Louis is called away, giving Karen a chance to study the scene a little closer. Besides being covered in blood, the top of the desk looks nothing like the one in the lobby. The pen holder is knocked over, the sticky notes are all over the place, even the blotter is crooked. Bianca had been grasping for something to hit Tanner with.
The Russian nesting dolls are particularly odd. They’re open, all of them, from large to small. She wouldn’t have had time to do all that while being attacked—if that’s what happened. But she had done it at some point.
Two theories come to mind. Either a nervous habit, or because something was hidden inside the last one. Something she needed at that moment, late at night, before the altercation with her boss.
A question she would ask Bianca, if she were a detective on the case. Too bad she isn’t.
The door to Wes’s office is open. The others are closed. Karen can see straight into it, all the way to the window and the dark sky behind it. The chair at the desk is pushed back a little.
He isn’t here, though. Maybe he had been. Maybe he left in a rush. Maybe he saw what happened. The security card swipes could show that, or the cameras, depending on the angle in the parking lot.
Or maybe Wes had left his door open.
She walks back to the elevator, turning all of this around in her head, trying to put the picture together. The jigsaw needs more pieces.
However, she did learn what she wanted to know. Wes Harmon wasn’t the victim.
Too bad. That would’ve made everything so easy.
25
The email arrives when Wes is still in Ivy’s bed. It comes from the CEO’s assistant, Abigail, and the whole staff is copied.
The Siphon office will be closed today due to an emergency. Details to come.
He smiles. The fire alarm probably went off again, triggering the sprinklers. It happened once before, and they were out of the office for almost a week. Wes puts the phone down and rolls over, sliding an arm around Ivy.
His house is small, with only two bedrooms, and he picked out all the furniture, including the bed. But he still likes hers better. It’s so much more comfortable. Could be the sheets or the pillow-top mattress. Or maybe it’s because the bed smells like her. And if he’s in it, so is she.
She wakes up and buries her head in his shoulder. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Time?”
“A little after seven.”
“Shouldn’t you be in the shower by now?” she says. She always teases him about the military precision of his routine. Her mornings are far more chaotic.
“I don’t have to go in today,” he says. “Some problem at the building.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She snuggles a little closer. “I’d take the day off if I could.”
“You can’t call in sick?”
“Our weekly meeting is this morning. It’s the one thing I really shouldn’t miss.”
“Too bad,” he says.
She does stay in bed a little bit longer, curled up to him. So easy, in these moments, to think only of the good things. The bad doesn’t exist right now, and he’s just fine with that.
A few minutes later, she gets up and heads into the bathroom. The shower turns on, and he closes his eyes. He could get up and make breakfast, which would be a nice thing to do, since he doesn’t have to go into the office. Or he could join her in the shower. Another good option.
Wes closes his eyes, deciding more sleep is the right answer. He should dream of his girlfriend, or at least about some woman he has always wanted but never had. A celebrity, maybe.
But he doesn’t dream about anything or anyone, because he never falls back asleep. The detective prevents it.
Karen is a problem. He doesn’t have proof of that, and so far it doesn’t sound like she knows anything, but he feels it anyway. She has no reason to look into their past, especially not at something that happened seven years ago. Yet she is. It makes him wonder what she’s up to, why she even cares. No matter how many ways he twists it around in his mind, it doesn’t make any sense.
He thinks about her until his phone dings. And dings.
Again.
Again.
Again.
* * *
—
Karen has two stacks of case files on her desk. No shortage of work to do—there’s a never-ending stream of sexual assaults and related crimes that end up in her division. Most mornings start with a cup of bad coffee, a packaged pastry, and the latest tragedy.
The stack on the left has the cases she is still working on. The stack on the right, in the far corner, has the cases she no longer has to work on. If it were up to her, she would have just one stack. All the cases, each one receiving an equal amount of attention. The DA doesn’t see it that way, and neither does Karen’s boss. The stack on the right contains all the cases that will never be prosecuted.
The station is buzzing today; activity swirls around her. Fair Valley has its share of homicides, but not too many professional men are killed by women in fancy office buildings. Not even in self-defense.
Earlier this morning, Karen talked to Louis and his partner about the Tanner Duncan case, and she offered to speak to Bianca.
“It might help,” she said. “If she can talk to someone familiar with assault.”
“You mean it might help if she talks to a woman,” Louis said.
Karen meant because she has experience talking to victims of assault. But yes. That, too.
“I think we can handle it,” Louis said. “But we’ll let you know if we need you.”
He walked away, ending the conversation.
She turns to the file she is supposed to be working on. A man has been taking lewd pictures of women on the bus. He sits on the aisle, angling his phone underneath the skirts of the women standing next to him, and snaps a photo. So far, the women who have noticed either moved places or cursed him out, but none of them wanted to make a scene or disrupt their ride to work. Nobody wanted to be late because of a photo.
Upskirting is against the law in California, though technically it’s a misdemeanor. Makes no difference to Karen. Her job is to stop him.
She has a sketch of the man, who always appears during commute time, when the buses between Fair Valley and Sacramento are the most crowded. What she doesn’t have is manpower. No, the police force could not afford to put anyone undercover to catch some guy taking pictures on the bus.
Karen has been riding the bus herself, hoping to find this guy. The downside was having less time to work the other cases, both the stack at the station and the one at her house.
The third stack. Wes and Ivy are in that one.
26
Ivy has one dress for funerals. Simple, black, hangs to just below the knee. The last time she wore it was when her grandfather died. Today she wears it again, for Tanner.
The funeral home is stuffy; the air feels as still as the corpse in the room. The casket is closed—not a surprise, given how he died. She only knows the details because of Wes. The police haven’t released everything about how or why he was killed, but the Siphon employees know. The rumors are out there, which is why the funeral is small and private. Less than fifteen people are here: Tanner’s family, some of the sales team, and the CEO of Siphon.
Zànglǐ.
The Chinese word for funeral. She learned it especially for today, along with the word for corpse. Shītǐ.