The Thomas Blume Series

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Being surrounded by dead bodies was nothing new. An unenviable habit of mine, given my chosen career, and my recent investigations in London. I had even become close to Nicole Remay, the woman working in the coroner’s office there, and she had helped me break more than one case.

Here in New York, the office of the medical examiner wasn’t nearly as alluring without the sharp wit of my female partner in crime. I entered the morgue, wishing she were there. It was always good to have someone on the inside—even when it came to morgue visits—and without Nicole’s guidance, I felt like an intruder among the dead—especially since I hadn’t even been back in New York for three whole hours.

That thought scratched at the back of my skull, the urge for a drink once again rising. The familiar smoke building inside urged me to fill my body with liquid oblivion.

Not now.

I pushed the sensation down and strode along the sterile hallway. At least the building was cool, away from the baking concrete of the streets.

Rey had called ahead for me, and the medical examiner was waiting when I knocked on the door to his office. Middle-aged, maybe in his early forties, he wore a pair of thin eyeglasses and had a finely trimmed mustache that didn’t suit him. His gaunt appearance virtually screamed morgue-worker. It again made me miss Remay something terrible.

“Mr. Blume?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

The examiner stood and offered his hand. “Alex Brooks, assistant ME.”

We shook, and the power in his grip took me by surprise. His pallid complexion and meager size made me think he’d be no stronger than a ghoul.

“I’m never quite sure how to approach things when a detective or officer comes by to see a body,” Brooks said. “I work alone most of the time. Do you need assistance? Would you like me to come back with you?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Could you give me the rundown of what we know so far, though?”

“Sure can. Darcey Holland, thirty-nine years old. She was discovered in the Hudson about thirty-six hours ago. Preliminary findings showed a fairly potent sedative in her bloodstream, Nembutal. Other than that, there’s not much else to say…except that the body is in pretty bad shape.”

“Water damage?” I asked.

A waterlogged corpse. Every detective’s worst nightmare…

“No, we were fortunate on that end to recover her quickly. But there is some severe damage to the facial tissue.”

“What are your assumptions?”

The examiner shrugged, as though he really didn’t care how she’d died. When you worked with death every day, one stiff was probably the same as the next.

“I’m thinking probably suicide,” he continued. “The Brooklyn Bridge is about a half mile up the river, and she could have easily floated down from there. The facial damage indicates that she could have fallen and struck her head or gotten caught on a rock as the body moved downriver. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of other trauma.”

I nodded, trying to imagine Darcey killing herself. She’d always been sweet and gentle, soft-spoken but full of life. “Okay,” I said. “Where’s the body?”

He reached for a card key at the edge of his desk and handed it to me. “Exam Room Seven. Take your time.”

I nodded my thanks, took the card, and hurried to the exam room, not wanting to be there a moment longer than absolutely necessary. I inserted the card into the slot. The lock clicked and I entered the room. The door closed behind me, pushed by the automatic lever.

The only noise inside came from the gentle hum of the refrigeration units.

Quiet as a tomb. I shivered, but it had nothing to do with the temperature.

The examination table stood in the middle of the room with a sheet draped over it. A shape lay beneath the sheet, and the face that remained uncovered, eyes closed and at peace, was both familiar and strange to me at once. I approached her hesitantly and gasped at the sight. It seemed surreal to see the first woman I had ever loved in such a state. The examiner hadn’t been kidding about her head. The flesh was missing from most of the right side of her face and neck. The absence of skin continued downward in ragged tears to areas beneath the cover. The right corner of her mouth had been stretched down by whatever caused the damage. Flecks of chipped teeth showed through a tear at the corner of her mouth.

I grimaced and looked away.

Here I was again, inspecting the ruined corpse of someone I once held dear. Death seemed to follow me at every turn, and I was bone-tired. I wanted to be back in a bar, staring into the bottom of a glass but didn’t have that option. Darcey had been a good person, and like all good people in my life she had wound up dead. The least I could do was find out what had happened to her. I sighed, moved closer and studied the body.

As I did, my eyes landed on her neck where the necklace had been. Curious, I stepped forward and pulled the cover away from her left side. I looked to her ashen fingers, lying at her side. Indentations on her pinky and ring finger showed where she had been wearing rings, but again, much of the skin was missing. Their depth and discoloration suggested the bands had been there for quite some time. She’d worn her grandmother’s ring since her sixteenth birthday. I’d never seen her without it. She’d worn it on her ring finger and had joked that the man she eventually married would have to be a saint if he expected her to replace her grandmother’s ring with an engagement ring.

Looking back, I should have known that wouldn’t be me. I was certainly no saint even then, and by now, I’d crossed more lines than a drunk driver.

The necklace and rings presented two odd details: first, that Darcey had been wearing jewelry at all; second, she’d clearly not been robbed. Maybe the examiner was right in assuming Darcey had committed suicide.

I found it hard to imagine, but maybe Rey was right, too. People change. Hell, I was already a very different person than I’d been when I left New York, and that had been only a little over a year. Maybe something had happened in the course of the last eight years that drove her to kill herself. If that were the case, this was going to be a very easy job to wrap up, and I’d be speaking to Roland Teach in no time.

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed an easy way out. A simple and selfish solution to a complex problem. This was a woman I once cared for.

She didn’t deserve this.

I couldn’t buy the fact that Darcey had killed herself. No way. People changed, but not that much. Sighing heavily, I pulled the sheet back up and left the room. With the image of Darcey’s ravaged face on my mind, I returned to the examiner’s office.

I didn’t knock this time, opting instead to casually walk in. I handed Brooks the card key, and he looked surprised that I was back so soon, dropping a magazine to his desk. I caught a glimpse of an article about mail-order brides. Little wonder he didn’t appreciate visitors.

“All done?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said. “Before I go, though, could you get me the case files? I’d like to see the details of the sedative and the jewelry she was wearing when the body was discovered.”

“For a suicide?” he asked. “Really?”

“I don’t recall that being proven yet,” I said.

“Well, Nembutal is a basic barbiturate, a sedative available from a few hundred places in this state alone. As for the jewelry, I’d have to hunt down the custody records before I can just go get the bag of her things,” he said.

“She’s been here for less than a day, right?” I asked. “How hard can it be to track something down from a body that just arrived?”

“Look, Mr. Blume…”

He paused here, unsure of where to go with the conversation. I was pretty sure he simply couldn’t be bothered, perfectly content to rule Darcey’s death as suicide. Being put in the situation was also making me aware of the Consultant ID around my neck. Sure, it had NYPD emblazoned on it, but it wasn’t the same as an actual badge.

Realizing that I wasn’t going to let the matter rest, Brooks stood up and huffed. “I can get you the jewelry, but I’m afraid I can’t just hand you over the case files right now—not without written consent from whoever is in charge of your department.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Wait here, please.” He slid by me and scurried out of the office.

I watched him disappear down the hall in the opposite direction of the exam room. When he was out of sight, I relaxed against the doorframe. Something about this didn’t seem right, and based on what I’d seen of the body and the medical examiner’s reaction, I was growing more and more certain by the moment that Darcey hadn’t committed suicide.

I looked to the examiner’s files and couldn’t hide my innate curiosity. I dived behind his desk and skimmed through the few folders on top. It didn’t surprise me to find a file with the name “Holland, D.” near the top. I took out my phone and got to work, moving as quickly possible. If I got caught, it would be more than my ass on the line.

Less than thirty seconds later, I returned to the doorframe, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Yet again, I’d committed a crime in an attempt to solve a greater one. Yet again, I was blurring the thin blue line.

Brooks returned soon after and handed me a cardboard box, effects collected from the body. I spent a few minutes examining the contents, all of which had been carefully tagged and sorted into clear plastic evidence bags. Sure enough, the jewelry was there, but none of it seemed like the kind of thing Darcey would wear.

Her grandmother’s heirloom was missing though. Something strange was going on here.

The slight comfort the booze from the airplane had provided was already starting to wear off. I was going to have to grab a drink sometime soon, or this was going to be a very long day.

As if it wasn’t already.