Evelyn Vaughn - Contact

But whatever it was, Tamara shouldn’t also feel guilty about moving them here.

The phone rang again and Faith took a deep breath before answering it. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

“Glad to know it,” said a much deeper voice than the one she’d expected. “That’s exactly the word I would have used.”

His energy actually seemed to pulsate out of the phone. Or was that just the man’s inability to moderate his voice?

“Detective Chopin,” greeted Faith, sitting up. Like he could see her. At least he’d called, and not his partner. Faith had been on the phone with Butch Jefferson as an anonymous contact too often to risk letting him recognize her disembodied voice. “Do you want to talk to one of the technicians, or maybe Mr. Boulanger?”

“If I’d wanted to talk to them, I would’ve called them,” he said. “I figured…that is, I thought I’d ask…”

Faith waited, feeling as handicapped as if she’d been blindfolded. All she could hear over the line in this busy office was that Chopin sounded frustrated. If he were here, she could have read his body language and his scent and even his temperature as if he were holding up cue cards with personal insights. On the phone…

Maybe that’s why she and cell phones had such a bad history. She resented their limitations.

“You are Faith Corbett, right?” asked the cop, managing a slightly quieter voice after all.

“Yes, Detective. What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted…” Chopin swore, and his voice went normal again. Which meant, pushy. “Evidence. On the Tanner case. We’re past the 24/24, and I need a damned progress report.”

The 24/24 stood for the day before and the day after a murder, the time from which the most valid clues came. Soon, people’s recall would fade. Undiscovered physical evidence might vanish. That’s why the majority of murders were solved within the first forty-eight hours.

Krystal had been dead thirty-seven hours and counting.

“I’m not supposed to involve myself with the Tanner evidence, Detective Chopin.”

“Which wouldn’t keep you from looking from a safe distance, right? So what’s the status? And call me Roy.”

He had her there—she had looked, on the computer network. She just hadn’t modified any files. “We’re still waiting on the M.E. for the autopsy results, and so far Officer Hinze hasn’t found concrete matches on any of the fingerprints from the scene. Considering that there were over fifty prints and partials, that’s still going to take some processing. The footprints will be even more tricky—for some reason, there was a lot of spilled salt on the floor. You know this one went to the night shift, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know. So, is the body still there? Did it—” Then he said, “Aw, f—” He bit off the swear word. “I’m sorry. Hell. I almost forgot it was your friend. I mean…uh…she.”

“You were right the first time,” Faith assured him. The evidence in the morgue was no longer Krystal. “I hope you’ve got some leads on the bastard who murdered her.”

He knew better than to commit himself. “Just to humor me—the body’s still there?”

As in many cities, the crime-scene investigators were not part of the police department, so they didn’t have offices at the police station. Neither was this unit part of the parish— Louisiana talk for a county. As soon as the city coroner finished with the corpse, it would be released to the funeral parlor or moved back to the parish morgue. But as long as it remained evidence to be examined…

“The body’s still here.” Faith’s fingers darted across her keyboard to access the proper file and confirm that. Looking only. No interference. “Why do you need to know? Do you need to see it for…something?”

“Unless the M.E. has something pertinent to the case, I’m just as happy leaving that part to you folks. Hell. Maybe I do need to talk to Boulanger.”

“Hold a moment, and I’ll put you through.” Never had she felt more like a glorified secretary. But at least her job kept her near law enforcement. She’d dropped out of college the previous year when she was questioning everything, including why she’d thought she would even want to be a lawyer. But in the meantime, she had to pay the rent. This job felt…right.

Greg’s voice mail clicked on, and Chopin swore again.

“Would you like to leave a message?” Faith asked.

“No. I’d like you to find him. I need to see if anything got—” Did he start to form the T from taken, or was Faith imagining it? “Hunt Boulanger down and have him call me. Got it?”

“Yes sir, detective sir,” said Faith.

“You’re cute when you’re a smart-ass,” said Chopin, as if he could see her, and hung up.

Faith let the phone roll off her shoulder into her waiting palm. Her neck felt cricked already. But once she had the receiver in her hand, she held it for a long moment, as if she’d be able to sense anything of importance off of it.

Other than the fact that Officer Leone had used her line recently, she sensed nothing. Not off the telephone, anyway.

Roy Chopin had called her cute. Actually, at the start of the conversation, he’d called her fine, too. Then he’d gotten self-conscious.

He’d called to talk to her? Using her friend’s corpse as an excuse? Surely not.

She’d thought she was socially inept.

Since she’d been sitting too long anyway, Faith decided to head down to the autopsy room where the medical examiner would be working his magic. If Greg wasn’t with him, she could work her way back from there, but there was no reason to waste time checking the nooks and crannies if she’d only find him where he usually was—with the evidence.

The frigid autopsy chamber was large for a room, but small for a morgue. Only a dozen stainless steel drawers fronted one wall, with three slabs—two regular steel tables, one with a trough underneath it—positioned down the room’s center. Two of the tables had a sheet-draped body on them. It seemed sad, them left out like this, but Faith supposed bodies were too heavy to put away every time someone ran out for coffee or a bathroom break.

Either way, nobody was here. Nobody living, anyway.

She glanced toward the sheet that she thought hid Krystal’s corpse. This time, she couldn’t smell her friend’s presence because she was breathing shallow, through her mouth. Although everything here had been made for easy cleaning—the floor, the tiled walls like a bathroom’s, lots of metal—even the reek of disinfectant couldn’t mask the odor of death.

“Tell me,” she whispered, keeping her distance as she’d promised Greg she would. Never had she more fervently wished that she really was psychic. “Tell me who did this to you.”

Then her head—Faith’s head, of course—came up. She heard something in the hallway, male footsteps. Someone was coming.

Someone who didn’t belong here. In fact…

She didn’t know those boots. So why did they concern her?

She concentrated, straining to catch this particular heartbeat. It pulsed more rapidly than the heart of someone who was simply taking care of tasks at work. It sounded more like someone doing something they shouldn’t. And in this otherwise lifeless room, surrounded only by hearts that never would beat again, she recognized it.

The killer was coming.

Time to leave, thought Faith—but her feet didn’t move. It wasn’t from courage. Some instinct more powerful than her desire to see the killer’s face was holding her transfixed, listening to those footsteps, listening to that heartbeat. What was different about it? A murmur? A rhythmic anomaly? Could she even be sure it was the killer, and not her imagination?

Her head couldn’t. But her instincts weren’t letting her go out there, all the same.