She called Detective Carter.
"Tell me you found something," he said.
"Just more questions so far.Can you get me contact information for the paramedic who responded to Amanda Escalante's death?Victor Ruiz?"
"Already on my desk.I'll text it to you."Carter paused."What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that a fifteen-year veteran paramedic noticed something wrong at that scene, and the responding officers dismissed him.I want to hear exactly what he saw."
"Keep me posted.And Blackhorse?If this turns into something bigger than a missing persons case, I want in."
"You'll be the first to know."
Kari ended the call and waited for Carter's text.A moment later, her phone buzzed with an address.Fire Station 27, about twenty minutes away.
Time to find out why Victor Ruiz felt so certain Amanda Escalante's death wasn't what it appeared to be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Victor Ruiz was not what Kari had expected.She'd pictured someone grizzled and cynical, the kind of veteran first responder who'd seen everything and believed nothing.
Instead, she found a soft-spoken man in his early forties with kind eyes and a gentle manner, sitting at a picnic table outside Fire Station 27 with a cup of coffee and a sandwich he wasn't eating.
He looked up as she approached, wariness flickering across his features."You're the detective?The one Rachel Carter called about?"
"Kari Blackhorse.Thank you for agreeing to talk to me."
"I almost didn't."Ruiz gestured to the bench across from him, and Kari sat."The cops who responded to that call made it pretty clear they weren't interested in my observations.Said I was overthinking it.Said I didn't understand how things work in the modeling industry."His jaw tightened."Fifteen years on this job, and suddenly I don't know what an overdose looks like."
Kari heard the frustration in his voice, the particular sting of being dismissed by people who should have listened.She knew that feeling well."Tell me what you saw.Take your time."
Ruiz was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts.Behind them, the fire station hummed with quiet activity, someone washing a truck, voices drifting from inside.When he spoke, his voice was measured, precise, the voice of someone trained to observe and report.
"We got the call around seven in the morning.Welfare check requested by a roommate who'd come home and found the door locked from inside.Building manager let us in."He took a sip of coffee, his eyes distant, seeing something that wasn't here."The victim was on the bed.Young woman, early twenties.At first glance, it looked like a standard overdose.Empty pill bottles on the nightstand, suicide note on the desk."
"At first glance," Kari repeated."What changed?"
"The details.The things that didn't add up."Ruiz set down his coffee cup, his hands moving as he talked, unconsciously recreating the scene."The pill bottles were lined up perfectly on the nightstand.Three of them, spaced evenly apart, labels facing outward.I've responded to hundreds of overdoses.When someone takes a bunch of pills, they don't arrange the bottles like they're setting up a display.They grab and swallow.The bottles end up scattered, tipped over, knocked on the floor."
Kari could picture it.Someone staging the scene, not understanding how real overdoses looked."What else?"
"The suicide note.It was on the desk, printed out on regular paper.Generic font, no handwriting.And the language was..."He searched for the right word."Clinical.'I have decided to end my life because I can no longer endure the pressures of my career.'That's almost word for word what it said.No one writes like that when they're in that kind of pain.Real suicide notes are messy.They're emotional.They're addressed to specific people.This read like someone had Googled 'how to write a suicide note' and followed a template."
Kari felt a chill run through her despite the afternoon heat."You told this to the responding officers?"
"I told them all of it.The bottles, the note, the position of the body."Ruiz's voice took on an edge."She was lying perfectly straight on her back, hands folded on her stomach, like someone had posed her.People don't die that way from pills.They curl up, or they fall off the bed, or they end up in some awkward position because the body doesn't cooperate when it's shutting down."
"And they dismissed all of it."
"One of them laughed.Said I was watching too many crime shows."The memory clearly still stung."The other one just wrote it up as a straightforward OD and that was that.Case closed before it was ever really opened."
Kari sat with that for a moment.A staged scene, dismissed by officers who saw what they expected to see.A young woman dead under suspicious circumstances, filed away as just another casualty of a cruel industry.
"Mr.Ruiz, have you ever seen anything like this before?In your fifteen years on the job?"
He didn't answer immediately.His hands wrapped around his coffee cup, and he stared at the table for a long moment.When he looked up, there was something troubled in his eyes.
"Once.About eight months ago.Different part of the city, different circumstances.Young woman, also a model, also an apparent overdose."He spoke slowly, as if he were working something out as he said it."I didn't respond to that one personally, but I heard about it from a colleague.He mentioned the same thing I noticed with Escalante.The scene felt wrong.Too neat, too organized.Like someone had cleaned up before we got there."
