Page 2 of Wrong Door

The Sarah thing was its own category of problem, and it was one he had been handling by not thinking about it directly. What he felt for her was simple enough to identify but complicated enough that he wasn’t able to put a name to it. Lust? A crush? Love? He had no idea. He was aware that she had become important to him in a way that went beyond the professional, and that this was happening less than seven months after Elena had passed away. There were times when he simply thought he wasn't ready. And when he tried to look deeper to understand why he wasn’t ready…well, that was when he tried to dive right back into the motions of normalcy, scrolling through two hundred and forty pages without reading them.

His phone buzzed, causing him to blink in surprise. God, he’d really zoned out there for a moment. He glanced at the screen and saw that it was Assistant Director Hayes.

Come down to my office asap, the text message read.

Usually, he was nervous or uncertain whenever Hayes called. This morning though, just an hour and a half into the day’s work, he welcomed the break in the monotony. Miles pushed back from the desk and went down the hall.

Hayes's office door was open, so he went right inside without knocking and took the chair across the desk. Hayes was already looking at something on his own monitor; a reading posture Miles had come to recognize as one that meant Hayes had found something he considered worth the interruption. Actually, over the past two months or so, it seemed to Miles that Hayes only contacted him or Vic when it was absolutely necessary.

"Good morning, sir," Miles said. “Do you have something?”

"I do,” Hayes said, finally looked directly at Miles. “I got a query this morning from Savannah PD.” He turned the monitor slightly so Miles could see the open email chain. "A local painter died in her studio two days ago. The initial ruling from the attending physician was accidental exposure, occupational hazard, something in the pigments or solvents arena. The family pushed for a second opinion, though, and the ME who picked it up ran a full tox panel." He paused, then pulled up a digital toxicology report. "There were heavy amounts of hexavalent chromium found. Chromium six."

Miles sat forward. "What were the levels?"

"That's where it becomes our problem." Hayes pointed to the report, tapping his screen. "The ME's language in the summary says, and I'm quoting here, 'levels inconsistent with any known occupational or environmental exposure scenario.'"

Miles stood up, leaned over a bit, and read it himself. He was well aware that Hexavalent chromium was a known carcinogen with established occupational exposure limits. It would often show up in painters and ceramicists and people who worked with certain dyes and coatings. It was not unknown in studio environments. But the concentration in the tox panel was not a studio exposure number and certainly not the sort of number you arrived at by accident.

"How was it administered?" Miles asked.

"The ME's still working that out. They’re looking at inhalation as the primary route based on the lung presentation, but she hasn't ruled out dermal or ingestion. Some of the materials in the studio had pigments that contained chromium compounds, which is consistent, but the ME's opinion is that whatever the source was, it was not the painter's own supplies."

"Meaning someone put it there."

"That's where she's leaning, yes. Savannah PD opened a homicide inquiry this morning. They've got a detective on it, but she reached out to the Bureau because she'd flagged the element angle and wanted to know if it rang any bells." Hayes leaned back in his chair and looked at Miles and said, "I'll leave it to you to determine whether it rings any bells."

Miles handed the monitor back. "Chromium."

"Element twenty-four," Hayes said, and that one comment said what neither of them had actually given words to. This was absolutely what an Elementalist case would look like.

"Does Vic know?" Miles asked.

"She's in the briefing room. I texted her right after I texted you. I've already looked at flights. There's one out of Reagan at 12:15 that'll put you in Savannah by a little before four. I can have you on it."

"Yes," Miles said. He was already thinking about the tox panel, about the ME's language, about the lung presentation and the chromium compounds in the studio. More than that, he was already stuck on the idea of how someone had put enough hexavalent chromium into a room to kill someone without making it obvious.

“Can you forward me all of that?” he asked, pointing to Hayes’s computer.

“Yeah, I’ll do it right now. I’ll send over the Savannah PD’s report as well. And hey, Miles?”

Miles stopped at the door. “Yes?”

"How are you holding up?" Hayes asked. His tone was even, neither pointed nor soft.

“I’m okay.”

“Things with Dr. Mitchell are going well?”

“As well as they can, I guess,” he said. Miles wasn’t sure why, but he felt exposed and a little angry at having Hayes mention his visits to Dr. Mitchell.

"You know…if you ever feel like this is all just too much, you can speak up. I know it’s been a lot…especially for someone who isn’t accustomed to always working out in the field in such a capacity.”

He nearly asked if Vic had said something to him—if she’d brought a concern to him. But that wasn’t a can of worms he wanted to open up, so he kept it to himself. “I think I’m doing okay for now, sir,” he said.

Hayes nodded once, in a way that acknowledged the statement without endorsing it. "Get to it then. And be safe out there.”

Miles exited the office and made his way down the hallway, to the briefing room. He wasn’t surprised to see that Vic was already there when he pushed the door open. She was sitting at the far end of the table with her jacket over the back of the chair and her laptop open. She looked up when he came in and read something in his face because she straightened slightly and closed the laptop.