“Ready?” Paterno asked.
No. Not ever. “Yeah. Just let me call my kid. Make sure everything’s okay with the baby.”
Chapter 6
Standing in the morgue and staring down at her sister’s body, Pescoli felt the blood drain from her face. For a second her knees threatened to buckle as she gazed down at the body of her sister. A kaleidoscope of sharp images cut through her brain: Brindel’s birthday party when she was about ten and had broken her arm, all the kids who were invited signing her cast. Another memory of Brindel seated next to a boy in a convertible as they drove away. Still another when Pescoli was suffering from bronchitis and Brindel had come into the bedroom in the middle of the night to share a favorite book . . . No, they hadn’t been all that close, but there had been moments where they had shared a sisterly bond.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding, sucking in air through her teeth. “It’s Brindel.” Who had done this to her? And why?
The body was naked, a sheet rolled back, and Brindel’s impossibly blue eyes were fixed, her skin bluish, tan lines visible. Most notably a small bullet hole was visible on her forehead, squarely between her eyes.
I’ll find out who did this to you, and I’ll get them. Trust me, Brindel, I’ll hunt them down.
She glanced over to Paterno, who was standing a few feet away. “What about Paul?”
“You want to see him, too?”
Pescoli nodded.
Paterno spoke to the attendant, who wasted no time, found the right locker and rolled out another gurney. Lying upon it was the body of Paul Latham, dead as his wife, a gray tinge to his skin, appearing older than Pescoli remembered, his once brown hair threaded with gray, especially at the temples. She clarified, “It’s Paul,” then turned away, and the attendant began rolling the body back to what she’d always thought of as “cold storage.”
They walked out of the building and Paterno, who had driven her the ten minutes to the ME’s office and morgue, offered to drive her back to her apartment. As he maneuvered his SUV through the hilly streets, she said, “You know I need to be a part of this investigation, for myself.”
Slowing for a traffic light, he said, “This isn’t your jurisdiction and you’re a member of the family. My advice: let us handle this.”
“You can trust me.”
“If the situation were reversed?” he asked, glancing at her as the light changed.
“Yeah, I know. But I could help you. I’m not going to mess things up.”
“You have a reputation for . . . getting things done. If unconventionally.”
So he’d checked on her. No surprise there.
“I know Tanaka doesn’t like me, but I could work with her.”
“She’s a little territorial.”
“I’d say ‘a lot’ territorial.”
“Okay. Maybe.” The rain had started up again and he flipped on his wipers as he rounded a corner and the house in which she’d rented the lower unit came into view. “This it?”
“Yes.”
He double-parked in front of the home, dark, as it was close to midnight.
“I would like to be kept in the loop,” she said as she opened the door. “My supervisor, Sheriff Blackwater, will vouch for me.” She really wasn’t sure about that.
“Already has.”
Another surprise, she thought, as she leaned inside before closing the Durango’s door. “Let me throw it back at you—what if the situation were reversed? What would you do if you’d just identified your sister in a morgue with a bullet hole in her forehead?” He just stared at her, so after a few moments of standing in the rain she slammed the vehicle’s door and stalked back through the wrought-iron gate, ducking her head against the drizzle, taking the stairs to the lower unit.
She was pissed, but had to shake it off.
Time to take off her cop’s hat and become mother to a seventeen-year-old and a baby.
For now.