Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “Of course,” he says in a tone that’s much too like a purr. “Right this way.”

  The halls of the administrative building aren’t quite as stark as the hospital proper, but they’re still pretty close. We pass many offices, the occupants clicking away on their keyboards or having hushed phone conversations. At the end of the main hall, we turn left and reach a large office. David waves us in. The right wall of the room is covered in surveillance monitors. There have to be at least forty shots playing from different parts of the hospital. But about every thirty seconds the footage switches to another shot.

  Those cameras will be an asset if anything happened with Melanie’s boyfriend while she was here.

  In front of David’s meticulously clean desk, there are two chairs, and he signals for us to sit.

  “What has Sergeant Pelletier told you?” I ask as I take a seat, Austin sitting next to me, looking at ease with the situation.

  “He said that you’d be popping in because of a homicide investigation.” He laces his fingers together on top of the desk. “And that’s all I know.”

  I bring up a picture of the victim on my phone and show it to him. “This is Melanie Thomlinson. Her body was found in the Millay Inn yesterday,” I explain. “Her parents informed me that she was a patient here a week ago, and I wanted to see if there was a record of who visited her while she was here.”

  After I give him her information, he turns to his computer and begins to type. “She was being treated for an infection,” he says as he glances to me, then focuses on the screen again. “From what I understand, she was here around thirty-six hours.”

  “Did anything occur during her stay that stuck out to anyone on the staff?”

  He reaches for his computer mouse and clicks a few times. “Not that I see noted.”

  “Would it be possible for us to get copies of the surveillance footage from the time she was a patient here?” I ask.

  “Would you like me to send it to you or to the Camden PD?”

  “Send it to Camden first,” I say as I jot that down in my notebook. With all those cameras, I’ll need help digging through the footage anyway.

  “You can email it to me and copy the sergeant,” Austin says as she passes a business card to David.

  “Were there any other injuries reported while Melanie was here?” If there’d been any other signs of abuse, an attack, anything like that, it would point me in a very clear direction, especially with Melanie’s mother’s comments. The bruising that was evident could easily be explained away by her fall off the ATV.

  “I don’t have all the details. The information I do have is very limited. Privacy laws and all that. Her doctor could give you more details,” he says, looking at the screen.

  “Would I be able to get a copy of her records?”

  “If her family signs off on it, yes.”

  “Could I speak with her doctor or maybe the nurses who interacted with her?”

  He nods. “Everyone who stays here sees multiple nurses and doctors, but I can get her last attending doctor for you. Would that help?”

  “Yes, that would be helpful.”

  David puts in several calls and leaves the office, and within ten minutes, he returns with a tall, slender man with dark hair. When I stand up to shake his hand, the gray at his temples becomes more obvious, though he looks too young to be going gray.

  I extend my hand to introduce myself, then Austin.

  “I’m Dr. Ian Munroe,” he says with a kind smile. “You’re here about Melanie Thomlinson?”

  “I am,” I say, unable to return his smile. “I’m sorry to inform you, but she passed away. We are investigating the circumstances around her death.”

  His eyes go wide, and Austin gets up, offering Dr. Munroe her seat in front of the desk. I’m not sure if it’s the shock, but he takes the seat, sitting down a little harder than I think he intends to. I sit next to him. David continues to hover near the door, as if unsure whether he should stay or go, before finally sitting back at his desk. Dr. Munroe fidgets, his fingers twitching against the edge of the key card clipped to his pocket, which displays his grinning portrait on the hospital employee badge.

  “Someone killed that poor girl? Really?” He scratches his jaw, and his fingernails grate loudly against the stubble dotted there. Dark circles hang beneath his eyes, shadowing them. I know doctors typically appear tired, but Dr. Munroe looks especially so. Like maybe he hasn’t slept well in days, weeks—or longer. “That’s awful,” Dr. Munroe finally says.

  “It is. But I was hoping I could ask you a few questions so I can try and sort this all out.”

  “Of course. I’ll help however I can,” he says as he leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “How often would you say you interacted with Melanie?” I ask. Based on what David said about patients seeing many doctors, I need to know what context he really has here. If he’s only seen Melanie a few times, that’ll severely restrict the kind of questions I can ask.

  “I saw her probably two or three times for the period she was here. It’s hard to keep track. We see so many patients every day,” he says as he leans back in the chair and crosses his legs.

  That’s not going to give me much to go on, but then again, her stay was rather brief. “Did Melanie ever seem uneasy while she was in your care? Did she mention being scared?”

  “Not that I remember. I think I would if she said something along those lines.”

  “When Melanie checked into the hospital, did she have any wounds that would have been indicative of abuse?”

  He shakes his head. “No, not at all. She seemed to be perfectly healthy other than the infection near her wrist. Granted, I didn’t give her a physical. But what I could see of her arms didn’t concern me. And her demeanor was not consistent with that of a typical abuse victim.”

  “Did you see anyone lingering near her room? Or entering her room when they didn’t need to be there?”

  He scratches his jaw again, the skin pinkening under his nails. “Not that I recall, but I didn’t spend much time in her room. One of the nurses did mention a boy trying to see her several times.”

  I perk up at that. “Do you recall which nurse mentioned this?” I ask.

  “Nurse Jordan, I believe.”

  I jot that down. “Have you ever treated Melanie before for other injuries?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I’d never seen her before.” His brows come together, as if he’s contemplating something. “There was one odd thing about her stay, actually.”

  “Oh?”

  “Her chart disappeared. It was stolen from outside her room. I tried to have David check the security footage, but none of the cameras around her room were working.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “No, that’s why it struck me as odd.”

  I note that detail down. “I won’t keep you any longer, Dr. Munroe. Thank you for answering my questions. If you think of anything else, please call me.” I pass him my card.

  He takes it and slips it into his pocket. “I hope you find whoever did this.”

  “Don’t worry—I will.”

  David leads Dr. Munroe out and tracks down Nurse Jordan. A short woman with cropped black hair peeks around the doorframe, interrupting the conversation I was having with Austin, but I wave her in. She’s got pinched eyes and thin cherry-red lips. When she spots me, she offers a hard smile, but her eyes tell me she’s not sure if she’s in the right place.

  “Take a seat, please,” I say before introducing myself and Austin.

  “Is everything all right?” she asks, glancing between the two of us as she folds her hands together in her lap.

  I explain the situation to her as delicately as I can.

  “That’s terrible. I can’t believe that,” she says. I guess the news from Camden hasn’t made it down to Rockport yet. Or maybe being shut up in the hospital keeps the news from reaching them.

  “Dr. Munroe men
tioned that you saw a boy trying to get in to see Melanie a few times?”

  “Yes, his name was Cade. He tried to sign himself in to see her several times. He was very insistent.” She drops her voice. “And annoying about trying to see her. Melanie made it clear that she didn’t want to see him.”

  “Did she seem scared of him?”

  “No, more frustrated, I would say. She wanted him to go away and to leave her alone.” She sweeps her hair behind her right ear as she speaks.

  “Munroe also mentioned that Melanie’s chart went missing.”

  She twists her hands, then looks at them tangled in her lap. “It did. At first, I thought that someone left it in her room or moved it to the main desk. But we were never able to locate it.”

  “Dr. Munroe seemed to think it was stolen.”

  “It might have been.”

  “Would you say that charts typically go missing?”

  “From time to time one will be misplaced, but we always find it again.”

  I make a note of that. “Did you see Cade near her room around the time that the chart went missing?” I’m not sure if Cade and the missing chart are connected or what he would gain from stealing it. But with his insistence, I have to wonder.

  “No, I never let him past the front desk. Someone would have to buzz him back, and I don’t believe anyone did. I made it clear that Melanie did not wish to see him.” She looks down at her feet for a moment. “It also seems like she would have brought it up if he made it back to her room.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else about her stay at the hospital that stuck out to you?”

  She glances from the door to Austin and finally back to me. “No.”

  I pass her one of my cards and ask her to call me if she thinks of anything else. David shows in three more nurses who all spent some time with Melanie. After I’ve questioned all three, the biggest lead I have is still the ex-boyfriend.

  As Austin and I walk out of the hospital, thick gray clouds roll across the sky, hanging so low some brush the tips of the towering pines all around us. I shoot a quick text to the station to get them started on the paperwork to request Melanie’s hospital records. It takes about fifteen minutes to get back to the station from the medical center, and all the while Austin is tapping away at her phone beside me.

  “What are your feelings on this?” she asks me as I turn into the parking lot.

  I let myself ruminate as I throw the car into park. “I’m not sure yet if her death is connected to the hospital, to the boyfriend, or if someone else was already planning to kill her for some reason we haven’t considered yet. It’s very odd that her chart went missing. I’m not sure what the perp would have gotten from it, but hopefully once we get her records, we can find out. There’s a slim chance this was a sex act gone wrong, though my gut tells me that’s not the case. I need to know more about her life leading up to her death to get a better picture of this.”

  “Are there any other answers we can get from the autopsy?” she asks.

  “I’m going to call Dr. White tonight to see how she’s coming with it. Though I doubt there’s anything that we don’t already know.”

  Austin and I walk into the station. She heads through the bull pen to her desk to start reviewing the surveillance footage that the hospital sent over, while I walk straight to Sergeant Pelletier’s office. I rap my knuckles on the door, and he waves me inside. There’s a deep crease between his eyebrows as he looks up at me. “How’d your interviews go?” I can really appreciate that he’s a no-bullshit guy.

  I fill him in on the details I got—on Melanie’s stay at the hospital, the accident, and the missing chart—and he lets me know that Officer Blake is getting the parents’ permission on the hospital chart.

  “There’s an ex-boyfriend we’re going to dig into tomorrow. Things went really bad when she broke up with him a couple months ago. You and Austin have surveillance footage from the hospital in your in-boxes, though I’m not sure how helpful it will be. Apparently, the cameras near Melanie’s room weren’t working.”

  “Austin will be able to look up his address for you.”

  “Thanks,” I say before heading out of his office. On my way out of the station, I say a quick goodbye to Austin, promising to meet up with her in the morning before Cade’s interview.

  I glance at the time on my phone, realize it’s nearly eight, and decide it’s time to call it a night. After all the interviews, I’m bone tired as I drag myself into my car and hit a drive-through for dinner. Five minutes later, I pull into a small motel. My mind churns over the details of the day. The ex-boyfriend may be a good lead to follow up on. But whatever happened to Melanie doesn’t say ex to me. It says something else entirely. She was targeted. That I know. And by someone she knew, but scorned lovers don’t usually take this route. If they were on really bad terms, as her parents and friends say, would she have willingly booked a hotel with this boy?

  I settle into my hotel room before calling Dr. White. Last year, while I was working with her on a serial case, she gave me her cell for emergencies. I usually try not to use someone’s cell if I can avoid it. But with our unanswered questions on this case, I need to know what else the autopsy is telling her, if anything. The phone rings as I grip it between my ear and shoulder. With my hands free, I open my bag of slop for dinner, extracting a burger and a pouch of fries. I flatten the bag on the third ring and drop my fries atop it, then make a puddle of ketchup.

  “Claire,” Dr. White says, a little breathless. “What can I help you with?”

  “I wanted to follow up with you about Melanie, see if we’ve gotten anywhere.”

  “I opened her up today. There are signs of strangulation on the body, damage to the vessels of the throat, as if she was choked and then released over and over again. There was also a partially healed fracture to her wrist, along with trauma to the vagina and rectum. It could be consistent with rough sex or rape. Though there are signs of previous scarring to the vagina, which leads me to believe that she may have engaged in rough sex in the past. No semen or other fluids were present, though.”

  I consider her words. Though DNA could help in this case, it won’t help if we have nothing to match it to. If the perp wasn’t in the database, it won’t do us much good until we have a solid suspect. With all the additional DNA in the room because of the debris, we need to build a solid case without it. “Did you see any other signs of old trauma on the body?”

  “The signs of trauma you already saw.”

  “Do you know yet how you’re going to officially rule it?”

  “I’m ruling her cause of death general asphyxia, pending toxicology.”

  “And you think that could still take three weeks?” I ask, then take a bite from a fry.

  “I’ll push it as much as I can, but more than likely three weeks will be it. We did find a hair stuck in the tape that secured the sheeting around her head. It didn’t look similar to her own.”

  “Do you think we can get DNA from it?”

  “Not likely. I’ve set it aside with the other forensic evidence and cataloged it. It did not have a follicle attached.”

  While a single strand of hair could help us, I know that with forensics, it may not necessarily be enough. If the hair was shed without a root or broken off, our chances of extracting DNA from it are incredibly low. And with the resources that I know are available to the Maine State Crime Lab, it may not even be possible for us to test it.

  “What color is the hair?”

  “Brown, but it’s not dyed. It’s a natural shade. Melanie’s hair was dyed.”

  I make note of that. “Thank you, Sabrina.”

  I finish up my call with Dr. White and pop another french fry in my mouth. It may not be much to go on yet, but it’s a start.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, I pull into the station at nine thirty. Our plan is to swing by Cade’s house at eleven, but I want to get as much of a jump on this as I can. There’s a chorus of voic
es emanating from the bull pen as I walk through the front door. I recognize several of the officers, Zane Holt, Clint Wilkens, and Sasha Lakely, seated at desks as I walk through. I remember seeing them on the scene. The station is hot, unusually so. The scent of burning coffee is heavy in the air. I feel the eyes of everyone in the room on me as I stride to Austin’s desk. She smiles when she sees me approach.

  “Morning,” she says. “We should get a copy of Melanie’s medical records today. Her parents signed off on it last night.”

  “Great,” I say. “You still up for helping me with the interview today?”

  “Of course, if you want me. I’ve never done an interrogation before.”

  I expected that, though. In my past experience in different stations, I’ve never seen a beat cop in an interrogation room. But I need another officer present anyway, even though it’s not technically an interrogation at this stage. If she’s going to be in this case, she might as well be up to her eyeballs like me.

  Austin pulls a folder from a stack and flops it open on the desk. “Yesterday while we were at the hospital, Clint and Zane interviewed a few more of Melanie’s friends. I went through some of the interviews this morning. According to them, she’d been at the hospital a month ago for the initial injury to her wrist. And after she got out, she was increasingly absent from school. But she wouldn’t tell anyone what was going on. They assumed it was the ex.”

  Though Chloe seemed to think that Melanie might have been seeing someone. I scan the notes about the previous trip to the hospital and her distance from her friends. So was it Cade or someone else who was keeping her away?

  “We also got the visitors list from the hospital—Cade’s on it and in the security footage. I’ve started going through it. Zane is working on it as well. But I don’t think we’ll find anything, since they already informed us none of the cameras near her room were working. So it’s unlikely we’ll see who stole her chart.”

  I take that all in. Though I know we’ve got to check out Cade, my mind keeps going back to the guy Chloe mentioned. “Were her phone records pulled up already?”