“Jake, I can see that the sketches are delivered to headquarters—” Gannet began.
Jake shook his head. “No, thanks, that’s all right. I want to compare them to the girl myself, make sure I’ve got the very best likeness. I’ll be back.”
He left the room, amazed to discover that he had to unclench his fingers to open the door.
He knew the morgue too well. Knew where to go for coffee.
He sat down, drew out a folder of notes, certain if he read and reread, he would find the thread he needed. Smoke and mirrors.
Fuck. He couldn’t concentrate. He was furious.
Why?
She’d known this, known that she wasn’t going to be a cop, not for now, anyway. She must have known she was going into forensics, and she hadn’t said a damn thing.
Not that they’d really carried on a conversation….
Fuck.
She should have told him. Still, it was a good thing, a damned good thing. Now she wouldn’t be on the streets.
There were lots of women cops. He wasn’t a chauvinist. He had no right to want her off the streets. Hell, he hadn’t even known she was an artist.
He took a sip of his coffee. It had grown cold. Impatiently, he put his notes back into the folder and started back down the corridor anxious to see the drawings.
There were several. All of them good. And all of them representing a living, breathing young woman, one who’d been attractive in life. Surely someone had loved her. Someone who shouldn’t have to wake up and realize that not only was she dead, but she’d died in a particularly horrible way.
“Detective? Changes, suggestions?” Nightingale asked.
He wanted to say something. Wanted something to be wrong.
Hell, no, he didn’t. He wanted the case solved. He just didn’t want Ashley Montague to be…so damned good.
No. They needed good people. He just hated surprises.
“Jake?” Mandy Nightingale persisted.
“No. They’re good,” he said, and added the drawings to the contents of his briefcase.
He didn’t thank the artist, though he knew he should have done so. He nodded an acknowledgment to Gannet and the others, including Ashley, and turned to leave. He forced himself to turn back.
“Thank you all. I’ll choose one of these for tomorrow’s paper.”
That was as much as he could manage. He turned and exited, further aggravated to discover he had to unclench his hands again to open the door.
CHAPTER 12
Ashley should have felt a deep sense of accomplishment and pride. Gannet, Nightingale and Murray had applauded her artistic efforts with a great deal of satisfaction—even smug satisfaction, on Murray’s part. Well, his job was personnel. He was supposed to know people, their talents, their weaknesses and just where they could best serve the public interest. Mandy Nightingale was also wonderful, telling her not to worry, all the other skills she needed would come, but that she’d already performed a very important service—and her paperwork hadn’t even gone through. Even Dr. Gannet had been extremely kind, shaking his head with a little bit of awe that she had been able to create such a plausible likeness from the pathetically damaged face of the corpse.
The corpse.
Oh, Lord.
Yes, she’d seen a lot, most of it on video, but she’d been to an autopsy. She’d never come near to passing out or vomiting. She had stood her ground; knowing that no matter how something made her feel, it would be her job to do the best for the injured and the dead.
But she hadn’t seen, or even imagined, anything close to the horror of seeing a body like that of Jane Doe. She had felt bile rising in her throat. The air had gone still around her, and for long moments she had felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Somehow she had swallowed the bile, then pinched herself to keep from seeing the spots growing before her eyes. She had forced herself to think as an artist, to find the features that would lead her to the true vision of the woman as she had been in life. But all the time, every minute of it, she had longed to throw the sketch pad down and run screaming from the room.
She hadn’t run, though. She had done the sketches, and they were good. She was good, and she should have been pleased by what she had accomplished. But as she drove away from the morgue—desperate for a shower and fresh clothing before picking up Karen and Jan—she grew angry with herself for not feeling a greater sense of achievement. The hell with him.
It hurt to feel that after last night. No. That had been nothing more than a moment’s insanity, almost like coming up for a gulp of air after being under water too long. He certainly felt nothing toward her. It was almost as if he still disliked her.
She pulled into the parking lot, grateful that her own space was available, still so deep in thought that she hardly noticed her surroundings.