Timothy
The medical examiner’s building is a few miles from the police station, a typical northeastern concrete block, low and white
nestled among a spate of pine. I pull up and gather my internal resources for my meeting with Beck.
I like Beck, I really do. But to be honest, he’s a little weird. First of all, he used to be an EMT. And those folks see things
that most of us don’t, won’t, and shouldn’t ever see. Broken limbs, bodies in various states of decay, found in ignoble conditions,
abuse, self-harm, murder, the ravages of unchecked disease. It changes them; many develop a very dark sense of humor to cope.
And what Beck finds funny is often unsettling. The other thing is that as the chief medical examiner, he spends much of his
time now with dead people. And I think he likes them better than he does those of us who happen to still be breathing.
I leave the car and approach the building. The smell of chemicals and death hits me as soon as I am buzzed through the doors.
The curly-haired heavyset desk clerk waves me through.
“Detective,” he says. “How’s it hanging?”
Which impresses me as something you’re not supposed to say anymore.
Probably never should have said in the first place.
I just give him a nod, and he smiles, face full of piercings—eyebrows, lips—an unhealthy pallor to his complexion.
He’s young; I feel like I could give him some advice about getting outside more.
But I have found that people generally don’t want advice, especially when they haven’t asked for it, sometimes even when they do.
Outside the entrance to the autopsy room and to Beck’s office is a desk where Miranda Reyes sits. With long black hair and
dark skin, deep-set eyes, generally dressed in various shades of black and gray, she’s like his undead gatekeeper. Her clear
directive is to keep people as far away from Beck as possible.
She’s here now, staring at me with that look that says do you have an appointment?
“He called me,” I say defensively.
“I know,” she says, tapping a black-painted fingernail on the desk, pinning me with her thickly lashed gaze.
“Your sister,” I say. “She’s a tiger in the boxing ring.”
She softens a little. “That doesn’t surprise me. She’s a handful at home.”
Miranda, who is raising her little sister, brought Dahlia to me after Dahlia got into a fight at school that almost got her
kicked out.
“How’s she doing at school?” I ask now.
Miranda nods, twirls a strand of hair. “Better. Calmer. Her grades are improving. She’s got some friends. That’s you. That’s
on you.”
I shrug. “I’m just wearing her out, giving her a place to vent, teaching her to control her impulses.”
“That’s a lot,” she says. Her lips are painted black, too. It’s a look. Black mini, oversized sweater, fishnet stockings,
and Doc Martens. She looks like she’s headed to goth night at the local club instead of working late.
She nods toward the door. “He’s waiting for you.”
Tonight, Beck’s office is only lit by his desk lamp, and the human skull by his keyboard is staring at me, eyes black pools.
I wonder who it was. But I stop short of asking because it’s a rabbit hole.
In addition to his role as ME, Beck is also busy, travels to teach, goes to writers’ conferences where he talks to mystery authors about how to accurately portray forensic science, toxicology, autopsy results. He even has his own Instagram page: @drdeath.
On his Insta bio: Death is a part of life. To live well memento mori.
Something else about Beck, which is a little weird for me but not as weird as you would think. Beck used to be Becka, and once after the precinct Christmas party a couple of years ago, we hooked up. And—it was pretty hot. I liked Becka a
lot; she was funny and inventive in bed, warm, exciting. But she left in the middle of the night. And then she blew me off,
didn’t answer my calls. Got a little chilly with me on the job. After her final text: Tim. “No” is a complete sentence, I finally took the not-so-subtle hint and reluctantly shifted back into our professional relationship.
By March, Becka announced that she was transitioning, that she would like to be known as Beck moving forward. That her pronouns
had changed to he/him. Anyway, I like Beck, too. He’s the same person—whip-smart, wicked sense of humor, cool under pressure.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I still think about Becka, though.
“We don’t talk on the phone now?” I ask.
He looks up from his work. “This town—you never know.”
“What does that mean?”
He hands me a folder and I sit down in the chair across from his desk. He’s growing a beard, looks like he’s been working
out—broader through the chest and shoulders. His hair, once a shoulder-length bob, is cropped short. Is it odd to note that
he’s as good-looking a guy as he was a girl? Is that one of those things you’re not supposed to notice or say in a professional
environment? Is it toxic maleness on my part?
I open the folder and start reading his report.
“Final results confirm my initial findings that Paul Hayes was poisoned. Hemlock. Do you know that Socrates was forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock to answer to his crimes of inciting disrespect against authority, accused of impiety and corrupting Athenian youth?”
“Okay.” Maybe I knew that, somewhere in the deep recesses of my knowledge of history.
“Also present was aconite, known as wolfsbane. Greek hunters used it to bait and kill wolves. A blue-flowering plant, it’s
often mistaken for an edible herb. It paralyzes the nervous system and eventually stops the heart. Even skin contact can be
dangerous.”
I’m looking through the report, but it’s a lot.
“These are common plants found in gardens, meadows, by the roadside,” he goes on. “People think plants are harmless, but many
of them are not. They have to defend themselves like everyone else.”
We’re both quiet a moment. I flash on Paul’s face, the way his hands were clenched in death to his own throat. Not a pleasant
way to go.
Looks like they got their wish. I flash on what I saw on the video footage. My brain is in overdrive, trying to piece it all
together.
“Did they run tests on Ignatia Rose?”
He rubs his hands together. “The hospital did not find either substance in her blood. In Ms. Rose’s case, based on the menu
you provided, they suspect it could have been the death cap mushroom, often mistaken for its harmless relatives. Her renal
failure is consistent with the effects of amatoxin. And it would only take a very small amount, less than half a mushroom
to harm or kill.”
“Did they find evidence of that toxin in her blood?”
“Her symptoms and biomarkers are consistent with known effects of the poison—hypocalcemia, hepatic failure, anemia.”
“Is there an antitoxin?”
“No, unfortunately. You just have to hope the body recovers from the ravages of the toxin. Just try to keep the patient alive long enough that they heal. In extreme cases, she might need a liver or kidney transplant.”
I sit with it a minute, Beck watching me. He goes on. “Murder by poison is an ancient technique, dating back to the Greek
and Roman empires. Circe, Medina, Locusta. Historically, it’s a woman’s weapon.”
I look at him, his gaze as dark and steady as the skull beside him. I try not to think about the night we spent together,
but I do. We mostly avoid each other except when we’re working now. But there’s still something there, a connection.
“So, hemlock, wolfsbane, and the death cap mushroom, these are organic substances,” I say. “Growing somewhere nearby presumably.”
He nods slowly.
“Have you ever heard of The Cove?” I ask.
Does he startle? He recovers quickly, leans back, releases a sigh. He grew up nearby in The Hollows. He attended Sacred Heart
College, got his master’s and PhD at John Jay College in Manhattan, then returned to work here. He knows the area, the people,
well.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” he says softly, as he rises and closes the door.
“It’s our job to be talking about this,” I say sitting up and turning to look at him.
“Do you think the world is a fair place? That good triumphs over evil and bad people get punished?” he asks, still lingering
by the door. He’s wearing his white lab coat and scrubs.
“Not necessarily,” I say. “No.”
I think back to my last domestic violence case, the one that ended in a young woman murdered by her husband in her kitchen, her baby crying in his crib for hours until a neighbor called the police.
She was small, maybe five three, a preschool teacher, someone’s daughter, mother.
I remember thinking, here’s a girl who never hurt a single person.
She bled to death on the tile floor of her kitchen.
We caught up with her husband getting wasted at a nearby bar, his knuckles still bleeding.
Look what she made me do, he kept saying over and over. I could have killed him right there; the rage was an ache at the back of my throat. We were
alone, on the deserted road back to the station. I could have pulled over. Just meted out the cosmic justice that he deserved.
But I didn’t. Last I heard, he was out on parole, trying to get custody of his kid back from the grandparents. It still activates
my ulcer when I think about it.
“It’s not,” he says. “In this work, we know that too well, don’t we?”
“What’s your point?”
“The Cove isn’t just one thing or group. It’s like a network. A network of women who help people.”
“Help people do what?”
He walks back around his desk and sits again. “Like, who would have believed that ever again we’d need to seek an illegal
abortion from the local midwife, herbalist, or shaman? That we’re heading back to coat hangers and forced sterilization? And
yet, here we are, a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body in the hands again of male lawmakers. Women find themselves
again at the mercy of a system that wants them to be weak and small, controllable, filled with shame and fear. So, we have
to find another way. Back to nature.”
My conversations with Vera and Ana ring back. “Are they—witches?”
He smiles. “Do you even know what that word means? You think it’s potions and cauldrons, bonfires, eye of newt, spells and
curses?”
“You tell me.”
“Witch is just another word for a powerful, fearsome woman in control of herself and connected to the earth. It’s a male word, something that justifies the institutional punishment and control of half the species.
Because there’s nothing more terrifying than a woman who won’t submit, who has some secret knowledge that can’t be regulated. ”
“Okay,” I say, drawing out the word. “I hear you.”
He rocks back in his chair, glances at the door. “The Cove is mainly comprised of people doing good in the world. But as in
all organizations, there are always bad actors. People who take things too far.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Beck?”
He taps the file. “I’m telling you to find the place where these things grow—the hemlock. the wolfsbane, and the death cap
mushroom—and you’ll find some answers, or at least more questions that will lead you to the answers.”
“And where would that be?”
“Have you ever heard of a poison garden?” he asks.
It’s starting to shape, the diffuse edges of the truth solidifying.
“Illuminate me.”