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“How soon do you think you can get the autopsy done?”
Darcy shoots me a look, one I’ve seen many times before, and one that I am certain I will see many times again. Darcy is the only medical examiner in the county, and therefore is grossly overworked and backlogged. She receives a constant flow of rush requests—like I am asking of her now.
She says, “I have several ahead of her, but I’ll push her up the list.”
“Thank you.” I refocus on Kellan. “Have you found the woman’s cell phone?”
“Yep. In the bathroom. It’s already bagged up and tagged as evidence.”
“Good. Her purse?”
“Downstairs, in the kitchen.”
“Anything interesting inside it?”
“No.”
I kneel down to get a better view of the woman’s tattoos.
“Look at this one,” Darcy points, “over here.”
I shimmy closer to the victim’s torso, avoiding the dried, stinking bodily fluids that have seeped out of her body over the last forty-eight hours. Embedded in a collage of roses is the letter A, enclosed in a circle.
“The anarchy symbol.”
Darcy nods. “And now look at the crease in her elbow.”
I squint, lean closer. Kellan is now hovering over my back, covering his nose. I count at least a dozen tiny dots speckled over the victim’s median cubital vein.
My brow cocks. “Needle scars?”
“I think so,” Darcy confirms. “I’ve seen my fair share of needle marks and those are pretty spot-on. I’ll do a toxicology scan on her first thing, see if I can rush that, too. That’ll tell us if she had any drugs in her system at the time of death.”
“Do you think this was drug-related?”
“In this community, I’d be surprised.”
“They don’t look fresh,” I observe.
“I agree, and the anarchy tattoo looks old as well; kind of like she tried to cover it up with the flowers.”
Rehabilitated. Or found God, maybe.
I stand up, consider the plush master bedroom. Already I’m getting the sick sense that something isn’t adding up. How did this young, anarchy-tattooed woman, with a (possibly) sordid past, end up married to a tech executive and living in a multi-million-dollar home?
I turn to Kellan. “I’m going to go downstairs and talk to the witness, then check the house for signs of a break-in. Can you get Evelyn on the phone? I want a team meeting scheduled for first thing in the morning.”
Evelyn is our admin officer, but I like to call her our everything officer. She’s a fifty-one-year-old widow—married to a cop who lost his life in the line duty—whose role is to support ongoing criminal cases within the county. Another overworked, underpaid workhorse who has dedicated her life to help rid the world of evil.
Kellan grabs my arm as I turn. I spin around, my gaze darting to the others in the room.
He leans in. He smells like fresh soap. “I’ve got this if you need to go home and rest,” he whispers.
I pull away my arm, run my sweaty palms over the thigh of my jeans. “No. I’m good.” Before he can protest, I turn and stride out of the room.
My chest feels tight as I make my way down the hall. My stomach is queasy. I feel sweat beading underneath my sweater. I drag in a deep inhale and remind myself of what my therapist advised I do in panic-inducing situations. Focus on the now, on what is immediately in front of me, in this moment. Sight, touch, hear, smell, and taste.
Slowly, I make my way down the staircase, mentally cataloging everything I see while looking for anything out of place. I come up with nothing because the home is immaculate. I make a mental note to find out who does the housekeeping—just a hunch that the victim, Alyssa, doesn't scrub toilets.
