by Liliana Hart
“Weirdly enough,” I said. “I’ve wondered the same thing. The autopsy won’t bother you? I’ve yet to get a cop to make it through a full autopsy with me.”
“That’s because they’re soft,” she said. “I’m from Atlanta. I can watch your autopsy and eat my donuts. No problem.”
“Alrighty,” I said. “It’ll be nice to have the company. Company that’s still breathing, I mean.”
She snorted out a laugh while I unlocked the metal door that led down to the basement. The bright lights came on automatically, and I pulled the door closed behind us and listened for the click that signified it had relocked.
We took the stairs, and I pointed Chen to the couch and showed her how to turn on the monitors so she could see everything that was happening around the rest of the funeral home. Once she was settled, I opened the cooler and rolled Warren Buchanan to the autopsy table. I unzipped him and cut off his pajamas while he was still on the gurney, and because he was a good-sized man and a lot heavier than he looked because of his muscle mass, Chen came and helped me get him onto the autopsy table.
“Today feels like it’s going to be a weird day for me,” she said, going to the sink to wash her hands.
“Look on the bright side,” I told her. “You could be where Warren is right now.”
“Good point,” she said.
I turned the overhead lights and the ventilator on, and then I turned on my recorder, documenting anything I could see with the naked eye. For a man in his sixties, he was in excellent shape. But considering he had a wife twenty-five years younger, I could understand why.
He had a scar about three inches long on the right side of his abdomen, consistent with an appendectomy, but I’d be able to confirm once I opened him up. I took blood samples, and I swabbed the inside of his mouth carefully.
I was able to move very quickly with victim number two. I had my tissue samples and Mr. Buchanan was all put back together in just over three hours. I used the ChemSee test strips I had in the drawer just like I had for Nina Walsh, and the results came back positive.
“Cyanide,” I said. “It’s a match.”
Chen looked startled at the sound of my voice. I’d been silent for hours while I was working. I’d forgotten she was even there.
“Jack said they recovered two more tins with the poisonous capsules during the search of the shop,” I said. “It’d be helpful to know how many tins the killer replaced.”
“That would make things too easy,” Chen said. “The first news alert went out a couple of hours ago. When I checked in at the station the guys said they were flooded with calls from panicked people, and everyone was bringing anything they’d ever purchased from the Witches’ Brew and demanding it be tested.”
I grimaced. “This will ruin Esmerelda. It doesn’t matter if she’s exonerated. She’ll always be guilty in the eyes of the people.”
“Or maybe she really is the killer, and she’s throwing us all off track,” Chen said. “Never let your guard down. Sometimes it’s the most unsuspected who can do the most damage.”
“And what if she’s innocent?” I asked.
“Then you’re right,” Chen said. “She’s through. She’ll have to move out of state if she ever wants to open another shop. The one thing I’ve learned about the people in this area is that they have long memories and they’re not exactly forgiving. The sheriff said Esmerelda is already getting death threats. He had to assign a man to protect her.”
“Eventually Jack is going to run out of men,” I said. “We’ve been thrown into chaos from all sides. Everyone has more than one job to do. That can only sustain so long.”
“He’s already run out of men,” Chen said. “He’s called in reinforcements from Stafford County. He sent out a memo a little while ago.”
I’d been so preoccupied with the autopsy I hadn’t stopped to check my phone. I took off my gloves and lab coat, and picked my phone up off my desk. I had six missed calls and a dozen texts, most of them from Jack.
Thanks for the coffee.
And then a few minutes later he texted again.
I’m assuming you’ve already started “digging in” to our victim. Let me know once you have preliminary test results.
His next text was about an hour later.
Be glad you’re underground. The news alert went out and people have lost their minds. Esmerelda getting death threats. Someone set her car on fire.
“Yikes,” I said to myself.
Forgot to mention I brought Doug into work. Figured it was safest place for him to work. He wasn’t happy to get up early, but I gave him a dozen donuts and a bottle of Mountain Dew, so I’m hoping he’s coherent enough to get started.
It was another hour before he texted again.
I’m going to assume you’re still wrist deep in body cavities and not ignoring me. Nash said pills were identical. The chemist is analyzing ingredients in the poisonous pills, but it could be a couple of days for results. All other items clear.
“Martinez texted and says the vic’s wife is asking for her dog,” Chen said. “She wants to know when she can claim the body.”
“I just need to collect some samples to send with the human tissue to the lab,” I said. “Then she can take both the dog and her husband. We can have him sent wherever she’d like for him to be interred.”
Chen relayed the message to Martinez, while I was still looking down at my phone, trying to decide what to say to Jack.
Just finished. Prelim results came back positive. Will send samples to lab.
I read it again after I hit send, and wondered if I could make it any less impersonal. I sounded like I was talking to my assistant instead of my husband.
Sorry about Esmerelda. People suck.
I put the phone back on the desk and went to get the dog so I could take his samples as well, though it was pretty conclusive that cause of death would be the same as his owner. What would be great is if we had a suspect.
“What’s wrong?” Chen said as I put the dog back and cleaned up my work space.
“I’m worried this is one of those cases that might never get solved,” I said. “It makes no sense. We’ve got two victims who didn’t know each other and couldn’t be more opposite in every way. What if there was no motive behind the killings? What if whoever it was just wanted to kill, and it didn’t matter who the victims were?”
A thought crossed my mind that had my heart beating harder in my chest. What if the killer just wanted to create chaos? Or run Jack’s resources and attention into the ground so no one was paying attention as much as they should’ve been? I needed to talk to Jack.
“I’m finished here,” I told Chen. “Just let me check in with the staff and make sure they don’t need me for anything, and we can head to the station.”
I grabbed the samples, and Chen and I went back upstairs to the funeral home.
When we walked out of the basement and into the kitchen, we both took a breath of fresh air.
“Do we smell weird?” Chen asked, sniffing her arm.
“Nah,” I said. “Maybe don’t hug anyone today. It’s the embalming you have to watch out for.”
I went to the kitchen sink and washed my hands and then grabbed a Coke from the fridge. I’d drink anything as long as it had caffeine in it.
“Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” I told Chen. “I’m going to check in with Emmy Lu and make sure everything is okay.”
Emmy Lu Stout had been working for me the last few months, and there were many times I wondered how I’d ever gotten along without her. She was somewhere in her middle forties, and she was a Bloody Mary native. She’d been pregnant with her first son when she’d walked the stage at graduation, and she married the baby’s father the day after graduation. She gave birth to four more boys before she turned twenty-five, and she’d been a stay at home mom until her last son had graduated from high school and her no-good husband left her for a younger model. She’d been left flat broke without any real job
experience, and I hired her on the spot.
“Sounds like it was a busy weekend,” Emmy Lu said when I walked into her office.
Emmy Lu was what I imagined a middle-aged Gidget who was thirty pounds overweight would look like. She was cute as a button, and she wore a pair of readers on the tip of her nose.
“It wasn’t one of my most relaxing,” I said, taking a stack of messages she handed me.
“Maybe you should go on vacation,” she said. “Have you noticed things slow down around here when y’all are gone?”
“It’s recently come to my attention,” I said. “A woman might be in later to make arrangements. I’ve got her husband and dog down in the lab.”
“Are you doing pet embalmings now?” she asked, her eyes going wide.
“Weirdly enough, having a dog in my autopsy space brought me more anxiety than I expected. I’m not a fan.”
“Maybe you’re just not a dog person,” she said.
“I think that it’s just I’m not a dead animal person,” I said. “Is Sheldon here?”
“He’s coming in for an eleven o’clock meeting with a potential client,” she said. “They’re looking at caskets. And I need you to sign these purchase orders. Make sure you send me a list if there’s anything you’re running low on in the lab.”
I grabbed a pen from her holder and scribbled my signature across each form. “I’m going to be in and out all week. Unless I’m needed specifically for something, Sheldon can take care of it. We’re swamped with this case.”
“I saw the news this morning,” she said, clucking her tongue. “It’s just awful. I love that store. I’ve taken those same pills for headaches. Esmerelda’s work better than any name brand. You think I need to throw away my box? I mean, I’ve had it for months. Isn’t it just the new ones that are contaminated?”
I raised my brows in surprise. Emmy Lu was hanging pretty fast and loose with her life. “Wow, those must be pretty good pills.”
She nodded solemnly. “Sometimes it’s worth taking the chance. You know she’ll never be in business around here again. Do you remember when Blue Bell ice cream had that listeria outbreak a few years ago?”
“One of the saddest days of my life,” I told her.
“I had three half gallons in the freezer, but there was no way I was throwing those things in the garbage. Some things are worth dying for.”
“Usually it’s people you love,” I told her. “Not herbal remedies and dairy products.”
She shrugged and tilted her head. “I love both of those things more than I love a lot of people.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I said. “Are the ones in your box red-and-white capsules or tablets?”
“Tablets,” she said. “I’m assuming I’d be dead already if they were poisoned. During my divorce I popped those things like candy. Though I wouldn’t necessarily mind my ex getting a hold of one of these new batches, if you know what I mean.”
“We should probably keep that just between us though.”
“Right,” she said.
I looked through my messages, but there wasn’t anything pressing, so I dropped them on my desk and went to find Chen. She was in the bathroom, so I yelled through the door that I’d meet her in the car.
I refilled my bag with extra medical supplies and grabbed my keys off the hook. I saw my reflection in the mudroom mirror and grimaced. My hair was haphazardly pulled up into a knot on my head, and I was paler than usual. Or maybe the dark smudges under my eyes made me look paler than usual.
I left through the side door that led to the carport. It was still early enough that the sun wasn’t oppressive, and there was a nice breeze in the air.
“Hey, Doc,” Morris Biggs called out as he jogged by. Morris was one of those guys who was addicted to jogging. I didn’t know if he actually worked for a living; there were times I passed him around town two or three times a day, always in his black jogging shorts and a white sweatband around his head.
“Hey, Morris. Make sure you stay hydrated,” I yelled back.
He gave me a thumbs-up and turned the corner onto Catherine of Aragon. The strip mall across the street was hopping, and cars were pulling in and out outside the new deli. Which reminded me that it was lunchtime and I was starving.
A group of moms walked by with strollers, lost in conversation, and I really stopped to look at what was going on around me. I’d had tunnel vision for the past week, moving from one victim to the next, including Ben. I’d not had one moment to sit and think or let my mind rest. I hadn’t gone for a walk or gotten fresh air. If I kept going like I was, I’d look up and it would be October, and I’d be wondering where the sunshine and pretty trees were.
I went to the back of the Suburban and opened the hatch, and then I put my bag on top of the gurney. A sharp pinch hit my thigh, and I yelled, “Ouch,” even as I brought my hand down to rub at the spot. But an unfamiliar hand caught mine before I could touch it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” my father said.
My head snapped up so we were eye to eye, and then I looked down to see the syringe sticking out of my thigh.
“I wouldn’t want you to accidentally hit the plunger,” he said. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t end well for you. I’m way past the point of patience, Jaye. If you keep getting in my way, I will take you out.”
I jerked against him, but he was too strong. “I never doubted that for a second,” I said between gritted teeth.
He’d changed his appearance once more. His hair was mostly silver and he was clean shaven, though his jowls were more pronounced and the lines in his face were deeper. Even his posture was different, so he was slightly hunched and rounded at the shoulders. If it weren’t for his eyes, I wouldn’t have recognized him at all.
“You’re being stupid,” I said, looking him in the eye again. “If you keep popping up like this it’s only a matter of time before someone takes you down.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said, smiling, showing slightly crooked and yellowed teeth. “Who’s going to do that? Your friend in the hospital? Or maybe Jack? The last I checked he was a little busy.”
My heartbeat was pounding in my throat, and I wanted to fight him, to call out, but I knew he wasn’t bluffing. Whatever was in that syringe would kill me. I didn’t doubt that. “Was it you?” I asked. “Was it you who poisoned those people?”
“It’s a very interesting case,” he said, not answering the question. “The perfect crime.”
“There’s no such thing,” I said.
“Wanna bet?” he said, and smiled again. “Let me tell you how this is going to end. I want those flash drives. And I’ll do anything and go through anyone I have to to get them. I’d sure hate for that kid to get hurt. I’ve enjoyed watching him play his video games. Seems like a bright kid. He must’ve come with a security upgrade because I’ve been in a blackout ever since he walked through your door. I’ve had to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing things. But it’s just like riding a bike. Young people today wouldn’t know how to survive without technology.”
“Maybe you should write a handbook.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Ha. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. It’ll give me something to do when I finally get to retire. I’m looking forward to the Golden Years. I hope you can understand my position.”
“I understand that you’re a monster and completely insane,” I said defiantly.
“To some I’m a hero,” he said.
“Not to me. Never to me.”
“The flash drives aren’t in your house. I looked yesterday before you had your little accident. I’ve searched your lab and the funeral home with the same results. Which means you and Jack are either keeping them with you at all times or he’s put them in a safety deposit box. Maybe he even locked them up in the evidence room at the station. But you’re going to bring me all five of them by midnight, or I’m coming to get them. Do you understand what that means?”
“It means if I have a clear shot I�
��m going to take it,” I said with much more bravado than I felt.
“As long as we’re clear.” He jerked the syringe out of my thigh and put it in his pocket. “It really is an interesting case,” he said again. I hadn’t even noticed that he was carrying a cane until he walked off around the carport.
I felt so helpless—powerless—and it made me angry. I couldn’t call out for help. I couldn’t tell people that my dead father was haunting me. Not unless I wanted to put everyone at risk. Ben had already paid a price, and I knew if we didn’t come up with a plan soon then Jack would be next on the list.
My legs were jelly, and I was leaning against the back of the Suburban, propping myself up as best I could. The side door to the funeral home opened, and my head snapped up as Chen came out.
“What’s wrong?” she said, immediately looking around for trouble. It was no use. Malachi was long gone.
“I hit my knee on the bumper,” I lied.
“I hate that,” she said and went around to the passenger side. “You ready?”
I closed the hatch and made my way back to the driver’s side. “As I’ll ever be,” I said, but I didn’t really believe it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jack had been right when he’d said I was lucky I got to stay underground. The town square was a nightmare of people and cars, and there were picketers marching in front of The Witches’ Brew. I beeped my horn for people to get out of the streets, but no one was budging.
“Just park in the alley at the backside of the station,” Chen said.
“I don’t think I can get there.”
There were cars parked in the street, and I could see uniformed officers setting up barricades, trying to get things under control. The officers must’ve been from Stafford County because I didn’t recognize anyone. They were moving the barricades right in front of us and waving for us to back up, but Chen rolled down her window and stuck out her badge.
They managed to push the people back long enough for me to slip through, and then they set up the barricades behind us. There was an unfamiliar car parked in Jack’s spot, so I pulled up close behind it and blocked it in since there were no other spaces available.