Page 92 of Good Girls Lie

I stand for a moment, slack jawed and hurt, then slowly start to walk back to Goode, the fury building in my gut.

How dare she?

Howdareshe?

55

THE TRUTH

Kate sees Camille Shannon’s family seated in the medical examiner’s waiting room, white-faced and tight-lipped, so she does an about-face and walks out the door, around the building to the back entrance, where discreet OCME vans deliver their cargo to the morgue.

She starts to badge the guard at the door, hand drifting to her waist until she remembers her creds are in her boss’s drawer. She tries a smile instead.

“Kate Wood. Charlottesville Homicide.”

The magic words work. The guard nods a greeting. “Heya. We aren’t expecting you, are we, Detective?”

“I’m here for my uncle. Sheriff Wood, Marchburg. The body from The Goode School?”

“Oh, yeah. Go on in. Dr. Singh’s got her. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

“Thanks, man.”

The autopsy is wrapping up when Kate arrives. The ME is a young woman, they get younger and younger, it seems. The old-school, cigarette-smoking, tuna-fish-sandwich-eating, gray-haired men are becoming obsolete, making way for shiny new MEs fresh out of school with expertise in cutting-edge forensics and more. Kate wonders for a moment if Tony feels the creep of white-male-privilege obsolescence in his department, then decides no, he’s too young and progressive. He has a high number of female staffers because he respects their abilities, not because he wants a nice view day in and day out.

Irrelevant, Kate. Focus.

“You want to ask the parents, or should I?” the dark-haired ME is asking a redheaded tech in a stained coat as Kate enters the autopsy suite.

“Ask them what?” Kate gives the ME a wave. “Kate Wood, Charlottesville Homicide. I was on scene last night. Dr. Singh?”

“Call me Jenn, please. This is my lead investigator, Ron.” Ron gives her a peace sign. “And this is a sensitive case, so I’ll need you to sign a nondisclosure if you want to get read in.”

“Seriously?”

“Family’s request. Unusual, but it happens. They’re pretty high profile.”

“All right.”

“The forms are on the counter. Ron, can you get her squared away?”

“Sure.”

It’s a standard NDA, so Kate signs her life away.

“You’re Tony Wood’s niece?” Singh asks when she rejoins her.

“I am. I assume he’ll need to sign one, too?”

“Already has, he faxed his an hour ago. So, I’ve just finished up. I see no defensive wounds, we scraped her nails and there’s no tissue. There was a good set of fresh, developing bruises on her left biceps, one oval in the front, four in the back. Someone had a hand on her arm, holding her pretty tight. That could have happened anytime in the past forty-eight hours. Can’t say one way or the other if she was manhandled over the edge, though. Some small fibers in her throat, too.”

“Was she gagged?”

“Don’t know. No sign of fibers anywhere but in her throat, no abrasions around her mouth. Could be something was shoved in her mouth to keep her quiet, could be she inhaled something hugging a friend. Without any other indications, there’s no real way to know, but I took samples. My most surprising finding, though, was a fetus, approximately seven, eight weeks. That’s what we need to ask the family about. Paternity DNA. Whether they want to know who got their daughter pregnant. I was told they don’t know who might be responsible.”

“Oh, wow. We found a prescription for Cytotec, the pills were missing. We assumed she’d taken them.”

“She may have. It’s possible the pills didn’t work. Normally, they’ll discover that on a follow-up and do a scrape. She might not have gone for the follow-up.”