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If that was Bree’s body, what was I going to do with it?
She’d wanted to be cremated and have her remains spread in the Shenandoah, somewhere near the river, where she’d spent the summers of her childhood. I owed her that, I—
Captain Quintus flipped on the light, and I blinked and shielded my eyes.
“Alex, why don’t you come on upstairs.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just wanted to talk some things through with you.”
“I got time for a shower? I haven’t had one in—”
“Go ahead,” my boss said, then he slapped the doorjamb and walked away.
I felt better after the shower and a change of shirt from my locker, more alert than I had been in days. When I reached the third floor, the demolition team was long gone, and the floor had been swept clean. I went through the plastic sheeting and saw five people standing near that island of desks under the fluorescent lights.
Sampson looked like he had something left over from the pig farm on his shoe. I was about to tell him I had the same problem when I noticed Mahoney stirring a dark cup of coffee. Captain Quintus was drinking water, and Aaron Wallace, the DC police chief, appeared saddened.
Detective Tess Aaliyah was the only one who gave me a steady gaze.
She swallowed, said, “I wanted to tell you myself.”
Questions exploded through my brain. Had they found Mulch? Had another member of my family turned up? Was I going to have to be tortured again, go to a dump scene to identify someone I loved? In the end, it was something even more unimaginable and cruel.
“The autopsy,” Aaliyah said. “I was there, and …”
Her eyes were watering and she shook her head.
“What?” I demanded.
“We still don’t have DNA, but the blood types match,” she said. “And there’s …”
Sampson cleared his throat, said, “She was pregnant, Alex. Six weeks.”
Hearing about the blood type had made the grief real. Hearing about the baby was too much.
My head spun and I felt sicker than at the pig farm. I sat down hard in one of the chairs, put my face in my hands, the headache pounding with every bit of its earlier fury.
“I’m sorry,” Aaliyah said. “Had you been trying?”
I shook my head bitterly, said, “This is a miracle and a tragedy at the same time. Can you believe that?”
“Shug?” Sampson said.
A great part of me wanted to rail at the sky and the moon, curse God and demand to know why I’d been singled out for this kind of punishment.
Instead, I gazed around at all of them and said, “Bree had uterine fibroids about five years ago. They removed them, but the procedure left scars. The doctors told us she’d likely never have children. A one-in-a-thousand chance, they …”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more bewildered in my life than I was at that moment. I didn’t even hear Chief Wallace come over beside me, but I felt his heavy hand on my shoulder before he said, “Hell of a thing you’re going through, Alex. Hell of a thing. Too much for one man to handle.”
I nodded, cleared my throat, and in a voice tight with emotion said, “Chief, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever had to deal with before.”
He patted my shoulder again. “I can’t imagine the stress.”
“I’m still standing.”
The chief took a chair, set it opposite me, and sat down on it, his forearms resting on his thighs, and his face twisted in anguish. “I know you’re still standing. I know you’re a fighter, and I know this is personal. That’s what makes what I’m going to say now so hard.”
