Chapter Eleven
Something oily took up residence in her veins.
Vulnerability felt like that. Thick and uncomfortable. Crap. She’d basically told Harvey that she’d wanted to be a couple before she’d escaped his house last night. To try to make this work between them.
Drennan was furious with herself for letting that buried little secret slip.
She knew better. How many times had she voiced her wants and had them thrown back in her face or used against her over the years?
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do this again, and she couldn’t breathe through the tightness in her chest because of it.
Embarrassment didn’t cover it. This was outright fear.
Conditioned into her over years of being told nobody in their right mind would choose her. That she was—
“No.” Her voice echoed through the basement exam room, harsher than she’d expected. That voice didn’t get to live rent-free. Like Cassidy had said. Drennan closed her eyes, setting her hands against the cold stainless steel of the exam table.
But that kiss… It’d held the kind of passion she’d always wanted. The desperate, hot kind that made her feel wanted and important. And while more than one night together hadn’t been the agreement, she and Harvey really hadn’t planned for a baby. That changed things, didn’t it?
“Did you say something?” Dr. Yarrow entered their dark little exam room as she imagined someone might enter a formal event, all smooth lines, pressed seams and straight posture.
Even his forehead didn’t dare wrinkle despite his age being somewhere in the mid-sixties.
The lab coat protecting his slacks and button-down hung off his shoulders with a little extra give down the sides.
The man had single-handedly led the Office of the Medical Examiner here in Hurricane for over thirty years.
With more natural deaths than homicides between the locals, Zion National Park and Springdale, there’d been plenty of time to take care of his physical health, but the stress around his eyes was starting to show.
“No. Sorry.” Drennan got back to arranging the tools the ME would need to start the autopsy of the drowned victim from the park, everything from the bone saw to specimen tubes to collect bodily fluid samples as they progressed through their established routine.
Thankfully, it seemed Harvey had acted quickly enough to call Dr. Yarrow to collect the body from the clinic parking lot that not a whole lot of damage had been inflicted on the remains by the extreme heat.
She wasn’t going to lose her job. Yet. “Just talking to myself.”
“Must’ve been a hell of a conversation for me to hear it down the hall.” Dr. Yarrow rounded the exam table and folded down the thin sheet providing a small modicum of privacy to their patient.
The victim had been stripped of her personal items, including her hiking gear, the beanie she’d been found in, her jacket, shirt, underwear, boots and socks.
Impeccably arched eyebrows framed almond-shaped eyes, the deepest shade of brown Drennan had ever come across.
Full lips, a blade of a nose, clear skin and healthy mid-back-length dark hair spoke of someone who took the time to take care of herself.
Her body was soft, revealing the victim’s preference for cardio rather than strength training.
The blisters on the bottoms of her feet and the lack of wear on the hiking boots said this woman hadn’t been much of an outdoorswoman or she’d started a new interest.
There hadn’t been reports of any missing women as far as Drennan had been able to find when she’d contacted Springdale PD and Zion’s law enforcement division head she’d met at the scene, but that didn’t mean someone out there wasn’t missing her or simply hadn’t known where she’d gone.
Drennan made a mental note to check in with the surrounding police departments.
The victim was potentially young enough to fit in with the college crowd from St. George.
Maybe someone had inquired after her there.
Still, they had very little to go off of when it came to uncovering her identity.
No driver’s license or other form of ID had been discovered on the remains or in her backpack.
It would take DNA, fingerprints or dentals to solve that puzzle unless the rangers could recover her missing personal items.
Dr. Yarrow tipped the victim’s head back, unlocking her jaw to peer inside the woman’s mouth before stepping back and donning his protective eyewear, gloves and mask from the secondary table she’d arranged while trapped inside her own head. “Are you feeling better today?”
Drennan nearly dropped the syringe she’d been in the process of handing off to collect fluid from behind the victim’s cornea.
Vitreous humor. It was just one of many samples they’d preserve for toxicology and reexamination down the line.
She managed to hand off the syringe without losing the rest of her dignity. “Um, yes. Thank you.”
“That park ranger—what’s his name, Knight?
—said you’d collapsed from dehydration.” Strapping the magnifying glasses over his head, the medical examiner positioned the tip of the needle to the side of the victim’s eye and pushed forward, pulling on the plunger at the same time. A filmy white fluid filled the syringe.
Drennan tried not to roll his name around in her brain for too long, but the unsolicited reaction started in her toes and tightened the skin on her scalp.
Images of that kiss, of the way he’d held her weight against that archway as though she weighed nothing, attacked before she could assemble her defenses. Her mouth dried.
“It shouldn’t have happened. I’ll be more careful in the park next time.” Her skin heated with another dose of that thick oily feeling in her veins. It wasn’t a lie, but she wasn’t ready to explain what else had led to her throwing up all the fluids she’d drunk yesterday. Not until she had to.
Setting aside the now full syringe on the metal rolling cart to collect various samples, Dr. Yarrow went back to the victim’s mouth to collect DNA with an oversize Q-tip.
“Well, pregnancy is certainly hard no matter where your health starts. Just let me know if I need to adjust your duties or your hours.”
That… She hadn’t expected that.
“What?” Drennan shook her head, no longer seeing the woman’s face but a blur of white lab coat and darkening at the edges of her vision.
She was holding her breath. Forcing herself to breathe through the surprise, she focused on capping the Q-tip Dr. Yarrow had swabbed and adding it to the sample cart.
She’d just taken a pregnancy test yesterday morning and gotten her own confirmation.
Her boss couldn’t have known before her. Right? “How did you…”
“You’ve been more tired lately.” The medical examiner didn’t miss a step in their routine, inspecting the inside of the victim’s mouth for wounds, missing teeth, crowns that might identify her or disease.
The light coming from his magnifying glasses turned the woman’s skin a waxy white.
“Eating a lot more, too. I noticed you’ve been favoring more fresh fruit and vegetables. ”
“You concluded that I’m pregnant from all that?” Was that even possible? A new workout routine could end with those results.
Dr. Yarrow notched his head up to put her in his direct line of sight.
The brightness of the light on his glasses skewered her vision.
“Well, I might work with the dead, but I’m still around the living plenty.
And I remember when my wife was pregnant.
You wouldn’t believe her cravings. Who voluntarily eats cottage cheese with watermelon? ”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t planned on telling him for a few more weeks and only because she’d need to take some time off after the baby came.
Their work here wasn’t strenuous, but she’d wanted to give him plenty of time to hire and train a new assistant if that was what he needed.
“Did you photograph these bruises on the back of her neck?” The medical examiner tilted the victim’s head to one side, exposing the purple and blue marbling at her nape.
Drennan took as much of a cleansing breath as she could in a too-small exam room with a decomposing body that’d been out of the freezer for nearing two hours. “Yes. I already uploaded the photos to your laptop.”
“These look like a handprint. Like someone held her down and squeezed.” Dr. Yarrow straightened with all that grace she’d never been able to achieve, even as a little ballerina, and tore his gloves free.
He scratched at his nose with one thumb, his attention locked on the body.
“Considering how long she was in the water, I can’t imagine we’ll get clean fingerprints off her skin, but the size of the handprint is a start. You said you couldn’t find her ID?”
“No, and there are no missing person reports at this time. I was going to expand to other departments in the state, maybe even into Mesquite and Arizona to see if any of them filed a report matching her description later today.”
“Something might come up on the X-rays. It’s possible she’s had surgery in the past and has a pin or plate with a serial number we can use.
This is the fourth homicide I’ve seen in as few months coming out of that park.
” The medical examiner’s eyes narrowed on their victim, and he removed his magnifying glasses.
“It’ll take a few more hours to finish the autopsy and at least three weeks for the crime lab to return the toxicology on the samples we’ve collected.
I don’t want to wait that long. Go back to the scene.
See if you can find anything that tells us who she is.
Make sure you take enough water this time and the waterproof gear. It’s in the corner.”
Back to the scene? Up the near three miles of incline and into water that looked like an algae breakout?
And possibly run into the man she’d admitted to wanting more from?
Oh, hell. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach, and a rush of acid charged into her throat.
She swallowed it back, but like the thick oily feeling in her blood, it clung.
This was her job. Her only source of income unless she wanted to burn through her savings.
There were no other options from this point.
She’d given them all up when she’d resigned from her position in the ER.
No one would hire her back after what’d happened.
Drennan peeled her gloves free and tossed them into the biohazards wastebasket. Her breath shook on a long exhale. “I can do that.”
She could. She’d done it once before. This time, she would be more prepared.
It took about twenty minutes to reach Zion National Park’s front entrance and even less to park and catch the shuttle to the Grotto, where the Emerald Pool Trail began.
Her legs burned from overuse on ascent, especially given the weight of the waterproof gear.
Was Harvey assigned to patrol this trail today?
Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs with a burning at the back of her throat as she attacked the steplike boulders leading into the upper pools.
Wasn’t it rare for this area to be so empty of hikers?
She’d bypassed a few on the ascent, but they’d been coming down from the pools.
She’d expected a few hikers on the shore angling cameras up toward the hundred-foot waterfall blowing every which way from gusts as she donned the waterproof one-piece and boots.
But this was good, too. There wasn’t anyone to get in her way as she dredged the few-foot-deep pool.
“Ugh.” Yeah. She was going to have to get in that water.
For hours. Not how she intended her day to go.
Drennan took her first step, surprised by the silt that gave way under her weight.
She extended both arms for balance, then carefully tipped forward to get a better look into the murky water.
Maybe she should’ve given Harvey or the other rangers a heads-up she’d come out to search the scene.
They could’ve at least ensured she wasn’t attacked by a pond monster, but the idea of seeing Harvey so soon after their last conversation… She needed time.
Piercing the surface with her net, she dragged the apparatus along the bottom of the pool. Coming up empty. There had to be something here. A phone, a wallet, the victim’s ID very clearly identifying her remains. “Come on.”
A shadow crossed the surface of the water to her left.
Drennan turned to warn the hiker not to get closer.
Lightning exploded across her vision. Along with the pain.
And then she was lost to the Emerald Pools.