Chapter Seven

The ME’s office was small and stuffy. Emmet sat in the hard plastic chair festering with resentment as he scrolled through his phone. He glanced around the room, noting the framed diplomas, the Phi Beta Kappa certificate, the pile of marathon medals sitting on the bookcase crammed with medical journals.

Emmet checked his phone again, and finally the guy walked in.

“Sorry. Had to take a call.” David Bauhaus pulled the door shut and walked around the desk. He had on blue scrubs and worn running shoes that probably had a thousand miles on them. The doctor flipped through a stack of manila folders by his computer and then dropped one in the center of his desk.

“So. Audrey Lambert.” He opened the folder. “You’re with Lost Beach PD then, I take it?”

“Detective Emmet Davis.” He gritted his teeth. “And it’s Aubrey.”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” He scooted his chair in. “Aubrey.” He slid on a pair of reading glasses, and Emmet felt a twinge of satisfaction as the guy peered down at the paperwork. He glanced up. “Your chief wanted the report expedited. I sent it over last night, so I assume—”

“I read it, yeah.”

The pathologist looked at him over the tops of his glasses.

“I had a few questions,” Emmet said. “The livor mortis, for one.”

He flipped through the report. “What about it?”

“You included photos.”

“Yes.” He turned to his computer and used the mouse to click open a file. “Let me see. We can enlarge these....”

Emmet winced as a row of autopsy photographs appeared on the screen. Aubrey Lambert’s body whisked by in a blur of pale flesh.

“Here we go.” He landed on a picture of the victim’s back. She was positioned face down on the stainless steel table, and the photo showed the tops of her buttocks. The doctor zoomed in on the reddish patch of skin, evidently reading Emmet’s mind.

“You’re wondering about the whitish pattern here.” He turned to Emmet.

“That’s right. It looks like some kind of impression?”

“Maybe a hammer, a wrench, something of that nature that was underneath her when the blood pooled. Someone with the state lab might be able to help you. They have a tool marks examiner.”

Emmet nodded. “And a time estimate? How long was she lying flat on her back?”

“Well, she wasn’t. Not exactly. Based on the other livor marks, I believe she may have been on her back with her knees near her chest”—he pivoted in the chair and brought his knees up in a modified fetal position—“like so for several hours. It’s hard to pin down the amount of time, precisely.”

Emmet nodded. “And you did a rape kit.”

“Yes.” He flipped through the report on his desk again. “It’s at the lab. No results yet. I can tell you I didn’t find any defensive wounds.”

“Any chance she was roofied?”

“The tox report just came back. Did you see it?”

“Not yet.”

He turned to his computer again and closed out of the autopsy photos.

“This just came in”—he glanced at his black sports watch—“two hours ago. Let’s see... ibuprofen, benzodiazepine—” He glanced up. “In other words, Advil and Xanax. Quite a lot of Xanax—about eight times the recommended dose for a woman her size. And a lethal injection of fentanyl.”

“Fentanyl. You’re sure?”

He nodded at the computer. “It’s right here.”

“No, I mean you’re sure that she was injected? Maybe her pills could have been laced with something or—”

“I swabbed the injection site at the back of her upper arm. She was injected with it. And the location would have been highly unlikely, if not impossible, if she had injected herself.”

He had swabbed the injection site. This guy thought like a detective. Emmet didn’t want to like him, knowing he’d been jerking Nicole around for weeks. But he had to admit the man was good at his job.

“The other thing,” Emmet said. “Your report mentions something about fibers on the body. Is that like carpet fibers or—”

“Not carpet.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “Something else synthetic. I’m no expert, but the state has someone who could identify it. And the FBI. The feds have a huge database, actually. They’d definitely be your best bet.”

Emmet scoffed. “Yeah, if I had a year to wait.”

“Well, yes. There is that.”

The phone buzzed on the desk. David flipped it over and frowned as he read a text message. He glanced up. “I’m needed down the hall. If you have any more questions—”

“I’ll be in touch.” Emmet stood up, and the doctor stood, too. “Thanks for the time.”

“No problem.” David stepped toward the door and stopped. “By the way, is Nicole Lawson with you? I’m guessing she’s here about the victim’s car? Our lab techs just finished processing it.”

“Yeah, I think she’s upstairs.”

He checked his watch and opened the door. “Hey, tell her hi for me, would you?”

Emmet stepped through the doorway and looked back. “Tell her yourself.”

Nicole found Miranda in the women’s restroom near the forensics lab. The CSI was twenty minutes late for their meeting, which was totally unlike her.

“Hey, there you are,” Nicole said.

Miranda glanced up at her in the mirror, and her eyes were pink and watery. “I’m just finishing up.” She grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and dabbed her face.

Nicole stepped closer, eyeing the tote bag sitting beside the sink. “Everything all right?”

“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “No. I don’t know. Sorry.” Miranda wiped her eyes. “I’m just having a day. My milk isn’t flowing, my nipples are bleeding, and I dropped my bottle and spilled half of it down the sink.”

Nicole noticed the baby bottle on the counter beside the tote bag—which she now saw contained a breast pump.

“Your nipples are... bleeding?” Nicole winced. “That sounds awful.”

Miranda blew her nose. “It’s no big deal, really. They’re just chafed, you know? Well. You don’t know. But it’s okay. It happens to people a lot. I’m just strung out today. Janie has a cold, and we were up all night.”

Nicole wasn’t a hugger, but she reached over and rubbed Miranda’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

“No. Thanks, though. I’m fine, really. It’s Joel I’m worried about.”

“Why are you worried about Joel?” Nicole asked, although she could guess. Miranda’s husband, who had once been a detective with Lost Beach PD, was now part of a multiagency task force working on drug and human trafficking throughout the Rio Grande Valley, including operations such as Red Highway. It was a hazardous job and grueling, too.

Miranda shook her head. “He hasn’t had a day off in weeks. He’s hardly been home except to sleep. He finally came in last night and crashed, and then the baby got sick and both of us were up all night. I tried to get him to go back to bed, but he’s barely seen her, and he wanted to help.” Miranda wadded the paper towels and tossed them in the trash. “It’s her first cold, and I didn’t know what to do. Turns out, there’s nothing you really can do.”

“How is she today?”

“A little better.” Miranda pulled a phone from the pocket of her lab coat. “Our nanny just called and said she’s napping peacefully, so maybe she’s through the worst of it.”

Nicole waited, not sure of what to say. She’d never seen Miranda so out of sorts. Right up until her due date, she’d seemed completely Zen and appeared to have everything under control. Nicole had gone to visit her, and she’d had the nursery perfectly decorated and her freezer filled with casseroles.

Nicole watched Miranda as she washed her hands. She wore a lab coat over jeans and a button-down shirt, which probably worked well for nursing. Instead of her usual tidy French braid, her long brown hair was up in a messy bun.

“Well, enough of this, right?” Miranda dried her hands and loaded up her tote bag. “Let me just get this bottle into the fridge and I can give you the update. Has Ryan started?”

“He was waiting for you.”

“Sorry.”

“Miranda, please.”

She shouldered her tote bag. “God forbid they might have a private room in this damn place so I wouldn’t have to pop out a boob in front of all the men I work with.”

“There’s nowhere you can go?”

“Well, I could go to my car, but that just takes longer.”

Nicole followed her down the hall. Miranda turned a corner and entered the garage where vehicles were processed. They paused beside the door to pull paper covers over their shoes. Then Miranda stepped over to the break area and stashed a bottle of breast milk in the mini fridge.

“There you guys are. We ready now?”

Nicole turned to see Ryan crossing the garage. The CSI wore white coveralls and had a pair of goggles perched atop his head.

“Yes,” Miranda said, joining them.

“I was just showing Adam the trunk.” He looked at Nicole. “You want to see?”

“Absolutely.”

She followed him past a mangled Kia and two pickup trucks to the far side of the garage. At the end of the row was Aubrey Lambert’s little blue Subaru.

Adam McDeere stood off to the side. Today he wore the typical Lost Beach detective uniform—navy golf shirt, brown tactical pants, and all-terrain boots—even though he wasn’t technically a detective yet. Like Nicole, he had covers over his shoes, and he looked very studious holding a notebook and pen in his gloved hands. Adam was three weeks away from his detective’s exam, and he’d been taking a lot of notes lately.

Ryan offered Nicole a box of latex gloves. She pulled out a pair and tugged them on.

“So, what did you find?” she asked.

“A lot,” Miranda said. “Have you had a chance to see the autopsy report?”

“Brady emailed it to the team this morning.”

Nicole had scoured it for clues and planned to study it more this afternoon.

“There were some small nylon fibers clinging to the body,” Miranda said.

“Yeah, I saw the notes about that. What are those, you think?”

“These were tiny, thready-looking fibers clinging to the skin and hair, apparently.” Miranda stepped closer to the trunk, and Ryan shined a flashlight into the cargo space. “We found similar fibers back here.”

Nicole and Adam moved closer and peered down at the trunk.

“Not seeing anything,” she said, glancing at Adam, who looked blank, too.

“Here.” Ryan dug into the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a pair of tweezers. He reached in and lifted a tiny blue thread about the size of an eyelash.

“I don’t know how y’all find this stuff,” Nicole said as Ryan placed the thread on Miranda’s outstretched palm.

“We collected numerous samples and sent them to the state lab for analysis. At a glance, David thinks these are the same type of fibers he recovered from the body.”

“So... you’re thinking she was wrapped in a blanket or maybe, what? A tarp?” Nicole glanced at Adam.

“Could be a rug?” Adam ventured.

“My guess would be a duffel bag,” Miranda said.

Nicole’s stomach knotted. “Really?”

She nodded.

“So, maybe he killed her at her apartment and loaded her in here?” Adam asked.

Miranda nodded again. “It’s possible. Of course, the lab will have to confirm the type of fibers we’re dealing with, but that would be my best guess. If he didn’t have the body contained in a bag or something like that, we would expect to find more evidence in the trunk. Hair, skin cells, maybe bodily fluids.”

Nicole stared into the trunk. A chill came over her as she visualized Aubrey’s killer zipping her into a duffel bag and stashing her back there like luggage.

“This dude’s sick,” Ryan said.

Nicole looked at him. The CSI had seen a lot—they all had—but this crime was particularly callous.

“Okay, let’s move on to the front,” Miranda said, lowering the trunk lid.

They walked around to the driver’s side. The door stood open, and a box of plastic numbers sat on the concrete floor nearby, along with a metal ruler. The markers would have been used when Miranda photographed whatever evidence she’d found, and the ruler provided scale.

“We recovered the pill bottle on the passenger seat, as you know,” Miranda said. “Along with twelve loose pills scattered on the seat and floor.”

“Do we know how many were in the bottle originally?” Adam asked.

“The label said thirty,” Nicole said. “But who knows if she had taken any before that day?”

“The toxicology report should help you with whatever was in her system,” Miranda said. “I’m just telling you what we found in the car. Which could have been staged, of course.”

Nicole glanced at Adam. Her working theory was that the scene was staged, and she knew he and Emmet and Owen were all coming around to that.

Ryan crouched down and aimed his flashlight through the windshield. “Then you’ve got the writing,” he said.

His light illuminated the word Goodbye written across the inside of the windshield in—what appeared to be—a woman’s loopy handwriting.

The writing had bugged Nicole from the moment she’d seen it. It looked feminine, yes. But she had trouble picturing someone who was distraught enough to kill herself writing the word so artfully.

“Pink ChapStick,” Nicole murmured. “Did we ever find it?”

“Strawberry.” Miranda crouched down beside Ryan. “The tube was down here, just beneath the driver’s seat.”

Adam lifted an eyebrow. “Fingerprints?”

“Yes.” She looked at Nicole. “The prints come back to the victim. But, of course, if the ChapStick was hers and someone wore gloves—”

“Or if he put it in her hand and wrote it,” Adam said.

“Right.” Miranda stood up. “The lack of someone else’s prints on the tube doesn’t really tell us anything.”

Miranda seemed to be on the same page with Nicole about how everything went down.

“So, the nylon fibers, the pills, the ChapStick.” Nicole looked at Ryan. “What about the exterior?”

He smiled. “We’re not done with the inside yet. Tell them about the mirror.”

Nicole looked at Miranda, shocked. Thus far their perp had been meticulous.

“You got prints off the mirror?”

Miranda shook her head. “We’re not that lucky. But we did find something you’re going to like.”