The Morgue
Friday, 4:00 p.m.
As a detective, Michael had seen a number of people go through the experience of identifying a loved one’s body. He’d even gone through it a few times himself, when they found a body that someone thought might have been Jen’s. Sophie was as eerily composed in this situation as he’d expected her to be.
She did go terribly pale when she saw the sheet-covered body, so pale that he saw for the first time that she had a slight dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. He put his arm around her shoulders and was surprised when she didn’t step away or shrug it off. She nodded to the attendant, who pulled back the sheet covering the corpse’s face.
As soon as he saw the face, Michael’s breath caught in his throat. He wished he’d learned to swear so he’d have the vocabulary for dealing with a situation like this. No, no, no, no, no, he repeated inside his head instead of swearing. The tangle of red curls lying on that slab, the waxy pale face that not too long ago had been grinning at him while forcing him to eat soup, it was all wrong, so horribly wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Then the initial shock ebbed enough for him to remember that this wasn’t about him, that he was standing with his arm around Emily’s sister. He squeezed Sophie’s shoulder, pulling her tight to his side. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” he whispered hoarsely. “We’ll get whoever did this.”
Tanaka caught Michael’s eye, and Michael nodded grimly. Sophie still hadn’t said anything. “Sophie?” Tanaka said gently, “We need you to make an ID for us. Is this your sister?”
Sophie looked up at Michael with dry eyes and an expression that said quite clearly that she thought he was crazy. She gave the body a sidelong glance, looked back at him, and then she gave a tiny gasp followed by a long exhalation, as though she’d just realized something. She turned back to face the body, shook her head and said, “That’s not Emily.”
Michael closed his eyes and stifled a groan. Victims’ loved ones sometimes clung desperately to denial. He could have fingerprint, dental record, and even DNA matches, and they’d swear they’d never before seen that body in the morgue. Sophie hadn’t struck him as the type to go into denial, but everyone had a breaking point. “Sophie, I know this is tough,” he began, but then he did a double take at the corpse. It wasn’t Emily. There were superficial similarities, but when he really looked at the body, it wasn’t much at all like her. “No, it’s not Emily,” he agreed.
It was Tanaka’s turn to do a double take. “Are you sure? She looks just like the photo you gave me.” He frowned as he looked at the body. “Then again, yeah, I can see the differences now that you mention it. I’m sorry to drag you in here and put you through this, Sophie.”
“I understand,” she said softly. “You needed a definite answer. Thank you for trying.”
“She might be one of the other missing girls,” Michael suggested.
“She does fit physically,” Tanaka said. “We’ll contact the families of the other missing women and see if any of them can identify her. Thank you for coming down here, Sophie. I’ll talk to you later, Rev.” He gave Michael a look and a head gesture that said very clearly, “Take care of her,” and Michael nodded.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked as they waited for a cab. “I know it’s rough going into that place, and looking at dead bodies is never fun, even if it’s not someone you know.”
“I’m just tired,” she said with a weak smile. “This hasn’t been the best week ever.” A cab arrived a moment later, cutting off his chance to follow up on that.
She went quiet again once they were in the cab. As they rode uptown in silence, he couldn’t help but notice the red mark on her wrist. It didn’t look as bad as it had the night before, but he had to wonder what had happened. It wasn’t a rope burn from the dog’s leash, that much he was sure of. It was too neat a wound, not ragged at all. The mark on her face wasn’t quite as visible, but it looked like she’d covered a bruise with makeup.
“Detective Tanaka called you ‘Rev.’ What does that mean?” she asked abruptly.
“Cops love nicknames. My dad’s a minister, and I guess he rubbed off on me, even if I didn’t go into the family business. I’m more of a straight arrow than your typical cop, so they started calling me ‘The Reverend.’ Over time, that became ‘Rev.’ To make matters worse, Saint Michael the archangel is the patron saint of cops, and they manage to fit that in, too.”
“That would explain the very interesting collection of refrigerator magnets you have.”
“You should see my desk. I have to rotate them to the fridge at home to leave room for the new ones. If anyone finds anything with an angel on it, it’ll end up on my desk.”
The tiny ghost of a smile that touched her lips made him feel that spilling that story was worthwhile, even if it was a little embarrassing. Then again, he could barely stay on his feet for five minutes without leaning on her, so it wasn’t like she’d ever seen him as particularly macho.
When they got back to his building, she paused at Emily’s door and said, “Thank you for going with me.”
“No one should have to go through that alone.”
“I appreciate it. Do you have any sisters, Detective?”
“Michael,” he corrected. “And no, no sisters. But I have two brothers.”
“Older or younger?”
“Both older.”
She nodded and gave him a wry smile. “You’re the third brother. If you were in a fairy tale, you’d be the lucky one, the one who marries the princess and inherits the kingdom. Though, really, it’s not so much luck as it is good karma. The youngest is the nice one who helps the people and creatures the older ones ignore, and they then help him succeed in his quest.”
“So the moral of the story is that I should be nice to people?”
“It doesn’t seem to me that you have to work very hard to do that.” It was hard to tell in the stairwell’s dim light, but he thought she might have turned a little pinker. She ducked her head and turned toward the door, saying, “I’d better see to Beau. He’ll be hungry.”
She opened the door, and Michael called to her, “Sophie!” She looked back, and he hurried to say, “If you need help, please tell me. Don’t get yourself in trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” she insisted. “I can take care of myself, believe me.” She chuckled softly, as if at some secret joke. “Oh yes, I can take care of myself. Good evening, Michael.”
He wasn’t sure why, but he felt like he really ought to get upstairs. And then he should probably take one of his pain pills and get some rest. Yes, that was what he should do. His chest hurt again, and he was very tired. He trudged up the stairs, got to his apartment, and was just about to open the pill bottle when he stopped and shook his head. He didn’t hurt all that badly, actually. He was feeling much better. The compulsion went away entirely and he put the bottle down. Instead, he fumbled with the coffeemaker to make a pot of coffee. If Sophie was up to her usual nighttime activities, he wasn’t going to lose her this time.