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“I don’t want to rush you, but the coroner’s office is here. As soon as you’re done, they’re going to bag her up.”
“Sure,” I said as I peered into the dead woman’s face. There was nothing to indicate that she’d died in the kind of arcane violence that I could feel. No look of horror etched into her features, no arcane sigils traced upon her body in blood, nothing else that would be there if this had been a scene in a movie.
“No forced entry,” Fourcade continued, sounding a bit bored. “No signs of struggle. I guess this helps tie up your other case.”
I looked at him blankly. “How?”
He waved a hand toward the pill bottles, and now I saw that there was a sheet of paper beneath them. “Note. Confession. It’s why I called you,” he said, as if explaining it to a three-year-old.
My jaw tightened, but I managed to keep my retort in check. I stepped over to the nightstand and read the note.
I cheated on my husband, then killed him. I couldn’t take the shame of a divorce. Now I can’t live without him, can’t live with the guilt.
It was a decent little suicide note, but it totally rang false. “This isn’t signed. It’s just a printout.”
“Half of all suicides don’t even leave notes,” he replied, mouth drawing down in annoyance. “You’re gonna get hung up because she didn’t dig out a pen and do it all nice and legal?”
“If you expect me to use this as a reason to close my other investigation, then, yes, I’m gonna get hung up,” I snapped back, too on edge to censor myself. “Where’s her computer?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, face darkening. “How should I fucking know? Probably in one of the other bedrooms.”
I walked past him to the hallway. I knew from my previous visit that there wasn’t a computer in the sitting room. The door to the other bedroom was ajar and I pushed in, quickly scanning. “No computer in here,” I called back over my shoulder. I heard a muffled noise that sounded like a growl, then the sound of opening and closing doors. I yanked gloves on and started opening drawers.
“Here,” I heard after about half a minute. I returned to the hallway to see Fourcade holding up a laptop case, smug smile on his face. “One computer. Satisfied?”
I shrugged. “Halfway. Now, where’s the printer?”
His red mustache was beginning to look pale in contrast to his florid face. “Maybe she wrote the fucking note and printed it out somewhere else.”
How stubborn was the guy going to be? I knew that I shouldn’t get into an argument with the detective about how to handle his own case, but I couldn’t believe that he had zero interest at all that the case could be more than a suicide. A rational part of me tried to argue that toxicology testing would show whether or not it had been a suicide, since I seriously doubted that she had actually ingested the pills, but I wasn’t interested in listening to the rational part at this moment. The past few days had been grueling and stressful, and I wasn’t about to let this jackass do a slapdash job of investigating this scene.
“Look,” I said, stepping toward him. “If she couldn’t take the time to find a pen to sign her name, why the fuck would she take her laptop to someplace else that had a printer to print out a suicide note? All I’m asking you to do is to treat this like a homicide investigation until you know for a fact that it’s not. I’m asking you to do your job.”
The last sentence was one that I really should have internalized.
“Get off my fucking scene, Detective,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Get surveillance video from the guard gate. See who came in,” I pressed. Fuck it. I’d already completely pissed him off. “Check the prescriptions. Fucking investigate it!”
“Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job. Get out!”
I took a step back to avoid the slight spray of spittle, abruptly realizing that everyone else in the condo had stopped working and was staring at us in the hallway. I scowled and squared my shoulders. “Fine.” My gaze swept the others. “Don’t any of you worry about this woman’s murderer going free because this man was too damn lazy to put in a little legwork.”
I left amid the openmouthed stares of Mandeville’s finest.
Chapter 27
My anger at myself grew as the distance from Mandeville increased. I’d been a jerk. An undisciplined, tactless jerk. There were a thousand ways I could have handled that whole situation differently, and any one of them would have been better and far more likely to result in Elena’s death being investigated properly. It was possible—even probable—that Fourcade was a good detective. But faced with the antagonistic ravings of a detective from a neighboring jurisdiction, it was no shock that he’d become defensive. Then my reaction had been to embarrass him in front of his coworkers. I’d put him in a no-win situation and given him no way to save face. If he went and got those surveillance tapes now or checked the prescriptions—all the things that he would have most likely done on his own without prompting—he would look like an idiot who had to be told what to do.
I wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel, but since I was driving I decided that would probably be a bad idea. Instead, I settled for taking several deep breaths and focusing on the monotony of the drive to ease my stress. The drive from Mandeville to Beaulac was almost completely on back highways, and after about twenty minutes of pine trees and cow pastures I began to zone out, regaining a bit of the feeling of peace that I hadn’t even realized I’d needed until it was gone.
Until a few months ago, my life had been fairly uncomplicated—before Rhyzkahl and Ryan, and before losing my aunt. I drummed my fingers absently on the worn steering wheel. There was a part of me that was glad my life was not uncomplicated anymore. The loss of my aunt gnawed at me, even though I had hope that it wasn’t permanent, but I had to face the fact that I didn’t want a staid and sensible life. I would never have become a cop if I did. I liked the action and the excitement, even though most of the time on the job was spent in long stretches of inaction. My field-training officer had told me that police work was ninety-five percent boredom and five percent sheer terror, but that five percent made it all worth it.
The sign for St. Long Parish flicked past as I approached the bridge over the Kreeger River. I’d wasted much of the day with the trip to Mandeville, but at least I could mentally cross Elena off as a suspect, even if I couldn’t quite do so officially.
The loud bang on the right side of the car derailed my thoughts and sent my pulse racing. My hands tightened on the steering wheel convulsively as the car fought to swerve in the direction of the blown tire. Adrenaline dumped into my system as I felt the tires slide on the metal decking of the bridge. I steered into the skid, even though the retaining wall of the bridge loomed threateningly, and I managed to get the damn car straightened out and under control just shy of scraping the low concrete barrier.
I allowed myself a ragged breath of relief, then caught a movement in the rearview mirror, barely registering the large pickup truck coming up on me far too fast—
