Chapter 9
NINE
Cold air blasted over Josie’s body as she walked into the lobby of Denton Memorial Hospital.
It felt amazing. More amazing than it should.
The air conditioning in her SUV was definitely broken.
She knew she should have a mechanic look at it, but who the hell had time for that?
Especially with the Balloons and Tunes Festival still wreaking havoc on the city and Chief Chitwood’s overtime budget.
Josie saluted the elderly woman stationed at the reception desk as she passed by.
She no longer needed to check in or flash her credentials. They were on a first-name basis.
Turner stood next to a bank of elevators, his back against the wall, one foot crossed over the other.
As usual, he was in a full suit. It was beige, almost the same color as Josie’s Denton PD polo shirt.
Two unruly curls fell over his forehead as he bent his head to his phone.
One thumb scrolled rhythmically over the screen.
Was he even looking at anything or was the activity akin to using a fidget toy?
“Late two days in a row,” he remarked as she drew closer, not bothering to glance up. “You know, just because you and the LT are doing the deed regularly doesn’t give you special privileges.”
Josie stopped in her tracks. Anger surged through her, hot and lightning quick.
Her mouth opened, a savage tirade about to pour forth.
Then she clamped it shut, realizing that was exactly what Turner intended.
She’d lost count of the misogynist sexist pigs she’d worked with over the course of her career, but they all used the same tired old playbook.
They taunted her to throw her off-kilter.
Getting her emotions stirred up distracted her from giving one hundred percent to her job, which gave them actual reasons to bully her.
They wanted her anger so they could mock it.
They wanted her self-doubt so they could play the unequivocal experts.
They wanted her to feel small so they could feel big.
They wanted her to feel stupid so they could lord their superiority over her.
They wanted her to feel intimidated so they could feel in control.
They wanted her to feel afraid so they could feel powerful.
Fuck. That.
It wasn’t about her anyway. It was always about them, and Josie had stopped giving them what they wanted a long time ago.
Besides, she was pretty sure something else was going on with Turner.
He hadn’t been this nasty in months. Noah’s operant conditioning experiment with the jars had worked well on him.
The name-calling, sexist remarks, and inappropriate comments had decreased significantly.
Flashes of humanity beneath his asshole exterior had become more frequent.
Despite the crass, inappropriate and demeaning words that had just come out of his mouth, Josie wasn’t sure he was quite as abhorrent as he wanted her to believe.
Being a total prick wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t even mildly taxing.
When you didn’t care about anyone or their feelings, it was nothing to hurt them. Sometimes, it was a whole lot of fun.
Except that Josie didn’t think Turner was having fun.
It was clear that he managed to amuse himself at times, but he put a lot of effort into being a douchebag.
Not for the first time, Josie wondered which was the facade.
This dickhead who’d just said something foul to get a rise out of her, or the kind, respectful investigator who had had lunch with her sister whenever he was in New York City.
Because there was a facade, and it was hiding something.
Whether it was more douchebaggery or an actual good guy was another question.
While she refused to respond to his words with the ire he was probably hoping for, she was still considering accidentally “tripping” and knocking him flat on his ass. Mostly because she couldn’t figure out how to make a knee to the balls look like an accident.
She really, really didn’t want to choose violence today.
Dropping into the box breathing she’d learned, which was supposed to regulate her autonomic system and calm her down, Josie catalogued the times she hadn’t wanted to physically assault Turner.
When he’d saved her from getting mauled by a dog.
When he’d saved her from falling down a stairwell.
When he’d crawled into a dark, enclosed space for her without a single mocking word about her claustrophobia and its origins.
When he’d broken rules, put his own job at risk, to get her information after Noah was abducted.
When he’d suggested that they were getting along.
So what the hell was this?
“If I were getting special privileges,” she said flatly, “you’d be unemployed.”
With a sigh, Turner dropped his phone into his jacket pocket and pushed off the wall.
He wouldn’t look at her, but Josie saw the purple smudges under his eyes and the pallor beneath his beard.
Punching the down button between the elevators, he said, “I’m sorry.
That—that was disgusting and uncalled for. ”
Josie’s mouth gaped open. Turner didn’t do apologies.
His long fingers stabbed at the button again before resting at his side, tapping away.
Recovering, Josie said, “What is wrong with you?”
Now, his blue eyes met hers. They were weary and sad. Had she ever seen him sad? Had she ever seen him anything but smug or amused?
The doors slid open and Turner stalked inside. “What? You don’t want my apology?”
“No, I’ll take it,” she said, following him. “It’s just weird.”
He pushed the button for the ground floor, where the morgue was located. “Of course it is. Nothing’s ever—” Without finishing the thought, he took his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling again.
It was a short ride. When the doors opened, the smell of paint assaulted Josie’s nostrils.
The hall leading to Anya’s suite of rooms was filled with men rolling taupe paint over the normally grimy walls.
The cracked tile floor was covered in drop cloths.
For as long as Josie could remember, this part of the hospital was drab, dirty, and except for the morgue, unused.
Josie didn’t have time to indulge her curiosity as to the hospital’s plans for the basement because she was too busy trying to catch up with Turner’s long strides.
He stopped to hold the door to the morgue’s examination room open for her. “Come on, Quinn,” he muttered. “We don’t have all day.”
Something really had gotten under his skin.
Common courtesy and douchebaggery all at once.
Ignoring him, she stepped into Anya’s domain.
Inside, the paint smell was fainter, overpowered by the usual morgue odors: harsh chemicals and decay.
The exam room was large and windowless, its walls gray-painted cinderblock.
Stainless-steel tables ran the lengths of the walls.
In the center of the room were two autopsy tables.
Both were occupied. Haven and Maxine Barnes lay side by side, each covered up to their shoulders with a thin white sheet.
At a sink in the corner of the room, Anya washed her hands.
A navy skull cap covered her silver-blonde locks.
She hummed as she turned off the faucet and grabbed a wad of paper towels.
Josie didn’t recognize the tune but felt its sadness.
“Doc,” Turner said.
Anya turned toward him, an annoyed look already firmly in place, but when she saw his face, it morphed into what Josie could only describe as concern. Was Turner growing on her?
“What’s wrong?” Anya asked.
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not answering any questions until you answer at least one of mine.”
Anya shook her head and walked over to Maxine Barnes’s body. “The song I’d want to be able to listen to if I was trapped on a desert island is not the same thing as me asking you what’s wrong.”
“A question is a question,” he shot back.
Josie sighed. “What do you have for us?”
“I believe that both women died from asphyxia. They both have some pretty classic signs of it. Petechial hemorrhages in the sclera of their eyes. Pulmonary edema with some froth in the bronchi and trachea. Right ventricular dilation. Those findings, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily point to homicide.
Asphyxiation generally is just the interference of the oxygenation of tissue in the body.
Things like cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning can cause interference, but that’s on a cellular level.
What we’ve got here is mechanical asphyxiation, meaning their external air passages were blocked.
” Anya reached into her scrubs pocket for a pair of vinyl gloves.
Snapping them on, she peeled back Maxine Barnes’s upper lip.
“Her labial frenulum is lacerated. Top and bottom.”
Josie leaned in closer to study the small tear where Maxine Barnes’s lip connected to her gum. Anya pulled her lower lip down to reveal a similar injury.
“Haven has the same types of injuries. You can also see some injuries to the mucosa of the lips where the teeth cut into it from the pressure. I was able to pull small fibers from each of their mouths that Hummel tells me are consistent with the fabric from their pillowcases.”
“This is a whole lot of words to tell us that these women were smothered to death with their own pillows,” Turner said.
Anya glared at him before folding down the sheet to reveal the rest of Maxine’s body. Unlike Haven, the only bruise marring her pale skin was the one on the inside of her right forearm. “They weren’t just smothered. What we have here is a case of burking.”
Josie had seen and heard a lot of things in the course of her career. Burking was not one of them. Even Turner appeared baffled, a crease forming between his eyebrows.