Chapter 22
At the medical examiner’s, Noelle grabbed two masks.
She didn’t know if it would help block the smell of death, but it was worth a try.
She was tempted to wad up tissues and shove them in her nose but didn’t want Evan to see her do it.
It was bad enough that his probing gaze hadn’t left her since they entered the medical examiner’s building.
He expects me to pass out. Or make a run for it.
Evan had met her at the building after she’d watched Emma go through two bags of clothes.
The teen had kept everything Kaylie had sent.
They’d been mostly practical clothes. Sweaters, jeans, coats.
The things looked a little big but not too bad.
Kaylie had also included a few sparkly things, which had made Emma’s eyes light up.
If anyone deserved something pretty, it was Emma.
Noelle was determined to find out what was going on in that girl’s life, why two men had shown up and spoken as if they had orders to kill her.
She also wanted to know exactly who Uncle Tommy was.
After the autopsy.
Evan eyed her two masks, but Noelle refused to meet his gaze, focusing on tying her gown behind her back and adjusting her face shield.
She followed Evan into the autopsy suite while trying to get her gloves on.
“These’re too small.” She turned and went out the door. He followed a split second later.
“Are you okay?” His voice was full of concern.
“Jesus, Evan.” Noelle threw the gloves in a bin. “I’m getting bigger gloves. I’m not about to fall on my face.” She snatched two out of the box of mediums and deliberately yanked on the first one, finally meeting his gaze. “Go,” she ordered.
From behind his shield, he studied her eyes, the only part of her face he could see.
He must have believed her because he turned and went back in the suite.
Noelle followed, feeling sweat form on her upper lip.
It was already growing hot behind the two masks.
She breathed through her mouth and tried not to focus on how stuffy the air felt.
Am I getting enough oxygen?
I don’t want to end up on the floor.
She should have let Evan attend the autopsy alone. They’d cover more ground if they split up. But she’d been the one at the crime scene in the woods and felt an obligation to see it through.
I can’t back out now.
Nearly five years ago, new to the sheriff’s office, Noelle had gone weak kneed during the autopsy of a child in this very suite.
The deputy next to her had grabbed her arm just in time, as her face had been a foot from hitting the floor.
Noelle had known fainting was a possibility but had been trying to prove herself in the department and had hoped she could muscle through it under Dr. Lockhart’s careful gaze.
Nope.
The deputy had jokingly called her Crash, and for two years the nickname had followed her around the department.
Since then she’d interacted with Dr. Lockhart at several crime scenes and during postautopsy phone calls. But she hadn’t attended another autopsy until today.
Inside the bright suite, Dr. Natasha Lockhart was speaking to her assistant.
She stood on a custom platform that made a large U around the stainless steel table where their victim silently lay, his torso splayed open.
Dr. Lockhart was petite and looked very young; she could easily pass for a college student.
It took Noelle a moment to realize the music playing over the speakers was Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
The doctor glanced over as Noelle and Evan entered, her eyes widening slightly as she identified Noelle under the mask and shield.
She hasn’t forgotten.
“Detective Marshall. Did you see my email?” asked Dr. Lockhart.
“No. From when?” She hadn’t checked her email since the earlier conference room meeting.
“I sent one this morning.” The medical examiner’s eyes twinkled. “We got an ID off his fingerprints.”
“That’s great!” Noelle started to grab her phone out of her pocket, under her gown, and hesitated.
I shouldn’t touch things with my gloves.
Dr. Lockhart guessed at her hesitation. “Don’t worry about your gloves. You won’t be touching the patient.”
“Good point.” Noelle looked at her phone. “Michael Munoz. Age twenty-eight.”
Emma was right that it wasn’t her father.
Why wouldn’t she tell me what is going on with him?
“I’ll get someone going on a current address and family,” said Evan, pulling out his own phone.
Noelle finally looked squarely at the body on the stainless steel table but couldn’t bring herself to look at his face.
Knowing his identity didn’t make her feel any better.
In fact it personalized the tragedy before her.
She tried to slow her pounding heart with calm breaths under the double masks.
It sort of worked.
“What can you tell us, Doctor?” Noelle asked in what she hoped was a normal voice. It appeared the medical examiner had finished with the organs in the torso. She had moved to the head.
“Mr. Munoz was a healthy man. He has an old, healed break in his radius and a few faded scars here and there, but he has recent contusions around his wrists and ankles.”
“He was tied up,” said Evan.
Like the man in the judge’s trunk.
“And not fed,” said Dr. Lockhart. “His digestive system was empty, and somebody beat on him close to his death. There are more recent contusions on his face, and his jaw was recently fractured.”
Noelle flinched, thinking of the blow it would take to break a jaw. “Maybe it happened after he died.”
“No,” Dr. Lockhart said in a flat voice. “I guarantee it didn’t.”
“Maybe that’s why he hadn’t eaten,” murmured Evan. “He couldn’t.”
Dr. Lockhart nodded. “A good theory. At the crime scene, I determined that he’d been moved after death, remember?”
“The livor mortis,” said Noelle, recalling the dark shade of his back, which indicated Mr. Munoz hadn’t died on his stomach, as they’d found him. “Do you have a time of death?”
“Not yet,” said Dr. Lockhart. “I’m waiting on labs. But I haven’t seen anything that contradicts the three-to-five-day timeline I said the other day.”
“And the gunshot wound?” asked Evan.
“The entry wound is actually from two bullets. Someone fired twice without moving the weapon,” said Dr. Lockhart.
“There is heavy stippling in the skin around the entry, telling me the gun was very close to his forehead when it was fired. One of the bullets exited under the jaw, but X-rays show one is still inside. My next step is to find it.”
Noelle finally looked Michael Munoz in the face. He didn’t look twenty-eight. He was grossly swollen, and his skin was mottled, but the hole in his forehead was apparent.
Two bullets. Someone wanted to be certain he was dead.
Dr. Lockhart’s last words sank in, and Noelle glanced at her. The doctor was hesitating near Mr. Munoz’s head, a scalpel in her hand, her gaze on Noelle.
She’s waiting to see if I want to leave.
Because the need to find the bullet meant the medical examiner was about to slice his scalp, peel part of it over his face, and then cut into the skull with her bone saw.
Noelle hadn’t watched—or listened—to it in person before, but she was well aware of the next steps.
She tried to take more deep breaths, but this time the double masks worked against her.
She grabbed at them and yanked them under her chin to suck in air. And then the smells hit her.
“I’ll be outside,” she barely managed to say before spinning and making a beeline for the exit. Outside the suite door, she ripped off all her PPE, wadded it up, and crammed it in the bin.
I won’t faint.
I need fresh air.
She headed down the hall toward the reception area and heard the suite door swing open behind her.
“Noelle!” Evan’s voice was muffled behind his mask. “Wait up.”
“I’m okay, Evan,” Noelle said, not looking over her shoulder. “I’m not going to pass out.”
He caught up with her halfway through the reception area, stripped of his PPE. “Hang on.”
Noelle stopped and made herself look him in the eye. “What?”
Evan touched her arm, sympathy in his gaze. “I don’t like what she was about to do either.”
Frustration boiled through her. “Mentally I know I can tough it out, but my body betrays me. It has other plans.”
He shrugged. “Fine. You gave it another shot. We’ll go back to me attending the autopsies like we’ve done for the past several years. Not a big deal.”
“I should be able to do this!” She rarely encountered a situation she couldn’t power through.
“I get it,” said Evan. “This is your thing. For me it’s heights.” He grimaced. “As soon as I look down, I’m completely frozen. It’s ridiculous. Going up I’m fine as long as I focus on where I’m going. But damn, one look down, and I have no control anymore.”
“I didn’t know that.” She tried to recall if they’d ever been in that type of situation together.
“It’s not something I brag about.” He sighed. “Dr. Lockhart will let us know what she finds. Neither of us needs to be there.”
“But it’s important because—” started Noelle.
“I know,” said Evan. “So it’s a good thing we can divide up duties. Autopsies for me, and you can be in charge of anything that involves standing on a cliff.” He held up his phone. “Lori got back to me with a last known address for Munoz. Feel up to that?”
Another death notification.
Still preferable to an autopsy.
“Yes, let’s go.” Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten lunch. “But we need to grab some food on the way.”
Evan grinned. “If you can eat after being in there, you’re fine.”
“I can always eat.”