Corpse Suzette (12 page)

“What did he take?”
Savannah asked.

“A couple of the rings he’d
given her, and a bracelet, and a pendant, and some silver candlesticks from
Tiffany, and some Waterford crystal, and Sammy’s diamond collar.”

“A dog collar?” Dirk
frowned and shook his head. “A diamond dog collar?”

“Yeah. He said he’d pry the
diamonds out and sell them. He was always jealous of Sammy, said she cared more
about that stupid dog than she did about him. But now…” She began to choke
again. “Now he’s... he’s... he’s dea-a-a-ad!”

Dirk turned to Savannah. “A
diamond
dog
collar? Is she serious?”

Savannah shrugged. “Sure.
Why not? I’d buy a couple for my kitties if I had the bucks.”

“You women are nuts.”

As Dirk maneuvered the
Buick around the dark road with its sharp curves, Savannah couldn’t help
thinking that the way home seemed a lot longer than the way to Devon’s house.

Deep, heavy, depression of
the soul could cause that.

“We’ve got nothing,” she
said. “Not a blamed thing.”

“So? I’ve barely started on
the case,” he replied. “It’s too soon.”

“
You’ve
barely
started. I’ve been working on it for thirty-six hours, and I’ve got squat, zip,
nada. You know as well as I do that if you don’t solve a homicide in the first
forty-eight hours, your chances are cut in half.”

“That’s just because most
murders are obvious. You arrive at the house, you see the body on the floor and
the body’s brother standing over it with a bloody steak knife. You ask the
other relatives what happened, and they tell you the two of them were drunk and
fighting over who got the biggest steak. Case solved. The other kind take longer.”

“Which kind?”

“The kind where it ain’t so
obvious.”

Savannah sighed. “That’s
probably wise and profound, but I’m way too tired to appreciate your sapience
right now. I just want to go home and go to bed.”

“Did you just call me a
sap?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I’ll offer to
take you home and even tuck you into bed myself. Maybe I’ll throw in a little
backrub, a little all-over, hot oil, body massage. What do you say?”

“Eh, bite me.”

“Okay. Never mind.”

Chapter

Y
ears ago, Savannah had
promised herself that, someday, she would treat herself to one homicide. Just
one.

She intended to murder
Officer Kenny Bates. And she was sure that if there was even one woman on the
jury, she’d get away with it.

Kenny served the fine
citizens of San Carmelita by guarding the front desk in the medical examiner’s
complex. You had to get by him to see Dr. Liu or any of her assistants.

Getting past him wasn’t
difficult. He was a worthless guard. But signing in without being highly
offended and grossly insulted was impossible. Kenny was living proof that not
all pigs had snouts. Some of them just had body odor, bad breath, and manners
to match.

“Savannah! Hey, babe!” His
ugly face split with a smile the moment she walked through the doors. “Long
time no see!”

“Long time no bathe,” she
replied as she approached his desk and tried to breathe through her ears.
Experience had taught her that breathing was a bad idea within an eight-foot
radius of Kenny Bates.

Dirk walked through the
door behind her and growled under his breath. “Back off, Bates and slide that
clipboard over here.” Bates pushed the board with its attached pen toward
Savannah and leaned over the counter as far as he could, straining to see down
the front of her blouse.

She caught a whiff of
something that smelled like egg salad and nacho cheese chips as he said, “I was
wondering when you were going to come see me. I’ve been meaning to tell you...
after you solved that last big case, I saw your picture in the paper. I cut it
out and taped it to my ceiling, right over my bed, next to Miss December.”

“Hey!” Dirk barked. “Watch
your mouth or you’ll be eating your teeth, jackass!”

Savannah held up one hand.
“That’s okay, Dirk. Bates and I have an understanding. He stays on that side of
the counter, and I don’t give him a karate kick in the groin.”

She grabbed the sign-in
board and scribbled a name on it— P.H. Cue. Then she pushed it back at him and
said in a low, menacing voice, “Get that picture off your ceiling, Bates. I
mean it. If you don’t, I’ll find out. I’ll wait for you in a dark alley. And
I’ll blow your brains out. You won’t even see me coming. You’ll just be hanging
around one minute and the next, you’re in pervert hell. Got it?”

He snickered, but looked
uncomfortable.

She leaned closer. “Look
into my eyes, Bates, and see if I don’t mean it.”

Kenny squirmed under the
blue lasers like a worm on a hot sidewalk. “All right. I’ll take it down.”

“And tear it into little
pieces and throw it away. I’m a private investigator. I’m going to check in
twenty-four hours. I’ll know whether you did or not.”

“Yeah, okay.”

As she and Dirk left the
counter and walked down the hallway, she could see Dirk grinning from the
corner of her eye.

“OF Kenny actually believed
you,” he said. “Like you would know what was on his bedroom ceiling.”

“Like I would go within ten
miles of his bedroom... wearing a biohazard suit.”

As they passed the double
doors to the medical examiner’s autopsy suite, Dirk pushed one open and looked
inside. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing going on in there. She must be done with your
buddy Sergio.”

“Not my buddy. Never my
buddy. Sergio was only a few degrees away from Kenny Bates. Better dressed,
same lousy attitude toward women.”

Dirk turned and gave her an
inquisitive look. “I never asked. What do you think of me when it comes to that
stuff? My attitude toward broads, that is.”

She laughed and punched him
in the ribs. “For a guy who calls females ‘broads’ you’re remarkably
progressive. Go figure. Did you call Dr. Liu earlier to see if she was finished
before we bopped over here bright and early in the morning?”

“Naw, I never call her
anymore. She gets mad. Says I’m nudging her; that I need to take patience
management classes.”

“Patience management?
Wouldn’t you have to actually
get
some patience before you learn how to manage
it? Come on, let’s look in her office.”

Sure enough, Dr. Liu’s door
was open, and she was sitting at her desk. When she first laid eyes on Dirk,
she gave an exasperated sigh. But when she saw that he had Savannah in tow, she
jumped up and hurried to embrace her.

“Hey, sister,” she
exclaimed. “You still hanging out with this old dinosaur?”

“Somebody’s gotta hold his
leash.” Savannah returned the hearty hug and marveled that she could have
probably wrapped her arms twice around the slender M.E. Tall, willowy, and
breathtakingly beautiful, Dr. Jennifer Liu looked more like a lingerie model
than a woman who dissected human bodies on a daily basis. Her long black hair
was pulled back with a bright red scarf and even a baggy lab coat couldn’t
totally conceal her womanly curves.

But Savannah liked her
anyway. They both loved Godiva chocolate, and that was a powerful bond.

“You should have called
first,” Dr. Liu told Dirk as he settled onto a chair next to her desk. “I don’t
have anything to tell you yet.”

“Didn’t you do the autopsy
this morning?” He looked bitterly disappointed. “I figured you’d get right on
it, what with me telling you I need it ASAP and all.”

Dr. Liu seated Savannah in
another chair and returned to her own behind the desk. “You detectives always
want everything ASAP,” she said, “but
you
are the worst. You must think
the world revolves around you. The rest of us live and breathe merely to make
your life more convenient.”

“And pleasant,” he added.
“Don’t forget pleasant. When are you gonna do my guy?”

She reached for a manila
folder on top of a stack on her desk and tossed it toward him. “I
did
your guy. First thing this morning.”

He grinned and reached for
the folder. “Thanks. You’re the best, doc. No matter what anybody says.”

“I did it right away
in
spite
of the fact that you told me to do it ASAP. I actually had a hole in
my schedule. Don’t expect that sort of service ever again.”

Dirk turned to Savannah.
“The good doc here is madly in love with me. Can you tell?”

Savannah nodded. “Oh, it’s
written all over her face. I think she’s about to ‘love’ you over the head with
that paperweight there.”

He opened the folder. “I
can’t read this gobbledygook. It’s all Greek to me.”

“Actually, it’s more likely
to be Latin,” Dr. Liu said. “But the bottom line translation is: I don’t know
what killed him.”

Dirk glowered. “Well,
that’s just hunky-dory. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Dr. Liu frowned back. “Not
yet.”

“Not yet what?”

“I don’t know what killed
him yet. But I haven’t gotten the labs back. When I do, maybe they’ll tell me.”

Savannah reached over and
took the folder from Dirk. She scanned the page, hoping it might make more
sense to her than it did to Dirk.

It didn’t.

“So,” she said, “tell us
what he didn’t die of.”

“He didn’t die of heart
disease,” Dr. Liu said. “Or a stroke. No evidence of any sort of illness, other
than a bit of liver cirrhosis, apparently from drinking too much.”

“Poisoning?” Savannah
asked.

“Maybe, but I saw no signs
that he had ingested anything toxic. The stomach lining was normal, not
inflamed, and the stomach contents to be expected for a man who had eaten lunch
but no dinner yet. My CSI techs said there were no signs of vomiting at the
scene. No food or drink either.”

“Could he have breathed in
something?” Savannah said, thinking of Kenny Bates’s toxic breath.

“The nasal passages,
bronchial tubes, and lungs were unremarkable. I doubt it. The only thing I
noticed was a reasonably fresh injection site on his outer right thigh, about
here....” She pointed to a spot on her own leg, several inches above the knee.
“And there were a couple of old, healed needle marks there, as well.”

“The guy was a junkie?”
Dirk asked.

“I doubt it, although we’ll
know better when the lab results are in. I saw none of the other signs of drug
addiction, and his veins were healthy. All he had were the intramuscular
injection sites. Not like a chronic, intravenous drug abuser.”

“Maybe somebody held him
down and forced something on him,” Savannah suggested.

“No bruising of any kind,”
Dr. Liu said. “If he’d been forced, surely there would have been some
contusions or defensive wounds.”

“You’d sure have to bruise
me to get a needle in
my
leg,” Dirk said. “I think he shot up with
something bad, chronic or not.”

“Then we should have found
a kit at the scene,” Savannah told him. “At least a syringe or something.”

“It’s a medical clinic,”
Dr. Liu said. “There are needles and vials of all sorts of things all over the
place. You probably wouldn’t have noticed, even if there had been something
there.”

“That’s true,” Savannah
agreed. To Dirk she said, “We ought to go back over there and look around...
now that we have some idea what to look for.”

Dirk sniffed. “A needle and
a syringe... at a medical clinic. Oh joy. That’ll be sorta like looking for a
piece of hay in a haystack.”

Savannah felt the residue
of communal sadness the moment she stepped across the threshold into Emerge’s
lobby. At the front desk, Myrna sat with her head in her hands, softly crying.

A sobbing Devon stood by
the atrium window, her arms around Jeremy, who looked as though he, too, had
been weeping. The only one who wasn’t crying was a young, dark-haired woman in
a white nurse’s uniform, who stood behind Myrna, rubbing the receptionist’s
shoulders.

Myrna looked up when
Savannah and Dirk approached, her eyes red and swollen. “Hello, Sargent
Coulter,” she said. “Hi, Savannah. I guess you’ve heard about our bad news.”

Savannah was a little
surprised at the apparent depth of Myrna’s grief. While having a drink with the
woman, she had gotten the idea that Myrna wasn’t all that crazy about Sergio.
Resented and disliked him, in fact.

But Savannah knew from
personal experience that, even if you couldn’t stand someone, it was sobering
and shocking if they died unexpectedly.

If nothing else, it
reminded you of your own mortality, and that alone was enough to ruin your day.

“Yes, I heard,” Savannah
said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Dirk added
with a bit less of a sympathetic tone. “What are you guys doing here? There was
crime tape across the front door. Nobody was supposed to be in here.” Devon and
Jeremy had left their places by the atrium and strolled over toward the desk
area. Jeremy spoke up. “The medical examiner’s people removed the tape over the
front door just a while ago,” he said. “And they said we could be here in the
lobby and in some of the rooms on the west side of the building. They left the
tape across the hallway there, blocking our way into the east side where
Sergio... where the body was found. And they told us to stay out of there until
you released it.”

“Good.” Dirk headed toward
the cordoned off area with Savannah behind him.

“How come
she
gets
to go in there and
we
don’t?” Devon objected as Savannah walked past
her.

“Because
she’s
with
me
,”
Dirk shot back. “Any more dumb questions?”

Then he paused and looked
back over his shoulder at the young woman in the nurse’s uniform. “Who are
you?” he asked. “Bridget O’Reilly,” she replied.

“You a nurse here?”

She nodded.

“Then you come with us.”

As the three of them walked
down the hallway toward the recently departed Sergio’s office, Dirk asked Nurse
Bridget, “What is it you do here, exactly?”

“Everything,” she replied.
“I draw blood, give shots, dispense meds, assist in the surgeries.”

“How long have you worked
here?”

“Only about six months.”

“Did you like the doctor?”
Savannah asked. “And Mr. D’Alessandro?”

“The doctor was good to me.
I hate the idea that something might have happened to her.”

“What about him?” Dirk
said. “Was he good to you, too?” Bridget’s Irish blue eyes suddenly looked a
bit guarded. Then she said, “Mr. D’Alessandro and I had a pleasant enough
working relationship.”

“And that was his idea,
I’ll bet,” Savannah said, quickly scanning the nurse’s
pleasant enough
figure.

“What’s that?” Bridget
asked.

“That your relationship
remain professional. I would imagine that was more your idea than Mr.
D’Alessandro’s.”

She looked uncomfortable
with Savannah’s brand of frankness, but she nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could
say it was more my idea than his.”