“No. It’s science.” She paused. “And personal experience…Regardless, one needle shouldn’t have been able to come close to killing him. It might kill me, or you, if you don’t have a history with it. But trust me, my brother could put away the heroin. One dose would not kill him.”
Another pause while Nate thought about that. He’d heard about that. About some addicts not even being able to have pain medication at the dentist. She was already talking again and Nate was certain he needed to listen to keep up.
“Again, I’ll bet you he has no other needle marks, so that was his first dose. Secondly, he didn’t even get the full dose.”
Nate raised an eyebrow wondering how she could know that.
“He died with the needle still in his arm. I saw the pictures. I read your report.”
Of course, she had. Normal people asked to see the report. Grace Lee came in with corrections.
“The needle was still half full. So your report suggests that my brother—who was a serious addict—started using with maybe half a dose and fell over dead. No vomit. No seizures—”
“How do you know he didn’t have seizures?” Nate interrupted. Damn. He wanted to dislike her. He wanted to tell her she was wrong and to have a nice day. He wanted to tell her to take it up with his Chief. She’d have his back. But instead, he was getting more and more intrigued.
Her southern accent made her sound like she should be talking about sugar and maybe trying a dash of hibiscus syrup in her sun tea. Or maybe asking him whether the linens would match at the wedding on Sunday. Instead, that sweet mouth spoke of addiction and evidence, of heroin and shoddy police work. His shoddy police work. He was frowning because it was occurring to him she might be right.
“He didn’t have seizures because only the tip of the needle was in his arm. It should have fallen out or at least created a bruise under the skin.”
“Even though he was dead?” Nate cringed at his own bluntness. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have to work it like it’s a case, not my brother.” At Nate’s nod, she went on. “The blood won’t congeal for several hours. Had the needle been flung around in a seizure, he should have bruised. Honestly, I’m not sure it was even in a vein from the pictures I saw.”
She was going to ask to see her brother’s body. He felt it coming.
But she said, “Junkies don’t die with the needle in their arm. That’s for TV. It’s wrong for all the reasons I listed and because it takes only a few seconds to push the plunger and pull the needle, but it takes longer for the effects to take hold. So if he really died of an overdose, the fastest it could have happened was a few minutes after he pulled the needle out.”
Shit. Double shit.
Grace Lee was making it hard to say no. And she hadn’t even asked him for anything yet.
Chapter Three
Grace stood in the hallway in the basement of the hospital. The gray metal entryway with the placard next to it counted as the entryway to the county morgue. She’d held back, waiting in the empty hall, having decided it was time to let Detective Ryder run the show. Though he hadn’t said it, he seemed to think she had a case. At least enough to bring her to the morgue and let her see her brother’s body.
It’s a case, she repeated the phrase in her head as though the more she said it the truer it became. Despite only having coffee in her stomach, it still churned with the thought. She was not looking forward to calling her father and telling them what she’d seen. Her mother was the one who had cut Jimmy out of the family more than once. She was the stoic, and she’d take whatever final conclusion Grace gave her. It was her father who was breaking at the loss of his little boy. Somehow, Grace thought a murder might be easier for him to stomach than an overdose. Her father wouldn’t handle it if Jimmy had truly been the instrument of his own death.
Ryder strode down the hallway toward her, and she felt the chill in here more than she’d felt it outside. The look on his face only made her colder.
An older gentleman followed the detective and held out his hand. “Miss Lee, welcome. I hear you’re with GBI?”
She nodded. Professional courtesy. He was going to let her in. Breathing a sigh of relief, she shook his hand and only asked if she could view her brother’s body.
“Of course.” He smiled as though she were asking about candy rather than her own family member, but she didn’t balk. She was lucky to get in here. Some medical examiners closed their place down and guarded everything like a dragon hoarding gold. Dr. Grunholdt didn’t. Or he didn’t for a fellow forensic scientist, at least.
She and Ryder waited while Grunholdt—clearly the only one here after hours tonight—pulled the files and went to the drawers where the bodies were kept.
It would be too much to hope that her brother would still be out on a table. Though he’d had an autopsy, it would have only been standard, not as extensive as if they’d believed it was murder. Though she’d requested the full autopsy, she’d not yet heard if it had been performed.
Between Ryder and his partner at the scene, the death investigator, and the M.E.’s decision that Jimmy was a junkie who had overdosed, she was lucky he’d even gotten the report he had. She’d seen more thorough reports on ninety-year-old women full of stage four cancer and battling pneumonia. Jimmy was young and his death deserved more than it had been given.
Grace held her tongue as Grunholdt opened a door and slid out an empty tray. Her heart stopped. She was opening her mouth to ask why her brother wasn’t where he was listed, when Grunholdt offered a smile and a wave of his hand. “I’m sure he’s in the walk-in. He’s supposed to go for cremation.”
He was? She didn’t know that. She was his sister. Her parents were in Georgia. Who could have signed for that? To be fair, Jimmy would have wanted to be cremated, but her parents wouldn’t have agreed. Unless he had… “Did you get a will?”
“Let me check.”
For a case that had only been four days ago—the autopsy only three—the doctor seemed to not know much.
“How much volume do you have here?” She felt the words trip off her tongue.
“I have twenty-eight in line right now.” That had been a much easier answer than where Jimmy’s body had gotten to. She watched as he reached out and opened the large silver door to the walk-in cooler, but she didn’t follow.
Ryder didn’t either. Despite his status as a major crimes detective, he looked a bit uncomfortable with the morgue. Grace ignored him. Or she tried to. He was a good-looking guy, and the shocking blue of his eyes grabbed her. They probably made people confess to crimes he wasn’t even interrogating them about.
Grunholdt came out of the cooler looking at his binder. Not rolling her brother’s body out or telling them to come in because he’d found it. Her stomach flipped again.
She looked to Nate, who flashed her a worried look with those stunning blues, and she liked this even less. She wanted to ask if the M.E. routinely lost bodies but again she bit her tongue.
“I’m sorry. I misread the notes. Your brother was already sent for cremation.”
No! She almost shouted it. Forcing her irritation down, she asked as calmly as she could, “Who filled out the paperwork for that?”
Grunholdt looked through the file again and said, “Kevin Anderson. Do you know him?”
Grace nodded. He was Jimmy’s boyfriend and definitely on her to-do list. Unless… had they gotten married? That was the only thing that would have put Kevin at the front of the decision-making line. “What was the relationship listed for Mr. Anderson?”
The M.E. looked again, as though all this was new to him. He paused, read, paused again. “Nothing is checked.”
Not married, she thought. So why had Jimmy’s body been cremated? This was getting worse and worse. Beside her she could see Ryder wearing a clear “everything is fine” face. On anyone else she would have been angry. But despite her barging in and basically accusing him of poor police work and missing clues, he’d listened to her.
She felt bad about it now, but she was fairly certain his expression now meant he was seeing the same things she was.
She was opening her mouth but Ryder’s voice came out.
“Can we get a copy of the autopsy paperwork then? And the intake forms, as well?”
Bless him! It would sound like an official request.
Grunholdt shrugged at them. “Front desk is closed for the night but I’m sure you can get it tomorrow.”
Grace wasn’t so sure it would still be here tomorrow. The morgue smelled better than this case did.
Again, Ryder leapt to the rescue. “I know my way around. I’m down here enough. I’ll do it.” He held out his hand and tempered his obvious workaround with a friendly smile for the M.E.
Grace thought about that. While she could afford to make enemies—she’d be leaving Dark Falls once she was done—Detective Ryder couldn’t.
“Don’t you already have these?” The M.E. frowned.
“Not the complete set. Just the short report. And not the intake papers.”
With that, the M.E. shrugged again and handed the full file over to the detective. Grace watched it pass from hand to hand and prayed that Ryder would copy the whole damn thing. Then he disappeared into the front office with her evidence in his hands. There was nothing she could say without revealing her thoughts.
Those thoughts were veering very strongly to something being amiss at the M.E.’s office, but what? With her own forced smile, Grace asked, “You did the autopsy. Can you tell me a little of what you saw?”
Grunholdt smiled like a friendly family doctor. “Oh, I didn’t perform it. One of the assistant M.E.s did it.”
“But you signed it…” she let it trail off. The M.E. signed off on everything, his signature wasn’t unusual. But if he didn’t perform the autopsy, then he shouldn’t have signed it without the performing physician’s signature already on the paper…
Chapter Four
Nate grabbed Grace by the elbow and pulled her out of the morgue before she could say anything else. Once again, she surprised him with her patience. She didn’t pepper him with questions as he practically dragged her through the twisting corridors of the hospital.
It must be the southern accent; it made him expect things he didn’t get.
They were barely out the door when he heard her stomach growl. “You’re hungry! You forensic types. Ugh. I can’t believe a trip to the morgue makes you hungry.”
“No. A trip to the morgue simply doesn’t make me lose my appetite. Not having eaten anything today except the coffee I had with you makes me hungry.”
Pressing his lips together, he felt his own stomach still rebelling at the thought of food, but he couldn’t begrudge someone else. Especially when she’d opened a big fat can of worms. “Baked sandwiches okay? On me.”
“I can get lunch,” she offered relatively quietly, but Nate wouldn’t accept. If she was right, he needed her maybe more than she needed him.
“I’ve got it.” It was all he said before handing her and the file he’d been clutching into the passenger seat of the unmarked SUV. She was thumbing through her brother’s paperwork before he even closed the door.
Not wanting Grace to overhear, and glad she was preoccupied, he stood at the back of the car for a moment and pulled his cell phone out. He wasn’t one for making use of speed dial, but he dialed his partner often enough that her number was a one-touch necessity.
At the usual “Whatcha got?” Nate replied through clenched teeth. “I’ve got a shit show is what I’ve got. The Lee overdose is not what it seems. And his sister is here from out of state.”
“Sister? Oh no. You need help with the wailing family?” The offer was sincere though Nate could hear the prayer behind the words, Mari’s fervent hope that he’d say no.
“She’s not wailing. She’s a forensic scientist and this is not good.”
“Seriously? You think she’s right and it’s not an OD at all?” Her voice took on a serious tone. “But the M.E. said—”
“That’s the bigger problem. The sister is all over the brother’s death, but now I’ve got a cluster F in the morgue.” He leaned against the car, no longer worrying that Grace Lee might see him. While one hand held the phone, the other worked to hold his face on his head as though it might fall off. The way it was throbbing, it might. “If the M.E.’s office is involved, this is big. And bad, very bad. Can you cover our cases today? Tell the Chief to call me if she wants an update.”
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that not only had he not gotten rid of “the sister” by the end of coffee, he might not get rid of her anytime soon. Mari’s easy promise that she would hold down the fort was the only thing about this that made Nate feel any better. Hanging up, he climbed into the driver’s seat and drove quietly to the sandwich shop while Grace thoroughly read the file. He didn’t doubt she understood every word. He also didn’t doubt she was picking holes in it.
Once again, they calmly ordered and took their sandwiches and drinks to a secluded seat in the back of the place. The lunch crowd had come and gone and they mostly had the place to themselves. At least his stomach had settled. Like her, if he let dead bodies get to him, he wouldn’t eat. The morgue just wasn’t his favorite place. Biting into his sandwich, he waited for her to start in on what she’d seen.
Grace Lee did not disappoint. “Not to be rude, but has your M.E.’s office always gotten rid of evidence?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” She was not pulling any punches. “Did they do that with your brother?”
“In spades.” She flipped open the file he’d copied.
His stomach flipped, and he regretted switching the machine to make her nice, full-color images. “Not while I’m eating!”
“Sorry!” She flipped the folder closed and looked contrite, but then took a bite of her sandwich as if she’d not just showed him her brother’s internal organs and dead, sightless eyes. Grace apologized again as she watched him set down his sandwich, his appetite suddenly gone. “I’m really sorry. I forget other people don’t deal with this all day and you handled the morgue really well.”
“I was faking it.” Nate wiped his face. Well, he could wrap up the rest of his lunch. “Okay, I’m done. Let’s look and you tell me what you saw.”
Her face animated again, her apology accepted or not, she was ready to go on. She dipped a hand cut fry in ketchup and started talking between bites. “One, there’s no toxicology report in Jimmy’s file. They should have at least checked for heroin.”
Nate knew that, he just hadn’t seen that it hadn’t been done. No, that wasn’t right. His oversight hadn’t been that bad… “It’s not in the file?” He felt his brows pulling together. “The M.E. told me it was cut and dried. Heroin OD. I had a verbal confirmation.”
“I understand. Why would you read the same report you’d just heard?”
He was grateful she was willing to forgive. Maybe she understood that he had a stack of cases. Ten different dead people in seven different incidents that he had to solve. Two seemed incredibly clear. In another it was obvious the man had been beating his wife and she’d cracked and killed him. How she should be dealt with was murkier than mud. So he’d heard the report on Jimmy Lee, seen an obvious OD, got medical confirmation and closed the case. Shit.
“At the stations in Georgia, the guys don’t have time to read the newspaper in the morning, let alone a report they just got an oral confirmation on. They don’t have time to handle the bodies properly. In fact, a lot of the time they don’t have the time to let me do it.” She paused a beat and looked him in the eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You got lied to. By Grunholdt.”
“No, not Grunholdt. The assistant. Sussex.”
“Is that who did the autopsy?” She asked and polished off her tuna melt, reaching for another fry. Again, that sweetly southern voice had made him think she’d go for a salad and garlic bread. Nope. Tuna melt. Extra cheddar. With fries. It was an order he understood.<
br />
Nate thought back to whether Sussex had actually said he’d done the autopsy. “Yesterday, I would have just said ‘yes,’ but today, after this morning, I don’t think I can. Sussex gave me the report but didn’t specifically say he’d done the autopsy.”
She nodded. “Okay, so Grunholdt signed off on the autopsy, letting one of the MDs working as his assistant actually do the work and write the report. That’s not uncommon. The M.E. technically has to sign off on every autopsy, so that any underling errors can be caught and corrected. It’s Grunholdt’s job specifically to do that. To catch that a tox screen had not been run to confirm the OD. The MD who performed the autopsy should also be trackable.” Grace flipped the folder open, this time to one of the forms. It was the final autopsy report, typed from the dictation at the time of the autopsy. “That doctor’s signature should be here, too. It’s not. The fact that it’s not there makes it look like Grunholdt did it.”
“But he admitted that he didn’t.” Nate was turning it over in his head. At this point, it could simply be a series of casual errors. Things standardly not done to full effort simply because to do so would mean other deaths didn’t get investigated at all. Just like him missing that the tox screen hadn’t been done because Sussex had told him that the OD was confirmed.
Grace interrupted his thoughts. “Look, there’s too much here that’s problematic. My brother was cremated on the signature of his boyfriend. That’s not legal. My family can and may very well wind up suing your forensic center for negligence.”
While Nate wasn’t happy to see any local departments wind up in court, he had to agree they had a case. But Grace’s next words popped his head up.
“Your copying these records for me unfortunately will make you part of that case if my parents decide to pursue it.” She looked apologetic, as if she innately understood he would not want to testify against an office he relied on regularly. “Honestly, I don’t think it will get pursued. It would be a last-ditch effort, if nothing else I did here worked. But I think there’s an abundance of evidence, Ryder.”
Dark Secrets Page 2