One
Be careful what you wish for.
The phrase whispered in the dark crevasses of Zoe’s mind as she stood over a body in the Monongahela County Morgue. Growing up, she’d watched too many TV shows about medical examiners solving murders with the evidence gleaned from the deceased. Those shows made the career appear heroic, even glamorous.
Now that Zoe Chambers wore the title Chief Deputy Coroner, she knew there was nothing glamorous about autopsy.
Even less when she knew the victim.
Doc Abercrombie, the forensic pathologist contracted by the county, lifted a no-longer-beating heart from the open chest cavity. “How much longer do you have?”
Attired in surgical scrubs, rubber boots, and a heavy waterproof apron, Zoe blinked. “You talking to me?”
“Who do you think I’m talking to?” He nodded at the body. “Her?”
Zoe didn’t want to admit she hadn’t been sure. The forensic pathologist wasn’t above directing questions to the dead. And there were two autopsy techs in the room in addition to Doc, her, and County Coroner Franklin Marshall. He could’ve been speaking to any of them.
“He wants to know when’s your wedding.” Franklin, also attired in what Zoe called butcher-shop chic, perched on a stool about ten feet away. When she looked at him, he shrugged. “I’ve been working with him long enough that I can finish his sentences.”
“Two weeks,” she told the pathologist and left it at that. Autopsy wasn’t a place where she wanted to discuss her impending nuptials.
“A Valentine’s Day wedding? I’d have thought you’d be more original.”
Zoe ignored the comment. Her mind was on the young woman on the stainless-steel table. The images from the call Zoe had taken last night played across her memory. The victim’s mother, gray-haired and frantic, ushered Zoe to the bedroom in the rear of the tidy house. The deceased, not much younger than Zoe’s thirty-seven years, sat in a rocking chair, eyes closed. Except for the pallor of her face—and lack of a pulse—she could’ve been napping.
Franklin pushed off from his stool and shuffled toward Doc. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Not yet. The heart looks normal. Arteries are clear.”
“How about the aorta?”
“No aneurisms.” Doc studied Franklin. “Go back to your perch, man. You look like shit. I’ll let you know when there’s anything worth seeing.”
Doc was right. Franklin looked awful. He needed a kidney transplant. Had for months. His declining health was the key reason he’d promoted Zoe to a full-time position with his office. This morning, his coloring was worse than usual.
He ignored the order. “I wanna know what killed this young woman.” He shot a questioning look at Zoe.
“There was no obvious sign of trauma,” she said. “According to her mother, she came home from work yesterday afternoon, said she didn’t feel well, and went in the other room to rest before dinner. Her mother checked on her an hour later and found her dead in the recliner. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at the scene that might explain her death.”
“I know. I read the report.” Doc pointed a gloved finger at the stool Franklin had vacated. “Go. Sit.”
Franklin rubbed his left arm and backed away from the table.
Satisfied, Doc returned to the deceased white female on the autopsy table, picked up his scalpel, and aimed it at the body. “You know her.” Not a question. And like the wedding inquiries, it was directed at Zoe.
“How’d you guess?”
“Because of the shade of green you turned when we started. You haven’t gotten sick in autopsy in over a year. Even then, you never lost it until further into the procedure. Hence, I reached the conclusion you know the deceased. I was trying to distract you by asking about you and your cop getting married.”
It hadn’t worked. “I went to school with her.”
“Good friend?”
Zoe closed her eyes, picturing the woman—the girl—she remembered rather than the empty shell on the autopsy table. Gina Wagner graduated Phillipsburg High School a couple of years after Zoe. Gina had been the cute, perky redhead everyone liked. Bookish and bright, she tutored other students in a variety of subjects. Even kids older than she.
Even Zoe.
“More like a close acquaintance than a good friend. The last time I saw Gina was close to five years ago. I was at the ambulance garage when the call came in. Woman in labor. The address was in the middle of Phillipsburg. Good thing she didn’t live on the opposite end of town or the baby would’ve arrived before we did. Her husband died a couple of years ago. She and her two kids moved back in with her parents.”
Franklin once again appeared at Zoe’s side. “Are her parents taking care of the kids?”
“Yeah.” Zoe looked at him. Was it her imagination or did his words sound mushy?
“Have you found anything yet?” he asked Doc.
“I told you I’d let you know when I did.”
Despite the chilly morgue temperatures, beads of sweat glistened through Franklin’s thinning hair. “What about her…her…” He fluttered a hand at the woman’s open and empty chest cavity. “What do you call it?” He brought the hand to his own chest.
Searching for words had never been a problem for the coroner. Zoe touched his arm. “Franklin? Did you eat this morning?”
“I think so.” His words definitely sounded slurred.
Doc gestured to the second tech. “Bring that stool over here.”
“I don’t need—” Before Franklin could finish the sentence, his knees buckled.
Zoe grabbed him from behind, wrapping both arms around him. Flailing, Franklin struck the stainless-steel tray holding the instruments and sent them clanging to the floor. Then he was dead weight. For a thin man, he was heavier than he looked. Zoe managed to slow his descent, going down with him, softening the fall.
Doc dropped to one
