Back in her office, Carla logged into her Jericho email and a message popped up from building facilities informing her that its staff were busy. It would be a few days before the office was completely cleared of Lauren’s effects. They were very sorry, but Carla would be sitting amongst her former colleague’s things for a little longer. Carla leant back in her chair and closed her eyes, listening to her stomach rumble. She hadn’t managed any food since the three mouthfuls of soup at lunchtime. She should force down a sandwich to keep up her energy levels while she looked over her notes. She was all prepped for her classes next week, so the body discovered at Silent Brook was her only distraction.
Her phone pinged with a WhatsApp message. Until she got a US sim card, she’d have to rely on the university’s Wi-Fi to communicate with her family back home. As she expected, the message was from her mother, currently on a yoga retreat in France. Sylvia, at the age of seventy-three, was currently undergoing a late-life crisis as Carla and her brother had termed it. Always selfish, she’d left Carla’s father for a man twenty years her junior whose job involved ‘something in TV’.
‘Perhaps he repairs them,’ had been her brother Pete’s only comment on the matter. He had refused to speak to his mother since, leaving Carla as the sole recipient of Sylvia’s calls when she was feeling lonely.
‘Call me when you can,’ said the message. No concern about how Carla was feeling after the long flight. Carla rolled her eyes and turned over her phone. She needed to start setting some boundaries and her mother would have to learn US working hours when Carla would be incommunicado. She was feeling out of sorts, and it wasn’t just her mother’s message. The scorn of the detectives had got to her. Viv Kantz had asked for her opinion, and she felt she should have something concrete to feed back to the team. Carla pulled out her notebook from her bag and studied again the objects left around the dead woman. Weirdly the diagram didn’t help at all. Carla was used to making rough sketches on site, but the amateurish strokes on her notepad failed to convey the horror of the scene. She hoped that oblivion had been quick for the victim. Women had been burned alive throughout history, although not, as many thought, in the witch trials that had affected New England. There the women had been hanged for their sins, although in Scotland and mainland Europe, women had been committed to the flames. There was also the Hindu custom of Sati, also known as widow burning, where wives were placed on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. This was the most extreme example, but there were modern day cases, such as the still unsolved discovery of the murdered Isdal woman in Norway, burnt like this victim in an out of the way place with a lonely history.
Carla considered the objects, wondering if she could find a pattern, any pattern, in the choice of items placed around the body. In her professional experience, people were occasionally buried with drinking vessels. Frank Sinatra, she thought, had been interred with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Not very helpful in relation to this victim as she couldn’t even be sure that the bottle contained alcohol. The glass shard was a mystery, although cobalt blue glass, known as smalt when it was powdered, did have a link back to Ancient Egypt. An archaeological link, then, but nothing else brought to mind the ancient African civilisation. The syringes had looked depressingly modern and were perhaps an admonishment for a lifestyle badly lived. Carla moved on to the coins. Two dimes and a nickel, Erin had said. There had long been a tradition of putting coins on the eyes or in the mouth of the dead. Charon’s obol, designed to bribe the ferryman taking the dead to the underworld. Surely, though, it would have been no hardship to place a coin in the mouth or on the eyes of the corpse. The killer must have stayed around long enough for the fire to retreat sufficiently for them to arrange the objects around the body.
With a sigh, Carla put down her pen. The detectives had been right to be sceptical. She could see no pattern. Perhaps once the victim’s identity was known, the reason for the objects would become apparent. Time to call it a day and head off to see the car showroom, which was open until six. She locked up her office and headed towards the entrance. The twenty-minute walk to Hoyt Lane would clear her head and give herself something else to focus on. She only hoped that car salesmen weren’t as sexist as they were back in England. The last time she’d bought a car, the rep had directed all his spiel towards Dan even though her husband had never been behind the wheel of an automobile. If she had no luck with this salesroom, she’d collar Jack, the friendliest of her colleagues she’d met today, and ask if he fancied accompanying her on a car-buying trip.
Outside the building, she ran into Max. He was searching in his leather briefcase and would have missed her if she hadn’t called out to him.
‘How’s your first day been?’ he asked.
‘Not what I expected to be honest. I’d forgotten how much admin is associated with a new post, but,’ Carla paused, remembering how upset he’d been at the discovery of Lauren’s effects in the office, ‘I think facilities are now aware of the state of my office.’
‘State is the right word,’ grumbled Max, pulling out his car keys. ‘I hope tomorrow is more fruitful for you. When is your first class?’
‘Friday. Actually, this afternoon was more dramatic as I was called to a crime scene down by the railway. It’s certainly not my usual routine.’
‘Crime scene?’ Max frowned. ‘Did Viv Kantz call it in?’
‘I believe so. Albert drove me down there and gave me a brief history of Jericho en route.’
Max looked a little put out, closing his bag with a snap. ‘I’m often the first port of call when they want an expert opinion. What happened?’
‘A fatality. There were some objects around the body they wanted me to look at.’
‘Anything worth noting?’
‘Syringes, a urine bottle—’
‘Oh.’ He lost interest. ‘That kind of death. We do occasionally get called to help. Sorry it happened on your first day. Do you fancy a drink? There’s a bar downtown well away from campus. Before you think I’m hitting on you, I’m just being sociable.’
Carla wondered why he’d made the point of insisting it wasn’t a date. Perhaps he was married and keen to display his ‘taken’ status. She doubted this was the case – married men, if they wanted to make sure she knew they were off-limits, usually made it perfectly clear there was a wife in tow. No, she suspected Max was single but uninterested in her as a prospective date, which was fine by her. Or maybe she’d got that wrong and was out of her depth in this complex social scene. Perhaps Erin would be able to explain the signals she was supposed to decode. ‘Why not?’
The bar wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Max presented an urbane if forbidding approach to the world. Morrell’s was noisy and filled with office workers enjoying downtime after their day jobs. Carla supposed the attraction was the lack of college students, but the music thumping in the background set her teeth on edge. It was waiter service and at least they were efficient. A young woman dressed in tight black jeans and a checked shirt took their orders.
‘Whiskey and rye for me.’ Max looked across at Carla. ‘What’s your poison?’
‘White wine.’ Carla, dog-tired, was determined to make an effort. Max took off his jacket and she saw his white shirt was pristine after a day in the department.
‘I hope you don’t think my comment was sour grapes earlier.’ Max made a face. ‘We’re not called into police cases very often and Albert does spread it around the department. I don’t like you to think I was pissed at you going.’
Like hell, thought Carla. ‘My mentor is the medical examiner, Erin Collins. I think she asked for me.’
Their drinks arrived and she took a glug of the cold wine. The noise from the other patrons was only just bearable and she wondered again why Max had chosen this place. Although he listened to her reply, she had the impression his concentration was elsewhere, and she saw him taking in the outfit of one of the servers whose jeans fitted tightly to her long legs.
‘Do you come to this place a lot?’
It got his attention. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s pretty noisy.’
‘Hi, Max. Is everything OK?’
Carla turned and took in another of the servers, a suntanned girl with cropped hair. The severe cut chopped into her fair-haired, pretty looks, giving her a more interesting air.
‘Fine, Zoe. This is a new colleague, Professor Carla James.’
‘Another prof. This town must have more per square capita than any other.’
‘Don’t tell that to the Harvardians. Carla, can I introduce Zoe Kantz, Albert’s daughter.’
Carla took a closer look at the girl and saw she’d inherited her father’s laughter lines but little else. ‘Good to meet you. Your dad mentioned dropping you off here earlier.’
Zoe made a face. ‘He doesn’t like me doing evening shifts. This place can get a bit rowdy after ten, so I’ve been allowed to take a job here as long as it’s daytime only.’
‘You’re not at college?’
‘Just graduated. Deciding what to do with the rest of my life. Mom’s hassling me to choose sooner rather than later.’
‘You don’t fancy following her profession?’ asked Carla.
Zoe made a face. ‘Not likely. I don’t have the stomach for it. I heard something was going on the other side of town today.’
Carla glanced at Max. ‘At Silent Brook?’
‘That’s the one. God. Mom will be in a foul mood when she gets back. There’s always something going on down there.’ The girl had the exuberance of the young. She must be at least twenty-one to be working in a bar and graduated, but Carla felt old enough to be her mother.
‘She’ll be working late, I suppose?’ Carla asked.
‘I guess.’ The girl’s gaze drifted away from them. ‘Mind you, two of her colleagues are over there. Do you know Charlie and Amy?’
The question was meant for Max, who shook his head. Carla’s heart sank as she contemplated the back of Baros’s head. ‘I met them both today. I don’t think they were thrilled to see me at the crime scene.’
Zoe hurried to a call from another table and, as if conscious of her appraisal, Baros slowly swivelled in his chair and caught Carla’s eye. Frowning, he turned back to his companion and muttered something to her. Perez leant to one side to catch a glimpse of Carla, her expression neutral.
‘Excuse me.’ Carla slid off her chair and made her way over to the detectives, never one to let a slight pass her by. She saw in satisfaction a flare of alarm in Perez’s eyes as Carla appeared at the table.
‘Hi. I hadn’t expected to meet you again so soon,’ she said to them both.
Baros lifted a glass of beer to his mouth. ‘Small town,’ he said. ‘Hard to stop bumping into your acquaintances. Even when you’re trying to get some downtime.’
She ignored his rudeness. ‘I guess the body’s been removed from the crime scene. Was anything else discovered around the victim? Something I might have missed?’
‘Nope.’ Baros’s words were swallowed into his glass.
Perez shot him a look but kept quiet. The attitude of the pair of them infuriated Carla. ‘I thought you’d be working hard on the case this evening. Good you can spare time for a beer.’
Baros slammed the glass down and looked at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? What’s there to investigate? Another dead hooker.’
‘Another?’ asked Carla. She felt Max join her, his tall presence just behind her as one male scented another.
Perez picked up her beer. ‘It’s not the first death at Silent Brook we’ve attended. Not that it’s any of your business. We’ve strict shift patterns and we’re off duty.’
Carla wanted to defend herself. Explain she was still jet-lagged and sensitive to their disdain of her. Instead, she smiled. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
She heard Baros mutter something under his breath.
‘What did you say?’ asked Max, tensing. Oh God, Carla thought. I don’t need anyone fighting on my behalf.
‘Let’s go.’ She pulled at Max’s sleeve, but he shrugged her off like an outraged suitor in a western.
‘Would you like to repeat what you just said to Carla’s face.’
‘Thought she’d like to keep her own house in order before she started criticising us.’
Carla frowned, trying to decipher his words. He must be talking about Dan, which made it an odd comment given his death was now three years old. Viv Kantz would know her story and must have passed it on to the detectives when they’d returned to the station as there had been no comment on her status when she’d met them at the crime scene. That he would use Dan’s death against her sent her into a fury, although she was also outraged at Albert’s indiscretion. First Erin and now Viv. Was she to be discussed like a troublesome patient rather than a professional colleague? Time to nip this in the bud. She leant forward so her lips were close to his ear.
‘It’s the dead who have the most to tell us. Don’t forget that, Detective Baros.’
He turned back to her, his face a visage of indifference. ‘Sure.’