Page 20 of The Drowned Woman
Death by misadventure, someone had told him that first night—he had no idea who, could barely hang on to any of the words hurled around. That was before they found the suicide poem she’d left, a message aimed to strike straight at Luka’s heart: his book, the poem he’d been fascinated by. Before they realized that she’d taken off her engagement ring and stopped her medication. There were tire tracks, gouged into the ground as she’d accelerated. No misadventure, no accident, now they were certain—so certain, beyond all reasonable doubt, beyond any argument Luka could make with the cops, the coroner, even Cherise’s parents.
Suicide.
Trudy’s death wasn’t suicide. And no accident, he was certain. Not with a missing cell phone but an intact wallet full of cash. Which left one possibility. Murder.
He pulled into the secure parking lot beside the anonymous yellow brick building that housed Cambria City’s police department. He despised the ugly cube of a building, and yet, somehow, in this unrelenting month of rain and gray, color had blossomed uninvited in the small corner of unattended mud beside the employee entrance. Yellow and purple miniature irises, immune even to the plummeting nighttime temperatures, had appeared first, followed by a clump of crocuses. And now what he’d thought were weeds had proven themselves to be flowers—his gran had had them in her garden as well, called them Lenten roses.
His first theory had been birds carrying seeds from residential gardens, but he’d worked in this building for over fifteen years and had never seen flowers before. It definitely was not the result of any municipal beautification project. Whatever or whoever was responsible, the mystery made him smile every time he came to work.
As Luka climbed the stairs to the investigative division on the third floor, his phone rang. Pops. “Everything okay?” Luka said.
“About to ask you the same question,” his grandfather answered. “You left before sunrise and I know where you went. You may treat me like a doddering fool, but I can still read a calendar. How you doing, son?”
Not even Luka’s father had ever called him “son.” Only Pops. As if reminding Luka that even at thirty-seven, he was still a boy to the old man. “I’m fine. Caught a case on the way back. Will you tell Janine I might not be home until late?”
“What about Nate?”
“Leah’s mother is picking the kids up from school.” Given Luka’s new duties as a surrogate father to an eight-year-old, it was lucky for him that Leah had moved out to her great-aunt Nellie’s house, only a few miles down the road from Jericho Fields. The kids also saw the same trauma counselor—someone Leah had recommended. Luka had never dreamed that when he finally became a father it would require a crash course in psychology. It helped to have someone like Leah to talk to about Nate and what he was going through—she was experiencing the same rollercoaster with Emily.
“Leah’s mother? That Ruby woman.” Pops’ tone dripped with disdain. “Don’t like her, don’t trust her.”
“Her record’s clean—criminal and driving.” Luka didn’t mention that Leah didn’t entirely trust Ruby either, although Luka wasn’t sure why. She’d assured him that the kids were safe with Ruby, leaving him with the impression that her mother had betrayed Leah on some deep emotional level when she was a child. All he knew was that Ruby had left Leah in her great-aunt Nellie’s care when Leah was eleven—but he had no idea why.
“Yeah, but she isn’t family,” Pops continued. “That boy needs folks he can count on.”
Translation: Luka was already failing Nate. “And he has them,” Luka defended himself. “He has you and Janine, now that she’s living at the farm—” Janine was hired as a home health aide for Pops, but she’d been helping to look after Nate as well.
“Who’s gonna help him with his homework and such? I don’t know nothing about this new-fangled math they’re teaching.”
Luka reached the door leading into the detective’s bullpen. He blew out his breath. “Nate will be fine, Pops. And so will I. I’ll get home as soon as I can.”
“See that you do. Not like it does the dead any good, you running yourself ragged.” Always one for the last word, Pops hung up.
Luka opened the door, the cacophony of a dozen men and women working rolling over him like a wave. The investigative division included vice and drugs, domestic and sex crimes, as well as Luka’s own Violent Crimes Unit, which focused on homicides, serious assaults, and robberies.
He skirted the periphery of the collection of desks until he reached his tiny glass-fronted office that always made him feel as if he were on display like a department store mannequin. After carefully removing his parka so as not to dump water over the collection of files arranged on his desk, he grabbed the spare suit he kept hanging in the tiny closet and went to change. On his way back from the men’s room he grabbed coffee, wincing as he spilled some on his hand. He’d switched out his old mug—one that Cherise had bought and that now sat on his desk beside her photo—for a new travel mug, but it still didn’t feel right in his hand.
As he settled into his desk chair, he finally felt in control of the day. He was just getting ready to dig into the intricate details of Huntington’s—Luka wanted to be able to understand the disease before he spoke with Leah about the particulars of Walt’s case—when he glanced at the clock on his computer and realized he had only twenty minutes before the sergeants’ meeting with Commander Ahearn. A meeting that McKinley would be at, no doubt trying to shift blame for this morning’s fiasco at the Falconer onto Luka’s team.
Krichek would have called him with any new info on the Orly case, so Luka quickly checked for updates on his other open cases. The first was a hit and skip, car versus bicyclist. Forensic results on the paint chips and broken headlight found on the victim’s body were still pending, the computerized traffic reconstruction was in his inbox, and there was nothing new from patrol after re-canvassing the area for potential witnesses. He glanced through the crime scene photos to choose which ones to print out for Ahearn, settling on one of the mangled orange bike rather than the one of its equally mangled deceased owner.
Gary Wagner was a thirty-one-year-old customer service worker training for a triathlon. He’d left behind a pregnant wife and a two-year-old. From the reconstruction, the truck or SUV that had hit him hadn’t braked until a quarter a mile past the point of impact. And they’d found boot prints suggesting that someone had returned and left again, abandoning the bicyclist to his fate.
That’s the part that made Luka so intent on finding the driver—Gary Wagner had still been alive when he’d been found by a farmhand on his way to work hours later. He’d died en route to Good Sam. All that time, lying alone in the dark and rain, suffering, no way to call for help, his phone shattered not by the impact, but by a man wearing boots. That act, taking the time to return to the scene of the impact but deciding not to render aid, but to rather allow the victim to die; that made it pre-meditated murder, which made the case Luka’s.
Luka called the state forensic lab. “Anything on the Wagner case?”
“We’re narrowing down the vehicle’s make and model from the paint, but it’s going to take time.”
“What about the headlight fragments? Can you use them to narrow it down?”
“Nope. It’s a generic replacement, could’ve bought it anywhere. Oh, but the bike shows evidence of transfer. Your vehicle will have a significant amount of Tangerine Daze-glow ruining its paint job. It’s a proprietary color, so easy to confirm the match once you find the vehicle.”
“If it’s not already scrapped and scattered over the tri-state area.” Luka hung up and turned to his next case, an armed robbery at a pharmacy. The suspect seen on video from security cameras in the store and on the street fleeing the scene now had a confirmed ID, patrol was searching for him, and the DA had approved an arrest warrant.
And last, a LOL mugging. Their little old lady was still in a coma but was now breathing on her own, not that that helped Luka find the actor behind her attack, but it was a nice bit of good news given that the trauma surgeons at Good Sam had been fitting her for a body bag when she first came in.
He made a note to follow up with her when he went over to Good Sam for the Orly autopsy after lunch—if he had time for lunch.
