Page 37 of Dirty Valentine (A J.J. Graves Mystery #17)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jack stayed behind at Hawthorne Mill to coordinate with the CSI team, so I rode back with Lily and Sheldon in the Suburban.

The storm that had been threatening all day was finally delivering on its promise, turning the late afternoon into premature twilight.

Lightning split the sky in jagged veins, each flash turning the world into a photographic negative—stark white followed by absolute darkness.

“I hate this weather,” Lily said. “If Cole doesn’t take me somewhere sunny and hot soon I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Did you know there’s a fifteen percent decrease in work productivity when it rains more than thirty-six hours?” Sheldon offered from the back.

“How about the murder rate?” Lily asked. “Because this rain makes me want to stab some people. Like this guy in front of me who won’t go more than ten miles per hour and has his hazard lights on.”

Lily pressed down on the horn and I sat still and wide eyed in the passenger seat, trying to remember back to my days of med school and how the pressure affected me. To be honest, I couldn’t really remember a whole lot. It’s just a lot of black space and panic when I try to think about it.

“Sheldon, you doing okay back there?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

“Fine,” he said, sitting next to the gurney where Margaret Randolph’s body lay sealed in black plastic.

“When someone gets their tongue cut out how do we prepare the body for an open casket? I’ve never dealt with a missing tongue before.

I like working with you because I get to add new things to my mortuary journal. ”

“Thank you?” I wasn’t sure if it was really a compliment directed at me or if it was directed at the depravity and creativity of murdering Virginians.

“Anyway, a missing tongue is no big deal,” I said. “If the shape of the mouth changes you just shove some cotton or putty in there to make it look normal, and then staple the mouth closed like normal.”

“I thought there’d be more to it,” Sheldon said, sounding disappointed.

“I had a guy once get the whole bottom half of his jaw blown off with a shotgun,” I said. “And the family wanted an open casket. You want to talk about miracle work? I was pretty proud of that one. By the time I was done you couldn’t even see he’d been in an accident.”

Lily navigated the familiar roads with ease despite the downpour that turned the windshield into a waterfall. The wipers fought a losing battle, each sweep immediately erased by fresh sheets of rain.

The funeral home materialized through the rain like a ship through fog, its red-brick facade dark with moisture.

We pulled under the portico, and the sudden absence of rain on the roof was almost disorienting.

The silence that followed felt heavy, expectant, as if the building itself knew what we were bringing into its walls.

We moved in tandem—Sheldon wheeling the gurney while Lily held the door and I punched in the security code.

The elevator descended with its familiar mechanical groan, taking us from the world of the living to the realm where death revealed its secrets.

The temperature dropped ten degrees between floors, the building’s climate control keeping the lower level cold enough to slow decomposition, cold enough to make me wish I’d grabbed my jacket.

In the lab, the fluorescent lights flickered to life with a harsh brilliance that banished every shadow, leaving nowhere for death’s secrets to hide.

The sterile white walls seemed to close in, creating a world separate from the storm raging above—a place where violence could be dissected and catalogued, where the dead finally gave up their truths.

Lily started photographing while I began the external examination, and Sheldon finished the paperwork with the methodical precision of someone who’d documented too many violent ends.

“Time for autopsy is 5:17 p.m.,” I said into the recorder. “Subject is Dr. Margaret Randolph, age thirty-six.”

“Look at her hair,” Lily said, leaning closer with the camera. “Someone washed and styled it. That’s a lot of effort postmortem.”

“Same with the clothes,” I added. “Everything’s been adjusted, arranged. Our killer spent time with her after death. Check her hands, Lily—any defensive wounds?”

“Nothing. Not even a broken nail.” Lily photographed each hand methodically. “She never fought back.”

“Which means she was unconscious when taken,” I said. “I’ve got something here. Black fibers caught in the finger creases.”

“From gloves maybe?” Lily said, already adjusting her camera settings for a macro shot.

“Looks synthetic. Bag these for me while I check the oral cavity.” I positioned the overhead light. “The tongue removal is interesting—one clean cut, very sharp instrument.”

“Scalpel?” Lily suggested.

“Or surgical scissors. Something precise.” I opened the oral cavity a little wider. “I’m going to bet that when we open her up cause of death will be drowning.”

“You think she drowned in her own blood?” Lily asked. “That’s a horrible way to die.”

I agreed, it was a horrible way to die. They posed her so serenely. You’d never think she suffered by looking at her. But suffered she had.

“Wait,” I said, bringing the magnifier down over her arm. “She’s got a tiny puncture mark here. Injection site. So maybe she didn’t know she was dying.”

“Small favors,” Lily said.

The internal examination revealed no surprises. Healthy organs, no signs of disease. Stomach contents showed a partially digested dinner of fish and rice.

“Tox screen shows she has a BAC of .09,” Lily said.

“So she had dinner and a couple of glasses of wine,” I said. “She was over the legal limit so her reaction time would’ve been slow. She might not have even known she was in danger until the needle went into her arm.”

“I need to head upstairs,” Sheldon said, sealing the last evidence bag. “Mrs. Patterson has called three times about her mother’s viewing tomorrow, and if I don’t call her back she’ll show up here with that taxidermied cat again.”

“Good luck with that,” Lily said, not looking up from her notes.

After Sheldon left, Lily and I continued working through the internal examination.

My phone buzzed as I was suturing the Y-incision.

“It’s Jack,” I said, seeing his name on the screen. I put him on speaker since my hands were occupied.

“How’s it going?” Jack’s voice sounded tired.

“Just finishing up. Found injection site, and some strange fibers on her hands. You?”

“Blackwood’s alibi is solid. Traffic cameras confirm he was home until he left for the mill. He got there a few minutes before we did. And Patricia Whitman’s DNA doesn’t match the blood at Victoria Mills’s house.”

“So we’re back to square one?” I asked.

“Not quite. Judith Hughes is stable enough to talk. Can you meet me at the hospital?”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

* * *

King George County Hospital squatted against the evening sky like a monument to human frailty, its windows glowing yellow against the pewter clouds.

The parking lot had become a shallow lake, each lamppost reflected in the standing water like drowning suns.

Jack waited in the lobby, water still dripping from his jacket, creating small puddles around his boots that the janitor eyed with weary resignation.

“Third floor,” he said. “Psychiatric wing. They’ve got a deputy posted.”

The elevator ride was silent except for the mechanical hum and the ghost of classical music piped through speakers that had given up on quality decades ago.

When we reached room 312, Deputy Rodriguez nodded from his chair outside, a paperback novel folded open on his lap—one of those true crime books that always got the details wrong.

“She’s awake. Pretty anxious though.”

The room beyond the door felt smaller than it was, shadows pooling in corners despite the bedside lamp’s valiant effort.

Judith Hughes looked nothing like her photo—the confident grad student researching Colonial property transfers had been replaced by something hollow and haunted.

She sat propped against pillows that seemed to swallow her, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold her pieces together through will alone.

Scratches covered her arms like desperate calligraphy, telling the story of her flight through woods that had hidden her but couldn’t protect her.

“Ms. Hughes,” Jack said gently. “I’m Sheriff Lawson. This is Dr. Graves. We found you in the barn.”

Her eyes tracked to us, but they weren’t quite focused—like she was seeing through us to something else entirely. “You found me,” she whispered. “Or maybe you were meant to find me. I can’t tell anymore what’s real and what she wants me to see.”

“Who?” Jack asked, leaning forward slightly.

“Bridget.” The name came out like a prayer and a curse combined.

“She’s been in my dreams for weeks. Showing me things.

The stones crying blood. The earth opening up beneath the courthouse.

My ancestors’ sins written in fire across the sky.

” She laughed, a broken sound that made my skin crawl.

“But that’s crazy, isn’t it? That’s what I kept telling myself.

Even when things started moving in my apartment. ”

“Your apartment?” I asked gently, taking the chair near her bed.

“I haven’t lived in the family house since…

” Her voice cracked. “Since my parents died. But several weeks ago, I started getting letters. Old paper, like parchment. It reeked of herbs, like rosemary or something—so strong it made my head spin.” Her fingers twisted in the hospital sheets.

“It said the house was calling me home. That I needed to face what my family had done. I threw it away, but then I found it on my pillow that same night. Then in my car. Then under my coffee cup at work.”

“How long did you get the letters?” he asked.