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My husband, yes.
But more importantly right now, the primary detective on my current case.
“What have you got for me, Chief?” The sound of a door closing on his end of the line bounces through to my ear. Then the constant din of ringing phones and chattering voices makes me appreciate the silence of my building. The unchaotic organization. “Are you calling about Anna?”
“I am.” I hold the phone between my ear and good shoulder, and peel my gloves off to set them aside. “Aubree and I are following up with Anna’s autopsy, and I’ve come across something interesting that I thought you might like to know about.”
“Yeah?” His boots echo off hard tile floor and tell me he’s on the move. Going away from one place inside the station and toward another. “What did you find?”
“Markers of something called Mallory-Weiss Syndrome.”
When he says nothing, I smile and turn to the counter to look out at the city. Then I explain.
“Mallory-Weiss Syndrome is evidenced by lacerations in the distal esophagus and proximal stomach. This is typically associated with forceful or prolonged vomiting.”
“Like… a lot of it?”
“A lot of it, often, for a long time,” I clarify. “For Anna, these lacerations led to bleeding, and now, scarring of her stomach and esophagus.”
“So she was sick a lot. Prone to stomach bugs?”
“We typically see markers of Mallory-Weiss Syndrome in patients who were bulimic. Not always, but often. She was underweight,” I continue. “Extremely thin. She was in the public eye, and had been reading stories about her body in the press ever since she was a pre-teen. I checked her teeth, since vomiting erodes the tooth’s enamel, and sure enough—”
“Okay,” he sighs. “So she was throwing up daily and fucking with her body. Her teeth are wearing away, her stomach is bleeding.”
“Well…” I cut in. “Was. I suspect she was actively doing this to herself as recently as two months ago. But not this month. Not this week.” I set my elbows on the countertop, and exhale. “Something changed her mind, Archer. She stopped hurting herself, and was getting a handle on her disorder.”
“Shit…” I hear his hand grate over stubble as he scrubs his jaw. “Okay. She was bulimic, but healing. Fletch!” he shouts on his side of the line, and I jerk the phone from my ear in surprise. “We gotta go find her therapist.” Then he returns to a normal volume and comes back to me. “Mayet?”
“My office is at your disposal, Detective. I have more work to do, which’ll keep me busy for a while yet. But, Archer… it’s sad, ya know?” I chew on my bottom lip and turn to watch Aubree zero in on a section of Anna’s shoulder. “She was so young and beautiful. Talented. Generous. She was obviously smart, since she navigated childhood fame and kept it going through to adulthood.”
“No one has anything bad to say about her,” he agrees. “Except that one bitter ex-boyfriend Fletch and I had to talk to. Everyone else speaks of her kindness. Of her hard work. Her charitable donations. Her security guard seems to think of her as his kid sister, and her maid is devastated. Not even Miranda London can find drama to toss fuel on the fire, and we both know she’s looking.”
“Ugh,” I grunt. “I can’t stand her. She’s so nasty and cheap.”
He chuckles. “Yes, Minnnka. She is. Have you got anything else for us to work with?”
“A little, but nothing concrete. We know Anna used an IUD for birth control, but it was removed recently.”
“Removed? Why?”
“I don’t know. But it almost seems spur of the moment and not necessarily as part of the IUD’s lifetime. We also know Anna had sex in the hours prior to death.”
“That’s gotta be her killer, right? Get us that sperm, and we’ll be able to identify the last man to spend time with her.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve already pulled samples, but this one…” I shake my head so my hair swings and tickles the back of my neck. “No spermatozoa present.”
“No sperma… what?”
“The owner of said sperm has had a vasectomy,” I explain. “Whoever she was with doesn’t want children.”
“Whoever she was with,” he digs in, “either really knew what he wanted in life,orhe had a wife who knew what she wanted anddidn’twant.”
“You think he was married?” Curiosity has my heart jumping in my chest, but disapproval follows right after. “Nice girls don’t bang someone else’s husband, Detective.”
“I think it’s entirely possible she was, though. He would have been the one stepping out on his vows, not her. And if shewasfucking around with a married dude, that sounds like motive to me. Maybe he was about to get caught. Maybe they had been seen together, or perhaps Anna was going to expose him. Maybe they had a fight, and things were getting noisy. Who fuckin knows? But for whatever reason, she removed her birth control in a hurry. And now she’s dead.”
“I haven’t been able to pull DNA from the sample we have yet,” I sigh. “But we’re working on it. There’s no sperm, which means his surgery was successful and done well. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pull simple squamous epithelial cells.”
