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FORTY

three months before the funeral

The first five months of my administration turned out to be a nonstop series of blinks. They flew by in a blur.

But that second Thursday in June is etched in stone. It started with the storm of the century. And then came the devastating one-two punch.

First, Rachel Horton hit me with a left jab. “Dr. Byrne needs some more blood.”

The chief followed up with a right cross. “Minna Schultz is dead. Her body was found this morning floating in Magic Pond.”

Driving to the crime scene I kept thinking about that day a lifetime ago when Misty, still raw from the loss of her parents and her brother, told me that Minna’s role in their deaths would not go unpunished.

“One day, I’m going to make that bitch pay,” she’d sworn.

“Don’t go around repeating that to the rest of the world,” I told her. “Or one day it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass.’”

But Misty was too angry to keep quiet. She vented her rage to anyone and everyone who would listen. And today, I thought as I parked my car at Magic Pond, is the day I had warned her about.

My sister Lizzie, who only had to walk from the hospital, was already there when I arrived. “This has got to be the biggest crowd Minna ever drew,” she said. “So far, I’ve counted fourteen cop cars—local, state, and sheriff’s department, plus EMS, the ME, and a dive team from the county.”

“And a pack of bloodthirsty jackals,” I said, pointing at the cluster of reporters, news vans, and camera crews.

“You know what they say, Maggie—give the people what they want, and they will come.”

“Mayor Dunn! Dr. McCormick!” It was the chief. He waved us through the perimeter and led us behind a privacy screen that had been set up to block the macabre scene from public view. Maureen Jessup, the medical examiner, was kneeling beside the body.

“Maureen,” I said, “I need?—”

“I’m not done yet, Maggie,” she said without looking up. “I need a little time.”

“I know, I know. Just give me some good news I can feed to the public.”

Maureen lifted her head and looked to me. “You want good news? Tell them she’s dead. That ought to make a lot of people happy.” She turned back to her work.

I looked at Lizzie. “Do you see those vultures over my shoulder? If I don’t tell them something, they’ll make up their own shit.”

“Ignore them, Mags,” she said. “This isn’t your first media circus. You’ve done this a hundred times.”

“As a prosecutor. This is my first one as mayor.”

“You want me to help you lose your virginity?” she said. “Get out there with a bullhorn and tell them what they want to hear.”

“Which is what?”

“I don’t know,” Lizzie said. “How about something like this: ‘The bloated and bludgeoned cadaver of my biggest political rival was just pulled from the very same body of water that had been at the core of our venomous conflict. So lock up your womenfolk and children and grab your pitchforks and torches. There’s a homicidal maniac on the loose.’”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re no help.”

“Maggie, in a town like Heartstone, where three people getting food poisoning at the firehouse potluck dinner is front-page news, that’s exactly what they’re hoping for.”

“I know, but I need to give them something reassuring.”

“Okay, let’s try this: ‘Beloved philanthropist Minna Schultz died peacefully of natural causes in her sleep last night. The medical examiner is completely clueless as to how her pruned and puckery ass wound up floating in Magic Pond.’”

I didn’t crack a smile, but Maureen laughed out loud. She stood up. “You two are annoying the crap out of me. If I give you something with a positive spin, will you take your sister act on the road so I can focus on my work here?”

“Yes!” I said. “Absolutely!”

“Here it is: There are no obvious signs of external trauma or defensive wounds.”

“So, you’re leaning toward suicide?”

“Come on, Maggie. How long have we been working together? I am not leaning toward anything. You asked for some good news, and the best I can give you is that nothing is jumping out at me that suggests homicide. But that can all change once I’ve got her on the table and I’ve spent some quality time with her up close and personal.”

I knew that was as good as I was going to get. I looked up at the chief.

He gave me a nod. “We can work with that.”

For a small-town cop, Chief Vanderbergen was remarkably media savvy. “This is a lot like a car wreck on the highway,” he said. “Everybody slows down because carnage is fascinating—as long as it’s not your own. But as soon as a cop gives them a ‘nothing-to-see-here-folks’ wave, they lose interest and get on with their journey.

“The press will play Minna’s death for all it’s worth, but for now you can take some of the steam out of their rhetoric, just by saying something insipid, but reassuring.”

“Like what?” I asked.

He flipped open a pad and read from it. “We are closely examining the circumstances surrounding Ms. Schultz’s death, and we do not believe there is any threat to the community, nor are the police looking for anyone at this time.”

“Perfect,” I said, taking the pad out of his hand.

I read the statement exactly as he’d written it, and then segued into what was really important—the storm that had been pelting us for the past thirty hours. My message was simple: it’s over, we weathered it, and we’ll be coming out of it even stronger. Classic political bullshit, but it seemed to do the trick.

“Nicely done, Mayor Dunn.” Lizzie said. “Always a pleasure to watch you work your magic, but now I’ve got to get back to my boring day job healing the sick and comforting the dying.”

“Don’t go,” I said. “Something happened. Rachel came to my house early this morning.”

She gave me a blank stare. “Rachel... Rachel...”

“From Dr. Byrne’s office.”

“Well, well, well. I guess that’s one of the perks of being mayor. Your phlebotomist makes house calls. I still have to show up at his office.”

“I did go to his office. Last week. But something is wrong, so she showed up this morning and took it again.”

“And?” she said.

“ And ? And what do you think? Twenty-five years, and I’ve never had to do a retest. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“No. Not really.” She paused and then let out a long sigh. “Oh, Jesus, Maggie. Have you already written the script? What did Rachel say?”

“She said that the lab screwed up. What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here, Maggie, but maybe the lab screwed up. It happens all the time. Do you remember Covid? Do you know how that got started? Somebody in a lab in China screwed up.”

“That’s never been proven.”

“Fine. You want more examples? Go to the memorial wall on the Lab Safety Institute’s website. Death by explosion is an occupational hazard. Doctors and technicians handle deadly viruses all the time. And sometimes they mishandle them.” She put her cell phone to her ear. “Honey, I’m not coming home tonight. I dropped the damn monkey pox beaker, and...” She ended the scenario with a coughing fit.

“I don’t know why you don’t take this seriously,” I said.

“Because labs are not robots, Maggie. They’re full of human beings who make mistakes because they woke up with a hangover, or their kid didn’t get into college, or their wife ran away with the FedEx driver.”

“Can you check with the lab and see what went wrong?”

“Absolutely not! I’m a doctor. I can’t walk into the lab and say, ‘Who the hell screwed up this time?’ Especially since you’re not my patient.” She gave me a hug. “You’ll get the results next week. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

She headed up the path toward the hospital.

“That’s the best you can do after four years of medical school?” I called out after her. “‘You’ll be fine’? I want a second opinion.”

She stopped and turned. “Okay! You’ll be crazy! Crazy and fine! It’ll make a great bumper sticker when you run for reelection.”