“Did she suffer, Chief Mayet?” She chokes down a pained sob and wipes her eyes, then, as we stop on the second floor and I gesture her ahead, she stumbles across the threshold on shaking legs. “You can tell, right? You’d know if she was in pain before she… before…”
I lead her straight past the desk we would normally log in at, since Preston Danes sits there and fusses with the computer. Instead, I merely tap the heavy glass door and wait a single second before Aubree draws it open.
“This is Doctor Emeri.” I coax the woman through and follow her into the room filled with individual cubbies assigned to each new DB for the duration of their stay. Some only stay for a couple of days. Some, for a couple of weeks. In one case, we have a body that’s been here for seven years already.
A case the former Chief M.E. couldn’t solve, or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered.
Josey’s cubby is already open, her body lying out on a steel stretcher with a white sheet pulled all the way to her chin.
“Please answer me.” Trembling all over, Sylvia turns to me with fat tears tracking over her cheeks. “Please tell me if she was in pain.”
“She wasn’t,” I answer gently. Truthfully. “Her death was very quick, Ms. Ryan. Her wound was clean and smooth, and would’ve resulted in afast loss of consciousness. I honestly doubt she even felt it when it happened. I believe she simply…” I shrug. “Went to sleep.”
“Like when she was a little girl.” Her chest and shoulders bounce with her grief.
Stepping forward, Aubree does what she does best: brings comfort to those left behind, while I consider myself the bringer of comfort for those who no longer live.
She wraps her arms around the woman and hugs her tight.
“Josey was afraid of the dark all the way up until she was fourteen years old,” she cries. “I workedsodamn hard to keep a roof over our heads, and most importantly, to make sure we always had a home with two bedrooms. I felt like not having those two bedrooms would make me a bad mom.” She brings her soaked eyes up to mine. “She didn’t even sleep in her own room until she was a teenager, but I made sure there was always a second room waiting for her anyway.” Weak, broken, shaking, she brings her hand up. “The dark scared her, so she’d lie beside me every single night, and I’d help her get to sleep by stroking her nose.”
“You were a good mom,” Aubree croons. “Not everyone gets one of those, but Josey did. She got to feel safe, even in the dark, because she always had you to depend on.”
“Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children,” she whimpers. “That’s not how life is supposed to be.”
“No. It’s not.” I steel my spine and inch a fraction to the left. “Would you like to visit with her?”
Watery eyes shoot across the room.
“You can hold her hand,” I explain. “You can stroke her nose.”
“Is she…” She stumbles closer to her daughter on shaking legs. “Her neck…?”
“You can look if you want to.” I step ahead to Josey’s tray and stop on the opposite side, so when we all meet up again, I’m close enough to grab the sheet and allow the devastated mom a second longer to really think this through. “By law, you have that right. But you can’t touch anywhere except her hand or her face.”
“You’re entitled to look,” Aubree repeats softly. “But looking is a little like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Once you’ve done it, you can’t put the paste back.”
“Y-you don’t think I should?” She gulps. “Is it really bad?”
It’s actually one of the cleanest, least traumatic death injuries around. But still… “Looking only hurts you, Ms. Ryan. It serves no purpose but to assuage a little curiosity, and right now, you’re not emotionally capable of making such a decision and processing the consequences that will come of it. Youcanlook,” I lower my chin. “But I don’t think you should. It’s an image that will stay with you for the rest of your life.”
“The rest of my life…” Sobbing, she lowers into a crouch and hugs Josey’s hand between both of hers. She hardly even notices the way Aubree spins and grabs a rolling stool, or how she slides it beneath her backside so the woman doesn’t simply melt to the floor. “The rest of my life seems like a really long time,” she weeps. “If I don’t have my baby…”
Like someone shouted her name, Aubree’s eyes swing across the room and stop on the door. A mere second later, a gentle knock announces our visitors.
Showoff.
I cross the refrigerated room on fast, silent feet, and inching the door open, I reveal Archer closest of all, then a half-dozen steps behind him, Detective Banks.
“Hey.” I drag the door wide and say nothing about the gentle brush of Archer’s fingers against my hip as he passes. When Drake crosses the threshold, I nod. While Sylvia’s cries echo from wall to wall, her grief pouring through the doorway so even Preston glances up from his work, I lower my chin in acknowledgment, then I close him out and trap her pain in here with us. Finally, I turn to stand between the detectives. “She arrived only a few minutes ago. She hasn’t said anything yet that I think bears documenting.”
In my peripherals, Archer’s jaw grits and releases, while across the room, Sylvia presses a kiss to Josey’s hand. Her wrist. Her palm.
“Has she asked any questions?” Drake asks, his voice low.
“Just the standard kind.”
Curious, he lifts a brow.
