Читать книгу Unravelling - Elizabeth Norris, Elizabeth Norris - Страница 21

hen I get home after Alex and I drop Jared off at polo, my mother is awake. And baking.

This happens sometimes, which almost makes everything worse. “Almost” because nothing beats the smell of warm bread.

“J-baby!” she calls when I open the door. “In here!”

“Here” is the kitchen. She’s showered and is wearing a bright green velour jumpsuit and more eyeliner than she needs. And she’s surrounded by possibly eight hundred muffins— blueberry, banana nut, bran, cornbread, chocolate chip—they’re everywhere. Literally. They cover every surface in our kitchen. As does flour.

My flip-flops stick to the linoleum floor. Egg, vanilla extract, butter—I’m not sure what I’m sticking to, but I know I’m annoyed. We’ll be eating muffins for every meal until we have to throw them out, and I’ll be the one cleaning this up.

“How was school, baby?” she asks, turning to give me a smile and a banana nut muffin. “Here, have one, they’re fabulous. I used your great-grandmother’s recipe, and I got it just right. They couldn’t be more perfect!”

“School’s fine,” I mutter as I take a bite. She’s right. She did get Nana’s recipe perfect, which is saying something. My dad’s grandmother owned a bakery.

“Jared said your schedule was all wrong. He told me they gave you classes that were easier than his and that you’d need to get it changed. Do you have any classes with Kate? Oh, here—try this one too. I’m not sure why it isn’t quite right, but they just didn’t rise as well as the first batch. They taste fine, though.” She hands me a flat cornbread muffin. She’s forgotten that I don’t like cornbread. Just like she’s forgotten that Kate and I aren’t friends anymore.

“I’m getting my schedule fixed,” I say, taking a bite of it anyway. “I filed paperwork with Elksen and now I’m just waiting for him to get around to it.”

“How is it?” she asks, nodding to the flat muffin. “I’m just not sure why they didn’t rise. I could throw them out, I guess, but that would be so wasteful. I just don’t know what happened. All the other batches look great.”

What happened is she messed up the baking soda or baking powder, but I’m not about to point that out. “It tastes great, Mom.”

She beams, and her dimples—the same as Jared’s—peek out of her cheeks. Even her nose scrunches up with her smile. She looks ten years younger than she did a few days ago. I can’t think of the last time she smiled like that.

I want to say something else, prolong this moment, but words fail me. And it doesn’t matter. She’s already turned back to the mixing bowl and begun a long explanation of why she decided to also make a batch of raspberry muffins and how they’ll be different from the blueberry ones, even though she’s using the same baseline recipe. I text Alex, Struz, and even Jared’s water polo coach to let them know there’ll be muffins on us for anyone who’s interested.

And then I just listen to her talk.

It’s not that I’m particularly interested in the art of baking muffins or that I don’t have a ton of other things I should do. I just love how animated she looks—so opposite of yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

I have a second chance to fix all this. To try harder.

My mother offers me a spoonful of batter, but I shake my head. The problem with days like this? They’re just enough to remind me what I’m missing. I don’t have a mother I can talk to. I will never be able to tell my mother about Ben Michaels, that he saved me somehow, that he’s denying it.

So after she finishes the raspberry batch, I grab the Clorox wipes and head to her bedroom. I throw the curtains wide, roll up the shade, and open the windows as far as I can. Once I’ve got some air in there and the ceiling fan is attempting to circulate it, I start picking up the clothes on the floor.

And when I’m rearranging the picture frames—putting the picture of Jared and me at Disneyland after we rode Space Mountain back on her nightstand—I see it.

My dad’s laptop, plugged in, still turned on, and resting on the bed, buried in her bedspread. He has his own room. My parents stopped sleeping together forever ago. She needed her own space for peace and quiet, and frankly, if they had to stay in the same room, he never would have come home from the office.

Which means he spent the morning in here—with her.

I sit down on the bed and pull the computer into my lap, open it up, and log in. His password would be complex. To anyone else—even someone who knows binary code. But I can hack anything my dad has passworded. I know him too well.

As it loads, I hear my mother’s singing underneath the thrum of the fan, and I can’t help wondering if this is why she’s awake and in a good mood. I know she’ll come down from this high— she always does. But could it be this easy to pick her back up again?

Scrolling through my father’s history, I open up the last files he viewed. One is a performance eval for Barclay, T. I don’t know the name, so he must be a new analyst. At first it appears to be anything but average. In fact, the first part is straight-up glowing. A hundred percent on handgun and rifle qualifications—it means he hit dead-center on all fifty shots. His computer skills are fantastic, and his actions directly led to closing a recent investigation. Only my dad is recommending he be moved to a different unit. Apparently T. Barclay doesn’t respond well to authority, and he blatantly disregarded an assignment my dad sent him on. That’ll probably ruin T. Barclay’s career. You can’t just not do what your boss tells you to when you’re in the FBI. Even when your instincts are good and you end up being right. The ends don’t justify the means in a bureaucracy.

The next file is paperwork on a gang case that goes to trial later this year. Normally I’d be all over that. But the third file is the autopsy report for Torrey Pines Doe 09022012. My John Doe.

Jackpot.

This is, of course, illegal. Just looking through my dad’s files could come with some pretty stiff penalties if the government found out—for me and for my dad. And even though I’ve been snooping through his files for a long time, my heart still races uncontrollably every time.

I glance at the bedroom door again and listen for anything out of the ordinary, but the only thing I hear—other than my own hammering heart—is my mother’s off-key version of an old Whitney Houston ballad.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the report.

My John Doe is still unidentified. They don’t even have an alleged identity next to his case file (which reduces him to the location and the date of his death). They’re putting him at approximately twenty-five to forty-five years, height and weight not applicable. That, I agree with. That I understand. What I don’t is what I read next. The physical examination.

FINDINGS:

01 Global burns consistent with radiation with extensive body

mutilation

02 Perimortal crush injury of right thorax

03 Head injury cannot be ruled out

What. The. Hell.

How can that even be possible? He wouldn’t have been exposed to radiation on the side of the highway—or in his car, for that matter. There’s no reason burns should have shown up on his skin postmortem. I’m not exactly up on medical science, but burns with extensive body mutilation are bad, and they tend to show up immediately. And if the crash killed him and not the burns . . . maybe that was why he was driving so fast. He could have been trying to get to a hospital. Or running from something.

Next page.

CAUSE OF DEATH:

01 Global burns

02 Perimortal crush injury, right chest

So far, the medical examiner is the only person who’s signed off on the autopsy. Maybe they’re getting another opinion. Not that I blame them—it seems more likely that someone switched up the bodies than that this is actually my John Doe.

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:

The body is presented to the county morgue in a blue body bag and wrapped in a white to tan sheet. The remains are those of a Caucasian male and consist primarily of a severely burned body. Burns are consistent with chemical burns or radiation. There is no charring, but there is complete burning of the fl esh from many sites, massive destruction of bony tissues, and resultant profound mutilation of the body. Soft tissues of the face, including nose, ears, and eyes, are absent, with exposure of partially destroyed underlying bony structures.

My stomach turns at the possible image—I get the idea— and I scroll down to try to see more.

And the smoke alarm screeches.

I jump to my feet, automatically sniffing the air for smoke. My skin itches at the possibility of burns. I shut the laptop and toss it back onto the bed before I run to the kitchen.

Thankfully, nothing is on fire.

But the muffins in the oven are burning—and smoking— and my mother is standing in the center of the room looking at a broken coffee mug, black eyeliner tears streaking down her face.