Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(36)

Lonergan smirked. “Need a drink . . . or a paramedic?”

She could feel the heat rising in her face, her cheeks flushing. There was a lot to say, but not here or now. Foster had hoped that after yesterday Lonergan would have settled in and mellowed some. He hadn’t. “Don’t worry,” Foster said, her body shaking with an impulse to smack the smug look off his face. “I know how to keep my powder dry.”





CHAPTER 20


The house looked worse from the street. Nothing about it felt right. For one thing, the homes on either side were far too close, which would likely encourage neighborly conversations over the garden hedge. The symmetry of the two-story colonial was appealing—three windows with shutters across the top, two shuttered windows, and a blue door with a wreath of fall flowers below. Inside, the ad said, there were ten rooms, a full basement, and an attic. There was also a huge yard and a two-car garage out back. It would be ideal if not for the sneer of contempt the house appeared to give, as if it were human and discerning and rejected out of hand the person standing alone by the neglected bushes. As if that lonely figure were contemplating an attack or had stolen its wallet at gunpoint.

Maybe it was the peeling aluminum siding, which in itself was a turnoff. Who put siding on a classic colonial? It was like encasing a living, breathing thing inside a tin can. The ad hadn’t mentioned the siding. If it had, this trip would have been unnecessary. There was no use going in. The house would never do.

Not like the others—not like Naperville or Saint Paul, not like Bloomington—where the houses had been perfect. On quiet streets offering plenty of room to work. Houses in places where the seasons changed, summer sun to autumn chill, autumn chill to blankets of pure, white snow. But not this house. It didn’t feel right at all.

When the morning’s paper was grabbed out of a deep pocket, the front page told the story of a young woman found dead downtown. Margaret Ann Birch. Nineteen. Pretty. Details were scarce, unfortunately. Early times yet. This was only the first. The fear and panic would come after the next, when the pattern formed. Pretty young things, all the same. The police had no idea what was coming.

Not sad. That was life. Sometimes the young grew old; sometimes they didn’t. Every living thing died, and the jump from here to gone often wasn’t such a grand leap at all.

But to be left out in the cold alone, well, that just wouldn’t do. There should be a house. Not this one but one that felt right. A home. Margaret Ann Birch wouldn’t see the winter. She’d miss how perfect the imperfect world looked when it was blanketed in fresh snow. The next would miss it too. And the next.

Things were what they were. Hopefully, the next house would be more suitable.





CHAPTER 21


It was cold in the autopsy room, and hard rock music—frenetic, incomprehensible—blasted out of Dr. Olivia Grant’s stereo speakers like a thousand rabid bats out of Hades, as if the violent clash of notes was a defensive screech that had the power to beat back death, giving it no dominion over the living. As unappealing as the music was to Foster, the noise felt alive, and it took her mind off the cold and the bleak tiled walls that were the color of the ME’s green hospital scrubs and the metal table and the body lying on it with the striking Y incision, which always drew the eye no matter how hard you tried not to let it.

The detectives hung back out of the field, watching as Grant stood at the table over what was left of Margaret Ann Birch. Though the autopsy had been scheduled for nine, Grant had started without them.

“I hate it when you bring me young ones,” Grant said. “I really hate it.”

Grant covered Birch’s body with a white sheet, then faced the cops who’d come for information. She slid off her surgical cap to reveal cropped platinum hair, which set off her smooth caramel skin and big hazel eyes. Grant grabbed the small remote that worked the stereo and clicked off the music, plunging the room into an eerie, hollow silence. Death was back. It did hold dominion over the living.

“Didn’t you say nine?” Lonergan held up a wrist with an old analog watch fastened to it. “It’s just that now.”

“Detective Lonergan. You again,” Grant said, not sounding at all happy about the reunion. She then glanced over at Foster, who stood beside him. “Only this time you brought the A-Team. Good for you, not so good for her.” She winked at Foster, then peeled her gloves off, padded over to the sink, and scrubbed her hands with harsh soap—hands, wrists, forearms. “I got to it sooner. I didn’t want that child to lie on my table any longer than she had to. I didn’t think I needed to wait for a quorum. Besides, you’re the main one always ragging on me to speed things up. Now you’re complaining. Typical.”

Foster knew Lonergan was in no position to complain too loudly. This was Grant’s world, and she ran it like she knew it. Grant turned and looked over at Foster standing stoically, her eyes on the sheet under which Beth Birch’s child lay cold, having just endured Grant’s meticulous probing. Foster had been here so many times doing exactly this. Grant had conducted Glynnis’s autopsy, though there’d been no question as to the cause of death. She’d also conducted Reg’s, and she had been kind, caring. Neither of them, Foster knew, would ever mention it.

Grant plucked up her paperwork from the desk. “Immediate cause of death, exsanguination, but . . . well, you could have guessed. Twenty-two stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, some deeper than others. Two missed the heart by millimeters. One got it right on the money.”