Skye downed her third cup of foul-tasting sweetened black coffee and still felt fuzzy after two hours’ sleep and eight hours of investigation.
She watched the medical examiner, her longtime colleague Dr. Rod Fielding, cut into the body of seventeen- year-old Abigail Weatherby.
She had to admit that she was unnerved by the conversation she’d had with Moira O’Donnell on the way from the jail to the motel. She caught herself biting her thumbnail, and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the box on Rod’s workbench to stop the nervous habit.
Anthony didn’t like Moira because he thought she was a witch responsible for the death of one of his “brothers”-the boys he’d grown up with at the orphanage. She supposed it wasn’t
Odd, but Skye had never contemplated Anthony’s unusual upbringing largely because he didn’t hide anything. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about how many kids were abandoned by their mothers at a monastery to be raised as warriors for God. The entire
Yet her mother had left when she was fourteen, walked out with a man who made lots of promises, then killed her. Abandonment wasn’t foreign to Skye, either.
And she loved Anthony. She accepted what he said as truth, even though it was unusual.
Then Moira O’Donnell showed up, and Skye saw a side of Anthony she’d only glimpsed briefly during the few months she’d known him. Anger and hostility. Had he and Moira been involved? She tried to brush it off as cop instincts, not feminine insecurities, but it wasn’t working.
Rod was unusually quiet as he performed the autopsy, but he was generally more reticent when working on young people. Focused, deliberate, with none of the banter Skye was used to. It made the autopsy that much more uncomfortable. If it was a drunk or a sixty-year-old heart attack victim or even a gang shooting, Rod would joke to relieve the tension. But Abby was seventeen; she’d had her whole future ahead. Everything …
Skye had come to the autopsy after telling Abby’s parents of her death. They had been sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, both of them believing that Abby was still sleeping in her bed. It was the hardest damn thing she’d ever done. She knew Hiram Weatherby, and she also knew that Hiram would be on her ass day and night until she solved the crime.
He was, after all, the mayor, and the council member who’d led the charge to appoint her sheriff.
She said to Rod, “You’re killing me here. It’s been thirty minutes.” All he’d spoken were clipped orders to his young assistant.
“I have nothing,” he snapped. “Nothing.”
“Nothing … what the hell does that mean?”
“Heart-perfect. Lungs-strong. No sign of cancer, heart attack, internal bleeding, physical signs of OD-I sent the labs over as a rush, and Monica just walked over tissue samples from every major organ, as well as skin and hair samples. I have a second set being worked up to send to the state lab for additional testing, beyond our capabilities. But sudden, violent overdoses would normally show
“There was an odd smell at the scene when we arrived-maybe she was poisoned through the air, breathed it in.”
“No sign of violence to her nasal cavities or throat or lungs. It’s like her heart just … stopped for no damn reason.”
Skye wanted something scientific to hold on to, but Rod wasn’t giving her anything.
He continued. “I saw the destruction on the cliffs, Skye. There had to have been more than one person on scene before or during her death. We didn’t find her clothing or her car, and she couldn’t have walked there without shoes-her feet are dirty, but no cuts or bruising. Someone had to have brought her out; someone had to have taken her clothing. Why? She should be alive. She’s perfect in every way.”
“This morning her father said she’d recently lost a lot of weight, that she’d been exercising.”
“How recent? Sudden weight loss, or over time?”
“He said she started losing at the beginning of the school year. Lost twenty pounds or so, according to her mother.”
“Twenty pounds in five months? Not common, but certainly possible.” He inspected her body. “Yeah, I see the loose skin here … here. But if she was popping pills, I’ll know when I get the bloodwork back. I’m running everything I can think of.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“No sign of recent or habitual abuse. No signs of forced entry or violence or bruising in the vaginal area.”
He handed her a Polaroid photograph. “Here’s a copy of her tattoo.”
Skye stared at the photo. The colorful tattoo was eerily beautiful, a circle with crisscrossing curvy lines that narrowed in the center. It was the same image upside down. “What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s a bit unusual. I thought you might need it, show it to the parents. Maybe one of her friends knows something about it.”
She stuffed it into her notebook. “Lots of girls these days get tattoos.”
“I’ve seen. Usually when they’re dead. And one more thing.”
Rod turned Abby on her side and touched the small of her back. “I didn’t notice this at the site, but she has a faint birthmark here.”
The pale strawberry stain looked like a sun, with a filled, near-perfect circle in the middle of faint lines reminiscent of varicose veins, except they were red. Almost as if smeared, the birthmark spread around her to her side, ending in a crescent.
“A lot of people have birthmarks. What’s unusual about it?”
“It seems too perfect for a natural mark. I’m wondering if it’s scarring left over from a previous tattoo. But she’s underage, she’d need parental permission to both get and remove a tattoo.”
Skye shook her head. “In California, but it’s pretty easy to go to Nevada and get a tat, and there are plenty of people here who’ll do it for the right price. Did it contribute to her death?”
“Doubtful, but since I don’t know what killed her, I’m not going to discount anything. I took a skin graft and should have some answers.”
“Are you thinking maybe an infection from a bad needle?”
“Again, doubtful-her white blood cell count is normal. She’s a little on the anemic side, but not dangerously low. But hell, Skye, I’m willing to look at every cell in her body if it’ll tell me what happened to her.”
Her phone vibrated. Normally she wouldn’t answer it during an autopsy, but it was the hospital calling. “Sheriff McPherson.”
“Sheriff, this is Doctor Bertrand at Santa Louisa General. I need to report a missing person.”
“Doctor, I’m in the middle of-”
“You’re the contact. It’s my coma patient, in the hospice wing. Raphael Cooper.”
Skye straightened. Rafe Cooper was missing? “What happened? When?”
“I don’t exactly know-he apparently walked out just after midnight.”
“Walked out?”
“I’ve already ordered a copy of the security tapes for you, but I saw it myself. He walked out of the hospital. Extremely odd.”
Odd? That wasn’t the word Skye would use.
Especially since he’d apparently gone missing two hours before Abby Weatherby died. He’d also been the prime suspect in the slaughter of twelve priests, until Anthony Zaccardi convinced her that a demon was responsible.
Maybe Raphael Cooper wasn’t as innocent as Anthony made him out to be.
“I’m on my way.”
