through. Behind the store is a narrow alleyway that backs up to a hill. Checking to make sure the door is unlocked, I let it close and open my bottle of mouthwash. I gulp a mouthful, swish it around, then spit it out onto the pavement. Twice more and I almost feel human again. Shoving the bottle in my pocket, I reach for the handle to head back inside, only to have the door meet me halfway, colliding painfully with my hand as Hurley pushes through it from the other side.
“Ouch, damn it!” I yell, shaking my hand and hopping around as if that might somehow lessen the pain.
“Sorry,” Hurley mumbles. “Didn’t know you were there.”
I suck at the base of my thumb where the worst of the pain seems to be concentrated while Hurley stares at my mouth with an expression of unadulterated hunger that makes me ache in a whole different way.
“What are you doing here already?” he asks, dragging his gaze up to my eyes and shaking free of whatever fantasy he’s created.
“Already?” I repeat, puzzled.
“Where’s Izzy? Don’t tell me he’s got you out on your own already. You’re hardly ready.”
“I’m not here in any official capacity,” I explain. “And how do you know I’m not ready?”
“If you aren’t here in an official capacity, then why
It’s a good question, one I’m not too keen on answering since I don’t want Hurley to know I am conducting my own investigation into the death of Karen Owenby. “Personal business,” I say, thrusting my chin out in a way that dares him to call me a liar.
“And you just happened to find this dead guy here in the back?”
“Actually, he was alive when I got here.”
“Apparently. Like I said, he was alive when I got here.”
“Are you sure?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” I say with no small amount of sarcasm. “I talked to him up front in the showroom area. Then he disappeared into the back. When he didn’t show up again for a long time, I got curious and poked my head into the back. I saw blood coming from under the bathroom door and that’s how I found him.”
Hurley pauses thoughtfully a moment and I see his gaze drift toward my shirtfront.
“Um, hellooo,” I say, snapping my fingers high above my head. “Did someone tell you about the nipple incident or are you just admiring my assets?”
“Neither,” Hurley says, looking away. He clears his throat and then asks, “Didn’t you hear the gunshot?”
I think about that for a second and realize I didn’t. “No,” I tell him. “In fact, it was a little too quiet in there once the yelling stopped.”
“Yelling? What yelling?”
I tell Hurley about the muffled voices I heard. “Then it got eerily silent, except for one time when the phone rang. It was pretty loud,” I tell him, remembering how it made me jump. “I guess it could have drowned out the sound of a gunshot, though to be honest, I’m really not sure what a gunshot sounds like. Besides, the bathroom door was closed. Between that and the metal door to the showroom being closed, I’m not sure how much I would have heard anyway.”
“Who opened the bathroom door? You?” The tone of Hurley’s voice suggests he isn’t going to be pleased with my answer.
“Yes. After I unlocked it.”
“You unlocked it,” he says with a tone of barely contained patience, shaking his head. “That’s just great, Mattie. What else did you do to mess up the scene?”
His smart-assed tone strikes a nerve and I decide I’ve had enough of his bullying attitude. “Screw you, Hurley. There was blood oozing under the door. I’m a nurse, or at least I used to be. And I thought someone might be hurt and in need of help in there. I knocked first and when I got no answer I went in. What was I supposed to do, just let whoever was in there die? I had no way of knowing what was behind that door.”
I pause long enough to catch a breath, expecting Hurley to jump in with an angry rebuttal. But to my surprise, he bursts out laughing instead.
“You got spunk, Winston. I’ll give you that.”
“And I did what any concerned person would have done under the circumstances.”
“Okay, fair enough. Did you disturb anything else in the bathroom?”
“No. I looked the guy over for any signs of life and then I left him.”
“Okay.” He shoves a hand into his pocket and fishes out a handful of change. “Izzy should be here soon and then the two of you can process the scene. In the meantime, there’s a soda machine out front. Let me buy you a Coke or something to settle your stomach. Have a preference?”
“Something clear. Like a 7-Up or ginger ale,” I tell him. “Thank you.”
Hurley walks around the side of the building toward the front of the store, leaving me standing alone and unwatched. I pull the mouthwash from my pocket, chug another mouthful, swish and spit. I take a few moments to collect myself and when I head back inside, I see that Izzy has arrived. He and Hurley are standing just inside the door to the showroom area, talking. As soon as Izzy sees me, he hurries toward me, Hurley close on his tail. I see Izzy glance at the bandage on my forehead.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine. Did Hurley fill you in on the details?”
“More or less. But he didn’t say anything about you being injured.”
“I wasn’t. This”—I touch the bandage—“is from last night. A little accident.”
“I’ve been calling and paging you but I got no answer. I was starting to worry.”
Belatedly I realize that both my beeper and my cell phone are in my purse, locked inside my car. “Sorry. I’m not used to carrying the cell phone around yet,” I say feebly.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asks again, eyeing me worriedly.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I assure him. “I had a little touch of the ickies, but it’s gone now.”
“It happens to the best of us,” says Hurley. He hands me a ginger ale and says, “Easy does it with the drink. Feeling better?”
“I am, yes. Thanks.”
Hurley’s kindness toward me is exciting and I bask beneath his attention. As I sip my ginger ale, I briefly consider taking advantage of his solicitous mood to flirt with him a little. But then I realize that the lingering dregs of my vomit on his shoes might not set the best stage for a seduction.
“Well, let’s get to it,” Izzy says. He turns to head toward the bathroom, then stops and looks back at Hurley. “Is it okay for Mattie to assist me, given that she was the one who found him?” he asks.
Hurley nods and waves us on, saying, “Judging from the mess in that bathroom and the fact that the only splatter I can see on the front of Winston’s blouse is a big mustard stain, I’m pretty certain she wasn’t anywhere near the guy when he did it.”
I give Hurley a dirty look, pissed at both his cavalier attitude and the realization that when he was staring at my chest, he wasn’t admiring my boobs, he was checking me for blood splatter.
I follow Izzy back to the bathroom, unsure of how well I will handle being near the body again. Normally I have a cast-iron stomach; after years of dealing with the nastier bodily secretions we humans produce, most nurses become pretty stalwart about such things. But despite my usual fortitude, the right set of circumstances can occasionally get to me. I fear this is one of those.
But as Izzy and I don the gloves, paper booties, and waterproof paper gowns he removes from his black suitcase, I sense that my cast-iron stomach is back in place. There is a subtle shift in my mind, a mental distancing that is almost automatic to me now. And with that shift comes the clinical detachment I need. Plus, the cops have removed the bathroom door by taking it right off its hinges, opening up the room a little more.
The first thing Izzy does is take several pictures of the overall scene, including close-ups of the wounds and the hand that holds the gun. Once that is done, we begin our exam at the man’s head.
“Tell me what you see, Mattie,” Izzy says.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen how much damage a bullet can do to a head. We had three victims from a drug deal turned sour in the ER one night several years ago and one of them had incurred a similar wound. Plus, I’ve been reading up on gunshot wounds at the office, familiarizing myself with such details as ballistics, calibers, gunpowder residue, tattooing, and the geometry of entry and exit wounds. I pull from what I’ve learned and try to
