Page 60 of Death is Familiar

I staggered to my feet, forcing my breath to come in deep and regular waves, despite the bile curling in my throat, the anger and despair clouding my mind.

It never felt good to be right when people died.

But this was something. It was evidence. Hard evidence. And the agents needed to see it. I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t bring it to them. I’d contaminated the crime scene enough already. They needed to come to me. And they’d been firm about not breaking and entering.

Exigent circumstance.

The term had been rolling and rolling around in my mind since the moment Jack mentioned it. My loophole. I knew what I had to do. They could hate me for it later. I could hate me for it later. So, I screamed. And screamed.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi⁠—

The agents burst into the mausoleum. Weapons drawn, scanning the room. God, they looked intense. And they were about to get a lot more furious when they found out this wasn’t an emergency. That my life wasn’t in danger.

“What… what is it?”

But before I could respond to Jack, Todd had holstered his gun and had closed the space between us. His hands were on me, checking that I was intact. “I’m fine.” I swatted Todd’s hands away. Smack. Smack. Smack. “I found something.”

“Jesus, Delilah.” The tension dropped from Jack’s shoulders as realization dawned on him. He holstered his weapon. “Haven’t you heard of the boy who cried wolf?”

“I’m much more familiar with the woman who cried exigent circumstance.”

Exigent circumstances permitted the agents to gain access to spaces if someone’s life was in danger, or evidence was at risk of being destroyed. I wasn’t about to threaten the agents with destroying evidence so I’d opted for the former. Even if the act itself felt dirty.

“Do you know how much trouble⁠—”

“You love your loopholes as much as I do,” I interrupted before Jack could continue his lecture. “And I wouldn’t have called you in here if I hadn’t found something. So, you can get mad at me later.”

Thankfully, Jack and Todd were above letting the tension fester. We had a job to do, even if my methods left them wanting. They spoke in tandem, “What should I be looking at?” “What did you find?”

I pointed where the blue cap lay beneath the pew. Without hesitation, Todd got to his knees and peered beneath.

“Shit.” If anyone would know what an autoinjector cap was at first glance, it was Todd.

“Yeah, shit. Someone was injected with epinephrine in here.”

Jack rounded the pew. “What is it? How do we know?”

“There’s an auto-injector cap here, Jack.”

“Shit, don’t touch it.” Todd rolled his eyes. Jack was stating the obvious. Hell, anyone with a TV knew better than to touch the evidence. “Anything else? Anything that could help with the timeline?”

Sniff. Sniff sniff. Sniff.

The look on Todd’s face was one of disgust as he pushed himself upright. He gave another tentative sniff of his hands. Perhaps, he too, thought his mind had made up the smell.

“I noticed that, too,” I offered.

“What?”

“Body odor. Sweat.”

“Stress sweat.” I read the meaning beneath Todd’s words—stress sweat smells worse than regular sweat. Adrenaline causes people to stress sweat—everything was adding up. “This was recent, Jack. The smell will be gone in a day. Maybe two.”

More unspoken words passed between the three of us. We were lucky we got in when we did.

“I’ll call local PD and forensics to get them over here.” Jack typed something into his phone, his thumb hovering the call button. “Todd, get Fawzy to check the emergency call logs, see if there were any related 911 calls. Make sure this is more than a coincidence.”

What was left unsaid was that anyone who went into anaphylactic shock, even if they used their autoinjector, should have called 911. There was a small, small, chance that the cap was remnant of an unrelated incident. But all avenues and possibilities needed to be explored, even if it was just to confirm what we already suspected.