INTERNIST
Dr. Debra Mead looks up at me through her very large-framed glasses and makes a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, then says, “So you’re the nincompoop who spoiled my samples?”
“Probably.”
“This way,” she directs me down the hallway of the medical examiner’s offices.
I was first aware of the existence of her this morning when I was awakened by a phone call before six. It seems that Montana’s single medical examiner keeps very early hours.
“Theo Cray?” she had asked.
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. Mead. Are you the one who keeps sending me bodies?”
There was something so direct about her question that I almost blurted out an affirmative.
“Uh . . . maybe,” I replied hesitantly.
“I’m told you’re a professor of some kind?”
“Biology.”
“Don’t tell me you teach, too?”
“Uh, yes. What’s the problem?”
“I pity your students. Come to the Missoula medical examiner’s office.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Mead hadn’t given me anything else to go on, other than the imperious demand that I get there as quickly as I could.
Four hours later I’m being led down a hall by a petite, gray-haired woman who doesn’t bother to contain her disdain for me.
For some reason, I like her. Maybe my spirits have been lifted—because a tryst with a beautiful woman on the side of the road like a horny teenager will do that to you.
“So, uh, what’s this about?” I ask.
“It’s about me retiring from the university only to find myself ‘appointed’”—she makes air quotes as she says this—“by the governor as state medical examiner. Apparently I’m the only one in the state qualified after the last asshole left. Total disarray. They were sending bodies to Seattle. Seattle? Jeez.”
“State medical examiner? Wait, there’s only one in the whole state?”
“Yes. We have plenty of coroners. Any quack that can pass the test can be a coroner. But to do an official autopsy, one that a court will recognize, that has to be done by someone who knows their ass from their elbow or a bear claw from a knife.”
“So you know that they were killed by a man?”
She stops at a door and gives me a dumb look. “Yes, Professor Genius. You’re not the only one capable of calling a spade a spade.”
“So why hasn’t that been announced?”
She waves the question away and motions for me to sit in a chair. “Have a seat and take your shirt off.”
“My shirt?”
“I’m taking blood, skin, body hairs, and anything else I damn well feel like.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“You teach?”
“We went over that.”
“Right. Well, I’ve got a room full of bodies in there that I’m going to be examining. If I find any DNA other than the victims’, I’d like to know if it’s yours. Maybe it’s all yours. I’ll want semen, too.”
“Semen?”
“You teach biology?” She shakes her head. “God help us.”
“I’m confused.”
“Obviously. Let me explain it to you simply. If I find any DNA, I need to know that’s it’s not yours. I’d rather not have to wait to find out. I’m not a patient woman.”
“Clearly.”
She gives me a sharp look. “Listen, smart-ass, I can either have you do this voluntarily or I can get a judge to force you. You don’t want to know how we force a semen sample.”
“Actually, I do. Is it something you assist with?”
“Yes. I shove an eight-inch needle into your scrotum and drain it like a grape.”
I break out into a laugh. “Has anyone ever pointed out that’s physically impossible?”
“Do you think the normal dumb asses we see here even know how to spell scrotum? So what will it be?”
“Resistance is pointless, isn’t it?”
After she gets blood and follicle and skin scrapings, she leaves me to provide the final sample. It’s much easier than I would have expected, but I’m not surprised, given the recent memory to think about.
When I open the door, she’s standing on the other side of the hallway.
“Forget how to work your zipper?”
“I’m done.”
“Goddamn jackrabbit. You must be a real treat for the ladies.” She holds out her hand for the specimen cup. “Let me put your excretions on ice, then we’ll suit up.”
“Suit up?”
“Yes. Your notes weren’t exactly as specific as you might have thought they were. I have some questions about how you found the bodies.”
“Bodies . . . I only told the police I found Chelsea Buchorn. Oh, and then there was Summer Osbourne.” I’m honestly starting to lose track.
Mead watches my confused response, then replies, “Right. That was in the notes. We have a bunch of other bodies sent to us by a Mr. Anonymous. Do you think there are any other aspiring forensic examiners out there digging up dead girls I should know about?”
“Well . . .”
She waves my hesitation away. “If you’re worried about the legal implications, talk to a lawyer. In the meantime, let’s play a game of tell me how this other guy might have found the bodies and in what conditions, okay? The sooner we clear that up, the sooner we can find out who really did this and the FBI will move on to asking questions about him instead of you.”
“The FBI?”
Mead shrugs. “I didn’t say anything.”
Oh, crap. That might have been who followed Jillian and me last night. Mead’s little hint makes it seem that I might be the target of their investigation. Christ.
If that’s the case, I’ll need whatever help I can get to convince them that I’m on their side. That means doing whatever Mead asks.
I spend the rest of the day explaining to her about each body and how I found them. She asks specific questions about smells, depth of soil, and vegetation.
Although the medical technicians who removed the bodies made detailed notes, Mead is very curious about what my observations were when I discovered them. She was acutely interested in skin coloration.
“Any word on the samples from the hot spring?” I ask after we finish going over the last body.
“Hot spring?”
“I found a rib cage in a hot spring near Red Hook.”
“For crying out loud. Really?”
“I sent an e-mail to the police last night.”
“Great. Do you ever rest?” she asks.
“Do you?”
“Red Hook, you said?”
“Yeah. Does that ring a bell?”
“Maybe. Odd.”
“What?”
“When I first saw these bodies, it reminded me of something I examined years ago. A girl, a prostitute from near there. She had a claw mark across her back. Four, not five gashes.”
“Really? How long ago?”
“Going on twenty years.”
“And nobody connected her to this?”
“No. She died of an overdose. When I did the autopsy, I noticed the scars. She’d healed from them years prior. I just made a note of it and that was it.”
“There may be a connection.”
“Maybe. But at the rate the police are moving, I wouldn’t count on anything turning up for a while.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
NEXT OF KIN
Between being born and ending up on Dr. Mead’s autopsy table years ago, Sarah Eaves had a difficult life. Other than a hospital and date of birth, I can’t find out much about her childhood. There are arrest records for shoplifting when she’s eighteen and charges of prostitution and drug possession in her early twenties.
The three mug shot photos show a pretty, if sad, young girl aging too fast. There’s a five-year gap between her last arrest and when she was found dead in a motel room with a syringe in her arm.
This suggests that Sarah may have cleaned herself up but then had a relapse that killed her.
Dr. Mead was able to pull a few strings and get the address of her last employer, Darcy’s Hotcakes & Coffee, on the highway outside Red Hook.
As I sit here, sipping my coffee and using all my willpower not to eat the rest of my blueberry pancakes, I try to place the girl in the photo in a waitress uniform and imagine what could have transpired that would have caused her to regress to her darker past.