Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
B efore her morning coffee, Dr. May Smirnov finished tying off the last suture on Ace Osprey’s stubborn head wound. The thin line of stitches was neat despite his insistence on moving every time she touched his scalp. She usually arrived at work before dawn, so today was no exception, although she’d slept much better than usual on Delores’s couch and might’ve slept even longer had Brock not radioed her about a body coming in. She’d reluctantly moved off the sofa and headed into work, calling and awakening the forensic pathologist in Anchorage once she had cell service close to town.
Ace had been waiting for her, bleeding as he leaned against the building. Moron.
“Now, tell me again how you managed to slice open your hairline,” she murmured, focusing on snipping the final thread rather than the subtle, earthy scent clinging to him. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by a patient—especially one like Ace.
He grinned, the corner of his mouth tilting in a way that sent a jolt through her nerves. “I tripped and fell. It’s that simple, Doc.”
She arched a brow, unimpressed. He also smelled like whiskey. “Nothing is ever that simple.”
He shrugged but didn’t lose the grin.
She tossed the suturing tools into the metal bowl with a sharp clang. “Did you know the Surgeon General updated the guidance about alcohol? It's a toxin—never good for you, not even in small doses.” Her voice came out sharper than she intended, but she blamed the way he was watching her.
“Yeah, I heard.” He reached for his coat. He shrugged it on with ease, despite the height of the examination table forcing him to sit taller than usual. She winced internally. The clinic’s old, cheap equipment didn’t make things easy—she’d had to stand on a step stool just to reach him, which irritated her more than it should have.
His green eyes caught the sterile light, sparkling with amusement. His unkempt hair, streaked with deep brown, was in desperate need of a cut. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to push it back and trim it herself—an impulse she fought off with a professionalism that was becoming harder to maintain.
She wasn’t here to take care of him in that way. She was his doctor. Nothing more.
A sudden crash sounded from outside. The loud bang reverberated through the small clinic.
She jumped.
Ace’s gaze immediately sharpened, narrowing as he studied her. “That’s just snow falling from the eaves. You okay, Doc?”
“Oh, yeah.” She forced a laugh that sounded hollow to her own ears. “Loud noises and all that.” She tried to shake off the feeling of being exposed and turned back to make a notation in his chart.
The truth was, she hated loud, unexpected sounds. They took her right back to moments she didn’t want to remember.
Ace’s focus followed her as she scrawled her notes in his thickening chart.
“You know,” she began, keeping her tone light, “as your doctor, I’d recommend looking into mental health support. There are several excellent professionals you could Zoom with. You could even use my office if you wanted.”
One side of his mouth lifted into a sardonic grin. “You think I need my head shrunk?”
“Definitely,” she retorted, smiling despite herself. “You’re stitched together more often than not, and you’ve been coming in here more frequently, according to your medical records. Something’s off. Whatever happened with that plane crash, Ace? You haven’t dealt with it. You need to.”
The grin faded from his face, replaced by something quieter and more serious. He crossed his arms, leaning back just enough that the table creaked beneath him. His gaze locked on hers, steady and probing. “What about you?” he asked quietly.
Her fingers froze over the chart. She blinked. “What?”
“What are you dealing with, Doc?”
The question was so unexpected, so direct, that she felt like the floor had shifted beneath her feet. She looked away, but the weight of his stare didn’t let up.
They’d run into each other around town more than a few times, enough for her to know his habits and his quirks. And any time he got himself injured—which was more often than not—he showed up at the clinic. But never once had he asked her a personal question. Not like this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He didn’t look away, his gaze steady, peeling back her layers. “I think you do. Loud noises, huh? What else bothers you?”
She turned to face him fully, trying to muster the confidence she always felt in the exam room. “Nosy patients,” she said flatly.
“Fine, but if you need help, I can sober up.” He winked. “Do you need help?”
Charming, sexy, and wounded. A total disaster, basically. “No. Just pay your bill on time.”
He sobered, looking dangerous instead of damaged. “I’m here if you need me.”
Her throat tightened. “That’s kind of you,” she murmured. “I don’t need help—of any kind. Stop drinking. Listen to your doctor.”
“You’re not my doctor,” Ace said lowly. “Just because you patch me up once in a while doesn’t give us a doctor-patient relationship, May. Don’t forget that.”
She couldn’t breathe. “What are you saying?”
“The words make sense. I’ll lock the front door on my way out.” Ace’s jaw flexed. “You need to be more careful opening the place by yourself so early in the morning.”
“Brock and Ophelia will be here in a few minutes, if you want to wait for them,” she offered.
His expression blanked. “Yeah, Christian left me a message when he hit town and probably called them as well. I’m sorry about Tamara. I’ll see you later, May.” He loped out of the examination room and down the hallway, disappearing. The tension in the room relaxed. How odd.
She shook herself out of it and cleaned the room, sterilizing it. Then she moved into the hallway, ready to make that coffee.
The knock on the clinic’s front door was sudden and sharp. She jumped again, her shoulders jerking before she could stop herself. Oh for goodness’ sake. She knew they would be coming. Clearing her throat, she pressed her hand to the door, willing herself to stay in the present. She wasn’t that person anymore. She was in control.
She opened the door. “Sorry. I forgot that Ace locked this.”
“Hey, Doc,” Ophelia said as she entered the reception area, her voice steady. “Ace? Why was Ace here?”
Damn it. She shouldn’t have said anything. “Um, forget I said that.” Did she just violate HIPAA?
Ophelia’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. For now, we put the body in the hospital operating room instead of your office.”
The small-town hospital sat snugly between May’s clinic and the dentist’s office, the three businesses sharing a single operating room when surgeries or emergencies cropped up. The room had seen its fair share of chaotic injuries, but nothing like this.
“Sounds good,” May said, tying back her hair with quick precision. “I already contacted a forensic scientist colleague in Anchorage and we’ll see what we can do from here. But we’ll still need to send the body to the city when we get the chance.” But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
Taking a deep breath, May strode with Ophelia through the hub of her office and into the operating room. Brock already waited, his expression a mix of grim resolve and shared grief.
“You acting here as the sheriff?” she asked Brock, her tone more brisk than she intended.
He exhaled. “I don’t know. I’m not the sheriff, but I’m the best we have right now.”
“Well,” she said firmly, gesturing toward the door, “you two need to leave, please. I need to keep this place sterile.”
Ophelia frowned, but Brock gave a short nod.
“I mean it, Agent,” May added, emphasizing Ophelia’s title on purpose.
Ophelia blinked, then finally turned and followed Brock out.
The room fell into silence as May turned to the body on the table. Her heart clenched. She’d never met Tamara. What a waste of a young life—and those poor kids left behind without their mother.
She took a moment to ground herself, then booted up the computer. She still needed coffee, damn it. The internet was unpredictable at best, but for now, it held. She initiated a call to the forensic lab in Anchorage, and a familiar face appeared on the screen.
Dr. Elijah Porter. He was younger than most forensic experts she’d met, probably mid-thirties, with close-cropped auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses that magnified his intelligent, steady gaze. They’d crossed paths at a conference two weeks previous when she’d ventured as far as Anchorage, where he’d given a sharp, no-nonsense presentation on managing evidence preservation in extreme environments.
“May,” Elijah said, his voice calm. “Thank you for calling me in on this. What have you got?”
“A body,” she said plainly. “We’re isolated, and the weather’s about to trap us here for a few weeks. I need to conduct a partial autopsy remotely.”
His face tightened, but he nodded, all business. He’d asked her out in Anchorage, and she’d pretty much run away. “All right. Let’s get started. Walk me through the scene.”
May switched on the overhead light and angled it to better illuminate the body on the examination table. The harsh light cast long shadows over the sterile metal surface. She scanned the area beneath the body and along the sides of the table for any fluids or evidence that might have seeped out during transport. A faint, reddish-brown stain clung to the edges of the table, likely from thawing during the move.
“Residual fluid,” May murmured as she leaned in closer, swabbing the edge of the stain with a sterile cotton swab. The cold antiseptic smell in the room mixed uneasily with the faint metallic scent clinging to Tamara's remains.
Elijah’s image on the screen flickered as he adjusted his view. “That tracks. If she died in June and was exposed to the heat for weeks, most of the blood would have pooled, dried, or been absorbed. What you’re seeing now is from the thaw after she was moved. She bled out when it was warm.”
May’s stomach tightened as she took in the full picture. “So the environment sped things up and then preserved her.”
Elijah nodded. “Apparently.”
May retrieved forceps and lifted a strand of brittle hair near the back of the head. The strands broke apart as she touched them, crumbling into small, dry pieces. She carefully placed the largest intact pieces into a collection bag. The rest would be useless for further testing.
She adjusted the light again and leaned toward the ragged fabric of Tamara’s tattered jacket. “I’m taking fiber samples from the clothing remnants,” she said aloud for the recording. She gently sliced away a portion of the frayed sleeve and placed it in a labeled evidence bag.
Elijah leaned closer to his screen. “Show me the skull.”
May repositioned the camera to highlight two dents in the skull. The larger one was jagged and deep, while the smaller one was almost circular.
“Blunt force trauma,” May murmured as she traced the edges of the depression with a sterile probe. “But different shapes—could they both come from the same weapon?”
“Maybe,” Elijah replied thoughtfully. “If it was something irregular, like a crowbar, or if the killer changed the angle of the strikes. But it could also be two different weapons.”
May leaned in further, noting the splintering along the edges of the larger depression. “Whatever they used, they hit her hard enough to fracture the bone. This wasn’t an accident. No fall does this.”
Elijah nodded slowly, his expression grim. “This was deliberate. You can confirm the manner of death as homicide.”
The words settled heavily in the room. May felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Tamara hadn’t slipped and fallen. She hadn’t gotten lost or injured. Someone had attacked her—brutally.
May shifted her focus to the hollow orbits of the eyes. The edges of the sockets were uneven and frayed, as if something had chewed at them.
“The orbits are empty,” she noted quietly. “The edges aren’t clean. Could scavengers have done this?”
Elijah narrowed his eyes at the feed. “It’s consistent with scavenger activity, especially if she was left exposed during the warmer months. Rodents, birds...But there’s no way to know for sure without testing the tissue inside the sockets.”
May swabbed carefully along the edges of the eye sockets, collecting any residue that might offer clues. She sealed the swab in a vial and added it to the evidence tray.
She adjusted her view of the body, taking in the dried remnants of blood near the scalp and the frostbitten discoloration along the arms and torso. Even with the preserved tissue, the signs of early decomposition from the summer heat were still visible—the papery thinness of the remaining skin, the way some of the muscles had shriveled.
“You’re doing a good job,” Elijah said.
“Thanks.” May took a slow breath, trying to focus on the task at hand rather than the grim circumstances. “Is there any chance we can get her body to Anchorage?”
Elijah’s expression darkened. “Not for weeks. Not with that storm coming in. But you’re already doing everything we would do at the lab.”
She gave a brief nod. The evidence had to be preserved as best as possible until transport became feasible. Freezing the body again would slow further decay, but it wouldn’t stop everything.
“Understood,” she said, pressing her lips into a tight line. She noted the samples she’d collected—tissue, fibers, hair, and residue—and organized the sealed vials and bags in the evidence tray.
“Good work, May,” Elijah said after a pause. “I’ll make sure this case is flagged as a priority once we can receive the body.”
May exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”
He grinned, now off duty. “Maybe you can escort the body and we could get that drink this time.”
She forced a smile, having no intention of leaving the safety of Knife’s Edge again. Ever. “That would be lovely.”
“Good.” Satisfaction tilted his lips. “I’ll see you then.” He ended the call.
She stood there for a long moment, staring at Tamara’s lifeless form. Finally, she peeled off her gloves and disposed of them before walking to the hospital reception area, where Brock and Ophelia waited on black leather chairs. “It’s done,” May said softly. “Cause of death is homicide.”