AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Leigh braced for the backlash, for the hatred and fear everyone in this town had weaponized before her father had even been sentenced. Her mouth dried as Boucher shifted in his seat, ready to intervene.
“You lost a sibling, too.” Tanja Carson’s face hollowed then, and she suddenly looked ten years older. More worn. Tired. “Does it get better?”
Leigh didn’t have to ask for an elaboration. They understood each other on a level no one else would. She could lie, but false hope hadn’t ever helped anyone. “No. Not until you know what happened.” Her phone sounded with an incoming message. She drove her hand into her blazer to retrieve it, desperate for a release valve on the emotion charging up her throat. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”
She escaped the conference room and let the door secure shut behind her. It was easier to breathe out here, but all too soon, the door opened once again, and Boucher met her on the other side. He said something Leigh didn’t catch as she skimmed the report attached to an email meant for Director Livingstone. An email the team’s federal investigator—Chandler Reed—had blind copied her in on.
“Call me old-fashioned, but it’s customary to wait until the interview is over before you leave the room.” Boucher headed straight for an empty desk a couple yards from her position at the door and tossed the case file onto the surface. “Who pissed in your Cheerios, Brody?”
“It wasn’t a match.” Disbelief twisted hard and fast. That wasn’t possible. The test had to be wrong. She was sure of it.
“What wasn’t a match?” he asked.
“Troy’s—my brother’s—toy soldier.” The ringing in her ears was back. “It didn’t come from the same set as the ones left with Michelle Cross’s and Gresham Schmidt’s bodies.”
NINE
Concord, New Hampshire
Friday, March 12
11:00 a.m.
Toe tags were a thing of the past.
Nowadays, morgues like the one hidden in the basement of Concord Hospital catalogued the bodies ready for autopsy digitally.
Leigh shucked into the personal protective equipment provided just outside the examination room. Latex gloves, shoe booties, and a full-blown head-to-toe disposable suit would protect against bloodborne pathogens, any diseases Michelle Cross might’ve been carrying, and other contagions. When it came to dead bodies, no one could be prepared enough.
Boucher had volunteered to go through the rest of Michelle Cross’s investigative notes while Leigh made the hour-long drive southeast. It’d given her time to consider the analysis done on the toy soldiers recovered with each of the recent victims. The only acceptable conclusion? Chris Ellingson couldn’t risk using the same collection from twenty years ago. Too obvious. Forensic analysis had evolved. Family genealogy and DNA records were solving decades-old cases now. Stood to reason Ellingson had been forced to evolve, too. Problem was, she couldn’t prove his alibi for Michelle Cross’s estimated time of death true or false. Henry Rathe refused to talk to her, and Boucher wasn’t having much luck with canvasses or neighbor interviews.
The people in Lebanon were in denial.
No one wanted any part of another murder investigation. No one wanted to remember.
“Your left bootie is on backward.” Director Livingstone shoved long legs into her own PPE. Straightened dark hair had been slicked back into a tight ponytail, giving the illusion of youth, but the creases around Livingstone’s rich eyes said late forties. There was an emptiness in her voice. Worn and tested. Maybe jet lag. Maybe the weight of the job so many investigators like her had taken on over their careers. She didn’t know.
“Thanks.” Leigh took a seat along the locker bench as embarrassment threatened to unravel any confidence she’d talked herself into on the drive here. Another reminder she’d spent most of her career behind a desk. Not in the middle of an active investigation, but she’d always been a quick learner. And there was no better teacher than personal motive.
Snapping into latex gloves, Livingstone adjusted her equipment into place as though she’d done this a thousand times. It was easy to imagine she had. A woman in a predominantly male world would’ve felt the need to prove herself every time she stepped onto a scene. The director would’ve volunteered for whatever duties would expand her knowledge and put her ahead of her male counterparts, especially any that involved a body. Testing the truth for herself, delving into cases headfirst without coming up for air for days, always searching for answers—Angelina Livingstone gave the impression of an investigator who committed 100 percent and refused to back down. It was admirable. And exhausting. Living life from case to case, watching relationships and hobbies fall to the wayside—it ate the best veterans up inside. “You haven’t attended an autopsy before.”
The Scottish accent took the bite out of that truth. Or made it worse. Leigh wasn’t sure. She tried to smooth irreversible wrinkles out of the thin bodysuit as if pulling her appearance together would make a damn bit of difference in what waited on the other side of those doors. “Is it that obvious?”
“Here’s a tip.” The director’s equipment swished as she closed the distance between them. “TV gets everything wrong. There’s no cheating the odor of decomposition. Just breathe through your mouth. Your senses will adjust to the smell after about ten or fifteen minutes. Until then, if you have to throw up, make sure it’s in the hazardous waste bin.”
A hint of a sympathetic smile softened the woman’s mouth. Well, at least one person didn’t automatically hate Leigh for coming home. Then again, Livingstone wasn’t from Lebanon. She was an outsider. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
The double doors barricading the dead from the living swung open, and Dr. Jennings stepped through, gloved hands raised as though prepared to go into surgery. Technically, she was. There just wouldn’t be any recovery for the patient afterward. A set of goggles, a hairnet, and a mask shrouded the pathologist’s sharp features. “We’re ready for you.”
Livingstone cocked her head toward the doors. “Come on, Agen’ Brody. I promise I’ll hold your hair back for you if you toss your breakfast.”
Leigh couldn’t hold back the low-level laugh escaping up her throat. As intimidating as the director had been at the death scene, Livingstone was making an effort with her. She slowed before pushing inside the examination suite. Was that because Leigh didn’t have field experience or from pity?
She shoved inside. Beige walls with a thick green stripe closed in around her. The suite was much smaller than Leigh had expected. An eye wash station was positioned straight ahead. Where she’d imagined a perfectly square or rectangular open area with room to maneuver, Concord’s morgue was actually more L-shaped with a wall jutting into the space. A single stainless-steel slab took up the center of the room with a large sink and shelving at the head. Track lighting cast a wide glow over the slab and body, but the rest of the room had become unknown.
“Welcome to the show, Detectives. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for.” Dr. Jennings—Leigh didn’t actually remember learning her first name at the scene—took position at the head of the table. Shoulder-length black hair had been slicked back into a hairnet under the strap of her goggles, accentuating the long thin nose with the horizontal dent at the bridge. A blue light to catch flies sizzled behind the deputy ME’s right shoulder. “I’d ask for you to keep all appendages to yourself until after the deceased has been properly dissected.”
“Just you?” Livingstone asked. “No assistants?”
