Playing Dead

by Allison Brennan

  “I’m here for Phin Ward, not a body.”

  The woman glanced up, then called over her shoulder, “Phineas, you have a visitor.”

  Claire glanced around. The office was cluttered but organized. In the far corner was a fish tank with goldfish and a submerged plastic skeleton. Similar pathologist humor added levity to what could have been a depressing place to work, including a fake brain that looked real on a shelf, next to the snack food, and a life-size artificial skeleton hanging in the corner wearing a pirate’s hat and eye patch and holding a plastic sword.

  Phin emerged from the rear office and smiled at Claire as surprise lit his eyes. “It’s been awhile.” He walked out and greeted her with a hug, then escorted her into the staging area. This was where they first tagged, weighed, and logged in the bodies.

  “I know, I know. I’ve missed hanging out with you. How’ve you been?”

  “Sad and lonely without you, but I’ll live. Better than being him.” He jerked his thumb toward a cadaver in the hall outside the freezer. “Came in fifteen minutes ago. John Doe, hit and run.”

  A mortician walked by pushing a cadaver on a trolley. He handed his paperwork to Phin. Without looking at it, Phin walked back into the office, handed it to the woman, and returned.

  “Is there a place we can go talk in private?” she asked.

  He reached into a box and tossed her two booties for her shoes. She slipped them on, then followed him through the large autopsy room—currently unused—to a small office on the far side. The smell was mostly clean and antiseptic, with a very faint, underlying hint of something akin to rotten eggs. Like the first time she’d been here, Claire didn’t think it was that bad.

  The office was crammed with equipment used to preserve tissue samples and containers with a colored fluid that held, primarily, brains. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No,” she said, partly lying. Phin had a morbid sense of humor and probably wanted to get a rise out of her. “What’s this room used for?”

  “We have a neurologist who comes in every Tuesday to examine abnormalities in autopsied brains. Primarily for genetic research.”

  She picked up a jar, brows furrowed. “Don’t tell me this is from a child.”

  He took the jar from her, read the label, gave her a half grin. “Naw. It was removed from a grown man three days ago.”

  “It’s so small.”

  “Yeah, that’s why the neurologist needs to look at it. Abnormal.” He put the jar back. “Okay, what brings you to my neck of the woods? Work or pleasure?”

  “Neither. I’m not here about Rogan-Caruso business.”

  “And you’re still seeing that Mitch guy?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “So I guess you’re not asking me out on a date.” He sat on the edge of the metal-topped desk and crossed his arms, revealing intricate tattoos on his biceps.

  “Date?”

  “I’m just teasing you. You should have seen your face, though.” Phin grinned. He picked up a jar and absently turned it slowly around in his hands, the preserved organ turning inside. Looked like a kidney, but Claire wasn’t positive. “So why are you here?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Ah. The truth comes out.”

  “Two favors.”

  “What are you going to give me in return?”

  She didn’t know what to say. “Kings tickets?”

  He laughed. “I’m joking. Damn, you’re serious today. You usually come back with a great retort.”

  “I’m preoccupied.”

  “Okay, what? Seriously, I’m at your disposal.”

  “I need the coroner’s report from two autopsies fifteen years ago.”

  “Fifteen years? Those are in archives.”

  “But you can get to them a lot faster than I can. When I called, they said it would take weeks. I don’t have weeks. I need them like, um, today.”

  “You don’t ask for anything difficult, do you?”

  “Is it possible?”

  “I’ll get them. Who?”

  “Chase Taverton and Lydia O’Brien. They were killed on November 17, 1993.”

  “O’Brien. Your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to read the reports. They weren’t in the court records.”

  He stared at her, wanting more information, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “I’ll get them, but I might not have them until tonight.”

  “I really appreciate it. Call me on my cell phone and I’ll pick them up wherever.”

  “What’s the second favor?”

  “There was a guy hauled out of the Sacramento River yesterday. You probably did the autopsy today.”

  “I know the body.”

  “Did you work on him?”

  “No. What do you know about it?”

  “I know who he was.”

  “He wasn’t identified until this morning when the chief compared dental records. How do you know?”

  “Well, I know the owner of the car that the body was recovered in, and Dave—my quasi-brother the cop, you met him at the Monkey Bar last year—told me last night they were nearly certain it was Oliver Maddox.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “Not really.” She almost lied, made up a story for Phin, but she didn’t want to lie to a friend, and didn’t see what it would gain her now. “He was a law student researching my father’s trial and conviction. He believed that my dad was innocent.”

  “I didn’t think there was a question.” His voice held a hint of compassion. One reason Claire had always liked Phin was because he was straightforward and relatively unemotional. He rolled with the punches and liked to have fun in the process. But just his mild concern had her throat constricting.

  “There is. At least now there is.”

  “What do you want to know about the body?”

  “Was Oliver Maddox murdered?” She could get the information from Dave, but Claire didn’t want to ask. Dave was already suspicious.

  “Inconclusive. Molly was the senior pathologist on the case and said there was possible brain damage at the back of the head, consistent with a blow, but the body was badly putrefied. We’re ruling it a possible homicide. Because there are no external injuries that we could find, Molly put the preliminary cause of death as suffocation by drowning. But there’s no way to tell if he was alive when he went into the water.”

  “Dave said he’d been there for a few months. He was reported missing the end of January.”

  “That sounds right, but it’s nearly impossible to establish time of death after a couple days. He was under for months.”

  Possible homicide. Great. That didn’t get her any further than she already was.

  “Thanks for your help. And if you’ll call me about the reports, I’d appreciate it.”

  “One thing was weird, other than the attention the victim was given.”

  “Attention?”

  “Yeah—the FBI was here. I can’t think of any other autopsy since I’ve worked here that the Feds came in to witness.”

  “That is strange.” Why would the FBI be interested in Oliver Maddox? Were they tracking him because of his connection with her father?

  “The other weird thing?”

  “When Molly pulled out the organs, which were pretty much Jell-O from decomp, she found a flash drive.”

  “A flash drive?” Claire repeated, incredulous.

  “Bright pink. The Feds took it with them.”

  “Was one of the FBI agents named Steve Donovan?”

  “I don’t know, I can check.”

  “Did you see them? Blond, six one, midthirties, about a hundred eighty pounds, has a mole on his right cheek.” She pointed to the center of her own cheek.

  “Yeah, he was here.”

  “Shit.”

  “Know him?”

  “Yes. I just don’t know what it means.”

  Driving from Maddox’s town house to the
campus, Mitch reviewed the phone records he’d ordered last night. The student didn’t have a residential phone—more and more people were dropping their landlines for the convenience of a single mobile phone number.

  “Last call was made at 9:45 p.m. Sunday, January 20,” Mitch said. “He also made calls at 2:10 p.m., 3:08 p.m., and 4:49 p.m., all to the same number. Then received a phone call from that number at 5:15. It lasted six minutes.”

  “Which puts that about the time he was seen leaving his residence,” Steve said.

  “He called the same number—an Isleton prefix—at 5:22 and again at 9:45, his last call. The first lasted three minutes. The second call less than a minute. If he was meeting someone in Isleton, it wouldn’t take four and a half hours to get there.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “We know he was driving from Isleton when he went into the river. Could be the last person who saw him alive. But we don’t know if this last call was made before or after he left Isleton.”

  “So who’s the other number?”

  “It matches Professor Collier’s home phone.” “Maddox called him three times, no answer, and then the prof calls him back.”

  “Collier said in the missing person report that Maddox was calling to cancel their Monday meeting.”

  “Why?” “Oliver allegedly didn’t say why.”

  “Why a six-minute conversation? What’d they talk about? The weather?”

  “Collier said it was class-related. The Davis cops didn’t know what Maddox was working on. Collier said it was his thesis.”

  “A thesis seems innocuous. Who would kill over a college thesis?”

  “Maybe it’s not even related. Could be he hadn’t been working on his thesis because of all the time he spent trying to clear O’Brien.”

  “Now that makes sense.”

  “So he has to cancel the meeting because he doesn’t have anything to show.”

  “I follow you,” Steve said. “But one thing I can’t figure out. In all this, why didn’t Maddox go to the police? Or talk to someone? If he honestly believed that O’Brien was innocent—if he had found evidence to that effect—why wouldn’t Maddox have turned it over to the authorities?”

  “I—” Mitch didn’t have an answer. “Maybe he didn’t have proof. Or he could have had unsubstantiated theories. Knowing something to be true in your heart and proving it to be fact are completely different.”

  “Then perhaps his girlfriend or advisor will be able to shed some light on this.”

  Steve pulled into a security-vehicle-only parking place at Davis and put his official FBI business placard in the window. Mitch dialed the last number Maddox called the night he died.

  “The Rabbit Hole.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “Corner of 2nd and B Streets right off River Road. Can’t miss it. Gotta white rabbit on the sign.”

  “Thanks.” Mitch hung up.

  “Well?”

  “Bar, from the sound of it. Want to make a stop?”

  “Worth checking into, but it’s been nearly four months. If Maddox met someone there, the bartender may not remember.”

  “It’s the only lead we got right now.”

  They exited the car, walked into the administration building, and showed their badges. “We need to speak with Professor Don Collier regarding one of his students.”

  “One moment.” The receptionist left the room and Mitch said to Steve, “Do you have Tammy Amunson’s contact information?”

  “Yes, and her class schedule.” Steve glanced at his watch. “It’s 1:30. Her last class was over at noon today. I have a mobile number.”

  “I’m sure as hell not looking forward to giving her the bad news.”

  The receptionist returned. “I’m sorry, Professor Collier canceled all of his classes today.”

  “Canceled?”

  “Yes, sir. I can direct you to his teaching assistant, Shelley Burns. She has a desk in Professor Collier’s office at King Hall.” She handed a card over on which she’d already written the name and number.

  “Where the hell is King Hall?” Steve muttered as they walked out.

  Mitch handed Steve a map of the campus he’d pulled from the receptionist desk. “Now I know why they pay you the big bucks,” Steve said.

  Shelley Burns’s office was more like an oversize closet, not much bigger than Claire’s home office, Mitch thought. She had a desk and a narrow wall of tall filing cabinets. Shelves on three walls were full of thick legal tomes. One shelf tilted precariously to one side. If anyone tried to remove a book on the left, Mitch was certain everything would slide off the right.

  There was the desk chair and one more chair that the door hit when it opened. She gave a shrug when they walked in and stood shoulder to shoulder. “Sorry, I’d offer you the professor’s office, but he locked up and I don’t have a key.”

  “We’re trying to reach Professor Collier about a student of his who has been missing.”

  “Oliver.” Shelley frowned as she bobbed her head. “He was such a geek, but I liked him. I was shocked that the pressure got to him. I mean, he lived for this stuff.”

  “What do you mean about the pressure getting to him?”

  “Don—Professor Collier—said that Oliver’s thesis wasn’t going well and he was panicked. Don thought he just left, couldn’t take it. The thesis has to be vetted by not only his advisor, but a committee. He might have had to stay another year. There’s a lot of pressure on third-year law students.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you that Oliver’s dead,” Steve said.

  “Oh, oh no!” Shelley looked stricken.

  Mitch sat in the one guest chair and put his elbows on his knees. “We’re sorry. We’d wanted to tell the professor the news in person.”

  “Maybe he heard and that’s why he canceled his classes,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine that he would do that without telling anyone about Oliver.”

  “You don’t know why he canceled?”

  “I thought it was a fight with one of his girlfriends. I was late to his eight a.m. class and was running across the lawn. He was standing in the middle of the walkway arguing with some woman. He walked off, angry by the looks of it, and she shouted something at him, but I couldn’t hear it. I got into class like ten seconds before he did. He went to the front of the room and said that he had a personal emergency and was canceling the lecture today. Didn’t even give an assignment. I mean, we only have two weeks until finals. He just walked out.”

  “He’s never done something like this before?”

  “Don? No way. He’s never sick.”

  “What was his relationship like with Oliver?”

  “Like, would he be distraught about his death? I guess he’d be upset. I used to be jealous of them—Oliver was his pet, everyone knew it. But then I suspected they had some big disagreement.”

  “Over what?”

  She shrugged. “No idea. But it had to have been major. I mean, they used to talk for hours in Don’s office, Don got him a choice internship two summers in a row, and Oliver had a key to his office so he could use Don’s personal law books. Then it just stopped. They barely spoke to each other anymore.”

  “Just like that? Do you know when this argument started?”

  “Hmm, not really. After classes began for the new term. That would have been end of August . . . maybe October? Early November? Definitely before Thanksgiving.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Oliver didn’t have any family nearby. Don always has his best students over for Thanksgiving, unless they go home. I was there with about eight or nine others. Oliver wasn’t. And Don said he hadn’t been invited. Really flip, very unlike Don.”

  “That’s very helpful,” Mitch said. “Did you—”

  She cut him off. “If you’re from the FBI, is that because Oliver was, like, murdered? And why aren’t the Davis police here?”

  “I can’t really share that information with you as i
t’s a pending investigation,” Mitch said. “Do you have any of Oliver’s things here? Research? Perhaps notes or an outline? His thesis?”

  “Oh, no. Oliver was very hush-hush about it. He wasn’t sharing anything. He wasn’t even talking to Don about it. “

  “Thank you for your time,” Steve said.

  “One more thing,” Mitch said. He knew the answer, but he had to ask the question. “Can you describe the woman Professor Collier was arguing with before he canceled his classes?”

  Shelley said, “Pretty, dark hair. Caucasian. Twenty-five or thirty. Older than a college student. She was wearing jeans, I think. A long beige blazer. I don’t remember anything else. Oh, she was kinda on the short side. Don’s on the short side, so I noticed she was at least four or five inches shorter. Five two maybe?”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  They left King Hall.

  “Dammit,” Mitch said. “Claire was looking at his class schedule and left early. I knew it. What does she know that we don’t?”

  “I wish I knew,” Steve said.

  What was Claire up to? What did she tell Don Collier that had him canceling his classes and acting strangely?

  “We have to track down Collier,” Mitch said.

  “Got his home address right here. He’s not too far from campus. And now I have a good reason to talk to Claire O’Brien again. Two people have identified her. It sounds like she’s a step ahead of us, too. I don’t want her to get in over her head.”

  Neither do I, Mitch thought.

  Steve called Oliver’s girlfriend as they walked, and Tammy Amunson agreed to meet them on the ground-floor of her dorm. Tammy was a petite blonde, pretty, though she dressed on the plain and dowdy side. She wore small, smart glasses. Someone that an equally brilliant geek lawyer would fall for, Mitch thought.

  “Tammy?” Mitch introduced himself and Steve. “Let’s sit down where it’s private.” He led her to a sitting area in the corner. There weren’t many people inside on this beautiful May afternoon.

  Her face fell as she shrank into the chair. “It’s about Oliver.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Tammy, but he’s dead. His body was found yesterday morning.”

  Her bottom lip quivered, and she bit it to make it stop. She blinked back tears, then said in a shaky voice, “Wh-what happened?”