A coward, I looked away. There would be no questioning Connelly or her family right now, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak to the others who had been admitted. Their families were standing like Robinelle, watching the shadows on the glass wall. I left the paranormal unit.
Stopping a security guard in the hallway, I asked directions to the medical university’s pathology department and got into my car, following the hastily scripted directions. I parked and found the weekend pathologist just leaving. I identified myself and said, “I hate to bother you, but—”
“Then don’t,” she said, sounding tired and taciturn. Her name tag identified her as Dr. Gomez, her accent placed her as a Tennessee native, and her expression said she had worked a long shift and was mighty unhappy. She was a take-charge, no-nonsense woman with very dark copper skin tones and a curly Afro that sprang around her face when she released it from a clip. “You can walk out with me. But I can’t talk to you. HIPAA laws make all patient matters confidential.”
She might not have meant it to hit me the way it did, but anger shot all through me. “Murder investigations precede HIPAA,” I said, “especially since a subpoena was delivered to your department at seven a.m. While I appreciate you being in a hurry and your desire to protect patients, you can talk to me now or I can have a marked car show up at your home and bring you in to PsyLED for a more formal discussion.”
Gomez stopped and swiveled to me. “I don’t like being threatened.”
I blew out a breath as the anger dissipated. I had no idea where my attitude had come from, except from the vision of Connelly Darrow dying and being brought back behind the curtain. “People are dying. I need information,” I said. “Please. Tell me what you know about the body.”
Gomez frowned. “We received jars of sludge from a crime scene, and I thought it was a joke. Seems it wasn’t. The preliminary reports from the early samples show nothing of substance. So far nothing is growing on the plates or the broth. Today I received four fingers from the paranormal unit from two different patients. They dissolved before I could do more than measure and weigh them. I sent parts of the remains to the clinical lab for chemistries, to mycobacteriology for cultures,and to CDC for virology and infectious disease testing, and my tech worked up what he could in histo.”
“What is histo?”
“Histology. He put a few small scraps of flesh into the histology tissue processor. If the tissue survives the dehydration and paraffin processes, it’ll be cut into slices of point five to point one micrometers and mounted on a slide, stained, and read under a microscope. Then I might—might—have an idea what’s killing the patients. Your people say it’s a curse, but even curses have a cause—bacterial, viral, prion-based—somethinghas to cause the tissue breakdown and total organ failure. And heat, bacteria, and moisture are usually responsible for decomposition, regardless of magical energies.”
I frowned. “Radiation doesn’t involve those things. Magic is energy, just like radiation is energy. And we’ve already speculated that this could be a...” I tried to think of a way to say this that might be medically helpful instead of investigatively helpful. I went on. “Call it a nonwitchy time curse, speeding up death and decay rather than causing them, because death and decay happen to all of us.”
Gomez crossed her arms, her scrubs swishing, her eyes narrow in thought. “Keep talking.”
“You might not have anything except a magically accelerated natural progression. And because the patients were deprived of early access to a null chamber, which would halt the energies and the progression of the patients’ decomp, then the energies might have taken hold and done their damage. Once the patients did get access to a null unit, it could have been too little, too late. All the affected people at the farm were put inside a null chamber and they got better. Accelerated decomposition of inanimate objects stopped. We might have...” My words ground to a halt. “PsyLED should have pushed use of the null room at HQ harder.”
The anger on Gomez’ face faded. “PsyLED has a null room in Knoxville?”
I frowned. “Yes. There is a null room at PsyLED here in Knoxville, and parked outside is aportablenull chamber on loan to UTMC from the North Nashville coven.”
I didn’t have to be Tandy to know that Gomez was shocked. She hadn’t known.
“Both are available,” I said, softer. “PsyLED’s room is a better null space because it’s stable. We offered for UTMC to transport patients there for treatment. That didn’t happen.”
“You offered that to us? Who did you talk to, because this is the first I’ve heard about it,” she said, redirecting her anger.
“Yes. We offered. I can find out who took the call at UTMC if necessary. We’ve been feeling our way through this, just like y’all.”
Gomez cursed and walked toward the doctor parking area.
Feeling despondent, and knowing that communication had broken down somewhere, somehow, I moved to my vehicle and began to write up my reports. Moments later, JoJo notified me that there had been a death on the paranormal floor and for me to get back to the morgue.
NINE
I was standing at the morgue doors, waiting for the paperwork to be filled out, and for family to grieve. I had been here long enough to find vending machines and eat a package of pretzels and drink a Cheerwine, both of which were wonderful snack foods.
I finally heard a ding and the elevator doors opened. A stretcher was wheeled off toward me, preceded by the stench ofdeath and decay. The body on the stretcher was zipped into a human remains pouch, a white sheet over the HRP. The transport workers were covered head to toe in blue antispelled unis, their faces hidden behind masks and goggles. I showed my ID and requested to see the body.
They stopped. One of them pulled back the sheet. The other unzipped the pouch.
It was what I had expected. Pretty awful. Sometime in the last hour, Connelly had coded again, been pronounced, and been moved off the floor. Her eyes had probably been blue; now they were clouded over. Her lips were gray, pulled back tightly from dry, crusty teeth. A greenish slime drooled from one corner of her lips around a tube that was still in place. Her brown hair was falling out. Her skin was weeping, melting from her bones like candle wax. Her hands and feet were green. I assumed I was expected to touch and read the body to verify the presence and type of the magics in it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I curled my hands into fists. The experience of fightingdeath and decaywas still too fresh in my memory. My finger still ached, the skin still white and dead looking.
Before I could talk myself into it, the elevator pinged and opened. Gomez strode out, shouting, “This better be worth—”She halted, cursed, and came on. “Worth my time to come back on my day off,” she said softly. She stopped over Connelly’s body. “Astounding,” she said. “And damn it all to hell.” She looked at me. “You get a judge’s order and you can observe the PM. Otherwise get the hell out.”
I got.
And I had the perfect excuse to not touch the body.
***
I drove to the office. My official vehicle had come to me by way of confiscation and it was “fully tricked out inside,” according to Occam. It had every bell and whistle ever devised by car manufacturers—heated seats and steering wheel, autostart, Bluetooth, an onboard computer that I could link to my laptop if needed, electronic chargers, monitors to tell me when I had low tires... It had everything. I loved it. I’d never tell my mama, but the best reasons for entering the modern world were Krispy Kreme donuts and tech.
