Ruby waved a hand. “You got nothing to worry about. No ID on the body?”
The sergeant shook her curly head. “Except for a charm on her bracelet with the name Betty engraved on it.” She spelled it for them.
“There’s a name you don’t hear much these days.” Ruby looked over at the blanket-covered form. She was no longer panting from the long climb, but for some reason, she couldn’t make herself walk the twenty feet over to where the body lay on the dusty gravel.
“Hey, you caught that other case with the kid,” Papoojian said suddenly. “The dumpster boy.”
Ruby winced inwardly at the term. “Yeah.”
“They dumping all the murdered kid cases on you now?”
She shrugged, taking an uncomfortable breath against the Dread, which now seemed to be all but vibrating in her midsection.
Was this what she had been dreading, she wondered suddenly—murdered children?
It almost felt as if she were tearing each foot loose from slow-hardening cement as she urged herself to go over and look at the victim, Pasco at her elbow with an attitude that seemed oddly dutiful.
“Ever see a dead kid?” she asked him in a low voice.
“Not like this,” Pasco replied, his tone neutral.
“Well, it’s gruesome even when it’s not gruesome,” she said. “So brace yourself.” She crouched down next to the body and lifted the blanket.
The girl was lying face up, her eyes half-closed and her lips slightly parted, giving her a sort of preoccupied expression. She might have been in the middle of a daydream, except for the pallor.
“Well, I see why Desjean was so sure the girl wasn’t local,” Ruby said.
“Because she’s Japanese?” he guessed.
“Well, there are a few Japanese in east midtown, not many, but I was referring to her clothes.” Ruby shifted position, trying to relieve the pressure from the way the Dread was pushing on her diaphragm. It crossed her mind briefly that perhaps what she thought of as the Dread might actually be a physical problem. “That’s quality stuff she’s got on. Not designer but definitely boutique. You get it in the more upscale suburban malls. I have grandchildren,” she added in response to Pasco’s mildly curious expression.
She let the blanket drop and pushed herself upright, her knees cracking and popping in protest. Pasco gazed down at the covered body, his smooth, deep-gold face troubled.
“You OK?” Ruby asked him.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Like I said, kids are gruesome even when they’re not—”
“I think this is related to this case I’ve been working on.”
“Really.” She hid her surprise. “We’ll have to compare notes, then. Soon.”
He didn’t answer right away, looking from the blanket to her with a strange expression she wasn’t sure how to read. There was something defensive about it, with more than a little suspicion as well. “Sure,” he said finally, with all the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to a root canal.
Ruby felt a mix of irritation and curiosity, which was quickly overridden by the Dread. She couldn’t decide whether to say something reassuring or simply assert her authority and reassure him later, after she knew she had his cooperation.
Then the crime lab arrived, saving her from having to think about anything from the immediate situation. And the Dread.
At the end of the day, Pasco managed to get away without talking about his case. It was possible of course that he had not been purposely trying to elude her. After spending most of the day talking to, or trying to talk to, the people in the building, checking on the results of the door-to-door in the neighbourhood, looking over the coroner’s shoulder, and through it all pushing the Dread ahead of her like a giant boulder uphill, she was too tired to care.
She made a note about Pasco in her memo book and then dragged herself home to her apartment where she glanced at an unopened can of vegetable soup before stripping off and falling into bed, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor.
3:11.
The numbers, glowing danger-red, swam out of the darkness and into focus. It was a moment or two before she realized that she was staring at the clock-radio on the nightstand.
Odd. She never woke in the middle of the night; even with the Dread pressing relentlessly harder on her every day, she slept too heavily to wake easily or quickly. Therefore, something must have happened, something big or close, or both. She held very still, not even breathing, listening for the sound of an intruder in the apartment, in the bedroom.
A minute passed, then another; nothing. Maybe something had happened in the apartment next door or upstairs, she thought, still listening, barely breathing.
Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. And perhaps that was all it was, a whole lot of nothing. It could have been a car alarm out on the street, an ambulance passing close with its siren on, or someone’s bassed-out thump-mobile with the volume set on stun. Just because she didn’t usually wake up didn’t mean that she couldn’t. She took a long deep breath and let it out, rolling onto her back.
There was something strange about the feel of the mattress under her and she realized that she wasn’t alone in the bed.
Automatically she rolled onto her right side. Rafe Pasco’s head was resting on the other pillow. He was gazing at her with an expression of deep regret.
Shock hit her like an electric jolt. She jumped back, started to scream.
In the next moment she was staring at the empty place next to her in the bed, her own strangled cry dying in her ears as daylight streamed in through the window.
She jumped again and scrambled out of bed, looking around. There was no one in the room except her, no sign that anyone else had been lying in bed with her. She looked at the clock. 7:59.
Still feeling shaky, she knelt on the bed and reached over to touch the pillow Pasco’s head had been resting on. She could still see him vividly in her mind’s eye, that regretful expression. Or maybe apologetic was more like it. Sorry that he had showed up in her bed uninvited? Hope you’ll forgive the intrusion—it was too late to call and there wasn’t time to get a warrant.
The pillow was cool to her touch. Of course. Because she had been dreaming.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, one hand unconsciously pressed to her chest. That had been some crazy dream; her heart was only now starting to slow down from double-time.
She stole a glance over her shoulder at the other side of the bed. Nope, still nobody there, not nobody, not no how and most especially not Rafe Pasco. What the hell had that been all about, anyway, seeing her new partner in bed with her? Why him, of all the goddam people? Just because he was new? Not to mention young and good-looking. She hadn’t thought she’d been attracted to him but apparently there was a dirty old woman in her subconscious who begged to differ.
Which, now that she thought about it, was kind of pathetic.
“God or whoever, please, save me from that,” Ruby muttered and stood up to stretch. Immediately, a fresh wave of the Dread washed over her, almost knocking her off balance. She clenched her teeth, afraid for a moment that she was going to throw up. Then she steadied herself and stumped off to the bathroom to stand under the shower.
Pasco was already at his desk when Ruby dragged herself in. She found it hard to look at him and she was glad to see that he was apparently too wrapped up in something on something on his notebook to pay attention to anything else. Probably the mysterious case he was working on and didn’t seem to want to tell her about. Shouldn’t have slipped and told me you thought it might be related to the one we caught yesterday, she admonished him silently, still not looking at him. Now I’ll have to pry it out of you.