Chapter 3
Maggie entered a crime scene the way she entered a church. She stopped on the threshold to gather herself, emptying her mind of all else so she could be a worthy receptacle for what she learned inside. She calmed her thoughts, steadied her heart, and opened herself up to absorbing gifts beyond the tangible. With reverence and humility, she then stepped inside, determined to do her best.
Her eyes went to every corner of the room, cataloging everything. Well, everything but me. Though I could follow her every move if I desired, Maggie could not see me. At best there were times, I thought, when she sensed my presence or I felt a connection binding us across our worlds. But mostly I was little more than an observer to her competence as a detective. She was all I had failed to be.
The young patrolman in the corner could not meet her eyes. Maggie noticed, and the smallest of frowns flickered across her face. “Has anything been touched or moved?” she asked, without judgment, knowing that keeping her anger under control was the best way to preserve the truth.
“I’ll let Denny tell you for himself,” the black cop said as she headed outside to help corral the onlookers who were already clogging the sidewalk and driveway.
Maggie stared at Denny, waiting. He blushed. “Just do your best to remember exactly what it was you might have touched or moved,” she said quietly. I could feel the cop’s world shrink to Maggie and nothing else. She had that effect on people, and it made her one hell of an interrogator. The beat cop’s heart rate slowed, and he searched his memory carefully. He wanted to help and it did not hurt that Maggie, my Maggie, was as fine a specimen as the human race could offer. She was not beautiful, nor even pretty, by most people’s standards. Her face was plain, her hair an ordinary brown. But she was in incredible physical shape, and she moved through the world like a panther might cut through the jungle—focused and utterly unafraid.
Denny was staring at her arms. She wore a sleeveless black blouse, and her muscles were perfect.
“Your name’s Denny, right?” Maggie said more loudly. “Help me out here, Denny.”
“I picked up her left arm,” he finally said. “To check her pulse and make sure she was dead.” When Maggie nodded, as if understanding, he continued. “I guess maybe it slipped out of my hand and I let it flop a little?” He looked like he might faint.
“Flop how?”
Denny leaned over the body, trying to remember. “It was straight by the body when I first picked it up, very straight, almost like someone had pulled it into place.”
“Good,” Maggie said. “What about the other arm, the one with the gun?”
“I touched her hand, a little. The finger was coiled around the trigger. I thought it might be dangerous.”
“And that’s it?” she asked.
Denny nodded.
“Thanks. We can take it from here.”
Maggie knelt next to Peggy Calhoun, the crime lab head, and the two women began to whisper in low tones, conferring over what they had just heard. Denny, ignored, headed out the door—but found a less forgiving detective blocking the way: Maggie’s new partner, Adrian Calvano.
“Way to f*ck up a crime scene,” Calvano told the terrified patrolman as he scurried past. “Hope you enjoy walking the beat.”
“Give it a rest, Adrian,” Maggie said automatically, her mind on the body before her. She sounded like she said that phrase a lot.
What a jerk Calvano was. How could Gonzales have made him Maggie’s new partner? Adrian Calvano was an unctuous douche bag I’d hated when I was alive and now loathed well into the afterlife. He’d never missed an opportunity to tear someone else down, be it partner, perpetrator, or passerby. I hated him for so many reasons it was hard to keep track. Replacing me as Maggie’s partner was just the latest one. For one thing, Calvano was in his midforties, but had stayed thin and still had all of his hair. He probably dyed it, since it was still jet black, but you couldn’t quite be sure. He wore it brushed straight back like he thought he was some sort of Italian count. Women loved it. Women loved him. The rest of the word thought he was an a*shole.
Maggie deserved so much better.
“Adrian?” Maggie asked. When Calvano, a world-class ass-kisser, responded right away, I realized she was the senior officer on the case. That made me feel better. I was sure Calvano hated taking orders from a woman. “I need you to screen and interview all those people standing around outside,” she said. “Talk to her neighbors. The usual. Peter’s filming them, but I need you on it. Find me people who know the victim, who can tell me about her life.”
Clearly, Maggie was unaware that Calvano’s usual interview technique was to insult people, then alienate them completely, and, eventually, make them hate every cop they met from there on out. But there was nothing I could do to stop him as he headed out the door, leaving Maggie kneeling with Peggy Calhoun among a sea of forensic techs so intent on their own tasks that they paid no attention to the two women.
“It’s really sad,” Peggy said. “It looks like she was completely alone. There’s not a trace of anyone in this house but her.”
Maggie glanced at her friend. “That bother you?”
“A little,” Peggy admitted. “I mean, look at her. She was so beautiful. How can a person like that end up alone?”
“Some people like being alone,” Maggie said. “I live alone.”
“I know,” Peggy conceded. “And I’ve lived alone for thirty years. It’s just that she seems so delicate, and this house is so filled with love. As if she had a lot of love to give. It’s horrible for her to die alone this way. What made her so unhappy?”
“My guess is someone else,” Maggie said. “She’d have been better off alone.”
Maggie was on her hands and knees, her eyes level with a spot only a few inches from the floor. “You know what? I don’t think this woman was alone when she died. Look at the position of the hand, the way it’s wrapped around the gun and the fingers are curled around the trigger. You ever see that before?”
Peggy shook her head. “Not in a suicide.”
“Exactly,” Maggie said.
“Calvano is going to want to call it self-help. He always does.”
“I can handle Calvano,” Maggie said confidently. “This one is not being marked closed anytime soon. Not until we catch the guy.”
Peggy gave a sound that was halfway between a sob and a sigh. Maggie looked at her sharply. “You okay, Calhoun?”
“I knew you would take her side,” Peggy said, nodding toward the victim on the floor. “I knew you’d be the one to fight for her.”
Maggie patted her on the back. “I’m going to need you on this one. Together, we’ll find out who did this to her. He won’t get away, I promise.”
“Gonzales knows her,” Peggy said. “She’s a trauma nurse. He says she saved his son’s life one night after he’d been hit in the temple at a baseball game. The doctors said not to worry, that it was just a minor concussion. But she saw something in the kid’s eyes and wouldn’t let it go until they finally did another scan. Turns out the kid had a serious internal cranial bleed. They caught it in time because of her.”
Together the two women stared down at the dead nurse, searching for a reason why she might be lying there while others walked around alive.
“It’s always the good ones, isn’t it?” Maggie asked.
“Seems that way,” Peggy agreed.