“I imagined she’d have cried out,” she added. “There are no markings around her mouth to suggest that they tried to muffle her unless they did so very lightly.”
I breathed in deeply and walked back over to my coffee, taking a long sip. “Cause of death?”
“Definitely whatever they injected her with,” Dr Crowe told me. She pulled the sheet back up over Sonia and yanked her gloves off, nodding to a report on the desk. “I’ve been taking a little look into the toxicology, but it’s not my area. I’ve asked Dr Olsen to come in and take a look. But,” she brought her mug over to stand beside me, “I’m guessing our killer got their recipe right this time around.”
“Practice makes perfect,” I muttered darkly. “What about a time of death?”
“I’d say anywhere between one and two,” Lena answered.
“The,” I hesitate, not sure what to call it. It wasn’t a drug, per se. “The formula,” I settled with, “it’s got the same compounds as the other one?”
“Looks that way to me, Max.”
“Plants, then,” I said with another slow sip. “I should call Mills,” I decided, fishing my phone out of pocket.
“Outside,” Crowe ushered me to the door, “I need to take my report to the boss,” she told me, pushing me out into the hallway and locking the door.
I watched her do so with an insulted expression, which quickly turned to a pout when I realised she’d also locked my coffee in. I turned to her, but she was already gone, her tuft of white-blonde hair vanishing up the stairs. I sighed, gave the coffee machine along the drab hallway and mournful look and turned back to my phone, quickly dialling Mills.
It rang for a moment, and I worried that he was still with Dr Quaid, but his voice distantly answered. “This is Mills.”
“It’s me,” I told him, frowning at his weird sounding voice. “Where are you?”
“Heading back now. I’ve got some interesting notes about some of these plants, sir.” In the car then, that made sense.
“Good. Crowe’s found some interesting stuff too, and Dr Olsen’s on her way in.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he answered succinctly, and I hung up then, plodding my way over to the coffee machines with a sad face. I could just wait for Lena to come back, but to be perfectly honest, I didn’t much like the thought of drinking something that had sat in a room with a dead body for that long, and nobody liked lukewarm coffee, anyway. Not even Lena, who had taken hers with her. I hit a few buttons on the machine, making one for Mills too, and made idle chit chat with a PC who had come down for a few minutes silence from the holdings. Once he ambled off, I took both coffees, one stacked on the other and leant against the wall, waiting for Lena or Mills, and pulled my phone out of my pocket again, beaming to see a text from Liene lighting up the screen. Something heavy lifted from my chest, and I let out a silent whoop as I scanned her words. She’d be back early and wanted to get dinner when she did. That was good news. I replied eagerly, half aware of a set of footsteps snapping their way down the hall.
“Sir.”
I looked up to find Mills with me, his face a bit flushed from hurrying. I put my phone away and handed him one of the coffees.
“We’re just waiting on Dr Olsen. Lena’s upstairs giving her report to Sharp,” I told him, “So she’s locked us out until she gets back.”
“She’s very trusting,” he said with a smirk.
I groaned, knowing it was my own doing. “I knocked over one beaker. One, about five years ago, and now I need to be supervised in there like an eight-year-old, apparently.”
“What was in the beaker?” Mills asked with his eyes narrowed, a grin already forming on his face. It might have been something that ought not to get spilt, something with a long, complicated chemical name and warning symbols. I looked away, taking a large sip of bitter coffee.
“Very nosy today, Mills,” I told him, mimicking his voice. “Tell me about your tattoo. What was in the beaker?”
“Yes, tell me about the tattoo, I haven’t forgotten. And we’ve got time to kill.”
I glowered then. I regretted mentioning the tattoo, and certainly did not want to share the story of how I got it. Luckily for me, Lena decided to make her triumphant return, skittering down the hallway to us.
“Good, Mills is here. You’ve got some plants?” She asked. Mills nodded, his hand going to his trustworthy notebook. “Good, we’ll need that,” she said, unlocking the lab door and letting us both back in.
“You leave your drink in here?” She asked, taking the now lukewarm mug and emptying it down the sink.
“I did. Thanks for locking me out.”
“I don’t take chances with you around. Like a bull in a china shop you are,” she was clattering away at her keyboard, and then she looked over the computer screen and appraised me from afar. “Did you play rugby?”
“Maybe,” I muttered. She chuckled triumphantly and bent her head to her screen again. I turned my attention to Mills, who, despite the fact he was trying to hide his smile by sipping his coffee, was still less likely to take the piss out of me.
“Kask’s plants?” I asked. He sobered up quickly and fished his notebook out, handing it over. I opened it to the most recent page, where his quick, jagged handwriting identified the plants and then a few words with each one about what they did. Underneath them all, he’d written, “botanist’s toolkit.”
“A lot of these are not very nice,” I muttered, looking at the underlined words of poisonous or deadly. “Paralysis?” I read aloud, bewildered.
Crowe’s head shot back up. “Show me that,” she snapped, holding her hand out for the page. I passed it
