CHAPTER 24
THE CALL CAME MERE HOURS after they left the hospital. The victim went into respiratory distress and eventually suffocated. The doctors and nurses on call had attempted lifesaving ventilation procedures, but her body simply gave out. Her death report revealed that a stab wound severed the spinal roots in her C6 spinal region. She had been paralyzed from the waist down. Wren instinctively shook her leg when she learned this information.
The doctors also reported that the killer had tended to the wound he created, as Wren had already suspected. The blood loss was not as significant as it would have been if left untreated, making it unlikely as the final cause of death. The blood test results provided an even clearer picture of the victim’s fate. Her system showed moderate quantities of poison hemlock, likely administered intravenously before she was placed into her living tomb. The hemlock finished the job that her killer had started. Wren had lingered on this detail when she first read it. It is a literary poison, and she wondered what it said about the killer who wielded it in this way.
With the body now lying lifeless and cold on her table in the autopsy suite, Wren can’t help but think of the parents’ faces at the hospital. Their tear-stained cheeks and their tired eyes burned in her memory. She can’t even imagine the grief they’ll feel when they discover the extent of the horror their daughter endured, what she saw and felt and suffered through. This killer’s crimes are like an airborne virus, infecting everyone along the way to its primary target. It’s all collateral damage to him, but to the real people involved, it consumes their every cell. For just a moment they had their daughter back and alive, only to have their hopes dashed. Though sometimes death is the only real mercy.
Wren dumps out the green bag with the victim’s effects, transferred over to the medical examiner’s office from the hospital where she took her last strained breaths hours earlier. The contents spill onto the steel table beside her body. There aren’t many things inside of it. Her dirty, stained clothing was cut off her body while the doctors attempted to save her life at the ER. The back of her shredded white T-shirt is brown with old blood. There is dried vomit on her right sleeve, likely having dripped onto it after she lost consciousness. Her jeans are caked with mud. Wren is determined to figure out precisely what was done to this woman before her untimely death, but at the same time is terrified to discover the truth. She knows that this woman’s last lucid hours must have been full of things even horror movie directors can’t fathom.
Wren casts aside the clothing and returns to the bag’s emptied contents. There is only one thing left. The only other possession the victim was transported with is a bracelet that, according to the accompanying report, was taken off her left wrist. Wren’s eyes lock on this piece of jewelry. The bracelet is delicate and has a dangling silver anatomical heart charm with a small engraved E on its side. Her pupils focus and refocus, as if in disbelief. With her gloved hand, she touches it. She is looking to prove that it’s really there, in the room with her, and half expects her fingers to pass through it. Instead, they connect with the cool metal, first the charm and then the rest of its length. It’s real, and it’s here.
Her thoughts are chaotic. They speed through her brain in undecipherable patterns. She imagines the inside of her mind sounds like a scratched CD skipping endlessly. She knows this bracelet. It belonged to her in another life. Now she stands in the place where she usually feels her most competent and strong, light-years away from the version of herself that once wore this bracelet, holding it again in her hands.
This bracelet belongs to Emily Maloney.
This bracelet belongs to Wren Muller.
CHAPTER 25
JEREMY CAN’T HELP BUT THINK about how his grand return has gotten off to such a rocky start. Seven years. Seven years of plans and work has led up to this unsatisfactory showing. He watched the disaster unfold from what should have been a pleasurable vantage point yesterday, forced to remain hidden on the outside of the cemetery observing helplessly as his plan broke apart. Failure is never an easy pill to swallow, but for Jeremy it is like ingesting broken glass. He successfully evaded it for most of his life, yet somehow he’s now awash in it.