Page 99 of The Turning of the Tables

I really wished I hadn’t offered. By the time I was done sniffing every goddamn chemical in the ME’s van and in ours, my eyes were watering, my sinuses were clogged, I’d gone through a whole travel pack of tissues, and I hadn’t been able to find the smell.

“Sorry,” I said to Maginot.

“Don’t be,” he replied in a voice that was far more cheerful than I’d expected. “It means that whatever you’re smelling is linked to the killer.”

I frowned. “But you don’t know what it is,” I pointed out.

“True, but I have a theory—one I’d like you to help me with.”

“Okay…” I’m sure I sounded skeptical. I wasn’t skeptical of his theory, but I was skeptical that I was going to be of any use in helping with it.

“We find out what itis, we get a lot closer to finding the killer.” He sounded pleased.

I was not pleased. I didn’t like having been essentially demoted to a K-9 sniffer dog, and I didn’t like the idea of sniffing a whole bunch of chemicals. Because my nosehurt.

“So then I have to…?” I left the sentence hanging.

“I’ll come down to the lab with some possibilities,” Maginot replied cheerfully. “And you can tell me if they match.”

I had sniffed somany bottles of chemicals, antiseptics, creams, unguents, gloves, wipes, and God only knew what else that I had a throbbing headache, burning sinuses, and watering eyes.

But we’d identified the smell. Well, I was at about eighty percent confidence, telling Maginot that I needed to give it a at least a day before re-sniffing both because I had so much in my nose that I couldn’t see straight—literally. It was good that Noah was still driving me to work, although Quincy had offered to start so that he could go back to his own job.

The scent in question belonged to a type of antiseptic used to sterilize instruments and skin before surgery—chlorhexidine. It wasn’t something you kept in your medical cabinet. Which meant that either the victim or the killer worked in surgery—either a hospital or a veterinary clinic. The victim had been old enough that he was likely retired, which suggested that it was the killer who had access to the chlorhexidine, instead.

I supposed it made sense—someone who worked in a hospital would likely have access to medical records that would provide information about people who were in themost contagious stage of an Arcana infection. I almost certainly didn’t need to point that out to Maginot. My face also hurt too much for me to want to carry on a conversation with anyone, so I’d grumbled something about hoping it was helpful, then staggered my way out to Noah’s car—where he’d been waiting for the last hour and a half for me to finish chemically excerebrating myself.

“What happened?” was the first thing he asked me when I dragged myself into the passenger seat.

I looked over at him, with a nose and eyes that had to be bloodshot to hell. “Evidence matching,” I answered.

“With your face?” I knew it wasn’t meant to be a serious question.

“My nose, yeah.”

“What doesthatmean?”

“Identifying a chemical by doing a comparison sniff test.”

“Chemical.”

“Yeah. Antiseptic.”

Noah’s blue eyes, so like mine, were wide with horror. “For how long?” he asked, his voice breathy.

“The last three hours.”

“Jesus.”

“Can we go home now?”

He shifted the car into gear. “Yeah. Jesus, Seth,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Threehourssniffing chemicals?”

“Not my favorite day,” I told him.

“No. Jesus,” he said again.

“I don’t think I sniffed Jesus at any point,” I tried to quip, although it sounded weird and flat, even to me.