The Remembering

Chapters 23 thru 27

Chapter Twenty-Three
Boston 2011

   Liam stood over the dead female and looked down at her.  He saw Danyka, but he quickly dismissed the idea.  He saw Danyka everywhere.  The woman had long blonde hair and blue eyes, just like Danyka.  The victim was smaller and had a slimmer build than Danyka.  She wasn’t Danyka.  Danyka died eleven and a half months ago in an explosion in the North Sea.  He scrubbed his hand over his face as he knelt down by the body.  He grew a beard that he kept shaved close to the skin.  His hair was a little longer than he preferred.  Especially with summer in the air, but he couldn’t seem to find the energy to get it cut.  He was still muscular.  He was gaining back the weight he had lost ten months ago.  It was his eyes that were really different.  Once they were always full of life and quick to smile.  Now, there was nothing.  There wasn’t any emotion in them.  They were empty and haunted.  He constantly felt this weight on his chest.  It was hard to breathe.  Eleven and a half months ago, he had come home to tell his family that Danyka was declared lost at sea.  His family was devastated.  He was still devastated.  He pushed himself into his work.  He worked like a robot.  He haunted the station. He hardly slept.  When he did sleep, he dreamed of Danyka.  She was alive there.  Alive and smiling.   It hurt more when he woke up and she wasn’t there.  So, he slept as little as possible.  The only way to keep his mind off her was to work. 

   “What ya got partner?” Jordan Briggs came over and stood on the other side of the body. 

   Liam snapped out of his thoughts and said, “It looks like she was attacked.”  He looked around the apartment at the broken knick knacks and furniture.  “She definitely tried to fight for her life.  She has defensive wounds,” he pointed to her legs and her forearms, “We will have to check under her nails to see if she has any trace evidence of her attacker.”  Liam stood. 

   “I’ll also make sure the coroner checks for sexual assault and a full work up on a possible murder weapon.  CSU hasn’t found any murder weapons yet.” Jordan added.  He looked over at his partner, down at the body and then back at his partner who was still staring at the body.  “You good partner?”

   Liam looked up at Jordan and nodded, “Yeah.  I’m going to notify the next of kin.”

   “Want me to come?”

   “No.  I will meet you back at the morgue or the bull pen.”

   Jordan nodded as he watched his partner leave.
 

                                                        ***

   Liam sat at his desk chair and looked at his computer screen.  Notifications didn’t get any easier, but he hardly felt anything anymore.   Which is why he chose to do them instead of letting Jordan do them, maybe one day he would feel something again when he told a victim’s next of kin that they would never see their loved one again.  Maybe one day when a parent slapped him across the face in disbelief to the news that their child was dead, he would feel it.  But today wasn’t that day.  He couldn’t feel anything.
  
   He saw Jordan come into the bull pen and came back to the present.  “What did the coroner have to say?”  He watched as Jordan sat and sighed.  Jordan brushed his light brown hair back and looked at Liam. 

   “It was a brutal death.  She wasn’t sexually assaulted, so that’s something.  But the coroner said that the killer kept stabbing her even after she was dead.”

   “Does he know what she was killed with?”

   Jordan shook his head.  “No.  He said that it might be a small spike, because of the wound track.  It’s sort of cone shaped.  But the spike wasn’t metal or wooden.  He collected some trace that I already sent to the lab to be analyzed.