“Do you remember what he was wearing?”
“Black. All black. He had on one of those hoodie things.” Cheryl grew quiet, as if she’d run out of energy. When she spoke again, her voice sounded like it too had lost its energy. “Once he was gone, we came out from behind the car and went looking for Elizabeth. That’s when we found…” Cheryl’s voice cracked.
Pete gave her a moment before asking, “Did you see which direction he went?”
She pressed the handkerchief to her nose with one hand and fluttered the other toward an overgrown vacant lot with no lighting. “That way.”
“Did you see a car he might’ve gotten into?”
She shook her head.
“Hear a car door slam? Or an engine start?”
More head shaking.
“One more question. When I arrived, Mrs. Landis’ car door was open. Had she not closed it?”
“She had. I’m sorry. I guess that’s my fault. I opened it as soon as I ran over there. I didn’t realize she’d been shot until she…you know…tumbled out.”
“No need to apologize. You did everything right.”
She sniffed and bobbed her head. “Can I go now? My husband is probably having a cow wondering what’s going on.”
Pete jotted down her contact information and gave her one of his business cards with instructions to call if she thought of anything else. He then dismissed her to save her spouse from the agony of birthing a bovine.
Three
Present day
Once again wearing her morgue attire, Zoe pushed through the door into the autopsy suite. She found the tech, who’d brought her the AED for Franklin, in the middle of the Humpty Dumpty process of putting the victim back together again. Sort of.
Doc looked up from the table where he packaged tissue and fluid samples for the lab. “How’s Franklin?”
“Breathing,” Zoe said. “Conscious and alert.”
“Good. I hate when I have to autopsy a friend.”
He said it with a healthy dose of snark, but Zoe winced at the mental picture of Franklin laid open for dissection. One of the hazards of working on the ambulance in a small community was arriving at an accident scene or medical emergency to find the victim was a friend or close acquaintance. Having someone she knew well come through the morgue was worse. Way worse. Case in point—Gina Wagner.
Zoe veered her focus from the woman being sewn up. “Do you know anything about Franklin’s wife?”
“Loretta? I never met her. They’ve been divorced a long time.”
“He asked me to call her. Said they’ve been back in touch recently.”
Doc grunted. “First I’ve heard of it.”
“Me too,” Zoe said more to herself than to him.
With his work completed, Doc removed the plastic splash shield he wore over his face. “I hope toxicology has better luck finding a cause of death than I did.”
“Do you have an educated guess?”
“I’m educated enough to not guess.”
Chastised, Zoe lowered her head.
He clipped her on the shoulder. “Seriously, I’m stumped. No sign of trauma or medical abnormality. There’s nothing to suggest drug use. Her tissues and organs appear perfectly healthy.”
“Except she’s dead.”
“There is that.” He strode toward the biohazard bins, stripping out of his protective garb as he went. “You know what to do regarding the paperwork.”
Zoe nodded. Cause of death: Undetermined pending toxicology. But first, she had to find Franklin’s phone.
Which turned out to be the easiest part of her day so far. He’d left it on his desk, plugged into the charger. She knew his PIN from the many times he’d had her make calls for him in recent weeks. Doc said the ex-wife’s name was Loretta, which made finding the number in his contacts list a breeze.
The voice that answered was anything but jovial. “What do you want now, Frank?”
Frank? For a moment Zoe feared she’d misdialed or picked up the wrong phone. She’d never heard anyone call him anything other than Franklin. “Um, is this Loretta?”
A pause. Apparently, Zoe wasn’t the only one confused by this call. “Who is this?”
“My name’s Zoe Chambers. I’m the chief deputy coroner. I work with—”
“He finally died, did he?”
Zoe wished she could see the woman’s face. Hoped there was more sadness in her eyes than in her tone. “No. But he asked me to call you and let you know he’s in the ER at Brunswick Hospital.”
“Oh.” Another long pause. “How serious is it?”
“His glucose levels dropped rapidly, throwing him into an irregular heart rhythm. I had to shock him, but he converted and is now receiving treatment in the Emergency Department. He should be fine once they stabilize him.”
“You shocked him?”
Not the question Zoe expected. “With an AED we keep nearby.”
“But you did. A deputy coroner. Not a doctor.”
Zoe wanted to ask what the hell this woman was getting at. “I’m also a paramedic.”
“Oh.”
Was it Zoe’s imagination or did Franklin’s ex sound disappointed?
“Okay then. Thanks for calling.”
“Wait. Should I say you’ll be in to see him?”
But the line had gone dead. And if Zoe was any judge, Franklin’s ex-wife would’ve been happier to hear that he was too.
A half dozen men and women in business suits entered the coffee shop and gathered at the counter, placing their orders.
Pete hoped they’d choose a table toward the front.
Baronick tapped notes from Pete’s narration into his phone. Looking up, he asked, “Any sign of the car being broken into?”
“No.”
“Security cameras?”
“None. The plaza’s owner installed them afterward.”
“Doesn’t help us any.”
“No, it does not.”
“What about the physical evidence at the scene?” Baronick asked. “According to what I read, there wasn’t much.”
“There were no casings. The parking lot was paved, so no footprints. All the fingerprints in the car belonged to either the victim or the husband.”
The detective watched the new arrivals. “If our one-armed man exists, he wore gloves. Or didn’t touch anything.”
“Stop with the one-armed man references. For starters, in the movie, he wasn’t a serial killer. And if a random murderer passed through my township and I missed a chance to nail him, it’s no laughing matter.”
Baronick raised an eyebrow. “You can’t seriously believe Landis’ theory.”
Did he?
With their
