Chapter Twenty-Four
From beneath the glass fume hood door, I reached in and examined the piece of ceiling tile Patrick had submitted for evidence. The steady hum of the negative pressure exhaust deafened my ears to other sounds in the room. I scraped off the reddish-brown areas with a scalpel and immersed the bits into a tube of extraction fluid. It was odd to have had ceiling tile come into play in my life in two different ways. First in an investigation, and second, at my place in the basement.
“June!”
I jumped and swiveled on my stool to look behind me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Vinny said and pushed up his glasses. “Your previous co-worker, Ursula, is starting today. After she puts on a lab coat, I thought she could shadow you for the day.”
“Oh, right,” I said, recalling last week’s announcement. My stomach twisted into a Palomar knot. I couldn’t lie. She’d burned me before, and now I was twice shy.
Ursula entered the lab and walked toward Vinny and me. She hadn’t changed. She still sported an edgy burgundy bob, winged black eyeliner, and wore a form-fitting lab coat.
“Hello, June,” she said in a smooth voice and spoke as if we were long-lost friends.
“Hi, Ursula. Welcome to forensics,” I said.
Vinny placed a stool beside me. “I’ll leave you two ladies to catch up. You’re in expert hands, Ursula.”
“I know I am, Vinny,” Ursula said smoothly. “I’m the one who trained June, once upon a time.”
I struggled not to grimace. I equated that training to boot camp. A long day stretched ahead. I took a deep breath and explained the extraction procedure. “As you can see, forensics differs completely from routine pathology.”
Ursula didn’t agree or disagree.
“There are SOPs online so you can familiarize yourself with what we do here. Have you been given a password yet?”
“I have,” she said.
“That’s good,” I said. Moments of awkwardness were almost palpable, but I fought through them and kept talking about work duties. “For obvious reasons, it’s especially important at this stage of sample prep not to cross-contaminate.”
Ursula nodded, as if she knew everything already. That was good. At least she was engaging.
“Do you know if Aram is in today?” she asked out of nowhere.
“He is,” I said as I screwed on the test tube lid, trying not to sound surprised or annoyed.
“I’ll have to stop by his office and say hi,” she said. “We had such good times together at St. Eugene’s.”
“I’m sure he’d like that,” I said and pulled off my gloves, wondering how good those times really were.
“You know, June, things went to shit after you left St. Eugene’s.”
I paused. “Really? How?”
“We were understaffed, and everyone became stressed and bitchy. And of course, Victoria kept making mistakes, right up to her suspension. Thank God, you reported her. She would have killed someone.”
“Thank you,” I said, assuming that was a compliment. “Still, it was a tough thing to do.”
“I’m sure it sucked, being labelled as a snitch,” she said.
I bit my lip.?
“Victoria was pissed,” Ursula continued. “I’d never seen her face as red as when she came out of the boss’s office. I’m glad to be out of that place.”
“Me, too,” I said. Finally, we were in an agreement about something. In her own way, I sensed Ursula was being respectful and cooperative. But only time would tell.
I showed Ursula the various instruments and briefly explained their function. We sat at a computer terminal, and I orientated her on the software program.
Ursula checked the clock on the wall.
I hadn’t realized it was almost noon. “You’re welcome to go for lunch. We can meet back here in an hour.”
She got up and bustled out of the lab. The upside to training her was I didn’t have to tell her things twice.
I remained seated at the computer and checked my work emails. I leaned back in my chair and thought of the mystery list on the USB I had found. I stood to retrieve it from my locker.
Halfway down the hallway, Ursula and Aram stood near each other. They were all smiles and giggles, and I said, excuse me as I walked by.
I rushed into the locker room and let out a breath. Their brazen flirting irked me. Maybe it was because Aram had seemed to have moved on so easily. It didn’t matter now. That part of my life was over. Gone. I wasn’t feeling any form of jealousy right now. I opened my locker.
What was wrong with me? Aram and Ursula were probably just catching up because they hadn’t seen each other in a long while. I rummaged through my handbag and retrieved the USB stick.
The main door opened, and Aram sauntered over. “How are you?”
“Awesome.”
He looked at my hand. “What’s that?”
“Just a USB drive.”
“Are they photos? Any of us?” He raised his brows and smiled.
I slammed the locker door. “No. There are no photos.”
“I’m sorry, June,” he said. “I saw the way you looked when you walked by, and I just wanted to say I am not interested in Ursula. Nor was I ever interested in her. I know it’s moot now, but I wanted you to know.”
My temper flare dissolved. He had read my expression of disgust and addressed unspoken words, unspoken emotions. His consolation smoothed my unjustified, immature outburst. “It’s okay,” I said.
“I’ll see you around,” he said and turned to leave.
“Aram,” I said. “This stick actually isn’t mine. I found it in my basement.”
“Found it? Do you know what’s on it?”
“A long list of names. And numbers.”
“Phone numbers?”
“No. There are too many digits,” I said. And then I couldn’t believe the next words out of my mouth. “Actually, could you have a quick look? Maybe you’ll know what kind of list or directory it could be.”
“Sure. We can use my office computer, if that works.”
“It does.”
We made our way inside his office and left the door open. I handed him the flash drive, and he inserted it in into his laptop. He clicked the mouse until the list came up.
I shuffled closer. “I don’t recognize any of the names, but of course I never expected to. There are no logos, subtitles, or dates.”
He scrunched his brows in thought. “No, I don’t recognize any names either. This looks like a personal compilation.” He put a finger to the screen and counted the number of digits beside the names. “Twelve,” he said. “A phone number has ten.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “There are twelve digits. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but patient identification numbers have twelve digits.”