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I’d never heard of a good day starting with the police at the front door.
Of course, at first I didn’t know who kept pounding outside despite the ungodly hour. An angry ex-boyfriend wanting his stuff back or the nice old woman downstairs who needed help opening bottles struck me as more likely candidates.
The police never occurred to me.
“Coming!” I shouted as I climbed out of bed and pulled a bathrobe over my pajamas. Given the apartment building’s paper-thin walls, I didn’t need to raise my voice to be heard, but yelling made me feel better for being woken up.
I swung the door open, ready to berate my visitor, but my tongue froze when I spotted the two uniformed officers.
The closest one tilted his head. “Megan Kelley?”
I considered denying it, combing my brain in search of something illegal I might have done. But when the officers folded their hands in front of them, some of my fears eased. They certainly didn’t look braced to make an arrest.
“I’m Megan,” I said.
The officer bowed his head. “We regret to inform you that Caroline Fisher has passed.”
It took me a moment to realize he meant my roommate Carly. And, judging from his solemn stance, she hadn’t passed a law-enforcement certification course or anything else worthy of the police’s attention.
“You mean passed on?” I asked, sure that couldn’t be right either.
He nodded. “We would appreciate your verification of the woman in this picture as Ms. Fisher.”
I tensed as he pulled a photograph out of his shirt pocket, unsure what to expect. My stomach dropped when I took in the black-and-white closeup of Carly’s face. Although she appeared to be resting peacefully with her eyes closed and her face devoid of expression, knowing she’d been dead when the camera had captured the image sent a shiver down my spine.
“It’s her,” I said. Feeling unexpectedly weak with loss, I leaned against the doorframe.
The officer returned Carly’s picture to his pocket. “We place her time of death as the night of March seventeenth.”
I assimilated his insight, indignation replacing my grief. March 17 was two days ago. How could she have died two days ago without the police knowing until now?
Although, to be fair, I hadn’t noticed Carly’s absence either. Sunday night I had been working, and I spent most of yesterday running errands.
“She listed you as her emergency contact.”
I arched an eyebrow. “She did?” At age thirty-six, I was a full decade older than Carly, and I didn’t even have an emergency contact identified.
Or, maybe her pregnancy required her to note someone.
I stiffened, now questioning whether Carly’s child was the real reason for this visit. Maybe the paramedics had ripped it from Carly’s dead body, and the police had come to deposit the squalling preemie in my arms.
I peeked over the officers’ shoulders, hunting for a police cruiser in the parking lot to see if a baby sat penned up behind the metal grid like someone under arrest. The only vehicle I spotted belonged to one of the neighbors. Their monstrous SUV usurped two spaces and blocked my view of everything around it. The police could have brought me an elephant, and it would have been invisible behind the SUV.
“We hope you can help us notify Ms. Fisher’s next of kin,” the officer continued. “Sometimes this type of news is better received from somebody who knew the deceased.”
I blinked, not sure how to respond. Carly had never mentioned any family except to say she ran away at seventeen and hadn’t seen her parents since. I could only think of a few reasons why a girl fled her childhood home and cut off all parental contact, none of them good.
The officer cleared his throat. “I can see you’re in shock.”
Of course he’d think this, since I had yet to contribute anything intelligent to this conversation. “I’m fine,” I said, flashing him a smile to prove my point.
His expression didn’t change. “We’d be happy to come inside and sit with you while you make some calls.”
My heart lurched as my mind shifted to the baggie of marijuana my ex-boyfriend had left in one of the coffee-table drawers after we split up two months ago. I could just picture these two cops plopping onto the couch to put their feet up for a moment and jarring the drawer open.
I plastered another smile on my face, hoping it wasn’t trembling as much as my heart. “No, no, that won’t be necessary. I don’t plan on making any calls.”
The two officers glanced at each other before the one doing all the talking turned back to me. “Surely you want to notify Ms. Fisher’s family and friends.”
They evidently thought I was a nutcase. “Yes, surely.” I decided these cops needed a definitive affirmation, so I added with more confidence, “I’ll do that.”
Although I had no clue how to locate Carly’s family and I might have to wait for her friends to stop by in search of her before notifying each of them, delivering the news to coworkers would be simple. We both worked at the same gentlemen’s club, so I could make an announcement during my shift tonight.
From the furrow of his brow, I suspected the officer was debating over whether to ask me to document a notification action plan. But then he said, “Ms. Fisher died from a drug overdose.”
“She did?” I never would have suspected Carly of abusing drugs. She had never acted anything less than lucid, and when she’d found my ex’s baggie of marijuana she hadn’t hidden her displeasure. Plus, she’d loved her baby. The thought of her ingesting anything with the potential to harm her unborn child didn’t sit right with me.
The second officer squatted down and retrieved a paper bag from the landing. He handed it to me while the first officer said, “We located these effects on her person.”
“Oh.” I accepted the bag, wondering if it contained the unused drugs discovered near Carly’s body.
“Her cell phone is inside, which may help you contact her relatives,” the officer said.
The bag obviously held more than a cell phone, but I didn’t ask him to elaborate on the other items. I could dig through it later, in private.
One thing clearly absent from Carly’s effects was a premature newborn baby.
“What about Carly’s baby?” I asked.
The two officers exchanged another look. “Baby?”
“Carly was pregnant,” I said. “I take it the baby didn’t survive.”
The closest officer stared at me for a moment before coughing. “We were unaware of Ms. Fisher’s condition. Her body was only discovered this morning, so we have not had a chance to perform an autopsy.”
From the way his forehead wrinkled, I gathered he hadn’t planned on any autopsy. After all, if every drug addict who overdosed in Las Vegas were autopsied, the backlog of dead bodies would threaten to spill out into the streets.
But I didn’t challenge their lies. Instead, I said, “How was her body discovered?”
“Two joggers noticed it in a drainage ditch.”
I frowned, trying to picture Carly’s body crumpled in one of the concrete tunnels built underneath the city to route storm water away from the street surfaces. Although many of these tunnels could fit a human being, the image refused to gel. Carly might not have indulged in romantic dinners at the city’s top steakhouses, but neither was she the type to get high in drainage ditches.
In fact, of all the girls at the gentlemen’s club not enrolled in college, before today I would have voted Carly as the most likely to make it out of the stripping business and into something more mainstream. I could have easily pictured her settling into a simple domestic life, marrying a nice professional and raising babies.
Of course, in a way she had escaped the stripping lifestyle.
I surveyed the two officers, wary of their ability to recognize a suspicious death when they saw one. They seemed to be run-of-the-mill beat cops, the type who spent their days writing traffic tickets and rousing passed-out sidewalk drunks.
The first officer came across as relatively intelligent, which explained why he was doing the talking. Still, I doubted he’d handled many investigations more complicated than looking into the whereabouts of missing pets. I placed him around mid-forties, and wouldn’t be surprised if he operated under the assumption that all twentysomethings abused illegal substances.
About the size and shape of a household water heater, the other officer took up most of the outside landing. He was closer to Carly’s age, and I had to admire his build. He probably spent most of his time off in the gym, popping steroids like a kid consuming candy on Halloween. I’d guess his role in this partnership was limited to driving the squad car, subduing civilians, and physically relocating drunks. Holding a conversation did not appear to be one of his strengths.
With these two in charge of Carly’s case—if she even had a case—they could have overlooked something as obvious as a crowbar to her heart or blood spatter from a bullet wound.
“Are you sure Carly’s death was an accident?” I prompted.
I was fully awake now despite the early hour, my mind churning through the possibilities. Both Carly and I had never had much success in love, and some of our old boyfriends had left brewing in anger. One of these spurned lovers could have come back for revenge—and what better motive existed to off your ex-girlfriend than an unwanted baby and the looming threat of child support? Even though I knew Carly had never intended to pressure the father, the potential for her to change her mind might have justified preemptive murder in his eyes. Maybe he’d remembered her favorite hangout and stalked her until he could slip a lethal dose of drugs into an unmonitored beverage.
Then I had to consider the profession of stripping. During the course of our workdays we occasionally ran into some questionable characters. Maybe one of these men had taken a liking to Carly, then, miffed by her refusal to perform anything heavier than a lap dance, followed her somewhere, forced her to ingest unwanted drugs, took advantage of her altered faculties, and disposed of her like a used tissue.
The first officer eyed me as if he could see the crime-scene images flashing through my head. “We have no reason to suspect foul play.”
“Do you plan to confirm that?” I persisted. “Carly wasn’t the type to use drugs.”
“Often the people we least suspect have substance-abuse problems,” he replied. “But we can substantiate Ms. Fisher’s cause of death later this week, possibly tomorrow.”
I itched to press for details on how he’d accomplish that, but decided to let the issue go for now. No good could come from antagonizing the police.
“Here’s my card,” the officer said, inching toward the stairs as if he were in a hurry to leave now. He handed me a business card imprinted with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department logo and the name Gerard Sparks. “If you have any further questions, you can reach me at the number there.”
“Will you keep me informed of any developments in Carly’s case?” I didn’t bother to ask if a case even existed.
Sparks hesitated. “I will keep you apprised of any information I’m able to disclose.”
I interpreted that as police speak for no, that at most he’d regurgitate what he’d told me today, perhaps with a few other mundane details added to get me off his back.
“Can you at least let me know what the autopsy reveals?” Maybe if I assumed an autopsy would be performed the police would oblige. My final manipulation tactic emerged as a reminder that Carly had been expecting. “Either autopsy? Carly’s or the baby’s?”
“I can share with you any unclassified information that arises from that procedure.”
“Let me give you my number.” I tore a corner off the paper bag and, using the pen Sparks offered, jotted down my cell number before handing the items over. “I don’t need the gory details,” I said, hoping this concession improved my chances of hearing back from him. Besides, I really didn’t want to hear the details. I didn’t even want to know what really went on during an autopsy.
Sparks took my number and slipped it and his pen into his breast pocket. “Is there anything else we can do for you at this time?” He darted a look toward the parking lot.
“No. Thank you.”
Sparks nodded and rushed down the stairs. His sidekick followed, although his thighs were so muscular he couldn’t walk like a normal person. He had to wobble from side to side like a penguin to make his way down the steps. I imagined he turned sideways to fit through doorways too.
Still, he looked good going down, and I watched him until he disappeared somewhere behind the SUV.
