The Angel of Death

In the corner of the room stood an oak sleigh bed, and in the middle of the bed were the remains of Mr. Oakes. His limbs were at odd angles, like gnarled branches of trees, the legs contracted so tight his knees made steeples beneath the cotton sheet. She could see the tip of his tongue protruding. It was a strange color, a dark gray, extending beyond his lips—a shriveled turtle’s head of a tongue peeking from the edge of his mouth.

But that wasn’t the horror of it. When her mind finally registered the picture, she wished, in that instant, that she’d listened to Sheriff Jacobs. Because she was looking down at the face that was no longer there. A mask, like that from a horror show, replaced the face she had known.

Skin, no longer smooth like her teacher had worn in life, had now withered to the bone. Blood seeped down his teeth like painted lashes. But the worst was his eyes. The lids of his eyes had rolled back like window shades, revealing two dark holes.

The eye sockets were empty.

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SPEAK
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
This Sleuth edition published by Speak Books,
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING/SLEUTH EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Ferguson, Alane.
The angel of death : a forensic mystery / Alane Ferguson.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old high school senior Cameryn Mahoney uses skills learned as
assistant to her coroner father to try to unravel the mystery of a local teacher’s gruesome
death, while also awaiting a possible reunion with her long-missing mother.

[1. Forensic sciences—Fiction. 2. Coroners—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction.
4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Single-parent families—Fiction.
6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.F3547An 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005033647

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For George Nicholson — agent,
friend, and guide.

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2006 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

ISBN 0-670-06055-0 (hardcover)

Printed in the U.S.A. Set in Bookman ITC light Book design by Jim Hoover

For George Nicholson-agent, friend, and guide.

Chapter One

“DO YOU KNOW how many laws we’re breaking?” Cameryn Mahoney demanded.

Deputy Justin Crowley shrugged nonchalantly. He was driving his Blazer with one hand draped lazily over the wheel while the other brushed back his too-long dark hair from his eyes. “Well, if I had to guess, I’d say at least six,” he answered slowly. A smile curled at the edge of his lips, making a kind of comma in his cheek as he added, “Maybe more.”

“Six laws. And this doesn’t worry you?”

Another shrug, only this time his shoulders barely moved. “Not particularly.”

“
Why
does this not worry you?”

“Because there’s a dead body on the side of the road, which can’t stay there. That’s a fact. The sheriff and the coroner are out of town, which is also a fact. That leaves the two of us—Silverton’s trusty deputy and its extremely capable assistant to the coroner”—he nodded in her direction—“to work the scene. In other words, it’s just you and me. And we’re doing it.”

“This is crazy.
You’re
crazy.”

“Just doing my job.”

Trees whizzed past as Justin downshifted around a hairpin turn on the Million Dollar Highway, a narrow two-lane road that ran like an umbilical cord from tiny Silverton all the way to Durango. To Cameryn’s right, Colorado’s San Juan Mountains towered above her in a granite block, while to her left the mountains fell away in a thousand-foot sheer drop, a yawning mouth of a valley bristling with Engleman spruce beside streams with fluted ice as thin as parchment. According to Justin, there was a body on this road that Cameryn was supposed to process, without tools or a gurney or even a pair of latex gloves. Messing up at the beginning of a case could mean disaster if it ever went to court. They shouldn’t even think of processing a scene alone. It was insanity.

“You’re chewing your fingernails again,” Justin pointed out. He glanced at her for the briefest second, and in the relative dimness of the car’s interior his eyes looked more green than blue, the color of a lake reflecting evergreens. “What are you so nervous about? I thought you liked this stuff.”

“I
like
being prepared and I—this—this is all wrong. We should radio the police in Durango or Montrose. Or something.”

"Relax
. You’ve been so uptight lately—did you know that?”

“We were talking about the remains, Justin, not about me.”

“All right, all right, back to the case. There’s something funky about the body. All I’m asking for is your quick, professional opinion and then . . . boom.” He hit the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. “You’re outta there.”

The seat belt cut into her neck as she twisted to face him, protesting, “But I’m
not
a professional. How can I give a professional opinion when I’m still in high school?”

“Ah, but you’ve got to admit you know more than I do,” Justin replied. “You’re a forensic guru. You’re so good that—guess what Sheriff Jacobs calls you when you’re not around! Come on, take a guess.”

Cameryn closed her eyes and groaned. She knew what was coming. A quip, a sly remark about her working with the dead—she knew folks in Silverton whispered about her all the time, under their breaths, their words falling like snowflakes only to melt beneath her resolve. It didn’t take much time with the living to remind Cameryn why she wanted to be a forensic pathologist. The dead didn’t tell stories, except about themselves.

Although Justin seemed to register her groan, there was no stopping him this morning. “Jacobs calls you the Angel of Death.” The deputy grinned as though he’d just given her the highest compliment. “What do you think about that?”

She replied with her standard answer, the one she always gave, her Pavlovian response. “I’m into the science of forensics, not death.”

“Tell it to the sheriff.
I’m
not the one who gave you the name.” His eyebrows, dark half-moons, rose up his forehead as he smirked. "Angel.”

Another hairpin turn, only this time a huge semi-truck roared up the mountainside, belching greasy smoke into the morning air and leaving a gassy trail behind.

Like a vapor winding its way through the streets of Silverton, the idea that she loved death had dissipated throughout the tiny town of seven hundred citizens and had crept its way through the halls of Silverton High. It encompassed her friends, who squirmed at the fact that she’d seen the insides of a human body. It drifted over to her boss at the Grand Hotel, who made Cameryn soak her hands in bleach water before setting the tables, something he never asked the other servers to do. Her own grandmother, whom she called “Mammaw” after the Irish way, clucked whenever Cameryn read forensic books, convinced that the mere study of those books would somehow condemn her soul to hell. But her father, the real coroner of Silverton, encouraged her. “You’ve got a talent, Cammie,” he’d say. “You
see
things. What you have is a gift.”

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