Chapter Thirty
Jill hated the morgue.
It wasn’t the dead bodies—she had seen enough of those in her years as police chief. It wasn’t even the eerie quiet or the scent of antiseptic trying (and failing) to mask the underlying smell of decay.
No. It was Iggy.
The county coroner, Ignatius “Iggy” Demers, had the hygiene standards of a middle-school boy and the eating habits of a gremlin.
Jill sighed as she and Officer Mason Dooley pushed open the door to the forensic lab, immediately hit with the unmistakable aroma of pastrami, mustard, and fries.
Iggy was mid-bite into an obscenely overstuffed sandwich, a smear of mustard on his lip and a blob of ketchup decorating his cheek.
Beside him, on one of the exam tables, was an order of fries in a grease-stained takeout box, with ketchup smeared on the metal surface dangerously close to an autopsy file.
He was hovering over an open body, chewing enthusiastically.
“For God’s sake, Iggy!” Jill snapped. “Can you not eat directly over the corpses?”
Iggy looked up, completely unfazed, licking ketchup off his cheek from the fries. “What? They’re not gonna complain.”
Mason made a strangled sound and immediately turned five shades paler.
Jill groaned. “You’re getting condiments all over the place!”
Iggy glanced down at his autopsy files, where a generous dollop of ketchup had landed.
“Whoops.” He wiped it with his sleeve, which somehow made it worse.
Mason audibly gagged.
Jill shot him a look. “Do not throw up in here.”
Mason gulped, doing his best to look anywhere but at the corpse lying on the table, which had an exposed chest cavity.
“Jesus, Iggy,” Mason muttered. “Have you ever heard of the word sanitation?”
Iggy took another big bite, waving him off. “Germs can’t live in here long. Too cold.”
Jill shook her head, exasperated. “Remind me to talk to the county about replacing you.”
Iggy winked. “Come on, Chief. You’d miss me.”
Jill let out a long suffering sigh. “Doubtful. Let’s talk about Griffin Mead.”
Iggy licked mustard off his thumb before flipping through a greasy file.
“Right,” he mumbled, scanning the autopsy notes. “So we know Griffin Mead had Clonidine in his system, which explains why he was incapacitated before he drowned.”
Jill crossed her arms. “And no other drugs? Nothing else that could have knocked him out?”
Iggy shook his head. “Nope. Just Clonidine. Enough to seriously impair motor function. He would have been disoriented, weak, and unable to swim if he ended up in the water.”
Jill tapped her fingers on the stainless steel exam table. “So, could the Clonidine have been delivered through something like … novocaine?”
Iggy perked up, intrigued. “Oh, yeah, definitely. If someone dosed him earlier in the day, it would take about thirty to sixty minutes to really kick in. If he was given Clonidine at the dentist’s office, he would’ve started feeling disoriented shortly after.”
Mason grimaced. “So … Griffin goes about his day, starts feeling weird, and by the time he’s near the docks, he’s so out of it that someone who followed him could have … pushed him in?”
Jill nodded. “And if the Clonidine had already weakened him, he wouldn’t have been able to fight back.”
Iggy picked up a clear evidence bag and waggled it at them. “Or he could have gotten it another way.”
Mason glanced at it warily. “What is that?”
Iggy grinned. “Stomach contents.”
Mason’s face turned green. “Nope. No, I do not want to know.”
Jill ignored him. “What was in his stomach?”
Iggy flipped through the report, smearing a bit of mustard on the paper. “Let’s see … we found beer, half a ham sandwich, some kind of seafood chowder, a few ibuprofen, and what looked like potato chips. Any of those could have been laced with Clonidine.”
Mason turned to Jill. “Seafood chowder? That’s how Chips ingested the deadly nightshade! Someone could have put it in his chowder.”
Jill considered that, but then shook her head. “I’m still leaning toward novocaine. It’s the easiest way to administer something like Clonidine without the victim realizing it.”
Iggy nodded. “It’s a solid theory.”
Jill leaned against the exam table, deep in thought.
“So if Griffin was dosed with Clonidine at the dentist’s office earlier in the day,” she said, “then that means Bradley Comstock was most likely the one who drugged him.”
Mason nodded slowly. “That fits. But … Bradley couldn’t have been the one to push Mason into the water. He has an alibi.”
“Melanie.” Jill muttered. “She swears they were working together the whole night.”
Mason scratched his chin. “You think she’s lying?”
Jill frowned. “I don’t know.”
Mason hesitated. “But … what if someone else did it for him?”
Jill’s head snapped up. “An accomplice.”
Mason nodded. “What if Bradley drugged Griffin during the dental appointment, but he had someone else finish the job later that night? The whole town knows Griffin turns up at the Thirsty Gull every night of the week for a few beers. They could have been lying in wait for him to leave for home, knowing he’d be nearly incapacitated by that point, and followed him to the docks. ”
Jill’s stomach twisted. It made sense. Bradley had a pretty firm alibi for both murders—he had been in Portland the night Chips Hogan was poisoned and at his dental office the night Griffin supposedly fell into the water and drowned.
And yet …
They kept circling back to him.
Mason frowned. “So if Bradley had help … who the hell is his mystery accomplice?”
Jill sighed, staring down at the autopsy report, her brain working overtime.
That was the million-dollar question.
Who was helping Bradley cover his tracks?
And how much danger were they all in?
Jill closed the file, ignoring the mustard stains, and turned to Mason. “All right, we’re done here.”
Mason shot up so fast he nearly knocked over a stool.
“Thank God,” he muttered, practically speed-walking to the door.
Iggy grinned, taking another massive bite of his sandwich. “Come back anytime, guys.”
Mason muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Over my dead body.”
Jill followed him out into the hallway, inhaling fresh air like it was her first breath in an hour.
Mason shuddered. “How does that man still have a job?”
Jill smirked. “No one else wants it.”
Mason groaned. “I need a shower.”
Jill clapped him on the back. “Buck up, Dooley. We’ve got a killer to catch.”
As they stepped into the cold evening air, Jill’s mind kept turning over the puzzle.
Bradley wasn’t working alone.
And whoever was helping him?
They weren’t done yet.