, and, and, and - it’s Cindy. Her clothes are all messed up. And her eyes, her eyes are open. But she’s not moving!”

The room was as silent as if it were empty, while three-dozen people held their breaths. Claire looked over at the table where Cindy’s husband had been sitting, but it was empty except for one line of various types of glasses marked with lipstick and another of squat unmarked glasses, each holding a wedge of lime. Kevin’s jacket was gone.

“
Did you touch her, Belinda? Can you be certain that she was dead?”

Shaking her head, she began to stutter again. “N-n-n-no.”

“
Call 911 and get an ambulance,” Dante snapped over his shoulder to the bartender, who immediately picked up the phone. “And the police.” He stood up and gently lifted Belinda to her feet. “Show me where she is.”

Her head whipped violently back and forth.

“
Just point me in the right direction then.” His tone was coaxing. “I need to see if I can help your friend.”

Belinda let him lead her. A few feet behind, about a dozen people followed, Claire among them. There was still absolute silence. Wade came out of the He-Pee room and joined them. His eyes were alight as if he suspected a prank or hoped for an outing. They went past the gaming rooms, where cigarette smoke hovered above the heads of the gamblers hunched over slot machines, clutching white plastic buckets full of quarters. They hadn’t looked up for the woman screaming, and they didn’t watch as the silent, wary group walked past them now. When Dante pushed open the outside doors, the hot and heavy air pressed on them, in contrast to the air-conditioned cave of the Hoe-Down Room.

Belinda weakly waved her hand in the direction of the far reaches of the parking lot, then sank to the sidewalk and began wailing again. A couple of the women gathered around her, while the rest of the group more slowly followed Dante’s loping run through the half-empty parking lot. Sawyer, hindered by his limp, brought up the rear.

There was a second’s pause at the sight of Cindy’s body, half-naked, awkward and terribly still. As soon as Claire saw it, it was clear that that was what it was. A body, emptied of life.

Cindy lay on her back, one leg twisted underneath her. One of her red high heels had come off and it lay a few feet behind her. A few yards farther away sat her purse. Her blouse had been ripped open to display her full breasts, spilling out of a gold-colored satin bra. Her denim skirt was around her waist, exposing a tiny pair of matching gold-colored bikini panties. Claire was able to note all these details without feeling any emotion, but she found she couldn’t look at Cindy’s face, at the pale-blue eyes, half-open and dull, and the way the swollen tip of her tongue poked between her lips.

Claire could see why Belinda had wrapped her own hands around her throat while she stuttered the news about her best friend. Angry red marks were clearly visible on Cindy’s long neck. Careful to touch nothing else, Dante knelt and pressed two fingers just below them, at the side of her throat.

Claire already knew the answer before he shook his head and announced, “No pulse.”

“
Should we do CPR?” Richard Prentiss ventured. His narrow face was drained of all color. Martha stood behind him, and now she patted him on the shoulder, comforting him even before Dante spoke.

Dante shook his head again and stood up. “Her skin is cool. I think she’s been dead for a little while.”

Moaning, Wade Merz stumbled away and threw up at the base of a lightpost. Even after he was done being sick, his shoulders continued to heave. Claire guessed he was crying. She had a sudden memory of Cindy and Wade at the prom together, both young and beautiful and proud of it. Back in the days when everyone was young and no one could imagine Wade stiffing a twenty-dollar hooker or Cindy’s half-naked, broken body stretched out under the yellow vapor lights.

Claire felt sick and strange, as if she were hallucinating. Everything was beginning to look two-dimensional, as unreal as a stage set. Pretty soon Cindy would get up and wash the makeup off her throat and go home.

She heard a soft mumbling, words she couldn’t make out. She looked around. Logan stood twenty feet away from their little group, moving his lips as he looked at Cindy’s body. Claire couldn’t tell if he were talking to himself, to Cindy, or to someone he only imagined was there. He shifted from foot to foot, his hands twisting against each other as if he were washing them clean. His face had altered, and he somehow looking more like the old Logan. Was Logan’s new drug strong enough, Claire wondered, to keep him anchored even in this reality as terrible as any nightmare?

“
At least we should make her decent,” Sawyer Fairchild said. Claire hadn’t realized he was standing behind her, but now he moved past her and leaned down to tug together the edges of Cindy’s shirt.

“
No,” Claire said, and grabbed his hands. They jerked and trembled in her own. She wondered if he was remembering all the bodies he had seen in Vietnam. “That’s evidence. You have to leave her the way she is until they take photographs.”

“
What difference does it make if I cover her up?” His voice was low and unsteady. “Do you think Cindy really wants the whole police force staring at her breasts?”

“
There could be fingerprints on the buttons, maybe even the cloth,” Dante said quietly to Sawyer. He put his hand under the other man’s arm and moved him back a few feet. “You don’t want to mess that up.”

“
Hey, what’s this?” Moving too fast for Claire to stop her, Jessica snatched something small and dark from Cindy’s hand.

“
Let me see,” Sawyer said.

“
No,” Claire said, running over to them. Sometimes she wished she didn’t have the hall monitor-type personality. If only she wasn’t always aware of the rules and acutely uncomfortable when they were broken. If only something inside of her didn’t squirm in protest when people talked during the movies or took eleven items into the eleven-items-or-less express line. “It’s important not to get anyone else’s fingerprints on” - .

Claire stopped, staring at the object Jessica held in her hand. It was a box. A heart-shaped box. And as far as Claire could see, it was identical to the one in the package she had received at the hotel this afternoon. She was too stunned to protest when Jessica thumbed it open. Inside was the picture of Cindy dancing at the prom, her head thrown back and her eyes closed.

Claire barely heard the angry bull-like roar as someone came shoving through the crowd. At the sight of his wife’s body, Kevin Sanchez staggered backward. “Cindy, what have they done to you? My God, what have they done?”

Claire’s gaze was drawn back to the box Jessica still held in her outstretched palm. The box Claire had gotten a few hours earlier was twin to the one Cindy had been holding in her dead hand.

TAGURIT

Chapter Seven

Kevin was still screaming his wife’s name, but to Claire it was as if the sound was being swallowed up, absorbed by the empty darkness that surrounded them. She felt as if she were high above their little group, observing with great detachment as they shouted and cried and ran around. Was this how God felt when he looked down at the earth, she wondered. Indifferent and far away?

Then Dante wrapped his arms around her and Claire felt herself come back into her body. “You look like you’re about ready to faint,” he said into her ear, and she realized that he was right. As she pressed her face against his shoulder, the tight strings of her body began to loosen.

The feeling of isolation was further shattered when everything arrived at once in a whirl of strobing lights and ululating sounds - first an ambulance, then a police car, and finally Tyler, hurrying toward their little group from the direction of the hotel. As he got closer, Claire could see fear and self-importance chasing themselves across his face. The patrol car and the ambulance skidded to a stop.

Tyler had to shout to be heard over the sirens. “Step back, people, step back!” Everyone obeyed but Kevin, who still knelt in the gravel, pressing his wife’s body to his chest. Cindy’s head lolled back at a sickeningly boneless angle. Claire saw the Adam’s apple in Tyler’s throat bob as he swallowed hard. He adjusted his belt upward. Mercifully, the sirens ceased wailing, leaving a welcome well of silence.

Two cops spilled out of the police car and a pair of paramedics jumped from the ambulance. They all converged on Cindy, then slowed when it was clear she was beyond help. Paying no attention to the new arrivals, Kevin kept his face pressed into the hollow of his wife’s bare shoulder.

One of the paramedics leaned down and picked up Cindy’s wrist. Kevin lifted his head and roared, “Let go of her!” The startled man complied. Kevin shrugged Cindy closer and buried his head in her hair. “What have they done to you? What have they done?” he moaned again, a question with an answer he didn’t want to believe.

Tyler appealed to the small crowd. “Can someone tell me what happened here?”

There was a pause, then Dante’s voice cut through the beginning babble. “Belinda came out in the parking lot and found Cindy here. Then she came back to the bar to get help. Some of us came out to see if we could do anything, but....” Dante’s words trailed off.

“
How long ago was this?”
“About five minutes.”

Claire checked her watch. She was surprised to realize Dante was right. Everything seemed to be moving too slowly. Noises were louder, colors brighter. Shock, she thought. Fight or flight, and she could do neither.

Tyler leaned over and spoke to Kevin. “Buddy, you’re gonna have let go of her. You need to let the paramedics do their job.” Head down, Kevin continued to rock his wife’s body. Tyler laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come on, man, you can’t help her now. Let us do our jobs, so we can find out who did this to her.” Kevin seemed to shake his head, or he could have been dropping kisses on his dead wife’s hair.

Tyler walked over to Claire and whispered in her ear. “What’s his name? I can’t remember.”

“
Kevin.”

Tyler turned back and leaned down again. “Kevin, you gotta let go of her. Do you hear me, Kevin? Do you understand what I’m saying? There’s gonna come a point where you can’t hold on to her forever. I promise we’ll take good care of her.”

After what seemed an interminable pause, Kevin slowly eased Cindy back to the ground. He did not raise his eyes from her face. One of the paramedics knelt beside her and picked up her wrist again, but clearly it was only a formality.

Tyler turned to the taller of the two cops. “Marc, why don’t you take Kevin here back to the hotel, find someplace quiet and get him a drink. Tell the manager I’m gonna need a room that I can use for the duration. I’ll come in in a few minutes to take his statement.”

The small group was silent as they watched Kevin, slump-shouldered and stumbling, be led away by the policeman.

“
Oh, I almost forgot. When we found her, Cindy was holding this.” Sawyer took the heart-shaped box from Jessica’s hand and offered it to Tyler. “I guess we should put it back where it was.”

“
No! Damn it!” Tyler’s voice rapped out. “So you mopes have been touching things?” His glance, full of contempt, swept over them. Claire followed his gaze. Richard looked as if he were about to collapse. Wade face was pale and as serious as Claire had ever seen it. Even Jessica seemed drained by the all-too-real drama. “Once you’ve disturbed the crime scene, you can’t just put things back the way they were. He turned to the remaining cop. “Greg, get an evidence bag and take this from Mr. Fairchild.”

Tyler turned back and regarded them all as if they were all equally guilty. “Now let me get this straight. You all came out here together. Was there anyone who saw Cindy out here, in the parking lot, dead or alive, prior to that?”