Page 25 of Deeper Than the Dead

She blinked away the bleariness, then traced a water stain on the whitewashed beadboard ceiling. She blinked again. Home.

She groaned and started to flop onto her side, but the brass-and-crystal light fixture her father had hung on her fourteenth birthday drew her into the past. She’d so badly wanted a chandelier. It was nothing elaborate, but it had made her fourteen-year-old self feel special. Eve thought she was crazy for wasting her birthday wish on a dumb light fixture. Didn’t matter. Vera had loved it. Her mother smiled and whispered that she wished she’d had one that pretty when she was fourteen.

Before.

Before their mother got cancer. Before she died, leaving Vera and Eve so very sad. Before their father sought out comfort elsewhere, leaving them so utterly and completely alone. And before the rest of the disastrous things that occurred.

Vera was home. She lay in the bed a few more moments, until the more cognitive side of her brain caught up with the emotional part delivering all those tender memories. She was home, and she was in trouble.

Sadly the trouble was coming at her from both aspects of her life.

The other memories, more recent ones, poured into her skull. Years of hard work to bring a cutting-edge investigation team to life. And then the one defining event that destroyed it all.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force the thoughts away, but they refused to go. No more pretending. At some point, her sisters would ask questions about the trouble in Memphis. This other insanity—right here at home—kept her off the hot seat for now, but it wouldn’t last.

Nothing ever did.

Vera opened her eyes and allowed the reality to rise inside her, swarm in her brain like bees in the springtime.

No less than a dozen well-trained, focused minds had worked hard to become the very best officers in the elite program. Vera interviewed each one personally and repeatedly. All were the cream of the crop produced by the police academy. Four seasoned veterans had been carefully chosen to lead the unit.

Vera turned on her side and curled into herself.

Still, they had failed. No one had spotted the trouble until it was too late.

Mission after mission went perfectly. The department, the mayor, the governor praised their work. The media turned them all into celebrities. Other police departments were asking for help with creating their own teams that would work 24-7 to stop crime before it happened.

The Memphis PD’s PAPA (predictive analytics policing action) team was the first truly successful one of its kind. For two years they had ferreted out and stopped perpetrators before they carried out their criminal activities.

And then it all went to shit when a senior detective killed another for reasons that had nothing to do with the work. Vera should have noted the issue and seen the trouble coming, but she missed it completely.

Internally, all were grateful the killing hadn’t involved civilians. Still, two fine detectives, a man and a woman, were dead. The woman who had done the killing immediately turned her weapon on herself.

Vera had known this woman. They had been friends, she and Lorna Carver. Lorna’s recent divorce set off warning bells for Vera, but Lorna insisted she was glad it was over. She and her ex had no children. The divorce seemed to be amicable. Vera bought her story without question. All was as it should be, and Lorna was ready to move on. End of story.

Except it wasn’t.

As it turned out, Lorna had relationship troubles going all the way back to elementary school. Her mother broke down during her very first questioning and admitted that Lorna had hidden it well, but she’d always had issues keeping a relationship together. When her husband moved out, Lorna became involved with a fellow detective—a colleague on the PAPA team. The two were close. Everyone on the team was close. But what no one knew was that he had a history with Lorna’s husband. That connection drove him to betray Lorna’s trust and ultimately prompted her to unravel.

Even now, Vera tried to find an incident that should have set off new alarm bells, but both detectives had been too careful. For Lorna, her career was all she had left, in her mind, so she worked extra hard to behave as if nothing was amiss. Until she lost control.

No excuses. Vera should have seen it coming.

She reached for her phone and checked the time. Eight fifteen a.m. She sighed. Good grief, she should have been up hours ago. Vera tossed her phone onto the bedside table and threw back the covers. As she pushed to her feet, she considered that it was necessary to talk to Bent again about the case here. She needed to know exactly what they had found so far. Ultimately, she was at a standstill as to what to do until she knew what she was up against.

What they were up against.

This was bigger than just Vera.

Once she had more information, she needed to have a more in-depth discussion with Eve. She wasn’t sure what time Eve and Luna went to work. Before now, apparently. The house was as silent as a tomb, which suggested no one else was here. Vera tidied the covers on her bed out of habit. She dug a pair of jeans and a tee along with underthings from her bag and rushed through a shower. With her hair tucked into a ponytail, she wandered toward the stairs, checking the other bedrooms as she went. Luna’s room was exactly what anyone who met her would expect. Pink and flowery. Lots of family photos on the wall. A framed photograph of her fiancé on the bedside table. Everything in its place. Eve’s, on the other hand, was cluttered and glum. There was only one family photo, and it was a framed shot from when Vera and Eve were much younger. It sat on the dresser alongside a pile of clothes that needed to be put away. Her bed was unmade, and the window blinds remained closed.

Perfectly Eve. Dark and brooding.

Their father’s room smelled musty and unused. Vera doubted anyone went into the room anymore. Unable to help herself, she turned on the light since the shades were drawn and stepped inside. The room looked exactly as it had when he was married to Sheree, which wasn’t that different from the way it had been in the before part of their lives. Sheree hadn’t really changed anything around the house. Doing house stuff, she would say, wasn’t her thing. Cleaning of any sort was included in the stuff that wasn’t her thing. Eve and Vera had been like little Cinderellas during her tenure as their stepmother.

Sheree hadn’t cooked either. Their father would make breakfast before he left for work. Vera and Eve figured out supper so their father wouldn’t have to. The summer after he and Sheree married, the two of them had been on their own for lunches as well. Sheree lay around the house watching soap operas all day. This was just before any significant social media launched, so when she wasn’t watching television, she stayed on the phone talking to friends or she simply disappeared for a few hours. All while Vera and Eve took care of the house, the cooking, and eventually, the new baby.

Early on they stopped complaining to their father. Even then they knew their stepmother was up to no good, but keeping the peace was far easier than dealing with the fallout of tattling. Sheree had been one vindictive bitch.

---