Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
When they’re gone, Gray exhales. I want to give him a hug.
I want to say something. What I don’t want to do is make a joke because I can tell he’s genuinely upset.
I can also tell he doesn’t want to talk about it.
So I think much too hard about my supportive-friend options—pat his back, squeeze his arm, lean against his shoulder—only to decide I don’t dare do any of them. Which isn’t like me.
I’d be quick with all of that any other time and with any other person. Even with Gray, I don’t think much of a squeeze or a pat. But I can feel the prickly energy shooting from him, and I’m afraid of getting the sharp end of his spikes.
No, really, I’m afraid of rejection, however temporary and infinitesimal, and I know I need to do something about my crush.
By “do something” I mean get over it. Box it up and put it on the memory shelf and in ten years, I can pull it down and say “Hey, remember those first years, after we met? I had such a crush on you. Crazy, huh?” and we’ll laugh.
I’m not laughing now. I’m in the throes of a very awkward infatuation.
I’ve never had this before. My crushes were strictly high-school, and always on guys I had no actual interaction with because that’s the point of a crush, right?
A fun endorphin rush without the inconvenience of actually having to—you know—talk to or otherwise interact with the object of your crush.
If the guy you’re crushing on is a friend, that’s just awkward. And if he’s a friend and a mentor and a detective partner and actually your boss and landlord? It’s stratospheric levels of uncomfortable.
It’s not as if I stand around mooning over Gray.
The problem comes in unexpected places, like this, where I want to comfort him, and the girl-with-a-crush rejects all options because if I squeeze his arm and he pulls away, that girl will feel rejected herself.
Which feels deeply selfish. He’s the one hurting …
and I will do nothing for fear of being hurt.
In the end, after expending far too much energy thumbing through options, I say, “Well, at least they don’t seem to have done any serious damage.”
“Yes.” Gray rolls his shoulders, pulling on the scholarly cloak that’ll feel most comfortable right now. He steps up to the table and draws back the sheet and exhales.
“Not much damage,” I say as I follow his gaze to the spots where the skin, fragile from the immersion and stretching, has broken. “The constables probably would have done the same.”
He nods, looks at the body, and then turns to me, mouth opening. Then he shakes his head and returns his gaze to the table.
“Duncan?” I say.
He hesitates, glances over, and says, “There are things about this I would like to discuss later. Preferably over whisky.”
“Sounds good.”
“For now, I brought camphor rub for the smell. Isla makes it for Hugh. Would you like some?”
“Yes, please.”
He pulls a vial from his pocket and twists off the cap.
I put a little of the salve under my nose.
It helps—both the camphor and the act of applying it, giving Gray a chance to mentally shift into work mode.
When he does, he moves to the top of the table, where the victim’s head is still covered. Then he glances at me.
I nod, and he folds back the rest of the sheet with great care. The sight is …
Oh, hell, the sight is horrific, and I think that’s part of the reason I’m so furious with those med students.
This isn’t a newly dead subject you could look at and pretend it’s a dummy.
When a person drowns in a body of water, they sink.
The corpse takes roughly three to five days to resurface, depending on the temperature, and the reason it resurfaces is decomposition.
In water, the body bloats, and the skin goes greenish and loosens, and the smell is unlike anything else. What I am looking at is monstrous, and the fact that it is clearly human is so much worse. My own revulsion is revolting, if that makes sense.
The hair is still attached to the scalp, though the scalp itself seems loose.
The hair matches Nellie’s—long and straight and dark auburn.
Most of it is still caught in pins. The eyes are washed out but still clearly blue, like Nellie’s.
It would be impossible to judge age—signs of aging would be erased by the bloat—but that hair has no trace of gray.
Her skin is a light tan color, which most of our witnesses mentioned with Nellie.
“Making a positive identification may be impossible,” Gray says. “This is certainly a situation where your DNA would come in very useful. Or … what did they use before that? Dental records, you said?”
I nod. “That’s useless in a world where someone like Nellie wouldn’t receive dental— Oh!” I look around. “Do you have a probe?”
He reaches into his pocket and produces a small leather kit. From inside it, he removes a probe. He doesn’t ask what I’m thinking—just hands it to me.
I very carefully prod the victim’s lips. “Nellie has a chip on her front left incisor. I asked for distinguishing features and—” My heart drops as I see the tooth, with its very old chip.
“Okay,” I say softly. “That seems like proof, but the housekeeper also mentioned a missing tooth. Other side. Top canine…” I stop as the probe hits the gap.
“May I take a closer look?” Gray asks.
I nod and hand him the probe. He repositions the lantern the boys left behind and then pokes and prods and peers.
“The tooth has been missing for years, likely,” he says. “The gum below has fully healed.”
“In other words, we’re not looking at some complex case where a body that looks vaguely like Nellie has been drowned to hide her identity, one tooth chipped and another extracted to complete the identification.”
“I fear not.” He glances over. “I’m sorry.”
“Either way, someone was still dead.”
“I know, but you spent a day getting to know Nellie, who seemed like a resourceful and sensible young woman. You wanted her to be alive.”
“Not as much as Isla hoped she was alive.”
His gaze fixes on me. “You do not need to deflect. This hurts.”
I exhale. “It does.”
“May I suggest, with these less than adequate conditions, we show Nellie the proper respect of moving her to my laboratory for further examination, pending Dr. Addington’s autopsy.”
“Please.”
Getting Nellie’s body to the town house isn’t easy.
Just preparing to convey her takes nearly two hours.
McCreadie has to deal with the med students first, which means transporting them in the cab back to the city.
He can’t justifiably stop in at the town house to ask Simon to send the coach for Nellie’s body.
That would be an unreasonable delay. So he has to send a message to Simon from the police office.
Simon meets us within the hour, but then we have to wait for McCreadie to return with Iain.
McCreadie doesn’t want to proceed without a constable to confirm his next steps.
I can tell that chafes. Oh, it’d be standard procedure in my time.
I wouldn’t have even dared follow the lead alone, and if I somehow stumbled on the body otherwise, I’d have backed out and called it in.
Police work is a lot looser here, as policies and procedures are being developed.
One thing I’m realizing is how much of those policies and procedures must have arisen from things going wrong.
It seems fine to have a detective pursue a late-night tip by himself, if there are no safety concerns.
It also seems fine for him to release the body to the coroner on his own.
But imagine all the ways that could go awry. All the holes it could poke in a case.
My mom is a defense attorney, and that’s one reason I’m ridiculously careful about following protocol. I can just imagine her face if I stepped onto the witness stand and said “I followed a tip on my own, found the body, and called in a hearse to take it without alerting anyone at the station.”
In this case, McCreadie isn’t worried about barristers.
He’s worried about Crichton. So he brings Iain and two other constables.
They confirm where the body is located and that Gray is on the scene.
Gray might not be the police surgeon, but the higher-ups in the department recognize his expertise, and they appreciate it.
There’s no point in locking down the scene. Again, that’s not really done when we predate most crime-scene analysis, but also, this is the scene of a very different crime—the theft of the body. The perpetrators have already confessed to that. Wherever Nellie died, it wasn’t here.
Only after all that’s done can we take the body. That part isn’t easy either. The smell means that two of the constables elect to stand guard instead. Iain accepts the camphor rub and assists us, as does McCreadie. Simon seems the least affected.
“Did I mention my father is a butcher?” he says.
“Uh, no,” I say.
“Also a right old bastard, so I don’t talk about him much,” he says cheerfully. “Never did anything for me except, apparently, give me a strong stomach.”
With that, he helps carry the wrapped body.
It takes all four men, with me guiding the way.
Nellie isn’t heavy, but the condition of her corpse means she must be moved with the utmost care, and it really is a miracle that whoever brought her to the shack didn’t do more damage.
Maybe her skin was less inclined to break while it was still wet.
I mention that to Gray, and I can see him mentally filing it away for future study.