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Carlos’s grin was back. “I’m a multitasker. I can watch your back and raid your fridge at the same time. I think it’s my turn to pay.” He pulled his wallet out and left enough cash for both meals and a sizable tip for the server. “Let’s go. Icebox pie waits for no man.”
The Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
MONDAY, JULY 25, 9:50 A.M.
Burke scowled. “Way to bury the lede, Gabe. Why didn’t you start with the private autopsy?”
“I wasn’t sure if I could trust Miss Sutton. I’ve decided that I can.” Gabe drew the autopsy report from his pocket and handed it to Molly. She opened the report, silently scanning its contents before handing it over the desk to Burke, her features expressionless.
Damn, he’d never play poker with her. Because the report would shock anyone, whether they’d known his father or not.
Burke read the report and Gabriel knew exactly when he’d hit the first shock because Burke gasped, his gaze flying up, eyes wide. “He had cancer? Your dad had cancer?”
“I didn’t know, either.” And Gabe felt guilty, both for not knowing his dad had been so sick and for resenting that his father hadn’t told him.
“Knowing your dad, he wouldn’t have wanted you to worry about him. Especially after...” Burke fidgeted. “Y’know. Your mom.”
Gabe knew. He and his father had watched his mother waste away before their eyes.
And now both of them were gone. He managed a nod at Burke, who, after a moment of wordless sympathy, began reading again.
Gabe knew when he’d reached the second shock because Burke muttered a violent curse. He shoved the report across the desk to Molly. “The presence of cocaine is bullshit,” he said furiously. “I might be able to believe the blood alcohol of 0.25, because Rocky did have issues with alcohol, but your father was not a drug addict. That much I know.”
“No, he wasn’t.” But the private pathologist had found enough coke in his father’s body to have killed him from that alone. “My father was a recovering alcoholic,” he said for Molly’s benefit. “He’d been sober for three years. But he never did cocaine. Never.”
But his father had never struggled with cancer before, either, a small voice whispered in his mind. Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did.
The thought bounced around his head for a few seconds before he shot it down. No. His father would not have done illegal drugs, especially the way the cops said he had. Booze, maybe. Hard, illegal drugs? No way in hell.
Molly was rereading the report with a frown. “What is this? It says: Secondary source revealed the presence of flunitrazepam.” She looked up. “Rohypnol. And a lot of it. Whoever killed him incapacitated him first. They probably gave it to him in whatever booze he consumed—willingly or not.”
Gabe had to close his eyes against a wave of grief, rage, and loss. They’d drugged his father and then shot him.
His body jerked when a cool hand briefly touched his. “Gabe.” Molly’s voice was quiet and sad. “We can continue this later.”
“No.” He forced his eyes open and met her gaze. “I’m okay.”
She shook her head, her expression incredibly kind. Her eyes, a vivid blue-green like the ocean in the Caribbean, were filled with true understanding. “No, you’re really not okay. But we can keep going, if that’s what you want.”
His eyes and throat burned, and he had to swallow before he could speak. “That’s what I want.”
“All right.” She returned her attention to the report. “The final coroner’s report will have the cocaine,” she said. “But I’m betting that it won’t show the Rohypnol. That way they’ll be able to say that your father was high on coke at the time of his death. The presence of alcohol will strengthen their case that he’d broken his sobriety and make the cocaine more believable. And given his cancer, they’ll argue that he couldn’t take the pain and just wanted it to end.”
“That’s—” Gabe’s voice broke and he cleared his throat. “That’s what I thought, too. That the cops would say that. Not that Dad did that.”
“What was the ‘secondary source’?” Burke asked.
“A blood sample and a urine sample. Harry Peterson, the ME’s assistant, slipped them into my pocket. I didn’t find them until I got home from the coroner’s office. That’s why I’m so worried about Harry. He went out on a limb for me. He said that he’d known my father, that Dad had been good to him. I don’t want Harry to be punished for giving me those samples or for telling me that the autopsy was fixed.”
“I’ll see if I can get one of my people into the coroner’s office,” Burke said. “DeShawn’s a great guy, but he won’t be able to watch over Peterson all the time.”
Molly set the pathologist’s report aside. “The date on the report is yesterday. Sunday.”
Gabe nodded. “The pathologist emailed it to me last night. I saw it when I finished my shift. She said that she normally would have waited until today, but she didn’t want to make me wait any longer than I already had, especially with what she’d found. It took nearly six weeks to get the report and she was worried that I might be in danger, too.”
“Which you might be,” Burke said. “We’ll discuss your personal security when we’re finished going over the details.”
Gabe exhaled carefully. He was tempted to deny that he might need personal security, but he wasn’t stupid. When the cops found out that he’d done a private autopsy... It wasn’t gonna be pretty.
