Suddenly, the memory of the last time I’d seen Lacy and Brett together before tonight came to mind. It was the night before she’d left for college, and he’d shown up at her house with a gun, threatening to use it on himself if she left him. He’d ended up jumping from her second-story window when the police arrived. The gun had turned out to be fake, but Brett’s manipulation had been real enough.
I gasped, and Lacy’s head shot up, her eyes wide with fright.
“I’m not… it’s not what…” Lacy froze in place. “He has something that belongs to me.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Lacy? Can I help you?”
Emotions ran across her face almost faster than I could read them. Fear, hope, anger. My friend was in some kind of trouble.
“You can’t tamper with the body,” I said, stating the obvious but also trying to prevent this information from coming out of Charlie’s mouth. If he spoke the words, they might be followed by,You’ll need to come with me.
“I wasn’t. I swear.” Lacy took a moment to collect herself. “He really does have something of mine.”
“Something like…?” Charlie waited for her to complete the statement.
Lacy cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. I knew that look. She didn’t want to tell him, so she wouldn’t. “Something personal… a piece of paper, a note.”
Lacy was lying, I was sure of it, but thankfully Charlie couldn’t read her like I could.
He approached her slowly. “I promise we’ll let you know if we find anything that could possibly be yours.”
Lacy must’ve realized she had no other option, and with my eyes I begged her to walk away. I did not want to have to pick sides in a fight between the law, aka Charlie, and what I knewto be true of my best friend. If she said she was looking for something that belonged to her, then she was. It might not be a note, but Brett had died with something she needed.
Unfortunately, catching her in the act of rifling through a dead man’s pockets wasn’t a great look.
Suddenly, a new face appeared between the red curtains. It was Anton. “Lacy? Are you back here?” He seemed distressed, as if he’d thought he’d lost her.
Lacy’s face relaxed when she saw him. “Anton!” She started toward him, but she had to pass me on the way. Charlie put out a hand and lightly touched her forearm. “Don’t go far, okay? We may need to ask some questions.”
I knew that wasn’t a maybe, and Lacy did too. She nodded, looked at the ground, and let Anton take her hand and lead her away.
After they were gone, Charlie shook his head as he put on latex gloves and offered the box to me. “Any idea what that was about?”
“None,” I said, hoping my tone implied that I wasn’t in a mood to speculate.
Charlie seemed to accept my response.
I didn’t take the gloves, figuring I could observe best with my eyes. Besides, I had no desire to touch Brett’s flesh again. I could still feel his bones cracking under my palms. I’d seen dead bodies before—Momma’s in her casket at the funeral home and Mr. Finch’s falling out of a stage set during the Rose Palace Pageant—but not one that had expired right in front of me. A chill crept up the back of my neck, leaving prickles, but I pushed aside my own discomfort and summoned my professional training.
I circled the body, first noting the gray pallor of Brett’s skin and then the red and purple marks along his neck, a combination of burst blood vessels and scratch marks. I’d cutinto my fair share of animals during labs in the first year of vet school, but I’d never stared at a human corpse, trying to discern what the body might be telling me. I tried to do as Charlie had suggested and pretend this was any other mammal, which, in my mind, was a compliment rather than a way to dehumanize the victim. Animals, after all, were often much better creatures than their human counterparts.
“Tell me what you see,” Charlie said as he took a step back and waited. I felt very much on the spot, but I made myself focus.
“Burst blood vessels,” I noted, pointing to the squiggly red lines. “That almost makes it look like…”
“Like he was strangled,” Charlie added.
“But he wasn’t,” I said. “I heard him, and I saw him. No one touched Brett until…” I listed the people off on my fingers. “Joe tried the Heimlich, and Mina and I attempted CPR. Presley fell to his other side, but I’m not sure she ever touched him.” I replayed the moments, grabbing at myself as I’d seen Brett do. “He coughed and held his throat, but he couldn’t exactly strangle himself.”
Charlie lifted a shoulder. “Right.”
I examined Brett’s mouth and noticed a slight trickle of blood in the left corner of his lips.
“There’s nothing visible in the airway,” Charlie said.
“But there’s dried blood that indicates some kind of scraping or tearing in the mouth or throat,” I added.
“I could see someone choking on ice, but ice wouldn’t have torn him up like this,” Charlie replied.
