Echoes of the Past (18 page)

Michelle reached for the jacket’s zipper, and
slowly lowered it. Milo took photographs as she did. When the zipper was
undone, she moved Aaron’s arms to the side of his body. She sensed him watching
her, and felt his incredible sadness. She’d never met a spirit who hadn’t known
it was dead before. She opened the coat and stared at Lindsay’s body and
frowned.

How did we
get bundled like that?
Agitated, Aaron spoke loudly, and she winced.

“I wasn’t expecting that.” Her comment applied to
both what she saw, and what she’d heard.

Milo snapped several shots in succession.

“Jamie, turn the recorder back on for me, please?”

He did, and she continued.

“The coat has been opened revealing Lindsay atop
Aaron, with her hands tightly pressed into his armpits rather than hugging him
as we supposed. This explains why he had his hands tucked in her pockets since
it would ensure her hands were kept as warm as they could be by the pressure of
his arms.”

The armpits were one of the warmer parts of the
body and even as the core temperature dropped, they’d stay warm longer. One or
both of these people had had survivalist training. Things weren’t adding up
here. From what she could see, the bodies had been subjected to the cold long
before they’d gone into the water.

Lindsay would have been affected faster than
Aaron. She was small, barely five foot tall, and didn’t weight more than one
hundred pounds. Her clothing clung to her. She wore jeans, cotton knit socks, a
red fleece sweater with what appeared to be a cotton turtle neck underneath. She
wore one laced shoe, a black canvas running shoe. While her clothing might have
been fine for a drive in the car, it would have provided no heat out on the
lake. If the two had decided to go out in a canoe, why hadn’t she put on more
suitable clothing?

Since Aaron wasn’t lying on Lindsay’s arms,
Michelle instructed the orderlies to pick her up and
lie
her on the other table. The pallor of the girl’s face showed she’d been pressed
tightly against Aaron at the time of death. Perhaps the canoe wasn’t a factor
in their deaths. Had they just fallen into the lake and stayed that way? The
tox
screen was vital now.

What
happened to us?
Anger had replaced confusion.

“Your bodies were found submerged in the Lake of
the Mountain on Friday morning. People think you were in a canoe on the lake,
but I don’t buy it. What did you do Thursday night after dinner?”

Milo chortled. “It sounds like your
cross-examining him, Doc.”

“I suppose in a way I am. All the answers are
here, gentleman. We just have to find them, but to do that we need to know what
to look for.”

She knew the way she was talking was strange, but
it was the only way to listen to the ghost and answer his questions as well as
her own. They’d get used to it. Other morgue techs had.

Aaron understood what she wanted.
I remember getting in the car and heading
out to get water samples before going into
Picton
.
There’s no way we went out on the water that night. We saw some lights near the
edge of the lake and went to investigate. That’s it.

“Let’s see what Lindsay has to say.”

Michelle reached out to grab the young girl’s
hand.
Nothing.
Lindsay’s spirit wasn’t here. What was
going on? One spirit didn’t know it had died, the other was mute? She could see
and hear Aaron, but she couldn’t bring up his memories of the moment he’d died
as she usually could. His mind was blank. There were no memories to sense. How
was that possible?

“Something’s not right here.”

She looked closely at Lindsay’s body. There was no
white foam near her nostrils or mouth the way there was on Aaron’s. Were her
lips blue? She looked at the ears and the nose. It didn’t seem possible, but
she wondered whether or not there might be frostbite there. The temperature
hadn’t gone below freezing that night, but the winds and rain had been vicious.

She shook her head, glad the techs couldn’t see
the confusion on her face. The only thing that made sense was if Lindsay had
died before going into the water. Michelle moved to the foot of the table and
carefully removed the sock from Lindsay’s left foot. Post-mortem
lividity
indicated Lindsay had died standing up. How was
that possible? She stared at the sole of Lindsay’s foot. What the hell was
going on here? She looked at Milo and Jamie. She needed to get them out of here
for a few minutes.

“Milo, could you go and get me a cup of coffee? I
know it probably isn’t standard procedure, but I’m exhausted.”

“No problem, doc. Lots of people do it. How do you
take it?”

“Double-double.”

He left the room and headed into the break room.

“Jamie, can you get me some evidence bags? I want
to keep things separate.”

“Sure thing.”

As soon as he was out of sight, she turned to
Aaron. “I don’t have a lot of time here.”

Why isn’t
Lindsay here if I am?

“My ability to communicate with the dead is
limited to those who died because of drowning. Lindsay didn’t drown. She was
dead in your arms before you both went into the water. I need to know what you
remember because there is something wrong here. You say you didn’t go out in
the canoe.”

There was a
storm moving in. It would have been suicide. I remember having dinner…

Michelle moved closer to Aaron’s body and slipped
off one glove. Skin to skin gave her a better image. Like watching a movie, the
last of Aaron’s memories unfolded before her eyes.

She watched him finish dinner, talk to Tony and
then Jackson about the ammonia hydroxide levels in the lake. She saw him rub
Lissa’s
stomach and kiss her goodbye.

“We won’t be long. Go to bed. You’ll feel better
in the morning.”

Michelle let the images flow. She observed them
leave the parking lot and travel along the road. She spotted the lights they’d
seen down by the water. They’d driven down the laneway almost obscured by the
tall corn stalks. It was dark, and as they got closer, Aaron had turned off the
headlights hoping they could sneak up on whoever was down by the water. He was
excited.

“These might be the guys dumping those toxins into
the lake. Wouldn’t it be cool to catch them red-handed?”

“I don’t know, Aaron. Maybe we should go back.”
Lindsay had been nervous.

“We’ll be fine. Stay right beside me.”

They’d only walked a few feet when a bright flash
of light blinded them. Startled, Lindsay had tripped over a root in the boggy
area and fallen sideways. “Damn it! My shoe’s caught in the muck.”

Aaron helped her up. “Leave it. Come on, I’ll walk
you back to the car.”

He did and then continued alone down to the water.
Suddenly, dust choked him…It was as if someone had shut a curtain. There was
nothing else.

Does that
help?

“It does. I believe you and Lindsay were drugged
and murdered, and I intend to prove it.
One more thing,
Aaron.
Could Professor Steele be responsible for this?”

The professor?
No way.
He’s one of the good guys.

“But you told the mayor he was an ass. He said you
argued with the professor frequently.”

That man’s
on crack. The professor never argues with anybody. He doesn’t have to. I’ve
never even seen him angry. I don’t remember ever speaking to the mayor. I like
Tony. He’s a great guy. I was going to ask him to be my best man.

She felt his sadness.
Thanks, Aaron.

Ron had lied to her. Why? Toxins were a hell of a
lot more serious than most of your run of the mill water pollution.

Michelle quickly pulled her glove up. She had a
fairly good idea as to what had happened. Now, she needed the physical evidence
to prove it. She moved over to Lindsay just as Milo walked in with her coffee.
She stepped away from the bodies, pulled off her mask and right glove, and
reached for the porcelain cup.

“Thanks. This is just what I needed.”

Jamie returned with a dozen evidence bags.

She took several mouthfuls of the hot liquid
trying to decide what to do next. There was no real mystery to Aaron’s cause of
death. It could wait.

“Guys, let’s put Aaron away for now and focus on
Lindsay. I think the young lady is full of surprises. Get her undressed. I want
pictures at every stage of the process, and then I want each garment folded and
placed in an evidence bag. Make sure you fold everything with an evidence sheet
under it. Be specific in describing the garments. She’s got mud embedded in the
right knee of her jeans, but her left shoe is missing, and the sock is filthy
as if she walked on her tip toes. I’m not convinced what we’ve found here was
an accident. I’m officially pronouncing these suspicious deaths. We’ll treat them
as homicides until it’s proven otherwise.”

Jamie looked at Milo and smirked, an I-told-you-so
look on his face.

“You pay for dinner tonight.”

“Seriously, Milo?”
Michelle laughed. “If you’ve spent any time in the morgue, you could’ve bet I’d
rule that way just from the way the bodies were bundled.”

“I know, but he called suspicious first—what was I
to do? I had a fifty-fifty chance.”

Michelle shook her head. The morgue might not be the
best place for humor, but sometimes sharing a laugh was the only way to deal
with the sadness of it all. She undressed the body, unzipping the fleece
sweater. She noticed something in the pocket and pulled it out. It was a brand
new synthetic cork. Where did it come from, and did it have any bearing on the
case? The one person who might know was the last man she wanted to see tonight.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much choice. She thought about the scene she’d
viewed. Ammonia hydroxide was a hell of a serious case of pollution. Just what
was going on here? If the team had proof, how could Ron dismiss them like that?
People stood to lose a lot of money if an unfounded rumor like this got out. It
could ruin the county—but if it were true, how many might die?

* * * *

Five hours later, freshly showered and back in
her own
clothes, Michelle got into the Camaro for the drive
to the Lake of the Mountain Resort. She’d completed Lindsay’s external
examination. The body had been cleaned, weighed, her hair brushed, and all the
trace from it as well as from under her fingernails sent to the police forensic
lab along with the rest of her clothing. She’d hung onto the cork, and tossed
it in her purse. She’d ask Ron about it in the morning; after all, he’d know
which wineries used them. Of course, the cork might have nothing to do with the
case at all.

There’d been a
perimortem
cut on her Lindsay’s right hand, bruising around her left ankle indicating
she’d sprained it shortly before her death—consistent with the fall she’d seen
in Aaron’s memory. She’d also found bruises on her arm as if she’d been grabbed
and dragged. Milo had suggested Aaron had put them there, but the boy’s spirit
vigorously denied even the idea he could have hurt her. Her fingertips and toes
had shown signs of frostbite. Michelle ordered the body x-rayed, but nothing
unusual had presented itself. Chances were good Lindsay had gotten wet when
she’d fallen. If the rain had started, conditions would have been ideal for
hypothermia, but time would’ve been a factor too, and with the abrupt end to
Aaron’s memories…

Michelle had taken blood samples from both
bodies,
tissue samples from inside Lindsay’s nose and ears,
and had sent them to the hospital lab for a full chemical analysis. If Lindsay
died from hypothermia, her blood sugar levels would be elevated, and Michelle
hoped the lab would have the immunoassay information for her by tomorrow
afternoon. Something Aaron’s spirit had said had
rung
a bell. She’d added a request that they check the blood for all types of drugs.
Scopolamine, one of the date rape drugs, was said to impair memory. She’d read
a paper on it recently stating it could be effective when inhaled in its
powdered form. It was also used as a truth serum even though its primary
function was to control nausea and travel sickness.

She had her recorder with her and would listen to
and transcribe her notes before she went to bed. She’d also downloaded the
pictures Milo had taken and would add them to her meagre file. She hoped the
others had come through by now. This case wasn’t adding up and it bothered her.

On Monday, she’d have Milo help her with the
internal examination of Lindsay’s body, while Jamie and George could do the
external on Aaron. She’d go in tomorrow afternoon and do her own. While
Michelle was sure Lindsay had died before she’d gone into the water, she’d need
to prove it before she could say anything. “Sorry, but this one isn’t talking
to me,” would create more questions than she wanted to answer. As it was, Milo
thought she was nuts. The answers to how Lindsay had died were in the girl’s heart,
liver, lungs, bladder, and brain. You couldn’t hide organ failure. And if she’d
been dead before going into the water, there’d be no lake water diatoms in her
lungs.

Once she revealed Lindsay’s cause of death, the
question on everyone’s mind would be how and where had Lindsay been exposed to
that low a temperature? The bundling made sense if Aaron had tried to share his
body heat with her. Finding the shoe could be
key
to
locating where they’d been attacked. Understanding how and where they got into
the lake might be harder. She seriously doubted the canoe had anything to do
with it. Proving it was murder and finding the killer was going to be a lot
harder than she’d expected. She focused on her driving once more.