Page 26 of Done Dirty

Wade Rivers had been meticulous about everything in his life—his condo, his studio, his files, his body. The kind of man who put dividers in his nightstand drawer and color-coded his notebook. And someone had walked into that controlled, organized world and beaten him to death.

I wondered if he’d been surprised. I wondered if he’d had time to be.

I clicked the recorder back on and picked up my scalpel. It was a government-issue handle, certified and perfectly functional, and it didn’t sit right in my hand. My old instruments had been fitted to me over years of use, weight and balance calibrated by habit. This one I had to think about, which is exactly what you don’t want when you’re making the first cut.

I made the standard Y-incision and worked through the body cavities in the order I always do—chest first, then abdomen, then specimens. Wade’s organs were the organs of a man who’d been meticulous about what he put into his body. His heart was clean, his lungs clear, his liver unremarkable. No fatty deposits, nothing inflamed, no indicators of chronic substance use at the tissue level. His stomach contents were partially digested—salmon, roasted vegetables, something grain based, consistent with a meal eaten two to three hours before death.

I kept the recorder running and talked through it as I went. Specimen labeled, chain of custody logged, time noted.

When I reached the groin I documented the postmortem stab wound formally.

“Single penetrating wound to the groin, left side, consistent with a narrow-bladed kitchen knife,” I said into the recorder. “Entry wound clean. No hesitation marks on wound margins. Absence of vital reaction in surrounding tissue confirms delivery after death. Wound is postmortem.”

Somewhere in the building a pipe knocked twice and went quiet. I went still without meaning to, scalpel in hand, heart doing something stupid in my chest. It was nothing. Old pipes. I knew that. But in a room this quiet, with a dead man on the table and Ella Fitzgerald playing low on the shelf, a sound like that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I took a breath and kept going.

“Sequence confirmed. Blunt force trauma first, consistent with cause of death. Postmortem stab wound second. Staging of scene third. No findings inconsistent with estimated time of death of midnight to two in the morning, July first to second.”

Tox samples came last.

I drew blood from two sites, collected urine, took vitreous from the right eye—that one always requires a steadier hand than people would expect, and the new lighting in here didn’t help. I labeled everything with the case number, logged it with the time and my initials, and filled out the Richmond request form. Holiday weekend meant the full panel would take longer than I’d like, and I couldn’t do anything about that.

What I could do was run my own basic screens on-site. Blood alcohol first. Wade came back at point zero two, which meant maybe a glass of wine with dinner and metabolized it normally. He wasn’t drunk when he died.

The urine panel came back clean for everything I could test here.

“The lab in Richmond will know more,” I said, capping the last tube.

I stripped off my gloves and dropped them in the biohazard bin. Washed my hands twice, the way I always do when I’ve been inside a body. Some habits you don’t question.

The playlist had cycled through most of itself and landed somewhere quieter—John Mayer, “Stop This Train,” which was either a coincidence or the universe making a point. I stood there for another few bars, then pulled off my apron and dropped it in the bin.

“Alexa, stop.”

The music cut out and the room went quiet except for the box fan. I looked at the evidence tray, the tox tubes lined up neat, the swab in its labeled container, the report waiting on the laptop.

“Okay, Wade,” I said. “You did your part. Time for me to go find Jack.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I found Jack in his office on the phone, standing at the window with his back to the door. He heard me come in without turning around and held up a finger.

I dropped into the chair across from his desk and waited. There was a half-eaten bag of pretzels on the corner of the desk. I took one and popped it in my mouth, while rubbing the knot out of my shoulder.

“Copy that,” Jack said into the phone. “Send it to my email.” He hung up and looked at me. “How’s Wade?”

“Dead,” I said.

“It would have been quite a shock if he wasn’t.”

“Speaking of, I think this place is haunted.”

“Then you should feel right at home.”

I ate another pretzel. “Rude. I was going to tell you cause of death.”

“My apologies. Please continue.”