What She Doesn't See

What She

Doesn’t See

A Novel

Debra Webb

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 Pink House Press

2006 Never Happened, Harlequin Books

Edited by Marijane Diodati

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S.
Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic
sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the
publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual
property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

PINK HOUSE PRESS

WebbWorks, Huntsville, Alabama

Second Edition July 2015

Monday, July 21, Miami

“You’re early, Alex.” A wide grin accompanied
the remark. “You know I can’t let you get started just yet.”

The detective was right. Charlie Crane’s body
was still in the house. Alexis Jackson surveyed the gruesome scene.
She could have done without seeing the old guy with his head
mangled by the bullet that had passed through his skull, but there
was no erasing that stomach-turning image now.

“Yeah, well, Hitch,” she said, shifting her
gaze from the poor bastard in the easy chair, “you’re late. You
guys were supposed to be gone an hour ago.”

Detective Louis Hitchcock, fondly called
Hitch by friends and enemies alike, snorted at her comeback. “The
M.E. had a little fender bender, but he’ll be here any minute now,
and then,” he spread his arms wide to indicate the room, “the place
is all yours.”

As Hitch spoke, his gaze slid down her
Margaritaville T-shirt, pausing ever so briefly on her breasts.
Alex didn’t flinch, she didn’t even get mad. She was forty years
old, five feet six, and one hundred twenty pounds of toned muscle
and hard-earned grit and determination. She wore her hair long,
straight, and blond—her methods for keeping it that way were a
closely guarded secret. The men she dated, including the one
visually devouring her right now, liked to wax on about how the
color of her eyes reminded them of the sea.

She sighed. Though she was damned proud her
efforts to stay in shape, the downside to being a blue-eyed blonde
with a decent figure was that most men, and some women, mistakenly
thought she was just another pretty face. But they only made that
mistake once.

“Seen enough?” she asked.

He snapped his gaze back to hers and cleared
his throat. “Who hired you?”

Alex felt reasonably sure he didn’t really
care, he just wanted to make conversation. She knew he still had a
thing for her. If she was into long-term relationships and cute
guys with adrenaline-driven egos, she might just give him a second
chance. The fact of the matter was she’d had a momentary lapse in
judgment and they had been there, done that.

She had a firm rule and she didn’t intend to
bend it again. Cops were off-limits. As were firefighters, P.I.’s,
and paramedics. Give her a CPA any time. As simple as it would be
to tread into deeper waters with a sweet guy like Hitch, she saw
the risks a mile away. He wanted something
permanent.
The
white picket fence and the kids. The only things in her life that
were permanent were her friends and her work. That was fine by her.
She had a business to run. Keeping one step ahead of the
competition was hard work, she could do without a husband and kids
slowing her down.

“I didn’t think this guy had any family,”
Hitch tacked on, dragging her attention back to him.

“The landlord.”

Charlie Crane’s death might be a suicide, but
in the state of Florida all unattended deaths had to be
investigated. Her gaze went back to rest on Charlie’s slumped form.
He had to be seventy at least. It amazed her that he didn’t have
any family at all. No wife or former wife, no kids, no siblings. No
one. Not even any real friends as far as the landlord knew. A stir
of something Alex refused to identify made her stomach feel a
little tight and queasy.

Hitch cocked his head and studied the stiff,
then tossed her a sympathetic look. “Well, I’m glad it’s you and
not me. As soon as the M.E.’s finished, I’m out of here.” He
visibly shuddered.

She considered the spray of blood and brain
matter on the paneled wall behind the body. Could have been worse.
She’d certainly come across scenes more ghastly than this. “Nothing
I haven’t done before.”

“A guy never knows what a girl’s going to
like.” Hitch flashed her another of those charming grins.

“You could always stay and watch, you might
learn something more about what this girl likes,” she challenged.
As she anticipated, he chuckled and promptly ignored her
suggestion.

The fallout from the manner of death didn’t
really bother her. The bodies were a different matter. Somehow
seeing the person, or what was left of the person, made her knees
go a little weak. She fought hard not to let Hitch see her reaction
to the corpse that hadn’t been taken away yet. She had a reputation
to maintain after all. Not to mention she went through this routine
every time she showed up at a scene. Men just couldn’t believe that
women could handle seeing something this grisly even though women
were the ones who bore their offspring. Go figure.

Clients often asked how she got into the
business of dealing with dead things—people as well as other stuff.
She usually made a joke of it. Someone had to do it, right? Truth
was, her first experience cleaning up after the recently deceased
had come at the ripe old age of fifteen. She hadn’t had a lot of
choice in the matter. It was either jump in and help her mother or
stand back and watch her do it alone. Alex hadn’t been able to do
the latter. Her mother had needed her, but she would have cut out
her tongue before she would have asked her daughter for help.

As with this current assignment, her father
hadn’t chosen the tidiest way to end his existence. A slightly
off-center shot to the chest where the lungs could have sucked in
most of the blood would have been preferable and considerably
simpler. Nothing about her father had ever been simple. He’d chosen
a single shot to the head. The explosion had made a mess of the
crappy room in the dilapidated house they’d called home. He’d been
an alcoholic who couldn’t see past the pit he’d dug for himself, so
he’d taken the easy way out.

Considering her line of work, Alex supposed
you could say the event had made a significant impact on her. After
dropping out of college and drifting from one dead end job to the
other, she started her own business:
Never Happened
.
Another cop she’d dated only once, before her self-imposed rule,
had given her the idea and all the reasons in the world she would
ever need
not
to date cops. Despite that unpleasant
experience she’d ended up dating Hitch. When it came to men,
apparently she had a faulty memory.

Giving credit where credit was due, that
first cop had given her something to think about. What happened
when a person committed suicide or died of natural causes or, God
forbid, was murdered? Who cleaned up the mess? In the past it was
usually a family member, but today, with elderly folks who had no
family left or with those too busy to maintain family ties, there
was rarely anyone to call.

More often than not, there were diseases to
worry about, and in the cases of advanced decomposition, normal
body fluids could become toxic, making it dangerous for a regular
Joe to do the cleanup.

All she’d had to do was get licensed in the
cleanup and disposal of hazardous materials, learn to use the right
cleaners and equipment, and she was good to go. Her phone hadn’t
stopped ringing since. For the first time in her life, she’d become
totally self-sufficient and was her own boss. She wouldn’t get rich
but she did well enough to keep her bills paid and a small crew in
work.

When the victim’s cause of death fell outside
natural causes or was unattended, like now, Alex had to wait until
the police had done their job to get started on hers. The delay
made the scene a little less pleasant, but there were masks for
that.

In her Toyota 4Runner were the accessories of
the trade: Hazmat—hazardous materials—outfits and bags for carrying
away the refuse. The outfits weren’t attractive by any stretch of
the imagination, think beekeeper, but they worked and that was what
mattered. Assorted neutralizers, protein-stain cleaners, various
tools and rags, as well as enzyme cleaners that killed blood-borne
bacteria and pathogens equipped her for the job. Not exactly the
disinfectants and bleach one used at home, but the objective was
the same.

A full forty-five minutes and a latte
later—Hitch insisted on sending one of his minions to the Starbucks
on the corner since Alex was forced to wait—the M.E. showed up and
took charge of the body.

She and Hitch stayed out of the way, during
which time she listened to how he’d installed French doors in his
living room over the weekend and how he would love it if she
stopped by to see what a great job he’d done. After three months,
he still wanted to be friends. She wanted that as well. She feared
it would never be enough for him in the long run so she steered
clear of getting too close again.

With a promise to have a look soon, Alex
watched the cops and the M.E. head out. Since the M.E. had
pronounced the cause of death as probable suicide and the police
hadn’t found any indication of foul play, Alex could do what she’d
come to do: Make the sparsely furnished, paneled den look as if a
suicide had never happened on the premises.

She had no preset amount of time to spend on
the job. Each one was different. First she donned the requisite
suit, including shoe covers, safety glasses and gloves, and then
she surveyed the scene. She mentally noted the areas where matter
had sprayed outside the anticipated range. A close check under
furniture as well as behind curtains and blinds was essential. No
one wanted to enter a room after it had been cleaned and discover
human remains still clinging to the underside of a blind slat.

“Aha.” Alex grunted with the effort it took
to fish what she was relatively certain was an eyeball from under a
chair. When the object rolled, covered in dust bunnies, into the
open, she knew she’d been right. In cases such as this one, it
wasn’t unusual for parts to be overlooked. Unless foul play was
suspected there was no reason for the cops to round up every speck
of DNA.

Alex reached for her hazmat bag to chuck the
eyeball, but something other than dust on the surface caught her
attention. She tried to lift it loose but her gloves wouldn’t allow
for the fine motor effort. Carrying the eyeball loosely in the palm
of her hand, she went in search of tweezers.

After a few frustrating failures she finally
lifted what looked like a contact lens off the delicate surface.
She dropped the eyeball in the hazmat bag but kept the lens to
examine it further. This was no ordinary vision enhancer. It was
thicker than the usual lens and quite large. The damned thing was
as big as a quarter with a metallic looking rim around the edges.
Very strange. The sort of gadget you might see in a sci-fi
movie.

It was probably nothing, but she wasn’t
taking any chances. She’d had the same briefing everyone in her
line of work received. Anything suspicious should be reported to
the police. No exceptions. No hesitation.

Alex bagged the lens and, after removing her
right glove, called Hitch. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Hitch, this is Alex.” She stared at the
object in the bag and hesitated, but only for a second. “Look, I
found one of the vic’s eyeballs at the scene.”