Maggie had to admit, she was impressed with the autopsy suite, a bright, gleaming pathology lab in the basement of the community hospital. After discovering the archaism of Nebraska’s coroner system, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
Last night Lucy had tried to explain how Nebraska law required the county attorney to also be the coroner, which put prosecutors across the state in charge of each county’s death investigations. It was a ninety-year-old law that set few standards, leaving it up to individual county attorneys to determine if and when an investigation even took place. No medical training was necessary. Death investigation training, which amounted to a day down in Lincoln, was optional. At one time Lucy Coy was the only professionally trained medical examiner in a five-county area.
“You have to understand,” Lucy had said last night, “Nebraska has about 1.6 million people in the entire state and a million of them live within a fifty-mile radius of Omaha and Lincoln. Both cities, of course, have their own medical examiners and homicide departments. Lincoln has the State Patrol Crime Lab. Omaha has the Douglas County Regional Crime Lab. They have all the high-tech luxuries, you might say, of a metropolitan city, but that’s also where most of the crimes happen. In this part of the state it isn’t like people are stabbed or shot to death every week. It just isn’t necessary to have all the technology and specialties.”
“Unless it’s your family or friend who winds up dead out here in the middle of the Sandhills,” Maggie had countered.
“It’s been said before”—Lucy had shrugged—“that if you want to get away with murder, western Nebraska would be a good place to try it.”
When Donny had given Maggie his geography lesson yesterday, she hadn’t quite translated what that sort of isolation could mean. Today she was beginning to understand firsthand.
She was, however, relieved to finally have some familiar surroundings. Even the scrub gowns were the same—two sizes too large, which Maggie always believed was on purpose to reduce guests to a more vulnerable state. Sometimes law enforcement officers required a bit of humility to relate to the victim. But Donny’s gown stretched tight across his barrel chest. The shoe covers didn’t quite make it all the way up his heels.
Lucy had her hands on Kyle Bandor’s ankle, her long fingers in purple latex. She looked up at Maggie.
“I heard what happened,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“You already heard about Johnny Bosh?”
“Unfortunately bad news travels fast. Oliver Cushman will be doing the death investigation.”
“County Attorney Cushman? The man I sent away last night.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. Will he even order an autopsy?”
“For a suicide?” Lucy looked to Donny for the answer but he shrugged. “Probably not,” she said. “He’ll probably order a toxicology report.” She glanced back at Maggie. “How did he look?”
“Dead,” Maggie said bluntly, avoiding Lucy’s eyes, suddenly aware of them studying her with genuine concern. She didn’t like the fact that if she closed her eyes right now she would still see Johnny Bosh staring at her.
“I didn’t see any drug paraphernalia,” Maggie explained. “His skin wasn’t red like it can be from certain poisons. His eyes were bloodshot but it didn’t look like petechial hemorrhage, so whatever he took didn’t strangle or asphyxiate him. I didn’t smell or see any vomit. His mother told us she noticed some OxyContin missing from her medicine cabinet.”
“Depending on how many he ingested and if he crushed them … most likely he suffered a cardiac arrest. Was there a note?” Lucy asked.
“If there was, no one’s found it yet.” Maggie remembered the boy’s cell phone in the side pocket of her suitcase. She was hoping it might offer some clues. Later she’d figure out if she could recharge it and take a look before handing it back to the family or—cringe—to County Attorney Cushman.
“Well, let me share what I’ve found so far.”
Lucy left Kyle with a soft double tap to his chest as though telling the boy she would be right back. Maggie was struck by the intimacy of the gesture. She’d watched dozens of medical examiners, coroners, and pathologists in her ten years as a federal agent and during her forensic fellowship. She believed it took a special personality to work with the dead, to slice tissue, pluck off maggots, suck out brains, and section apart organs, reducing the human body to bits and pieces all in an effort to solve a mystery, tell a story, and hopefully reveal secrets that even the killer couldn’t hide.