CHAPTER EIGHT
The county morgue sat at the end of a narrow service road behind the old municipal building, half-hidden by a row of bare maples and a loading bay that looked as if it hadn’t been painted since the seventies.
Selena pulled up outside and killed the engine.
For a moment, she stayed where she was.
The building was brick, two stories, with narrow windows and a slate roof patched in three different shades. A rusted sign near the side entrance read COUNTY MEDICAL SERVICES, though someone had scraped away part of the lettering so it now looked less like a department and more like a warning.
She checked the time on her phone.
Connor had warned her that the coroner was an acquired taste.
That was fine. But she resented the implication that she couldn’t handle it.
She didn’t need him to hold her hand through a morgue visit.
She had dealt with coroners before. She had stood beside bodies in better facilities and worse ones.
She had watched city pathologists work in glass-walled labs with digital recorders clipped to their coats, and she had watched rural doctors make do with bad lighting, old tables, and the kind of silence that got into your teeth.
Still, as she stepped out into the cold, the place made her hesitate.
Not fear. Irritation.
That was what she told herself as she locked the car and walked toward the side door.
Inside, the corridor smelled of bleach, cold stone, and old paper. The fluorescent lights gave off a faint buzz. A radiator knocked somewhere behind the wall, working hard and losing.
There was no reception desk. No clerk. No one to ask why she was there.
Selena followed the signs until she reached a frosted glass door marked DR. A. BLETHAN.
She knocked once.
A deep voice came from inside. “Aye.”
Selena opened the door.
The office was cramped, cluttered, and too warm. Filing cabinets lined one wall. Medical texts sat in stacks on the floor. A framed diploma hung crooked behind the desk, beside a faded photograph of a mountain ridge under snow.
The man behind the desk looked up from a folder.
Dr. Blethan was in his forties, broad-shouldered, with thick forearms, a dark beard trimmed close to his jaw, and hands that looked better suited to splitting logs than making clean incisions.
His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow.
A heavy watch sat on one wrist. He looked at Selena as if she had stepped into his kitchen without knocking.
“Can I help you, lass?” he said.
“Agent Selena Raven. I’m here to talk with you about Brenda Colter.”
He looked at her with suspicion. “I know who you are.”
She waited.
He didn’t stand.
Selena crossed the office and showed him her credentials. Blethan glanced at them, then at her face.
“Where’s Connor?”
“Working.”
Blethan closed the folder in front of him. “Then I’m not sure why you’re here. I prefer to have the sheriff’s department represented.”
Selena slipped her credentials back into her pocket. “I’m here to ask follow-up questions about your report. We don’t need Sheriff Chase for that.”
His mouth twitched, but not in amusement. “The sheriff’s office has a copy. So does your bureau. If you’ve got questions, put them through official local channels.”
“I am the official channel.”
“That so?”
Selena looked around the room. Her gaze moved across the overstuffed filing cabinets, the stack of folders on the floor, the coffee mug beside a tray of capped sample tubes, the coat hanging from a nail driven into the wall.
“Is this your normal setup?” she asked.
Blethan’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon?”
“Records on the floor. Samples beside your coffee. No reception. No visible sign-in procedure. I’m just wondering if this is how you run every suspicious death investigation.”
The warmth went out of his face.
“You come into my office and start that way?”
“You gave me obstruction. I’m giving you an observation.”
“You’re not in… Wherever you’re from… You’re in Harlan. We do things our way.”
Selena smiled without warmth. “You’ll be doing things my way until I’m done. And maybe you can stop acting like a county line outranks a federal badge—that would be a good start.”
Blethan stood.
He was taller than she had expected. Not by much, but enough to make the little office feel smaller.
“Enough of this nonsense. I suppose you want to see the body?”
“I do.”
“Then come on.”
He walked past her and opened the door.
Selena followed him down the corridor. His boots made solid sounds on the tile. Hard steps that matched the set of his shoulders. The man was angry, but not flustered. That bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
Don’t let him get to you, Selena, she thought. But she could already feel herself edging toward another argument. It was swirling inside of her.
They passed a storage room, a staff toilet, and a small break area with a kettle, two mugs, and a packet of cookies left open on the counter. At the end of the hall, Blethan unlocked a steel door and pushed it inward.
Cold air drifted out.
The morgue was cleaner than the office.
Two examination tables stood under bright overhead lights. Stainless steel counters ran along one wall. A bank of refrigerated drawers occupied the rear. Everything had its place here. Instruments arranged. Surfaces wiped down. Labels straight. No clutter, no casual mess. At least it was organized.
Blethan crossed to the drawers and pulled one open. The rollers whispered.
The body lay under a white sheet.
Selena stepped closer. Whatever irritation had been building inside her flattened into something colder and more useful.
Blethan folded the sheet back.
Brenda Colter’s face appeared under the light, emptied of expression, skin waxen, mouth closed, eyelids still.
Selena had seen death in too many forms for the sight itself to shake her.
What troubled her was always the same thing.
The body had become evidence, but it had once been a person.
Someone had spoken to them. Someone had known the sound of their footsteps.
Someone, somewhere, still expected the world to make sense without them in it.
She leaned in, careful not to touch.
“These marks here,” she said. “You classified them as post-mortem abrasion?”
“Aye. She was moved about.”
“Still confident?”
“Yes.”
“No hesitation?”
“If I had hesitation, I’d have written hesitation.”
Selena looked across at him. “You always this charming?”
“Only when someone calls me unprofessional before I’ve finished my tea.”
She ignored that and studied the body again.
The report had covered the obvious. Cause. Approximate time of death. External injuries. Toxicology pending. Nothing in it had leapt out as wrong, but reports were never enough. Bodies had to be seen. Rooms had to be felt. People had to be pushed until something loosened.
“Can you bring in the local forensic pathologist?” Selena asked. “I’d like to speak with them.”
Blethan stared at her for half a second.
Then he grinned.
It transformed his face, but not kindly.
“You’re looking at him.”
Selena looked up. “You?”
“Aye. Me.”
“You do both jobs?”
“In this county, yes.”
“The coroner and the forensic pathologist.”
“Well done.”
“That seems like a conflict.”
“It seems like rural life, Agent Raven.”
“You’re telling me there’s no independent pathologist involved in a homicide?”
“I’m telling you I did the examination, signed the report, and sent it where it needed to go.”
“Is it not expected to have a second pair of eyes on all this?”
“No,” Blethan said. “You just got here. I’ll tell you what’s expected.”
Selena felt her jaw tighten. She thought of Meg’s words. No flare-up with the locals. No complaints. Otherwise, it would look bad for Selena. But she was finding it increasingly difficult to contain her displeasure.
He nodded toward the clipboard mounted at the end of the drawer. “My name is on the coroner’s note. Same name on the pathology summary. Same signature. A big-shot city girl should’ve noticed that if she’d studied the reports properly.”
Selena turned on him.
“I’m from Harlan County.”
Blethan’s grin faded into something harder. “Oh, so you just picked up being rude in the big city and graced us with bringing it back with you? How generous of you.”
Selena stepped toward him.
“Is there anything new,” she said, each word clipped, “to be added to the report? What about footprints or fingerprints?”
“No. All in the report. The killer’s boot marks seem to be from some sort of custom sole, more than likely he’s made the sole himself so the make of the boot can’t be traced. And then he’s worn gloves, so no prints.”
“Anything you might have missed?”
“No.”
“Anything you were too overworked, too underfunded, or too proud to put in writing?”
His eyes sharpened. “Careful.”
“No, you be careful. I’m here because someone is dead and someone else may die if we don’t stop posturing long enough to do the work. I don’t care if you like me. I don’t care if the sheriff usually holds your hand through these conversations. I asked you a direct question.”
Blethan was quiet for a moment.
The hum of the refrigeration units filled the room.
Then he pulled the sheet back up over the victim’s face with surprising gentleness.
“There’s nothing new,” he said. “No hidden wound. No second toxicology result. No trace evidence I kept from the report for the pleasure of annoying you. What’s there is there.”
Selena held his gaze.
“And next time,” Blethan added, “if there is indeed another murder, bring Connor with you. At least he knows how to talk to people.”
Heat flashed through her chest.
“Go to hell.”
She turned before he could answer.
Her footsteps struck hard against the tile as she left the morgue, crossed the corridor, and pushed through the outer door into the cold. The air outside hit her face. She kept walking until she reached the car.
Only then did she stop.
Her hands were shaking.
Not much. Enough.
She unlocked the car, got in, and shut the door with more force than she needed. The sound cracked through the cabin and vanished.
For a few seconds, she sat gripping the steering wheel.
“That was useful, Selena,” she muttered.
No new evidence. No new insight. No clever question that changed the case. Just another local official insulted, another bridge scorched, another reminder that she could still be hooked if someone found the right place to cut.
She closed her eyes.
Girl from the big city. If only that had been true.
She was now pining for Washington more than ever.
The big cases, the buzz of city life. Everything was too quiet here.
And too many people seemed ready to start a war with her.
First Cheryl, now the coroner. Selena started to wonder what Connor had told them about her.
She started the engine.
The dashboard lights came on. Warm air coughed from the vents.
She looked toward the road that would take her back to the sheriff’s department, back to questions she still couldn’t answer.
Then she looked the other way.
An open road leading to who knows where.
She put the car into drive.
At the junction, Selena turned and let the road take her where it may.