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Marc shrugged and took his hands out of his pockets, but his eyes were glittering with amusement.
Sometime later, the body of the victim had told them that except for being dead, he was in remarkably good shape. No sign of disease in any of the major organs, no blockage in his veins, good muscle definition, no needle marks on his arms or between his toes to indicate intravenous drug use. The toxicology report wasn't back, and it might indicate some other type of drug use, but overall the victim looked too healthy to have been a user.
Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, fired at medium range, no exit wound. The penetrating missile was a .22-caliber bullet, which had also sent several bone fragments through the soft brain tissue. The kinetic energy of the tumbling projectiles had destroyed massive amounts of tissue, like a tidal wave rolling through the brain and smashing everything it touched.
X rays and photographs of the victim's teeth had been sent to the Marine Corps for identification. Depending on how efficient they were, the victim's identity should be forthcoming within a few days. Marc would begin trying to locate any family, and maybe, just maybe, within a week or two the poor guy could have a burial.
He was surprised when the identification came back the next day. Someone in the vast tangle of military and civilian bureaucracy was on the ball; either that, or by pure chance the victim's teeth had been in the first batch checked for a cross-match. There was a name now: Dexter Alvin Whitlaw, from Keysburg, West Virginia. Next of kin was a wife, Shirley Jeanette Allen Whitlaw, and a daughter, Karen Simone Whitlaw. Marc had their social security numbers and their last known address. He could find them.
The message light was blinking when Karen got home from work. She was tempted not to listen to the messages, just to take a quick shower and fall into bed. Since she'd sold the house and moved into an apartment four months ago, the nights had seemed even more lonely; after working all day, she hadn't had either the energy or the interest to do much unpacking, and a lot of her things were still in boxes, which made her feel as if she were living in a sparsely furnished motel roo
m—or a warehouse. The rooms seemed to echo, intensifying her sense of being alone, of missing Jeanette.
She hadn't been sleeping or eating well, either, and was losing weight. In an effort to jar herself out of her depression, she had switched shifts with one of the other nurses and was now working nights. The strategy had worked, to some degree. She was so tired when she dragged home early in the mornings that she literally fell into bed and slept like a log. After the first disastrous day, when she had been awakened eleven times by telemarketers and wrong numbers, she learned to turn off the phone.
Lately, she had been trying to stay up for several hours after getting home, to mimic the routine of daytime jobs, but not today. This was the morning after the night from hell. She wanted nothing more than to get off her aching feet and just sleep.
She worked on the surgical floor, where noncritical patients were placed after surgery. They were all in pain, but everyone had a different tolerance for pain. Some were so stoic only their blood pressure would indicate whether or not they were hurting; others screamed bloody murder at the least discomfort. Tonight had been a night for the screamers. They hurt, damn it, and wanted something now: another pill, turn up the morphine drip, anything. Of course, the nurses couldn't exceed the doctors' prescribed dosages without authorization; all they could do was take the heat. Tracking down a doctor in the middle of the night to authorize more pain medication was usually an exercise in futility; the nurses practically needed a team of bloodhounds to track down the doctor on duty, who had a genius for being somewhere else and not hearing his page.
Then a patient, a thirty-two-year-old mother of two, had gone sour on them. She was in for a ruptured appendix and had been very sick for several days but was recovering. Tonight, just after supper, she had been walking to the bathroom and suddenly slumped to the floor. A blood clot had lodged in her pulmonary artery, and she was gone, despite all their efforts. It happened sometimes, but the shock never really lessened. The only thing that had changed was that Karen had learned how to work through the shock, to keep going, to push it away. All nurses and doctors had to learn that, or they couldn't function.
But the kicker was when some idiot let a nineteen-year-old boy, wacked out on drugs, escape from the psych unit, where he had been taken because of the security. Some security. And where had the kid headed? Straight to the surgical floor, where all the good dope could be found.
He had shed his hospital gown somewhere along the way. Stark naked, his pupils so contracted he looked like an alien, hair standing out in wild tangles, he had wrecked the desk looking for drugs. Finally, he had found the locked cabinet, but Judy Camliffe, the floor charge nurse, had the key in her pocket. Security got there as he was trying to tear the metal doors apart. Unfortunately, subduing a naked man is tricky; there are no clothes to grab, and bare skin is slippery. The kid fought free so many times Karen lost count. They wrestled in the halls, upsetting carts, dumping files and charts everywhere, waking patients who then either became alarmed or decided they needed more pain medication. By the time the kid was finally subdued, the surgical floor was a wreck. By the time the nurses finished with their shift, so were they.
The message was probably from a salesman or a charity; she hadn't had time yet to make friends with any of her new neighbors, and all of her other friends were nurses who knew what shift she worked and wouldn't call to chat. She couldn't think of any remotely urgent reason she should listen to her messages, but still she dropped her bag and went over to the machine. She wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that red light was blinking.
Out of habit, she picked up the notepad and pen she always kept by the phone, just in case there might actually be a call she needed to return. She punched the play button and listened to the tape rewinding.
After some whirring and a couple of clicks, a drawling baritone voice broke the quiet of the room. For some reason, her breath gave a little hitch. The voice was somehow beguiling, with warm, dark, pure masculine tones that quivered along her nerve endings, almost as if she had been touched. Even disguised by the drawl, there was a hard edge of authority evident as well. He said, "Miss Whitlaw, this is Detective Marc Chastain with the New Orleans Police Department. I need to talk to you concerning your father. You can reach me at—"
He recited the number, but Karen was so taken aback she didn't write down a single digit. Hastily, she punched the stop button, then replay. When the whirring and clicking stopped, she listened again to the brief message and once again was so distracted by his voice that she almost missed the number a second time. She scribbled it down, then stared at the pad in a fog of fatigue and bemusement.
Dexter was evidently in trouble and thought she would bail him out. No, he thought Jeanette would bail him out; he couldn't know his wife had been dead for six months. Had the detective said "Miss Whitlaw" or "Mrs. Whitlaw"? His drawl had slurred the word.
She couldn't resist. She replayed the message one more time, as much to hear that voice as to determine if he had thought he was calling her or her mother. Listening closely, she thought he said "Miss," which was politically incorrect of him, but she still wasn't certain.
She didn't want to call. She didn't want to hear about Dexter's troubles, and she had no intention of bailing him out of anything, anyway. All she wanted to do was get off her feet and go to sleep.
She thought of her mother, how Jeanette had taken him back time and again, how she was always there if he needed her. He had never been there for them, but Jeanette had never wavered in her devotion.
Suddenly, Karen felt swamped by an exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical tiredness and everything to do with a lifetime of bitterness, of wariness, and these last lonely six months of grieving for her mother. She was tired of being dragged down by her father's desertion. It was done, and nothing she could do would change it. She didn't want to be one of those people who spent their entire lives whining about their past troubles, as if that excused them from responsible behavior in the present. She had loved her mother dearly, still loved her and would continue to grieve for her, but it was time to get on with life. Instead of letting the empty apartment depress her, she should get her things out of the boxes she had packed them in to move, and make a home here.
Maybe she would take more classes, get her master's degree in nursing. She might go into the critical care field. It was challenging but fascinating for those who could stand the pressure. She was calm during emergencies, able to think fast on her feet, both necessary characteristics in a good critical care nurse.
She took a deep breath. For the first time since Jeanette's death, she felt in control of herself, of her life. She had to deal with Dexter, if only for her mother's sake, so she might as well make the call. Without giving herself any time perhaps to change her mind, she picked up the receiver and punched Detective Chastain's number.
Unconsciously, she held her breath, bracing herself to hear his voice. How silly of her, to let herself to be affected by a man's voice on the telephone, but recognizing the ridiculousness of her reaction didn't mitigate the strength of it.
The phone rang several times, but no one answered it. Surely detectives didn't keep bankers' hours, she thought.
She glanced at her wristwatch. Seven forty-five. "Idiot," she muttered under her breath, and hung up. Louisiana was in the central time zone, an hour behind Ohio. Detective Marc Chastain was definitely not in his office at six forty-five in the morning.
She couldn't stay awake until a reasonable time for him to be there. She couldn't stay vertical another five minutes. Dexter would have to wait.
But she would call. When she woke up this afternoon, she would call.
That decision made, she stumbled into the bedroom. Fatigue made her clumsy as she undressed. Yawning again, she stretched out between the cool sheets and sighed with bliss, arching her aching feet and wriggling her toes. She tried to imagine how Detective Chastain looked. Voices almost never matched appearances; the detective was probably a pot-bellied good old boy, edging toward retirement, with a couple of grown kids. But he had a voice like dark honey, and it was with her as she drifted to sleep.
