All But a Pleasure by Phyllis Ann Karr

Author:Phyllis Ann Karr [Karr, Phyllis Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, Romance, murder, alternate world, fantasy
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2016-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Still Monday, October 2

Davison was silent all the way to the station, all the way through the station to the morgue. Almost corpse white himself, he stood trembling as they rolled the slab out of the cooler. Clayton helped him into viewing position beside the slab. Thinking back enviously to when they had the family dentist in for identifying Harry Jackson, Lestrade said, “I’ll warn you, M. Davison. Death can change people’s appearance.” Then she pulled the sheet back to uncover the head.

Davison gave a choked little cry and might have fallen if Clayton hadn’t been holding him.

Then Davison looked again. Shaking all over, he bent forward, carefully picked up a hank of the blond hair, peered at it very closely. Then he touched one of the closed eyes, jerked his fingers back from the feel of dead flesh, grasped his right wrist with his left hand to help steady it, reached forward again… Lestrade nodded her partner to open the eye for him. Clayton did so.

Davison bent over and peered hard at the eye, looked up at the fluorescent overhead morgue light, looked back at the eye. Hands trembling, maybe, a little less, he picked up the edge of the sheet and started to uncover more of the body. Clayton looked about to stop him, but Lestrade signaled No with a shake of her head. Right now, an accurate identification was the most important thing. They could caution Davison afterward to keep quiet about the tattoo. If the media, and Clayton’s friends Whitcomb and Osaka, could cooperate about it so, she figured, could Davison.

He wasn’t even looking at the tattoo. He was staring hard at the spot on the breastbone right over the heart. Lestrade guessed he hadn’t even noticed the tattoo at first. When he saw it at last he gave a violent start, but made no comment. Like he was already promising to keep the secret, without being told.

Shaking harder again, he lifted the hands, each one in turn, and studied the fingers, frowned as if concentrating on which hand was left and which was right, and studied them again.

Then, at last, he slumped to the floor, put his face in his hands, and sobbed. Almost soundlessly. Shoulders heaving.

“Corwin,” Clayton said very softly, laying one hand on his back.

Davison shook his head. “It’s not Angela! Oh, God, it’s not Angela. It’s not Angela!”

Clayton looked at his senior partner helplessly.

“I understand it, Detective,” she told him in a firm voice. Give him the years she’d had with this kind of thing, maybe he’d understand, too. Now she laid her hand on Davison’s shoulder. “People also cry when they’re relieved.”

“I…I…” Davison choked. “It’s not Angela, but it could have been! Now someone else will have to…go through this…and not find relief. Only despair. It is still a dead young woman…who looks so much like her…and where is she?”

“Probably in Florida,” said Lestrade. “Probably hidden by big-city shufflework and semi-competence. Maybe not even in the Miami area. Now. Explain how you know this isn’t Angela Garvey.

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