Field of Graves(74)
“Yeah, well, we were lovers, briefly. No one but Sam knows, though I think Fitz suspects.”
Baldwin felt a pang of jealousy and shoved it aside. The man was dead, for God’s sake. He had no business being jealous of a ghost. But this was a ghost who was haunting his woman’s dreams.
He understood, though. Ghosts visited him as well. Every night since the shooting, the three men who had been shot came and sat on the foot of his bed, watching him. He shook off the memory. “So you dream about him?”
“I dream about his death. Same dream every night since I shot him. He gets shot, goes down, and I go down with him. He’s decomposing, so am I. His skull turns to say something to me, and then I wake up. It’s expanded recently. All the victims I haven’t saved show up, too. This massive field of graves, and they’re all talking to me.”
“What do they say?”
“‘Help me. It’s your fault.’ I thought I heard something different this time. He said, ‘Go on.’ I don’t really know what that means.”
Baldwin sat next to her and took her other hand. “I think it means he’s telling you he doesn’t blame you for shooting him. Were you in love with him?”
Taylor shook her head. “That’s what’s so awful. I wasn’t. I was lonely, and he was there. It didn’t even last very long. It was a casual thing for me, but, yes, he loved me and wanted more. I broke it off, then he approached me to keep my mouth shut about his little venture, and I just snapped. I felt like he’d betrayed more than just my body, you know? He put my whole career on the line. If I turned him in to Internal Affairs, I might have taken the brunt of it. He could have said that I was in on it from the beginning, made it a ‘he said/she said.’ IA doesn’t like to see their cops embroiled in illegal doings, you know? Especially the female cops.
“But the worst of it was the satisfaction I felt when I saw him lying dead on the floor. I felt like he deserved it. And that’s just so wrong.”
“That’s a lot of guilt to be carrying around, Taylor. It wasn’t your fault you had to shoot him. He did attack you. These things happen.”
“‘These things happen,’” she echoed. “That’s what I just don’t get. I don’t know why these things ‘happen.’ Why do they happen?”
“If I could tell you that, Taylor, I would be God. And I’m not.”
She looked at him. “After all you’ve seen, you still believe in God?”
“I never said that. I just don’t understand. But I have a confession to make. Earlier tonight, when I kissed you, I thought I might have a glimmer. When I realized you understood what happened in Virginia, that you didn’t judge me, I felt like I had been forgiven. By whom, I’m not sure. I wasn’t looking for it, but it’s there. I don’t know what to do with it, and I don’t know if it changes anything, but it’s there.”
Taylor felt tears in her eyes. She had asked for forgiveness a million times, and she never felt as if she’d gotten it. But as she looked at Baldwin, she realized that it had happened a long time ago. She just wasn’t willing to forgive herself.
They both jumped as the phone rang. Taylor lunged for it. “Fitz?”
Baldwin could hear his voice booming through the phone. “How’d ya know it was me?”
“I was hoping. Did you get anything?”
“Yeah, I think we did. Are you coming in?”
She gave Baldwin a smile and squeezed his hand. “We’re on our way.”
THE
SIXTH
DAY
61
Sam walked out the main doors to the parking lot, only to see Dr. Gerald Peterson hailing her down.
“Hey, Dr. Owens, I came by to check out your burn vic. You got a minute?”
Sam felt a brief rush of annoyance. Peterson was the backup forensic odontologist on contract to Davidson County to do dental identifications. He was a small, graying mouse of a man, interminably cheerful. His pink nose twitched with allergies, and he had a wide smile that rose to watery blue eyes behind round, wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses. He was prone to seersucker, and even this late in the fall sported a salmon stripe with a wadded white linen handkerchief bulging from his breast pocket. The man was nice enough, but he was a little erratic, sometimes impossible to reach for weeks at a time. It was his practice to drop in on Sam at his leisure, citing his booming dental practice as his number one priority. Thankfully she didn’t need his services terribly often. Dr. Michael Tabor was their main guy, and he was almost always available, except for when he was out on major cases, on loan to other jurisdictions.
Sam had called Tabor’s office, found out he was in New York on a case, and had been forced to ring Peterson. He’d been surprisingly quick to respond. It was amazing what a little press coverage could do. Everyone wanted their name in the paper, especially on a case that was rapidly turning into a colossal citywide panic.
“Hey, Gerald. Come on in. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
Sam swiped her card, and the security doors unlocked. They entered and made their way through the lobby and the security door, then headed right into the clinical area and through the biovestibule.
Sam stopped and swung open a door, allowing the dentist in before her. The body had been taken to the anthropology laboratory, which was used primarily for the examination of skeletal remains. Just like the main autopsy suite, it had a skylight, but was much smaller, with a single stainless steel table resting against the wall.