The Dying Breath (16 page)

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Authors: Alane Ferguson

BOOK: The Dying Breath
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Justin was silent for a beat. He looked at Patrick as if he appreciated what he’d said, but he shook his head, saying, “He’s not that kind of crazy, Mr.—Patrick. O’Neil’s an organized killer. He’s the kind of crazy who plans his every move in cold blood.”
“But I think he
wants
to get caught,” Cameryn argued. “Kyle’s leaving clues.”
“Or just playing with us,” her father snapped. “In any event, Dr. Moore was kind enough to show me slides of the vic’s lung tissue. The cause of death in all three cases is artificial pneumonia brought on by some unknown substance. What it is, I don’t know, and
how
O’Neil did it is even more of a mystery. This case is as baffling as his last masterpiece using that klystron.” He scratched the back of his neck and said, “It looks like bizarre deaths may be O’Neil’s signature.”
“I know, I thought about that, too, Dad; that’s why I brought Justin in here. Kyle wants to be unique. He’s showing off for the police. Or for me,” she added hastily. “But he’s left something for us to figure out and I want to try.” Cameryn quickly explained her idea to everyone in the room, with various responses. Dr. Moore’s face seemed as pugnacious as ever, but there was a curiosity, too, as he looked at Justin, considering. Her father frowned, while Ben seemed eager to try his hand at detective work. He nodded his head as she spoke.
“So we’re gonna unravel us a mystery,” Ben said, slapping his hands together to go all loose in the joints. “All right, what do we do first?”
“Let me show you the file on Leather Ed,” Justin began. “Can we clear some space?”
“I’ll get that desk.” Hopping off the stool, Ben quickly rolled a computer desk with a laminate top and stopped it right in front of Justin.
“That’ll work great,” Justin told him. He laid the opened file on top and spread out the photographs in an arc, like a deck of cards. “Cameryn says we’re missing something, and maybe she’s right. I’ve already gone through this. While you study these, I’d like to take a look at those slides.”
“Be my guest,” said Dr. Moore. “That sample belongs to Leather Ed.”
While Justin squinted into the microscope, Cameryn studied the glass rectangles, each one marked with a specific name. “Did you make these, Dr. Moore?”
“No, the slides are created here, in the histology lab. It’s a process. You’ve seen me slice bits of tissue and place them in the cassettes—”
“Cassettes?” Cameryn asked. She frowned, trying to remember.
“Cassettes,” he replied, a note of impatience in his voice. “Those small white plastic squares—you’ve seen them. They’re on the table where I slice the organs. I put tiny chunks of heart, liver, lung, all the bits of visceral matter go into those containers. The lab technician takes the tissues to this lab and pours wax on top. Then they set. This device here”—he patted a square machine made of white enamel, with a huge, twelve-inch blade—“shaves the material that’s embedded in the wax. Those slices are stained, heated, placed between glass slides, and voilà! We can examine the lung at a cellular level.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” Justin said and moved aside so that Cameryn could see. The image was cream colored with a ribbon of red circles touching one another in what looked like a string of beads.
“There’s the foreign matter in the alveoli,” Dr. Moore murmured. “But for the life of me I can’t say what it is.”
Sighing, Cameryn pushed herself away from the microscope. Like Justin, she couldn’t interpret it at all, which meant it was no use to her. She turned once again to the evidence reports, some printed out while others had been scrawled in ink. “Justin, what’s all this?”
“That is everything we’ve got so far, including background information on Leather Ed. Plus a list of things found in his house. He served in Vietnam, bought the house and stayed in Silverton for over thirty years. But the guy was a loner. I realize I’m the new guy in town, but no one seems to have really known him.”
Ben picked up a photograph of the living room and frowned. “Is this the inside of his house? Man, that place was a mess. That was one strange dude.”
“I lived in Silverton all my life and I never really talked to him,” Cameryn said, feeling a haze of guilt. In her mind’s eye she saw him once again, hunched over his plate of food, his hair a mat of gray coils and his nails stained with tobacco. “He came into the Grand every so often and I served him, but now that I think about it, I don’t even know what he did for a living.” She stopped, considering this. “I mean, how did he pay his bills?”
Justin began rifling through the photographs. “I can’t say for sure, but I know one thing he did that could have scored him some extra cash.” Pulling a few pictures from the back of the pile, he said, “Look at this. Leather Ed grew pot. This was in his basement—the man was a regular horticulturalist. It could have been just for his own personal stash, but it’s possible Leather Ed may have been dealing.”
“You’re
serious
?” Cameryn asked, genuinely shocked. She studied the various pictures of the basement. It was unceilinged and unpainted, with shelves overflowing with boxes of junk, rags, pipes, and tools, but in the center, sprouting from trays on a wooden table, grew row after row of marijuana plants. Above them hung a bank of grow lights, five-foot rectangles tacked to exposed wooden beams.
“So that is said cannabis. I’ve never actually seen it before.”
“Very good, Cammie,” her father told her, wagging shaggy brows at her. “As a father, I must say I’m encouraged. Perhaps, ‘just say no’ works after all.”
“Dad, I would never touch the stuff,” she assured him.
“But the thing is, Leather Ed wasn’t just sparking bowls and pulling on blunts,” Justin interrupted. “Look, we found a little bit of coke, too.” He pointed to a picture of a box with small tinfoil squares shimmering at the bottom. “Those are called bindles. There’s cocaine inside each one of those little packages.”
“He had cocaine! Why didn’t you tell me?” Cameryn demanded.
“Because you’re not supposed to officially know about this case. We’re bending all the rules here. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like a big operation but might have been enough to generate some serious cash. Jacobs is tracing it down, trying to compare notes with the Durango squad. So far we don’t have much of anything. It’s still early in the investigation.”
Cameryn narrowed her eyes. “Blunts? How do you know to call them ‘blunts’?”
“It’s street slang. Baby Bhang, Gold Star, Acapulco Red, Mota, Bambalacha—I worked in New York, remember? And in case you’re wondering, I never inhaled.” He laughed, but the sound died in his throat when he realized he was the only one who seemed amused. Dr. Moore thrust out his lower jaw, which made him look more like a bulldog than ever. He grunted from somewhere inside the folds of his neck.
His face shadowed with self-consciousness, Justin said, “That’s a joke, by the way.” He looked nervously from one set of eyes to another. “Seriously, I’m one of the good guys.”
Ben’s face, though, broke into a big, knowing smile. “It’s cool, man. I lived in L.A. a while back. I’ve seen some crazy things, too.”
“L.A., huh? So why’d you come all the way to Durango?”
“Probably the same reason you landed in Silverton. I like the small-town life. But even in the big city people didn’t drown while they were sitting in a restaurant. This case is whack.”
While the two of them talked, Cameryn picked up the photograph of Leather Ed in the chair. She concentrated on every detail, studying the shelves and the bit of curtain contained in the shot. Something was there. It tickled at the edge of her mind, taunting her, as though the idea was an image viewed through clouded glass. Every time she tried to grasp it, it seemed to slip away, the shadows shape-shifting, the thoughts turning more blurry. She bit the edge of her fingernail and asked, “Dr. Moore, did Leather Ed have pot or cocaine in his blood?”
“I have no idea.” Dr. Moore spun a quarter turn in his chair so he was facing her. “The toxicology reports take time. They didn’t make their way to my desk today, but it’s possible the papers are still in the lab.” He took off his glasses, polished them on the hem of his lab coat, then hooked them over his ears. “I’ll go see if they’re finished. I’ve got the key.”
“That would be great,” Cameryn answered.
He stood and offered her his chair, and when she sat in it she felt the warmth from his body.
“I told you before, Miss Mahoney, everything takes time. I’m willing to give you mine.”
“Thanks, Dr. Moore. Really.”
As the doctor disappeared through the door Cameryn pretended to be engrossed in the pictures, but inside she was bursting with gratitude for Dr. Moore. Time, the one thing he had so little of, was being freely donated to her when Dr. Moore could be home with his wife and children. Ben, too, had stayed, as had her father and, most important of all, Justin. The feeling of protection, of love, almost overwhelmed her. And yet there was a different kind of malignancy here, too. Kyle, as insidious as the cancer that was taking Dr. Moore’s life, needed to be cut out, and there was only one way to do it. She had to think her way through. The answer was there, if only she could see it.
Once again, she picked up a photograph of Leather Ed sitting in the chair. The book was in his lap, held in place by skeletonized fingertips. Cameryn’s ponytail fell in the way so she flicked it behind her back. Turning the photograph every which way, she tried to read the print, but it was no use.
“What is it, Cammie?” Ben asked. “You see something?”
“I’m not sure. Justin? Do you remember what kind of book this was?”
“I think it had something to do with plants. It’s still in the cooler.”
“Is there any chance you could bring it in here so I could get a look at it? I think that says page 203.”
Justin shrugged. “Sure, I can get it, but if you touch the book you’ll have to wear gloves. I’ll grab us a couple of pairs from the autopsy suite.” He turned to Ben. “Do you have evidence tape? We’ll have to cut the bag open and reseal it with my name and date, so I’ll need fresh tape.”
“Sure. It’s put away but I’ll go with you and grab it out of the drawer. You know, I’ve never worked on this end of things before, and I got to say I’m curious to see how it’s done.”
Snorting, Justin said, “That’s the thing—it’s never done like this. This is all Cammie, all the way.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “It’s all about bending the rules. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
“And I,” Cameryn said, shooting a look that was deadly serious, “am all about saving Justin. You keep forgetting that Kyle typed your name, too. This isn’t just about me anymore.”
“I can take care of myself,” Justin growled.
“How about this? We’ll save each other.”
In spite of himself, Justin grinned. “All right, Cammie. I guess I can live with that.”
She could hear their voices trail away as they made their way down the hall. Now only Cameryn and her father remained in the lab. From the corner of her eye she saw Patrick lean toward her in his chair, his large hands clasped between his knees. He was not heavy but solid, and today he was wearing a clan Aran sweater knit in the Mahoney clan pattern. Her mammaw had made it out of natural wool, a color her grandmother called báinín. In the middle there was a diamond row, representing a wish for wealth, flanked by two cables that symbolized luck, and next to it she’d created a link that stood for the unbroken chain between the Irish who emigrated and those who remained at home.
Absently, her father began to rub his fingers along the luck cable. “I’m beginning to like Justin,” he said.
“Me, too,” she replied. The book intrigued her, as did the plants. “Dad, how long do you think Leather Ed was dead in that chair?”
“Three weeks, more or less.”
“The automatic food and water dog dish probably held about a three-week food supply, so that timeline fits. And there’s the outline the note left on the table. Which in itself is kind of weird because the house was a sty. So Kyle must have dusted before putting down the note. But why would he do that?”
She could feel her father watching her as she flipped from photograph to photograph, and although she tried to ignore it she could feel her father’s eyes boring into her. Finally, exasperated, she set down the photographs and said, “Dad! Why are you staring?”
There was a pause characteristic of her father. “I’m looking at my daughter,” he answered.
“A daughter who is trying to concentrate. I can’t do it if you’re watching me.” Once again she turned her attention to Leather Ed and the pale green plants that bloomed next to his side. Slanting her eyes, she tried to read the top line of the book. If she rotated it just right, she could maybe make out the word
hydration
. A little further she teased out
polymer
and
crystals
.
It almost startled her when her father spoke again. “I’m looking at my daughter and thinking she’s not the same anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer. Sighing, she let her hand with the photograph drift to her lap, because she knew there was something he wanted to say to her that couldn’t wait. His white hair had been combed back, gelled in place so that the teeth of the comb left tiny furrows. Judge Amy Green, the woman he was dating in Ouray, had reinvented Cameryn’s father. Instead of heavy work boots, he now wore cowboy boots made with tooled leather. The denim on his jeans was never faded, the hem no longer frayed. While she had to admit he looked more polished, she somehow missed the bear of the man he’d once been. Nothing ever stayed in place, though. Everything in life shifted like sand beneath a tide.

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