“You there?” Noah said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I—I’ll see you later.”
He hung up before she could say the one thing she was comfortable admitting: “I miss you.”
Seventeen
Three hours later, Josie drove through the center of town and up the long road to Denton Memorial Hospital. The large, blocky brick building sat on top of one of the tallest hills in town. Josie parked and went inside, taking an elevator to the basement, which housed the city morgue. It was the quietest place in the entire building. A long hallway, once bright white but now dingy gray and complemented by yellowed floor tiles, led to Dr. Feist’s domain. As Josie drew closer, the ever-present smell of chemicals combined with the rancid scent of putrefaction assaulted her senses.
She bypassed the large exam and autopsy room and went to Dr. Feist’s office. The door was open, but Dr. Feist wasn’t inside. Josie sat in the guest chair in front of her desk and waited. Dr. Feist had done her best to make the room warm and welcoming. The cinder block walls were painted a soothing periwinkle blue. The abstract wall art was awash in pastel colors. Dr. Feist kept the overhead fluorescent lights turned off in favor of two desk lamps, which gave the room a softer glow. A second potted plant had been added since Josie was last there, and now a white cylindrical air freshener sat on top of one of the filing cabinets, hissing out a spray of apple-scented aerosol every few seconds. It was a pleasant addition, but couldn’t overcome the odor of the morgue next door.
“Detective Quinn,” Dr. Feist said as she sailed into the office. She plopped into the chair behind her desk with a sigh, lower lip jutted out as she blew a breath of air upward, making her silver-blonde bangs flutter. “Are you alone?”
Josie checked her phone furtively. She hadn’t heard from Noah all morning. His only response to her texts had been a terse: Got caught up. Meet you later.
“It appears that way,” Josie said. “You look exhausted. Here.” Josie handed her a cup of coffee from their favorite city café, Komorrah’s.
“I haven’t been home yet,” Dr. Feist said. Her eyes closed as she sipped the coffee. “Heavenly,” she added. “Thank you.”
“They had you in the ER all night?”
She shook her head and put her coffee down on her desk. “Not the entire night. They had three more heart attacks after the other cases. I did what I could. I don’t normally treat patients, but I made myself useful in any way I could. Then I figured I was up, so why not come down here and do Nysa Somers’ autopsy? After meeting with her family yesterday, I don’t want them to have to wait long for the body to be released.”
“Thank you,” Josie said. “For getting to it so quickly.”
“Of course. I won’t have a report ready for another day, and even then, it will only be preliminary, pending the toxicology results. I can’t issue a final report until those are in, and as you know, toxicology testing can take up to eight weeks.”
“I’m aware,” Josie said. “Anything you can tell me now about your initial findings would be helpful.”
Dr. Feist leaned back in her chair, resting her head against its back. “Before I go into those, you should know that while it is pretty clear that Nysa Somers drowned, it’s not clear yet whether or not it was an accident. Her cause of death is drowning, but the manner of death—accident, homicide, suicide—I can’t give you a firm answer on that right now. Sometimes, when we see drowning as a cause of death, particularly in a case where a body is found in water and we don’t know how it got there, it’s not always clear how the drowning happened. That’s why toxicology tests are so important. I know it’s frustrating to wait, but we have no control over the speed of the lab, unfortunately.”
“I understand,” Josie said. “What did you find on exam?”
Dr. Feist nodded. “She had no traumatic injuries, no signs of sexual assault, no bruising, no lacerations, no skin under her fingernails, and no evidence of disease or sudden medical event. Basically, on exam, Nysa Somers was as healthy as could be. The only things I found were consistent with death by drowning. Her lungs were very congested. Hyperinflated. On x-ray they showed what we call ‘ground glass opacity,’ meaning that the images of her lungs look as though they’ve got ground glass in them. She had fluid in her stomach and her paranasal sinuses. But as I said, the manner of death is undetermined. At least until we get toxicology back.”
“Any other contents in her stomach?” Josie asked. “Any way to tell the last thing she ate and when?”
Dr. Feist’s face lit up. “As a matter of fact, there was some type of food in her stomach at the time of her death. It was difficult to tell what it might have been but from having done autopsies for the last twenty years, my guess is chocolate. Some kind of candy bar, pastry—a brownie, maybe? I can’t say that for certain. I’ve sent the stomach contents off to the lab as well for analysis but that, too, will take time.”
Josie said, “The stomach takes about six hours to completely empty, doesn’t it?”
“Well, it depends on the person,” said Dr. Feist.
“We’ve got about eight hours of time unaccounted for in this case. From roughly nine thirty in the evening till six in the morning. Is it possible that Nysa Somers ate something during that time based on what you found?”
“Not just possible,” Dr. Feist answered. “Probable. It’s just difficult to pinpoint when she ate it. It would have had to be after midnight, I’d say.”
“What about time of death?” Josie asked. “Were you able to narrow that at all? I know we’re only looking at a two-hour window as it is—between six a.m. and eight a.m.—but I’m curious.”
“Given the temperature of the room in which the pool was located as well as the pool water, both of which are at a constant temperature, and the measurement from her chest cavity on autopsy, I’d say she was dead approximately two hours.”
“You’re saying it’s likely she died shortly after six a.m. when she entered the pool area, then?” Josie clarified.
Dr. Feist nodded.
Josie was silent.
“What is it?” Dr. Feist asked.
“Nothing,” Josie said. “I’m just trying to work out how I’m going to tell her family that their star swimmer did, in fact, drown yesterday.”
Eighteen
Chief Bob Chitwood stood in front of the detectives’ desks, his arms crossed over his thin chest, staring down at Josie, Mettner, and Gretchen. His dark eyes peered at each one of them in turn over the rim of a pair of reading glasses. Strands of his white hair floated across his scalp. At least his acne-scarred cheeks weren’t flushed with irritation or anger, Josie thought. Yet.
He stabbed the air with a finger. Josie couldn’t tell if it was directed at one of them or all of them. “You’re telling me,” he said, “that the best swimmer on the college team drowned yesterday?”
The detectives looked at one another. Then Gretchen, who had the most calming effect on Chitwood of all of them, said, “Yes, sir. It appears that way. What caused it, we’re not sure.”