“I’d like to think that you coroners have your hunches about which cops are dirty,” Somers continues. “And cops? We have the same hunches about you. About which coroners are bribe prone, and which ones are more committed to… what? To the purity of justice? There’s one thing we likely agree on: our work is complicated and we don’t need other people breathing down our backs. Am I right?”
Despite her fatigue, her aching chest, a swell of admiration fills Clare. It is a form of genius, Clare thinks, the way Somers disarms him. Now she can extract exactly what she needs.
“Which report did you say you needed?” Flanagan asks.
“Jack Westman,” Somers says, referring to her notes. “I believe his birth name is John.”
The coroner’s capacity to keep his composure is admirable, his ability to distill his anger to only a small shudder of his jaw muscles. He stands and disappears through a door to the left of his desk.
“You’re good at that,” Clare says.
“There’s a golden rule,” Somers says. “Always arrive to an interaction like this prepared. Don’t let them take the wheel. Always retain control.”
“You’ve got dirt on him?”
“His reputation precedes him,” Somers says. “Nothing particularly terrible. He’s not setting serial killers free or anything. Lune Bay isn’t exactly a murder hot spot. But let’s just say that some sudden deaths have been brushed off as natural causes. Some of the richer people around here tend to die with more dignity than they ought.” Somers laughs. “It’s not funny. But hey, he retires next year. He doesn’t know what I know. It’s an easy upper hand.”
What effortless confidence, Clare thinks, studying Somers sidelong. It might be a function of how long she’s been doing this job, or it might just be her, built-in. Either way, Clare wishes she could find that kind of ease in anything she does. After a few minutes Dr. Flanagan returns, a file in one hand and a handful of foil-wrapped candies in the other. He sits and sets the file down, dropping a candy in front of each of them. Somers unwraps hers and pops it in her mouth.
“This better not be laced with arsenic,” she says.
Dr. Flanagan opens the file. “If I were going to kill you, I’d use something untraceable, Detective Somers. Give me some credit.”
Somers’s laugh is genuine, booming. A pressure valve has been released between them. Flanagan has accepted his defeat. He pores over the open file as he unwraps his own candy.
“I’m just scanning the summary report,” he says.
“Did you conduct the autopsy?”
“I did,” he says. “Five years ago.”
“You probably conduct a lot of them,” Clare adds. She is grateful that Somers doesn’t flinch at the obvious question.
“Indeed I do,” Flanagan says. He looks up at Clare, staring a second too long, smiling at her. “Right. Says here: gunshot wound to the head. Three shots, one fatal.”
He spins the top page to show it to Clare and Somers. The words come at Clare in a blur.
Gunshot wound, left templar lobe. Fatal.
Patient dead on arrival. Early stages rigor mortis.
“Sometimes there are details about a case you don’t forget,” Flanagan says, the candy knocking against his teeth. “This case was certainly one of those.”
Somers uncrosses and recrosses her legs. Clare knows her well enough now to see this as a sign of her frustration. The coroner’s wistfulness is getting on her nerves.
“Can you be more specific?” Clare asks.
“The first step is to examine the obvious trauma. Here, the deceased was struck with multiple bullets. Three. We accepted that the bullet to his temple was the fatal one, but he may well have died from the piercing of another organ. When death is so sudden it’s not necessarily possible to—”
“What’s this?” Somers interrupts, pointing to a word on the page. Metastases.
Clare leans forward to follow the path of Somers’s finger. Evidence of advanced metastases. Lungs, liver. Multiple. Source unknown.
“Well,” the coroner says. “He had cancer.”
“Yeah,” Somers says. “I think we understand that much.”
The years Clare spent in close range to her mother’s cancer had taught her the basic vocabulary of the disease: tumors and their spread, metastases like weeds popping up unwelcome throughout her body.
“Advanced,” Clare says. “Multiple. Lots of cancer, basically. He was dying?”
“We’re all dying,” Dr. Flanagan says. “Just at different rates.”
Somers pushes out a hard breath, all efforts to conceal her impatience fallen away.
“Listen,” she says. “Your calendar might be clear today, but Clare and I have places to be. I really do appreciate your lessons on the meaning of life, but—”
If Dr. Flanagan is wounded, his smile doesn’t show it. He leans back in his chair.
“My guess is the liver was the site of origin, but his cancer was so advanced that it wasn’t easy to pinpoint. And since he was already dead from another cause… well, there isn’t much value in digging through his innards to find out where the cancer started.”
“Did he know he was dying?” Clare asks.
“The symptoms at this stage would have been intense,” Flanagan says.
“Like he had months left?” Somers asks.
“Not months. Weeks. There was some early-stage jaundice too. Fluid in his abdomen. Not terribly overt, but enough. Hard to believe he wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Or his wife wouldn’t have known,” Somers says.
“But,” Flanagan continues, “the coroner’s office was never presented with corroborating records from his medical team. Nothing to indicate there’d been a previous diagnosis. That doesn’t mean he didn’t know, but it sure is odd, now that I think about it.”
“Now that you think you about it.” Somers shakes her head.
Clare remembers her mother in the final months of her own illness, the way the disease invaded every nook of her body until even the most mundane tasks required a surge of pain medication. It feels impossible that someone at the same stage of disease would not have known they were dying.
“I’ve seen stranger things,” Dr. Flanagan says. “Women in the final trimester of pregnancy with no record of it in their files. People with advanced cancers, or hearts calcified with
