“Gomez?”
Meredith is the first one into the lab as I hold Tony back outside the door.
“Yeah, Joe talked to him yesterday and his guys are already started tracking down Ward’s relatives. I gave him a heads-up this morning.”
“What about Keith?”
I notice the other man wince a little. “The chief said to let him have the day so I didn’t call him.”
“He’s not gonna be happy,” I point out, although I’m sure Ramirez is well aware of that.
It creates a bit of a dilemma for me because he’s supposed to be my partner, but I also don’t want to piss off the boss on my first major case. I recall Blackfoot mentioning he was tired yesterday afternoon, and also his agitated reaction when the chief told us to get some rest. Maybe there’s something going on I don’t know about.
“I know,” Tony confirms. “Don’t worry about it, he’ll get over it.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I don’t argue when he pushes open the door and I follow him inside.
“Definitely human,” I catch Meredith saying. She runs her gloved finger over a larger piece of bone. “That’s part of a rib.” She picks up another. “And this is a segment of the pelvic bone.” She points at a small, smooth-edged hole in the shard she’s holding up. “See that? It’s a sacral foramen. This piece is part of the sacrum, the bone at the bottom of the spine. You can see here where the coccyx attaches. Sorry, the tailbone,” she clarifies, looking up.
“Any way to tell if these bones are from our victim?” Joe wants to know.
“DNA,” I tell him. “And that’s Pat’s party, not mine.”
He turns to the lab tech. “How busy are you?”
Pat, who is used to getting pushed for results, rolls her eyes.
“I’m here on a Sunday, what does that tell you?”
Joe ducks his head and grins before trying again from a different angle.
“Fair enough. Let me ask you this then, how long does it take for the test to produce results?”
“Twelve hours, give or take, but I’m sure Doc wants a chance to look at them before I grind the samples down. And that’s assuming she has time to do that now.”
“Doc?” Joe turns to Meredith. “How long do you figure you need?”
“If I can borrow a camera and a notepad and use of a microscope, I can start now.” She suddenly turns to me. “Unless you need to…” She lets the sentence drift off.
I recognize the moment she realizes she may be letting on we have more than a professional connection when her eyes widen slightly.
“Do what you need to do,” I tell her.
“So it’s safe to say we’ll have the DNA results by morning?” the chief persists, still chasing Pat for an answer.
“Oh fine.”
“Excellent.” He throws the woman a winning smile before addressing Ramirez and me. “The three of us’ll scoot over to the FBI office and see if we can catch Gomez for a quick brief. Meredith can call you when she’s ready. Right, Doc?”
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbles, before returning her attention to the collection of bones on the table in front of her.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m missing something,” I hear Pat stage-whisper when I follow Tony and Joe into the hallway.
Meredith
“Nice catch.”
Pat grins at me after I confess Jay and I have something going on.
“He did all of the catching,” I admit. “I’d likely still be safely admiring from a distance. To be honest, I thought it would be frowned upon—fraternizing.”
“Nonsense,” Pat mumbles from behind the camera. She’s helping me document the fragments. “It’s not like you work in the same office. If things don’t work out there’s no reason for it to impact either of your jobs.”
She’s right, at worst it would be a bit awkward. “This is true.”
I examine the next bone for any distinguishable tool marks but there don’t seem to be any. I measure it, note it down, and set it aside for Pat to photograph. All of the identifiable pieces appear to be part of the torso except for one. It’s the last bone on the table in front of me, a two-and a half inch shard, with a shallow curve to it. Given the shape and measuring at a little over six millimeters thick, I conclude it’s part of a skull. Likely a man’s, since women’s skulls tend to be a bit thicker, they average closer to the seven-millimeter mark.
“I was actually going to call you tomorrow,” Pat announces. She’s downloading the images to her computer and sending them to my email while I clean my work area.
“About?”
“Jordan Dunwoody. I know I told you I was going to send you the report on Thursday, but with one of my lab assistants off sick and the work piling up… Well, I just forgot.”
I wave her off.
“I know what you mean, don’t worry about it. I forgot all about it myself.”
“I’ll send it right now, but if you give me a minute, I can print you off a copy.”
Five minutes later I walk out to the parking lot with a report on Dunwoody in my hand. I scan over it while I wait for Jay, who is on his way, when I catch something unexpected.
…traces of benzoylmethylecgonine and lysergic acid diethylamide.
In addition to booze, pot, and speed, the minister’s son had cocaine and LSD in his blood.
Chapter 20
Jay
“The ratio is the same.”
Meredith bends over the conference table and points at the side-by-side reports. One is from the entomologist she consulted, and the other is from the CBI lab.
She jumped in my truck when I picked her up just now, and I was a little confused when she asked me to turn back to the FBI office. I get it now.
“Same batch,” I conclude, and Damian Gomez hums in agreement before speaking up.
“You’d assume so. Makes me wonder if there are more who OD’d on that same batch. Doc? Any ideas on that?”
Meredith seems startled but then she shrugs. “I can look into it. Dennis Heath wasn’t the first drug-related case I had on my table the past year. I can go through my files.”
We head out shortly after, leaving Gomez and the chief to try and get a handle on this latest spin this case has taken. The FBI agent suggested with all of these different angles, it might be an idea to hold regular briefings. Joe agreed, offered the large briefing room at the station, and the first one is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at four. Meredith was invited as well.
“Where was Blackfoot?” Meredith asks when I get behind the wheel. “I would’ve thought he’d be there this afternoon.”
I realize she wouldn’t have heard me ask Ramirez outside the lab earlier.
“I guess Joe figured he needed the day off. He’s been a bit off lately. Short. Maybe stress or something.”
“Keith? Hmm. He’s usually pretty even-keeled.”
I turn and notice she’s gazing out the window, a frown between her eyebrows. “You’re friends with Autumn, right? Has she mentioned anything?”