His teal vest was in the garbage bag. “Clothes,” I said.
Gucci seemed happy enough with that explanation. “Lucky for you, even though freezing can alter the histologic appearance of tissue, if we can get a liver sample, it should still biopsy fine. I’m gonna need you to light his midsection. These camping lanterns are dim as an inbred cocker spaniel.” She rooted around in her backpack and handed me a flashlight and a footlong needle attached to a gigantic syringe.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joan Rivers,” I said.
“Professor Bidelspach thinks he can keep me from doing actual fieldwork. Well, he can suck a big bag of—” The last word was lost as Gucci crawled back inside. “Sharp!” she called with the sudden seriousness of a leftist surgeon tasked with performing an emergency tracheotomy on Bernie Sanders. “Light!”
Reaching in with the hefty flashlight, I could see Gucci had already further peeled back Connor’s shirt. A liver biopsy needed to be performed from the front. It’d be just my luck to end up with a biopsy of Connor’s colon.
“Feels like I’m shoving the needle into a gallon of sorbet,” Gucci effused. “This is fire!”
“You are definitely in the right line of work,” I said, barely managing not to faint.
Thirty-Seven
Sneaking across the Boise State campus in the frost-bitten darkness with Gucci by my side, I felt hopeful, terrified, and very much alive. With a swipe of Gucci’s keycard, the side door to the forensics building clicked open. We slipped inside just as plump snowflakes began to fall.
“Anyone shows up,” she said, unlocking the door to her lab, “we pretend you’re my auntie visiting from LA.” She switched on the fluorescent lights.
“Wouldn’t it be more realistic to say I’m your hot big sister?” I grumbled. I had twenty years on her, but “auntie” was still a bitter pill.
Beige machines ranging in size from a toaster to an industrial dryer filled the lab. Gucci wasted no time opening a tiny metal portal on the front of a contraption that was straight out of an eighties sci-fi movie. She inserted the syringe and squirted some of the corpse sorbet inside. “Not to brag, but I left no crumbs on that liver extraction.” She snapped the portal shut and pushed a few buttons.
“What does this thing do?” I asked.
“It’s a gas spectrometer,” she said. “In three minutes it’ll test for narcotics, amphetamines, aspirin. Also fentanyl and its two metabolites—norfentanyl and despropionylfentanyl—in case he got a bad batch of street drugs.”
“Any kind of OD would make my life so much easier. You’re absolutely glowing, by the way.” It was true. Gucci looked radiant as a British baking show contestant who’d managed to pull off a perfect Bakewell tart.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to do actual fieldwork,” Gucci said.“Having my research sidelined by a skeeve has been the worst. Academia will break your heart.”
“Not just academia,” I said, thinking of Mickey Larynx.
A series of peaks and valleys appeared in an electronic window on the side of the gas chromatograph machine. Gucci studied them intently.
“Well?” I said.
“He’s got narcotics in his blood—”
I punched the air with my fist. “Woo-hoo!”
“—but not at anywhere near lethal levels,” she said. “He did not die of a pentazocine or fentanyl overdose.”
“Dammit!” The media and criminal court system would paint Miranda as a violent murderess. And I likely wouldn’t fare much better.
“I’m so sorry, Tilly,” Gucci said.
“Before he died, the woman he attacked said he was wheezing,” I said. “And... and he looked like a monster.”
“Monster how?”
I shrugged. “Like this, maybe?” I made the face Miranda had shown me—mouth open and twisted, one eye squinted shut.
Her brow furrowed. “You didn’t tell me that. That doesn’t sound like opioids. But it might be— Wait. No. You know what?” she said, perking up. “I could run a test in the mass spectrometer.”
“Assume I know as much about forensics as the average boomer dad knows about child-rearing.”
“Sorry. The mass spectrometer can test for drugs that won’t show up on a gas spectrometer. But it’ll take an hour.”
