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“Not your fault,” I said with a shrug I didn’t feel. “Someone had to be the first to find him.” I glanced at my watch. It had been only ten minutes since I’d found him. It felt like an eternity. “I don’t think he’s going to make that meeting with the witness.”
“Fucker,” Crawford said, a ghost of a smile on his face. He knew I was trying to break the awful tension. “I’m gonna have to write him up after all.” We both gave stupid little giggles, then in the next breath Crawford had me enveloped in a big man-hug. I returned the embrace, knowing he needed the comfort as much as I did. A heartbeat later we stepped back, neither one of us the slightest bit embarrassed about the display of emotion.
“I need to make some phone calls,” he said with a sigh. “Crime lab’s already on the way.”
“And we need to find his wife. Does anyone know where she worked? Does she have family around here?”
“We’ll find all of that out,” he said, the growl in his voice a promise. Then he stepped away to make his calls.
I was saved from slipping back into agonized ponderings about Brian’s missing essence by the sight of the crime-scene van pulling into the driveway. It parked behind Crawford’s car, and Crime Scene Technician Jill Faciane hopped out—a petite woman with short red hair and an elfin face, dressed in blue fatigue pants and a Beaulac PD T-shirt. She headed toward me, pausing only to scrawl her name on the crime-scene log before ducking under the tape that had been hastily strung.
“I hate to say it,” I said when Jill reached me, “but I’m really glad you’re the tech on call.” We’d worked together extensively during the Symbol Man case and had become friends in the process. I’d grown up fairly lonely and isolated due to my penchant for summoning demons, so having a female friend was something new and rewarding.
She gave a sharp nod of understanding. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She shook her head, blue eyes dark and angry. “I hate it when one of our own dies. Even when it’s some sort of stupid accident at home.”
I knew what she meant. Police were a family, a brotherhood—no matter what the gender.
Her scowl deepened. “But a suicide. God damn it.”
“The note says that he killed his wife,” I said, voice grim.
She jammed her fingers through her hair. “It’s just so hard to believe. I’d heard they were having some problems, but shit. Everyone goes through rough patches.”
I shook my head. “The way it’s worded makes it sound like it was an accident, but I did a quick sweep and couldn’t find her.”
“And so he killed himself? How the fuck could he do this to us?” I could hear the anger in her voice, and I understood it.
I sighed. “It’s been a long time since we’ve lost anyone.” Then I winced. “I mean—”
“Other than you,” Jill said quietly. “But at least you came back.” She shivered and rubbed her arms. “Those two weeks were awful.”
I didn’t know how to respond. After the showdown with the Symbol Man, it had been assumed that I was dead. There’d been plenty of evidence to support that assumption, including eyewitness accounts of me being eviscerated and a few gallons of my blood on the scene—though no body. A cover story had later been spun to explain my disappearance and surprising reappearance, but there were only two people in this world who knew what had actually happened, who knew that I really had died. For two weeks, at least.
“But your funeral,” she said, forcing a grin, “man, that was some shit! The procession was five miles long!”
I made myself return the grin. “Everyone just wanted to get out of work.”
Jill snorted and thwapped me on the arm. “You are so stupid.” Then she gave a sigh. “Well, lemme get my shit so I can start processing this scene.”
Crawford walked back over to me as Jill trotted to her van. “The rank will be making their way out here in due course, and the search is on for Carol.” He gave me a penetrating look. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m doing fine.” I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’ll let myself feel it all later.”
His lips twisted. “I know what you mean, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, how are you doing? I know you’ve only been back at work for a week.”
I wiped a trickle of sweat away from my temple. The heat was beginning to ramp up as the morning progressed. “I’m all right. There’re a couple of people who are being weird about my, um, disappearance, but they’ll get over it.”
Crawford turned and stepped off the porch, motioning with his head to follow. He walked past the crime-scene tape to the meager shade offered by a scraggly oak tree, then took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his jacket pocket. “I’ve been a cop a long time, Kara. I thought I’d seen it all.” He pulled a cigarette out and lit it, took a heavy drag. He’d stopped using chewing tobacco and taken up smoking instead, which made no sense to me. He’d also shaved his mustache, which had really thrown me. On the other hand, he still dyed his hair brown and wore dull brown suits with wild and garish ties. So I guessed some things never changed.
“Anyway, I’ve seen enough weird shit to be willing to accept that there’s a lot of weird shit out there,” he continued. “I don’t believe that story about you having to go so deep undercover that everyone had to believe you were dead, but I figure if there really is another story, it’s probably best that no one knows it.” He shrugged and blew out smoke. I resisted the urge to move so that I was more upwind of him. He was surprising me with this apparent willingness to accept the inexplicable. I still wasn’t about to tell him what had actually happened during those two weeks, but I had the oddly comforting feeling that if I was to ever tell him, he’d be fairly accepting.>A red Ford F-150 was parked in the driveway next to a gold Ford Taurus with public plates—Brian’s department-issued vehicle. That told me that he was most likely at home, since I knew the pickup was his personal vehicle. But a shiver went through me as I approached the house, and I paused, trying to capture the fleeting sense of unease that had drifted by me. My gaze fell on the door and my eyes narrowed. It was pulled mostly shut, but the latch hadn’t caught and it was ajar approximately half an inch. I quickly retreated to my car and grabbed my gun and holster out of the glove box, then returned to the door, clipping the holster onto my belt and holding my gun at the ready position. I couldn’t see any sign of forced entry. Maybe he just didn’t pull the door all the way shut? I wanted to believe that, but the continued sense of unease nagged at me.
I nudged the door farther open with my foot, staying behind the jamb. “Brian?” I called. “It’s Kara Gillian.”
Silence. Not even the brush of movement on carpet. If he was in there, he was being awfully quiet. I gave the door a soft kick to push it open all the way, then took a quick peek in.
