As if asking for permission, Dawes paused before she turned the key in the ignition. Then the car rumbled to life and they were moving away from campus and out onto the highway.
They rode in silence. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was actually in Farmington, almost forty miles outside New Haven. The morgue, thought Alex. I’m going to the morgue. In a Mercedes. Alex thought about turning on the radio—the old kind with a red line that glided through the stations like a finger seeking the right spot on a page. Then she thought of Darlington’s voice floating out of the speakers—Get out of my car, Stern—and decided she was fine with the silence.
It took them the better part of the hour to find their way to the OCME. Alex wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but when they got there she was grateful for the bright lights, the big lot, the office-park feel of it all.
“Now what?” said Dawes.
Alex took the plastic baggie and the tin they’d prepared from her satchel and wedged them into the back pockets of her jeans. She opened her door, shrugged off her coat and scarf, and tossed them onto the passenger seat.
“What are you doing?” asked Dawes.
“I don’t want to look like a student. Give me your sweatshirt.” Alex’s peacoat was thin wool with a polyester lining, but it screamed college. That was exactly why she’d bought it.
Dawes seemed like she wanted to object, but she unzipped her parka, shucked off her sweatshirt, and tossed it over to Alex, shivering in her T-shirt. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Of course it isn’t. Let’s go.”
Through the glass doors, Alex saw that the waiting room had a few people in it, all trying to get their business done before closing. A woman sat at a desk near the back of the room. She had fluffy brown hair that showed a red rinse beneath the office lights.
Alex sent a quick text to Turner: We need to talk. Then she told Dawes, “Wait five minutes and then come in, sit down, pretend you’re waiting for someone. If that woman leaves her desk, text me right away, okay?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Talk to her.”
Alex wished she hadn’t wasted her coin of compulsion on the coroner. She had only one left and she couldn’t afford to use it to get past the front desk, not if the plan went the way she hoped.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and bustled into the waiting room, rubbing her arms. A poster had been hung behind the desk: SYMPATHY AND RESPECT. A small sign read, My name is Moira Adams and I’m glad to help. Glad, not happy. You weren’t supposed to be happy in a building full of dead people.
Moira looked up and smiled. She had some hard-living lines around her eyes and a cross around her neck.
“Hi,” Alex said. She made a show of taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Um, a detective said I could come here to see my cousin.”
“Okay, hon. Of course. What’s your cousin’s name?”
“Tara Anne Hutchins.” The middle name had been easy enough to come by online. The woman’s face grew wary. Tara Hutchins had been in the news. She was a homicide victim, the kind that could draw crazies. “Detective Turner sent me here.”
Moira’s expression was still cautious. He was the lead detective on the case and his name had most likely been in the media.
“You can have a seat while I try to reach him,” said Moira. Alex held up her phone. “He gave me his information.” She sent another quick text: Pick up NOW, Turner. Then she slid to the call screen and dialed on speaker. “Here,” she said, holding out her cell.
Moira sputtered, “I can’t…” But the faint sound of the phone ringing and Alex’s expectant expression did the trick. Moira pressed her lips together and took the cell from Alex.
The call went to Turner’s voicemail, just as Alex had known it would. Detective Abel Turner would pick up when he damn well felt like it, not when some pissy undergrad told him to, especially not when she demanded it.
Alex hoped Moira would just hang up, but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Detective Turner, this is Moira Adams, public outreach at OCME. If you could give us a call back…” She gave the number. All Alex could hope was that Turner wouldn’t check a voicemail from her number anytime too soon. Maybe he’d be really petty and delete it.
“Tara was a good girl, y’know?” she said when Moira handed her phone back. “She didn’t deserve any of this.”
Moira made sympathetic sounds. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Like she was reading from a script.
“I just need to pray over her, say my goodbyes.”
Moira’s fingers touched her cross. “Of course.”
“She had a lot of problems, but who doesn’t? We got her going to church every weekend. You can bet that boyfriend of hers didn’t like it.” At this Moira gave a little huff of agreement. “You think Detective Turner’ll call back soon?”
“As soon as he can. He may be tied up.”
“But you guys close in an hour, right?”
“To the public, yes. But you can come back on Mon—”
“I can’t, though.” Alex’s eyes scanned the photos taped below the ledge of Moira’s desk and spotted a woman in Winnie-the-Pooh scrubs. “I’m in nursing school.”
“At Albertus Magnus?”
“Yeah!”
“My niece is there. Alison Adams?”
“Real pretty girl with red hair?”
“That’s her,” Moira said with a smile.
“I can’t miss class. They’re so tough. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.”
“I know,” Moira said ruefully. “They’re running Allie ragged.” “I just… I need to be able to tell my mama I said goodbye to her. Tara’s mom and dad were… They all weren’t close.” Alex was flat out guessing now, but she suspected Moira Adams had her own story about girls like Tara Hutchins. “If I could just see her face, say goodbye.”
Moira hesitated, then reached forward and gave her hand a squeeze. “I can have someone take you down to see her. Just have your ID ready and… It can be hard, but prayer helps.”
“It always does,” said Alex fervently.
Moira pressed a button, and a few minutes later an exhausted-looking coroner in blue scrubs appeared and waved Alex through.
It was cold on the other side of the double doors, the floors tiled in heathered gray, the walls a melted cream. “Sign in here,” he said, gesturing to the clipboard on the wall. “I’ll need photo ID. Cell phones, cameras, and all recording devices in the bin. You can retrieve them when you return.”
“Sure,” said Alex. Then she held out her hand, gold glinting beneath the fluorescents. “I think you dropped this.”
The room was larger than she’d expected and ice-cold. It was also unexpectedly noisy—the dripping of a faucet, the hum of the freezers, the rush of the air conditioner—though it was silent in another way. This was the last place Grays would come. To hell with Belbalm. She should intern at the morgue this summer.
The tables were metal, as were the basins and the hoses coiled above them, and the drawers—flat squares slotted into two of the walls like filing cabinets. Had Hellie been cut up in a place like this? It wasn’t like the cause of death had been a mystery.
Alex wished she had her coat. Or Dawes’s parka. Or a shot of vodka.
She needed to work fast. The compulsion would give her about thirty minutes to get her work done and get out. But it didn’t take her long to find Tara, and though the drawer was heavier than she’d expected, it slid out smoothly.