Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

on Sheryl Lansdowne and Tommy Jarrett, I get another call. This one from the morgue.

“Hey, it’s Winston,” the coroner says. “I got your girls ready. You comin’ in?”

“Yes,” I say, before I can convince myself otherwise. “I’ll be there in a few.”

The county coroner’s office doubles as the Norton Funeral Home; I ring the old bell and wait until I hear the grate of the lock. Winston stiff-arms the door open for me and I duck in before it slams.

The place stinks of cleaning products, with a low undertone of something else. Old meat, like a butcher shop. Same as always. I take a deep breath, then another, trying to flood myself with the stench so it just becomes background. Normal.

It never really works.

Winston is not a big talker. He just heads down the wood-paneled hall and off to the left, where the county coroner’s small work area is located. It’s not terrible, and he keeps it well up to anyone’s standards. Gleaming metal, shining porcelain. Perfect, neat lines of blades and saws and needles, everything just so. Winston’s conscientious, even though they pay him shit—two-thirds what the county coroner over in Everman makes, though he’s got the same training and experience. We don’t talk about it.

He nods over to the right, where a small set of paper bags is already filled and sealed. “Clothes over there,” he says. “I left the car seats as they were. Cut the straps close as I could to the sides, in case there was any foreign DNA left on the catches.” The two seats are still wet, but he’s set them out on sterile towels to catch anything that might drip off. I leave it for now, and turn toward the single autopsy table.

It’s still empty.

“I thought you said you were ready. Where are they?” I feel an oily sickness bubble up in my stomach. I can handle shit, but I hate anticipating it.

“Ran into a problem after I called. I need to find a different scale,” he says quietly. “I’ve got to weigh the bodies before I get started. The built-in scale on the table won’t register them. I was going to call the hospital and get a baby scale, but who knows how long that’ll take. They’re giving me the runaround, saying it’s not protocol—”

I can’t. I can’t let those babies get colder; I know Winston’s kept them in the bags, in the dark, and everything in me rebels against the inhumanity of that. Not one more hour. Not one more minute.

I tell him, quietly, “There’s a way to do it. I’ll help.”

He gets what I’m saying immediately, and turns to stare at me with wide eyes. Says, “You sure?”

I just nod because I don’t know if I can say it again. I feel cold and heavy with dread, but there’s a terrible, warm tenderness boiling up in me too. These lost babies need to be held. To know, even this late, that someone cares for them.

Winston helps me up on the autopsy table. The surface is cold and smells of bleach, strong enough to make my eyes water. I let him record my weight, and then I hear him unzip the first body bag. I take a deep breath and close my eyes and hold out my arms.

The cold, limp weight settles in against my chest, and I instinctively hold her close. I don’t care about the fact that she’s dead and gone. I just care about her. My mouth goes dry, my throat tight, and I feel tears clumping thick at the edges of my lids. “It’s okay,” I whisper to her. “You’re not alone. It’s okay.” But I’m talking to both this lost child and the barely begun one hidden deep inside me. A promise I’m going to try to keep forever.

I hear Winston quietly recording the combined weight, subtracting mine, and then he takes her away. For a split second I want to fight to hang on to that poor baby, to hold her until she’s warm again, but then I let go.

The second body lies heavy and cool against me, and this time I can’t stop the tears. I brush my now-numb fingers across the little girl’s drying hair.

God help the one who did this. God help him because I’m going to find him.

6

SAM

My eight-thirty client is a rich older man who doesn’t mind paying my rates and—luckily—takes his responsibility as an aspiring pilot seriously. He comes early, and he comes prepared, and the hour and a half I’ve allotted for him goes by fast. Ten in the morning, a beautiful, clear day. When I taxi the Cessna back to the hangar, we finish up and shake hands, and he’s on his way with a spring in his step.

My mood has improved too. Flying is an irresistible joy for me, a kind of therapy that brings me real peace. Doesn’t last once I’m on the ground, but it does help.

I’m doing a check on paperwork before quitting—I don’t have any more clients scheduled—and it catches me by surprise when someone says from behind me, “Hi. Are you Sam Cade? The flight instructor?”

I turn. “Yeah,” I say. “What’s this about?” I’m a little sharp because I don’t like strangers walking up on me. Then I revise it a little—he doesn’t exactly look shifty. He’s casually but expensively dressed in khaki pants and a polo shirt, a bomber jacket he probably thinks makes him look aeronautical, along with the Top Gun–style Ray-Ban Aviators. White, young, maybe thirty. Short-cropped dark hair that barely shows under a Florida Gators ball cap.

“I was wondering if you had any openings for me,” he says. “To learn how to fly, I mean. I’m Tyler Pharos.”

“Sorry, but this isn’t a good time,” I tell him. “But we can set an appointment to go up and do a discovery flight with me as pilot, and I can explain the process. We’d also need to get you