Close to the Bone Read online

  ‘Why would someone who wasn’t diabetic be taking metformin?’

  ‘Some new diet craze? I don’t know. Why do people get deadly toxins injected into their faces?’

  ‘So they can look like their granddaughters. There’s something else in here, too. Doxylamine succinate.’

  ‘Antihistamine. Nothing exciting.’

  ‘But she didn’t have a cold. I don’t remember her ever mentioning an allergy. So why an antihistamine?’

  ‘Maybe she felt one coming on. Did she tend toward hypochondria?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Some hide it better than others.’

  ‘Okay. Three, four-pyridinedimethanol, five-hydroxy-six-methyl-hydrochloride.’

  He frowned. ‘Give me that!’

  She handed it over. Supposing – or suggesting, certainly – that he had been stumped would not help her achieve her stated objective.

  He typed the terms on his keyboard, then studied the monitor – which had been fitted with a non-county-issued privacy screen, rendering it impossible to read from anywhere except where he sat, directly in front.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. After a few moments, he said it again, until she could stand it no longer.

  ‘What, Oliver?’

  ‘Nothing terribly interesting. It just might explain the antihistamine. And the metformin.’

  ‘Hooooow?’

  ‘The pyridinedimethanol can be used together with the antihistamine to make a new drug called Diclegis. It’s for morning sickness. Ah, your eyes widen. That means something to you? Our dear, departed Diana had been knocked up?’

  ‘I’m getting conflicting reports on that. Is this stuff over-the-counter?’

  ‘Nope, has to be prescribed. The FDA is very fussy about that sort of thing, ever since the whole Thalidomide debacle. That’s why they panicked and took Benedictin off the market in the early eighties, leaving virtually nothing to replace it with, so ladies expecting a confinement just had to keep puking until very recently when the FDA were finally ready to admit that oops, sorry, it’s not so bad after all. But manufacturers know all about how name recognition is a double-edged sword, so they changed the name to Diclegis. It’s basically the same formula.’

  Theresa zoned out as he discussed the current history of morning sickness medication. Diana couldn’t have gotten the stuff except from a doctor, and a doctor would not have prescribed it unless they had been absolutely certain of her pregnancy. Her opinion and/or a home pregnancy kit would not suffice. She might have gotten some from a friend or some other backwater route, of course, but there would be little need for that. She had adequate medical insurance. ‘You said it also explained the metformin.’

  ‘Provided, of course, she had not actually been diabetic. Do you have any proof of that?’

  ‘No, but let’s assume it for the sake of argument.’

  ‘Then the only other reason – to my knowledge, and I assure you my knowledge is formidable—’

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  ‘Thank you. The only other reason would be to combat polycystic ovary syndrome.’

  He waited to see if she would recognize the term, which of course she didn’t, yielding what passed for a smile of equal parts condescension and triumph.

  ‘Women with PCOS have too-high levels of the male hormone testosterone – not something one would suspect of the comely Diana, but there you have it – which, among other things, causes irregular ovulation and menstruation. It also causes insulin resistance, which prevents the endometrial lining from getting in shape to nurture one’s little bundle of joy.’

  ‘So the metformin might have been prescribed to prevent a miscarriage. If Diana had this PCOS.’

  ‘Exacta-mundo.’

  She stood up, turned to go and walked into one of the gas canisters.

  ‘Try not to blow us up on your way out,’ Oliver said. ‘What’s on your mind? How does PCOS explain all that has occurred, in both the past and the present?’

  ‘I’m not sure it does yet. I have to check some things out.’ She walked out of the lab, literally feeling her way along the counter, unable to see what stood in front of her, her mind so full of shifting facts and suppositions and—

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Oliver called after her, his pissy tones bouncing between the glassware and Nalgene jars.

  The basement seemed no more or less creepy than it always did, the crypts holding their secrets and the four-inch-thick doors waiting to lure in a passing victim and then encase them forever. A weak and fading light shone through the one set of windows in the entire level, a small set of clear squares that let one see a few blades of errant grass and the bumper of someone’s car. She both feared and appreciated the basement; it would be impossible to ignore the childhood terrors it evoked, but at the same time she could always work there in peace and quiet. She made her way down to the end of the hallway and had just slipped her key into the lock when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  She screamed. Literally. There was no way to qualify it, she screeched like a little girl and that was that.

  ‘Sorry!’ The woman, a complete stranger, wore a black skirt and a deep-blue blouse, black pumps and a little too much eyeshadow for her pale complexion. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘Who – what – where did you come from?’

  ‘The elevator.’

  Theresa honestly debated for a moment whether the woman might be a ghost. She had never encountered one in the Medical Examiner’s Office, or anywhere else, but then again there would be a first time for everything and it would not be the worst thing that had happened to her that day – until she realized that the woman probably meant the other elevator. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Theresa MacLean, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Claire Donovan with the county manager’s office. I just have some questions for you.’

  Theresa blinked. ‘It’s been a really long day.’

  ‘I know! So awful, what you’ve been through. So I won’t take much of your time. It’s routine stuff, really. Is this where evidence is stored? That would be great, because I kind of need to see it.’

  ‘A really long day,’ Theresa repeated. ‘Can’t we do this tomorrow?’

  ‘Unfortunately, the manager wants my report as soon as possible.’ Her voice sounded sweet and soft and utterly unrelenting, as did her perky smile. I’ve got to learn how to do that, Theresa thought.

  ‘Uh—’

  ‘Tell you what, just continue with whatever it is that you’re doing and we can talk while you’re working. How’s that? It would really help me out.’

  Theresa unlocked the door and followed the labeled bags of clothing back through the years until she found Diana’s. Claire Donovan paused only for a moment from the funky, dusty smell and the cavernous collection of murder and mayhem. Then she plunged back in. ‘How long have you worked here? Is this door always kept locked? How do you know what is what? Do you spend a lot of time here after hours?’

  To this last question Theresa answered ‘no’. The county loathed overtime, so she would only be here when someone had been murdered during inconvenient hours – and they were often inconvenient hours – and the cops wanted her to go to the scene. She blew the dust off a paper grocery bag containing the clothing Diana Allman had worn upon her death.

  Claire Donovan coughed. ‘What about your chief medical examiner? Does he spend a lot of time here when not on duty?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have any idea. Since I’m not here myself.’

  ‘I thought there might be talk.’

  ‘Not to me.’ Theresa headed for the door.

  ‘Your supervisor’s position has been empty for a while.’

  ‘Yes.’ Would you like to see the storage room? The door still shows signs of the explosion.

  But County Auditor Donovan did not seem interested in salacious details. ‘Any plans to hire a new one?’

  ‘Supposedly, they’re getting a recruitment effort
together.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know; whoever handles nationwide talent searches. HR? The county exec?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be part of that process?’

  ‘Haven’t been asked yet.’ Theresa locked the door behind them.

  ‘And you’ve been acting supervisor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Without a bump in pay?’

  ‘Without.’ They moved through the basement, and Theresa punched the button for the elevator. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh,’ Claire Donovan said. ‘Just routine.’

  Routine what? Theresa wondered, but felt too tired to care much about it.

  ‘Your DNA analyst, Don Delgado?’

  Theresa felt a rumbling through her midsection, which meant that if she were a dog her fur would be starting to stand up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Does he have a PhD?’

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘No.’ The doors opened, and Theresa stepped into the elevator. ‘I don’t.’

  The auditor made some note of this on her clipboard as the car rose with its usual groan. ‘I see.’

  Theresa turned to her. ‘What do you see, exactly?’

  ‘That this is my floor. Take care of yourself, Theresa.’ The woman stepped into the lobby, now dimmed for the off-hours. ‘You should get some rest tonight. You look exhausted.’

  The doors closed before Theresa’s lips could form a good, sneering, ‘Oh, really?’

  She did what she always did in times of utter confusion. She went back to the evidence. Don had already done the fingernail scrapings, so that only left the tapings and the clothing; he had gone home at last, leaving her a note to call him if she felt like talking. She assumed Shephard had done so as well. She felt abandoned, with that sort of post-event let-down that makes one reluctant to say goodbye to people met on vacation or in a long line, despite knowing that they’ll be forgotten within the half-hour, and she chided herself for it. She should go home too; they had all reached the living-dead level of exhaustion. James’ reign of terror had ended, and it seemed extremely unlikely that his killer would have anyone else in his sights. And he still could have been shot by a nemesis from his past, from his neighborhood or his prison, someone who had never been within ten miles of the medical examiner’s office. And if his murderer did hail from inside the ME’s walls, that person would have better sense than to start up another spree and leave bodies scattered along the hallways.

  The image gave her pause.

  She might be working alongside a cold-blooded murderer. She might have been doing so for the past ten years. And, just as when James had been in their midst, she had no idea who, or how, or why.

  She pulled out the tapings and her slides. Around her, the building quieted down into its night-time mode. Soon there would be no sound or movement on any of the three floors save for the television in the deskmen’s office and their desultory conversation as they discussed what to order for their meal break. They would need those distractions tonight; it couldn’t be easy to function in a space that still smelled of the bleach used to clean up their co-worker’s blood.

  She went back to the animal hair she had mounted and found a few more on the tapings. None had roots, which restricted her ability to identify them. They were either a tan or white color and appeared to be simple, undyed wool. But the overlapping scales of the cuticle seemed much thinner and numerous than in wool fibers. In frustration, she laid one between two pieces of plastic cut from the rings that held a six-pack together and let the little sandwich warm until softened on the electric stirrer/warmer. Then she used a clean scalpel to slice off pieces, as thin as she could make them – the poor man’s microtome. Crude, but usually effective enough.

  The building had truly gone silent now, and oddly enough she found it comforting rather than scary. She had been surrounded by stressed-out human beings for going on forty-eight hours now, and the peace and quiet felt like a balm across her chafed brain.

  The cross-sections let her look at the inside of the fiber, which told her nothing except that it was semi-hollow. A convenient quality for a fiber, lightweight and warm, but—

  Hmm.

  Her mind began to travel down roads she didn’t want to follow, forming images she didn’t want to see.

  Theresa stood up and went downstairs, feeling the darkness close enough to touch. It watched her from every angle as she slipped down the back staircase.

  The two deskmen on duty started a bit when she appeared in their doorway.

  ‘Don’t sneak up on us like that, man!’ one told her. ‘Especially now. We didn’t think anyone was here.’

  She smiled. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘James really locked you in the trunk?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bet that sucked.’

  ‘It did. I need to look at one of the old daybooks, okay?’

  They cocked their heads at her in unison, but only for a moment before waving her toward the shelves and returning to their pad thai. The deskmen’s hub formed the pivot on which the rest of the building turned, and they saw not only every oddity of the dead but also most of those of the living as well. They fielded calls from relatives, agencies and the press, removed personal effects from victims ranging from sex toys of outstanding depravity to bloodstained photos of children, and kept track of office gossip with a bookie’s precision. Someone browsing through the ledgers of the dead hardly merited a glance … in any week except this one, perhaps.

  ‘What you looking for?’ the other asked her.

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’ The tall red daybooks, similar to the ones they had used in Trace Evidence before the conversion to digital, were stacked in order on the second-highest shelf. Since only one covered an entire year, they had nearly twenty years of history sitting in the deskmen’s office. When that shelf filled to overflowing the excess migrated to the vault. They would not be allowed to take up another shelf, which had all been spoken for by forms and other supplies and a thorough collection of crackers. She found the one for the year of Diana’s death and pulled it out.

  Each page had the date embossed at the top, its lines filled with handwritten notations regarding the victims received during the day. They were first assigned a number, handed out in numerical order on a first-come, first-served basis. Then there would be various notations of name, age, gender, home address, apparent cause of death, next of kin and to which funeral home or crematorium the body had gone after its brief stay. Some days allowed for spaces between the entries; some days required writing in the margins in ever-more cramped script.

  She turned to the date of Diana’s death, September 23. It had not been particularly busy. Two motor vehicle accidents, both male and single vehicle – Car Vs. Tree and Motorcycle Vs. Pothole. Theresa wondered if a biker could have a more embarrassing epitaph than done in by frost damage. The shooting, B/M, 22 yrs, GSW to head. Unwitnessed death at home of a W/M 55 yrs with the common notation Hx of EtOH, which meant that whatever the technical cause of death might be, the victim’s penchant for hooch had finally caught up with him. And Diana, recorded in Darryl Johnson’s dispassionate hand. B/F, Hom-Strangled. There the day had ended, until a homeless man who had fallen down the escalator at Tower City came in bright and early on the twenty-fourth as a W/M, unk, Acc.

  Theresa turned back to the previous page. Another young man dead from an auto accident, two middle-aged men with apparent heart issues, another who had overdosed and one who had been excavating a ditch when the soil gave way and a backhoe tumbled into the space on top of him.

  She even checked the day before, but the sad history there did not clear up her question.

  ‘Did Sergeant Shephard leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Dunno. He had been looking for the ME, last I saw him. How long do you think they’re going to hang around here?’

  ‘What about the detectives? Are they still in the building?’

  ‘Nah, th
ey headed out all bustlin’, asking us if Justin – that Allman guy, I mean – ever said anything about prison or about somebody gunnin’ for him or anything like that. He never seemed too worried to me.’

  ‘I didn’t work with the guy,’ the second deskman said. ‘So I couldn’t tell them nothing.’

  The first guy went on: ‘Only thing it seemed like he didn’t like was the bodies. But he got used to them. Where you going?’ he asked Theresa as she put the ledger back and moved to the door.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Theresa said, but didn’t specify which floor. It might be best not to leave a trail.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Leo had managed to keep his position at the Medical Examiner’s office for close to twenty years despite being malicious and cold with a wide streak of lazy. One of the more helpful qualities he maintained in order to accomplish this was a habit of socking away information for future reference like a squirrel with nuts preparing for the inevitable winter. And not just information. Sometimes the habit included other people’s employment applications, the contents of other people’s Rolodexes, and keys to other people’s offices.

  Theresa had found them after cleaning out his desk and had tossed them aside, assuming the assortment would belong to their storage areas in the basement or perhaps downtown. But weeks later, when she had time to check, the keys hadn’t fit any of those locks. Another week later when she had been alone on the floor, on a whim she tried them one by one until she discovered that two fit the lab doors of their neighbors across the hall in Toxicology. This had been in violation of county rules, certainly, but more importantly in violation of the director of toxicology, who guarded their findings as if they were secret wedding locations of A-list Hollywood celebrities. The truth might give the man an instant coronary, and who knew what effect it might have on the legal disposition of past cases? Lawyers could, if they chose, make huge haystacks out of such straws. So Theresa had mentally shelved the topic, gotten busy with a rash of homicides, and completely forgotten about it.