“No one…” he gasped for air, “…will believe you.”
“Wow,” Emmy Lu said. “He sure thinks he’s something special. I’m going to ask my son what that’s called. He’s a psychology major. I’m thinking Romeo here is pretty textbook.”
“Leave,” I said, staring him down. “And don’t ever come back.”
He muttered something unflattering, but I was past the point of caring. There were about to be a whole lot of people here in a short amount of time, and I was tired of making front page news for scandals.
Jack and I were still reeling from the bombshell Floyd Parker had leaked to the media about the son Jack had fathered when he’d been nineteen. Politics was a dirty business, and it was as dirty as it got when Floyd decided to run against Jack for sheriff. Fortunately, the people of King George hadn’t been swayed by Floyd’s tactics. But having another breaking news story so close to the last one wouldn’t be good. Jack and I had both gotten too much media attention over the last year, and I, for one, was tired of it, especially since it tended to bring the crazies out of the woodwork.
Emmy Lu and I watched as Blake sucked in a deep breath and managed to stand all the way upright, and then he shuffled out through the kitchen door and slammed it behind him. We both let out a shuddering breath.
“You okay, honey?” Emmy Lu asked.
I inhaled deeply again and then exhaled slowly. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for not killing him.”
“I gotta tell you,” Emmy Lu said. “This is about the most exciting job I’ve ever had. There’s never a dull moment.”
“I wouldn’t mind having some dull moments every once in a while.”
“Give me that cup,” she said. “I’ll make you some fresh coffee. Your hands are still shaking. I swear when I saw him all pressed up against you like that I was about to rush in and smash him over the head with the blender. I’m glad I didn’t have to though. That blender makes real good smoothies.”
Emmy Lu took the cup from my hands and dumped the coffee in the sink. She didn’t bother to mess with the Keurig this time but went straight to the espresso machine for the serious stuff. I took the opportunity to grab a bottle of water and dig the aspirin out of the drawer, and then I sat back and watched efficiency in motion.
Emmy Lu had been with me the last year, and I didn’t know how I’d ever gotten along without her. She was a dozen years older than me, and had babysat me a time or two in my youth. But she’d gotten married right out of high school and had five boys before she turned twenty-five and threatened to perform the vasectomy on her husband herself.
When her youngest had graduated high school, her husband had taken all their money, the barely legal receptionist at the tax office, and filed for divorce before hightailing it to Florida. Emmy Lu had been a stay-at-home mom for her entire adult life, and she looked like Gidget with crow’s-feet.
She’d needed a job, and I’d finally been in a position to hire a receptionist. She’d been fresh off the divorce when I’d hired her but she’d recently been spending a lot of time at the Donut Palace with Tom Daly, and she was spending so much time there the rumor around town was that she and Tom were making more than donuts.
“I’ve got to get downstairs and get to work,” I said. “I’m just making my night longer.”
“Well, take this down with you,” Emmy Lu said, pressing the cup in my hand. “Sheldon and I have everything under control for the viewing tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning against her in a half hug. “I know this is outside of your job description.”
“Honey, just about everything I do here is outside my job description,” she said. “I get to do all the normal boring stuff at home. Do you know how much laundry I’ve done in my life with five boys? I’ll take a night with Sheldon and a dead body any day of the week.”
“That must be a lot of laundry,” I said.
The lab was always cold, but tonight it seemed colder, and I pulled on a University of Virginia sweatshirt before putting on my lab coat. Most of the labs in the state weren’t as advanced as mine. It was probably the only thing I could thank my parents for. Their criminal activity caused them to need top-notch equipment, and the same criminal activity paid for it all.
It was white and sterile, like a good lab should be. I never wanted to make it feel too cozy because I already spent enough time here. There were two stainless-steel embalming tables in the center of the room—after all, that was the main function of the lab—and a body cooler large enough to hold six ran along the back side of the room.
I had the autopsy table closest to my desk and workstations because there was so much back and forth with paperwork, x-rays, and tox reports. I grabbed my lab coat and put it on top of the sweatshirt and buttoned it up, and then I put on a heavy canvas apron. I’d learned the hard way to never wear your best clothes to an autopsy.
I scrolled through my phone until I found my music app and decided on Ella Fitzgerald to keep me company. I slid open the door of the cooler and rolled Kevin Schwartzman to the autopsy table. He wasn’t a big man, so it didn’t take much to move him from the gurney onto the table. I blew into my latex gloves and slipped them on.
“Okay, Kevin,” I said. “Let’s see what happened to you.”
The motorized lift straps hung above the table. I pressed the button to lower them. I unzipped the black bag and fixed the straps beneath him so I could remove him from the bag without losing any potential evidence. Anything that fell off the body would just drop into the bag.
I hit the button again and Kevin lifted far enough into the air that I could remove the body bag from beneath him. I took another set of photographs with the lights on bright, paying close attention to the scorched flesh and melted metal of the chain mail around his head and chest. The electricity had found its exit route through the nose, chin, and fingers for the most part, but the toes of his boots had been blown out and blackened toes peeked from behind the charred leather.
I’d worked burn victims before, but this wasn’t the same. Kevin had enough salvageable tissue to do a full autopsy. I’d thought through all the ways to best remove the melted bits of chain mail from his skin. It was worse than I’d originally thought, and no matter what I did, the epidermis would be destroyed. There was no saving it for analysis. I could either spend hours trying to come up with a diluted acid solution to remove it bit by bit, or I could remove the layer of skin and metal completely with my scalpel.
With the decision made, I removed the clothing I could and hung everything up to be examined later, documenting each piece on the autopsy form I’d started for Kevin Schwartzman. I found his wallet and cell phone in a hidden pocket inside his jacket. I tried to turn the phone on, but it had been fried along with the rest of him. I bagged them both for Jack, figuring someone could get the data from the phone later.
The exposed skin was scarlet and looked badly sunburned, and I could see the blue of his veins from underneath. I started with the chain mail on his chest, using my forceps to pull the chain mail in an upward direction, and then I carefully slid my scalpel beneath it, separating the two. It was a painstaking process since he’d worn a full chain mail shirt. I didn’t know much about chain mail, but I was guessing it was expensive. Cheap metals would’ve melted much differently. If I had to guess, this chain mail would’ve held up well during battle a couple of centuries ago.