The complaints never disturbed her. In Mariah’s world, any publicity you didn’t have to pay for was good publicity.
And when the script was completed, she moved on to the next story, the next murder, never giving those deceased characters another thought. They weren’t real, after all.
But, dammit, Laura was.
Mariah lit another cigarette to get the smell of the autopsy room out of her nostrils. “It’ll probably taste like toxic waste,” Trace warned when he returned to the office. “And the cream is that nondairy stuff. But it’s hot.” He put a brown-and-white cardboard cup down in front of Mariah, then went around the desk, pulled an ashtray from one of the drawers and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She took a sip of the coffee, found it as bad as he’d predicted, but drank it anyway, willing the warmth to replace the ice in her bloodstream. “May I ask you a question?”
The leather chair behind the desk creaked as he leaned back in it. “Shoot.”
“Are you religious?”
“Not particularly.” Trace grimaced as he took a taste of his own black coffee. But like her, did not put it down. Unlike her, he needed the caffeine.
“Do you believe in God?”
He stared off into the middle distance as he considered that. His eyes were the color of steel, set deep in his unshaven, hollow-cheeked face. “I suppose I believe in what AA would call a higher power. Why?”
“I didn’t think I did. Not anymore, anyway.” She drew in on the cigarette, thinking that the fiery hell she’d been taught to fear during her catechism days was too good for the man who’d murdered Laura. “But I realized, down in that room, that I’m not nearly the agnostic I thought I was.”
She took another drink as she tried to put what she was feeling into words. “It’s not that I want to believe Laura’s in some mythical wooded glen like all those near-death experiences people describe, visiting with all our dearly departed relatives, listening to some heavenly choir,” she stressed. “It’s just that what’s down in that room—her body—isn’t her.”
She shook her head in mute frustration. “Does that make any sense?”
Trace put his cup on the desk and locked his hands behind his head as he remembered an instance, during his days as a rookie cop, when he’d gotten into a similar theological discussion with a sergeant who, whenever he looked at all those bodies in the morgue, saw nothing but dead meat.
At the time Trace had disagreed. He still did.
“You look at the faces,” he said quietly. “And they’re empty.”
“Exactly. Everything that made Laura who she was, everything that made her special is gone,” she stressed. “So where did it go? It couldn’t just disappear into thin air.”
“All souls go to heaven?” Trace asked.
Thinking that he was being condescending, she bristled. “Why not?”
She’d expected a smirk. Instead he smiled and she was surprised to note that it held considerable charm. “Sounds good to me.”
Mariah was in no mood to be charmed by some small-town, black Irish cop. Even if his firmly cut lips did remind her of a Celtic poet.
“Callahan,” she murmured, “wasn’t that Dirty Harry’s last name?”
He didn’t directly answer her question. “You know,” he mused out loud, “sometimes I think I should have become a chiropractor.”
“A chiropractor?”
“Or a dentist. Going through life as a cop with the name of Callahan isn’t always easy.” This time the smile reached his weary eyes, turning them a gleaming pewter.
Even as Mariah found herself momentarily intrigued by their warmth, she shook off the feeling. “So, when are you going to question Alan?”
“As soon as he’s out of surgery.”
“Too bad you can’t do it while he’s still under the sodium Pentothal.”
“Are you insinuating that the senator is a liar?”
“He’s a politician, isn’t he? It comes with the territory.” Her gaze turned serious. “You realize, of course, that this is going to turn out to be a media circus.”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“Are you also aware that Alan Fletcher has a great many powerful friends? Not only here in Arizona, but in the rest of the country as well?”
“You don’t get to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee without some powerful friends.”
His easy drawl irritated her. Her gaze met his and held. “I just thought I should warn you.”
“Consider me warned.” His gray eyes darkened, but his tone remained mild. Only a well-honed ear could have detected the steel in it.
Mariah swallowed the rest of the thick brown brew and stood up. “Well, thanks for the coffee, Sheriff. I’d better check into the lodge. I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Before you go, I need to ask you a couple of questions. About your sister.”
She sat back down. “All right.”
“Were you close?”
“When we were kids, we were as close as two people can be.”
“And later?”
Mariah sighed. “Not as close as I would have liked.”
She’d never forget the knock-down-drag-out fight between them on her last night in Arizona. Laura had only been attempting to soothe the always turbulent waters between father and daughter when Matthew Swann had discovered her intention to become an actress, like her mother.
But at the time, Mariah had viewed Laura as a traitor. Embarrassed, angry and young, Mariah had struck out with her most powerful weapon—words. She’d flung hurtful accusations like bullets, claiming Laura had abandoned her the same way she’d abandoned Clint Garvey on their wedding night.
Knowing that her sister had never gotten over the painful events of that disastrous night, Mariah had gone so far as to suggest that Laura would never marry any man because of her unhealthy relationship with her own father.
The word incest was never spoken, but the unpalatable suggestion had hovered over the room like a deadly cloud.
When an apoplectic Matthew had demanded Mariah apologize, she’d refused. It was the last time she was to see her sister for a very long time.
Then, two years ago, during a trip to California, Laura had surprised her by showing up on the set of a made-for-television movie. Their first meeting had been cautious. Their stilted conversation had reminded Mariah of two boxers, circling the ring, feeling each other out in the early rounds.
Gradually, emotional walls began to go down. Enough so that Mariah believed that while they’d probably never regain the relationship they’d once shared, perhaps, if they both continued to try, they’d be able to create something equally satisfying.
She began turning the empty cup around in her hands as she considered bleakly how she’d thought they would have time to patch things up.
“Did she happen to discuss her marriage with you?”
“Only in passing.”
“Did you get the impression her marriage was a happy one?”
“How could it be? Considering who her husband was.”
“That sounds a lot like conjecture.”