Nerves of Steel (14 page)

"After the external, I'll start with the wound and determine cause as best I can," he assured her.  He turned to Drake.  "Good to see you again, Detective.  I trust that would also be amenable to you?"

Drake nodded, but his gaze was fixed on her, not the medical examiner.  Did he think she would crumple?  That she couldn't handle it?  Her fingers dug into the thin metal ledge along the bottom of the window.  He didn't know her at all.  Or what she could handle.

They watched in silence as Isaiah changed into his protective suit, double gloved and carefully adjusted his face shield so it wouldn't bang against his thick, wire-rimmed glasses.  He and his assistant entered the autopsy suite to begin their work of witnessing for the dead.

Cassie's breath fogged the glass, her entire reality telescoped into the well-lit circle around Fran's body.  When she thought of Fran she was already beginning to use the past tense.  Was that good or bad?  

Isaiah's voice carried clearly through the speaker as he dissected her friend into her essential elements.  She heard the scratch of a pen and saw Drake scribbling notes in a small pad.

Was she the last one to hear Fran laugh?  Cassie knew she was the last to hear her speak.  And scream.

"Body of a Frances Jennifer Weaver," Isaiah intoned, moving around the table, not yet touching the corpse in front of him.  "External exam reveals a three centimeter by two centimeter irregularly shaped wound in the anterior neck at the level of the thyroid cartilage and slightly laterally displaced to the body's left side.  There is extensive stippling and abrading around the wound edges."  He paused and fixed a ruler in place while the diener took close up photos.

"Our guy held the gun directly against her skin," Drake translated unnecessarily.  If there was one thing Cassie had seen too many of, it was gunshot wounds. 

Isaiah placed a probe into the wound, reproducing the track of the bullet.  "The entrance wound was at an approximately thirty degree angle, aimed downward," he continued his litany, "placing the victim below the perpetrator and directly in front of him."  They rolled the body and he examined the back briefly.  "No obvious exit wound.  Lividity has set in and is consistent with the victim's position as supine immediately after death.  There are also abrasions circumferentially around the victim's wrists and across her mouth." 

More photographs.  Cassie closed her eyes against the bright stab of the macroflash, but her vision still flared red, pulsing in time with her headache.  She felt herself begin to sway and snapped her eyes back open, holding herself upright with her grip on the ledge.  She darted a glance in Drake's direction just in time to catch his narrowed gaze watching her intently.  He was hovering again as well, his hand stretched out behind her, ready to steady her if need be.

"I'm fine," she repeated, stepping to her left, out of his reach. 

He shrugged and returned his focus to the proceedings beyond the window.  "You're the doctor." 

Isaiah began the Y-shaped incision and carefully removed the chest plate, preserving the tissue around the neck.   

"The heart is virtually empty, consistent with ex-sanguination," Isaiah continued, removing each vital organ and weighing it before handing it to the diener for photos.  In his large, green-gloved hands, Fran's heart looked like a dark amorphous blob of meat.  There was no sign of the living, caring woman the compact mass of muscle had once kept alive.

After the chest cavity was empty, Isaiah ran his fingers over the tissue along the rear of the rib cage, working his way up until he found the bullet.  The diener photographed the site of the bullet, then Isaiah dug it out with painstaking care.  Pinched between Isaiah's forceps, the bullet with its flattened tip looked small, too insignificant to be lethal.  

"Thirty-eight caliber bullet with little deformity, removed from the cervical spine at approximately the level of C-7."  Finally he turned to the neck itself, carefully reflecting away layers of tissue.  "Trachea is completely disrupted, the larynx has sustained a comminuted fracture, and there is obvious penetration of the left jugular vein and common carotid artery."

Cassie's sigh rattled through her body like wind through a haunted house.  She took a step back, able to breathe again.  Isaiah turned the recorder off and gestured for the diener to take some close-ups.  He stepped out to join her and Drake, wrapping his bloody hands around his chest and tucking them under his arms.

"You heard?" he asked Cassie.

"Thanks, Isaiah."  She raised her hands, flexed and stretched them, relieved that they didn't have blood on them after all.  She caught Drake staring at her and dropped them to her sides once more.

"You wanna translate for us poor slobs?" Drake asked, pen poised over his notebook.

"Death was inevitable," Isaiah emphasized the last word, his gaze on Cassie.  "It's a toss up which came first: ex-sanguination or hypoxia.  My bet is the rapid blood loss did her in, but I can give you an exact answer after I review the micro.  Either way, manner of death is homicide."

Drake nodded, satisfied, and closed his book.  "That's all I need.  You'll send over your final report as soon as possible, right?"

Cassie saw he said this with a smile and knew the two must have worked together before.  Because if there was one thing Isaiah Steward was noted for, it was his painstaking search for all the answers before he made a final commitment.  Which was why she appreciated him disrupting his routine to give comfort to a friend.

Right now, she'd take comfort wherever she could find it.

Isaiah started back through the door.  "You'll get it when it's ready."  The door to the autopsy suite swung shut behind him, and she was alone with Drake once more.

Cassie zipped her jacket, avoiding the detective's gaze.  He laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Was it worth it?" he asked in a low voice.  Not his cop voice, but the same tone he'd used in the suture room when he'd asked her to call him Mickey.

She nodded, looking away so he wouldn't see her blink back the tears fighting to spill from her eyes.  He handed her a clean handkerchief.  Where the hell had that come from?  She ignored it, sniffed, looked down at the floor, anywhere but at him.  His hand on her shoulder radiated heat, even through the thick leather of her jacket.

"It's all right if you want to cry," he told her, folding the handkerchief into a neat square and returning it to his pocket.  "You've just lost a friend."

"She would still be alive if it weren't for me."

The words burned, but it was good to have them out in the open where she could deal with them.  Left inside, they threatened to eat away at her.  Now they joined the ranks of the other enemy, the man who had actually pulled the trigger. 

"Who died and made you God?" Drake asked, his voice back to normal, mocking and without a trace of compassion.  "You think you're responsible for everything bad that happens around you.  Is that why you let that creep, King, run roughshod all over you?  Do you somehow feel you have it coming?  That you deserve to be treated that way?"  He shook his head, blue eyes blazing at her.  "I don't understand you."

Cassie gathered herself up to her full five foot four and wished she were taller.  "I hope this isn't how you handle all your witnesses, Detective," she flared back.  "I'll call a cab, if it's all the same to you."

She reached for the phone on the wall.  He intercepted her, snatching it from her hand.  "No.  I said I'd take you home and I will."

"This isn't the prom.  I don't have to leave with the same adolescent I came in with."

They shared a glare for a moment, then he chuckled.  "Adolescent, huh?  Guess you're right.  I'm sorry, Hart.  I owe you an apology.  I had no right to bring up your ex-husband."

"Damned right.  And it's Dr. Hart." 

He gave her a gracious bow, mitigated only by the fleeting grin that played over his face.   "Dr. Hart.  Your carriage awaits."

Cassie looked past him and saw Fran, now completely eviscerated, a shallow husk of flesh all that remained of her friend.   Her gut twisted as if she'd been sucker-punched and her vision filled with black spots.  It was an effort to stumble through the door Drake held open for her.

He was wrong.  It didn't have anything to do with playing God.  It was all about right and wrong and taking responsibility for her choices in life.  Both the good ones and the bad.  It just seemed that, with the people she loved, her bad choices far outweighed the good.

She turned to tell him this, but he was walking closer to her than she realized.   She lurched against him, fell off balance.  His hand was immediately there, supporting her, righting her.  She stood, bemused by his proximity, her back against the wall. 

Cassie flashed to when Richard had cornered her in a similar position.  This time she felt no fear, none of the deep-seated emotions that unraveled her whenever she was around Richard.  Instead she felt a strange calm.  Her vision cleared, the world stopped its gyroscopic spinning. 

Drake looked down at her, blue eyes flashing in the fluorescent lights.  His hand fell away, hovering an inch or so from her body, as if he were afraid to break the spell that had embraced them both.

The sound of Fran's screams, the heat of her blood pumping into Cassie's hands, the dull film that clouded her eyes--all these vanished.  Leaving only the man before her.  Cassie raised her hand, her palm gently caressing his cheek, the stubble of his beard.  His chest caught with a sharp intake of breath and he looked away. 

Damn it, when would she learn?  She'd crossed some line, done something offensive to him.  She began to lower her hand, disappointed. 

Drake surprised her and took her hand in his, burying his mouth in her palm, tasting her with delicate strokes of his tongue.  She arched her neck, reached up to pull his mouth down to meet hers.

Her fingers tangled in his hair, her mouth opened beneath his, eager.  She moved his hand to rest inside her jacket, over her breast, where he could feel the desperate pounding of her heart.  He made a small noise as he shifted his weight, the better to align his body perfectly against hers.

She took a deep breath, mingling her exhalation with his, and for the first time that night, the sight of Fran's bloody body did not haunt her.

CHAPTER 24

A shrill buzz echoed down the hallway.  Drake jumped back, shoved his hands in his coat pockets.  The security guard moved past them down to the service entrance where the buzzer sounded once more. 

He dared a glance over at Hart and saw that her face was flushed with color.  She stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Necking in the morgue," he muttered, certain the spell was irrevocably shattered.  "What would the guys say about that?"  He reached for her arm, stopped short of actual physical contact.  No sense courting danger. 

She seemed fascinated by the tiled floor, didn't say a word as she walked out the door. After scrawling their initials on the guard's clipboard, he followed her out to his car.  He climbed into the driver's seat.  She remained silent in her seat, her eyes focused straight ahead into the darkness.

"I'm sorry."  He cleared his throat twice before his voice normalized.  "That was totally unprofessional of me.  I know fear can sometimes trigger certain," he stumbled over his words in his effort to sound impersonal, "emotional reactions.  I hope you don't think I would take advantage of that vulnerable state.  I haven't ever, I shouldn't--"  He decided to stick to basics.  "You're a witness.  Now," he turned the ignition on, "let me take you to your home."

She perched on the edge of her seat, her back straight, shoulders hunched high, neck rigid.  She said nothing, swiped at her face with her hand although she still hadn't cried, and stared straight ahead.

He fiddled with the heater, watching her from the corner of his eye.  Wan light from the building's security spots filtered in through the rain-streaked window, etching her face in blue-gray shadows as if she were carved from granite.  Just when he feared she was having some kind of catatonic breakdown, she spoke.

"I know she's just another case to you," she started.  Her voice was a hair above a whisper, but not gentle by any means.  Each word emerged clipped, as if she were biting off pieces of glass.  "Not even a case.  Part of your big drug conspiracy.  I know you can't let yourself get personally involved.  It's just--"  She cleared her throat and her voice returned, stronger now.

"Damn it, Drake, you met her.  You saw how vivacious, how full of life she was.  She's not just another DB!"  He looked up at her use of the cop talk.  "Yeah, everyone has their own name for it.  Dead body for you guys, crispy critters for the firemen--you know what we call 'em?  MM's: morgue meat.  I know it's the only way to keep your sanity in a job like ours, but forgive me if I'm feeling more than a little insane right now.  You got a fancy speech to cover that?" 

"I'm sorry."  He shifted in the seat, the butt of his Glock digging into his side, reminding him of his responsibilities.  To Hart.  To her friend.  "It's nothing personal."

"Don't you dare say that to me!  Not here, not after what we just watched."

He reached for her hand, trying to offer the dispassionate comfort of a professional.  Part of him was afraid of what might happen if she accepted it—he still felt the heat of her lips on his.

She jerked away before he could make contact and shoved her door open.  Wind rushed in, biting rain slashed at them both.  He leaned over her, past her, reaching for the door handle.  She jumped out into the freezing rain, avoiding him. 

"Know what, Drake?  You can just go to hell!  I'll walk home."

Drake scrambled after her.  Judas H!  Couldn't she see he was trying to help her?  Icy water sloshed over the tops of his sneakers. 

Help her or handle her?  It wasn't her fault he had responded to her touch in the hallway.  She was distraught, it was his job to take control of the situation.

Except that ever since he met Hart, he'd felt totally out of control.  Until he held her in his arms.  Then, for the first time since last summer, everything felt right, his world had tilted back into balance at last.  Only for a few seconds, but he already missed that feeling, missed her touch with an intensity that was frightening.