Snapped (8 page)

“I just don’t want to answer phones all my life. Not exactly a dream job.”

“I thought your dream was to be a singer and this receptionist thing was just paying the bills.”

Sophie looked away. That was
definitely
something she didn’t want to discuss today. Her dreams of being a professional musician had ended the night she’d been attacked in a parking lot just before a gig. The incident had caused a seismic shift in her life, one she didn’t really care to chat about on her lunch break.

She checked her watch. “I need to get back to my desk.”

They stood up. She tossed an empty soft drink can in the trash, and Jonah fell into step beside her on the path to the building.

She glanced up at him. “Any breaks in the case this morning?”

“Not exactly.” Now it was his turn to sound defensive.

“You still don’t know who he is,” she stated.

“We’re expecting Mia to help with that.”

“You’re resorting to
DNA
?” She stopped and gaped at him. “What about his fingerprints, his guns, his wallet?”

He gazed down at her with a guarded look, and she realized he’d tried all those things, obviously.

“DNA could take days.
Weeks
.” A bubble of panic rose in her throat, and she didn’t know why. “Isn’t there some faster way to find out his name?”

He watched her carefully with those hazel eyes, which were much too observant. “Why’s it so important to you?”

“Of course it’s important! Don’t you want to know who he
is
?”

“Was. And yeah, I do, because it’s my case. What’s it to you, though?”

She started to say something, then stopped. She wasn’t sure why she needed a name for the man who’d put her in his crosshairs yesterday. But she did. She
needed
it.

“I don’t know.” She blew out a sigh. “I want to understand, that’s all. I need to make sense of it.”

“Some things don’t make sense, Sophie. Some things just happen.”

She looked up at him and felt her throat tighten. He was right, she knew. Knowing the killer’s name and his background and seeing his life dissected on the news wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring twenty-year-old Eric Emrick back to life, or that professor, or give Becca Kincaid back her mother.

Jonah opened the door, and a cool gust of air washed over them. Sophie stepped inside, ending the conversation before her emotions came spilling out. Her headache was back in full force now, chocolate bar be damned. She strode to her desk, which Diane had abandoned promptly at one o’clock per her usual routine. The bleating phone was drowned out by the high-pitched saw down the hall, but the vertical row of flashing lights told Sophie she had half a dozen callers demanding her attention.

She snatched up the headset, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
Calm. Friendly. Efficient
. Her voice was many people’s first impression of the Delphi Center, and she liked them to picture her sitting serenely in the lobby, directing incoming communications. When she did her job right, callers to the lab didn’t have to know about absentee employees, or upheaval from construction projects, or petty office politics—all of which could undermine the center’s credibility. Image was important.

Sophie waited for a break in the noise before fielding the calls, one by one. Jonah stood at her elbow, observing her every move.

“You’ve got a knack for that,” he said when she finished. “If I tried to do it, I’d probably hang up on half of them and piss off the rest.”

She smiled. “I’ve been told I give good phone.”

His just looked at her, and another call came in.

“So, did you need something?” she asked. “Because I have to get back to work—”

Pop
.

Sophie flinched and glanced anxiously down the hall. The nail gun continued, and she bit her lip.

Jonah followed her gaze toward the construction
noise. Then he looked back at her. “You know, no one’s going to think less of you if you take some time off.”

“Why would I take some time off?”

“You had a pretty crappy day yesterday.”

She tipped her head to the side. “And what sort of day did you have?”

His jaw tightened and he looked irritated. Good. She didn’t need a sympathy pass any more than he did.
She
wasn’t the one stuck in some hospital with a bandage around her head or a shattered elbow or a leg she could never walk on again.

“Look, Sophie …” He glanced at the elevator bank, probably looking for Ric, before settling his attention on her. The buzz saw started up again, and for a moment they stared at each other. When the noise abated, she waited for whatever words of advice he was going to dole out next.

“You want to have dinner later?”

She couldn’t keep the surprise off her face. The saw screamed again, saving her from having to respond.

He wanted to have
dinner
? She wasn’t sure what to do with that. Men hit on her all the time—one of the side effects of a job that required her to be friendly with the public all day long. A lot of guys interpreted her ready smile as a neon sign that said,
Ask me out, I’m easy
. Cops were the worst, because they tended to have big egos and didn’t need much encouraging. But she sensed there was something else behind Jonah’s invitation.

Then again, maybe the kiss had been the neon sign. Duh.

“We ready?”

They both turned to see Ric standing there. His
gaze went from Jonah to her, then back to Jonah again. Sharp detective that he was, he seemed to realize he’d interrupted something.

“Give us a sec,” Jonah said.

Ric pulled off the visitor’s badge clipped to his pocket and put it on the reception counter. “We’re due at TCMEO in thirty,” he told Jonah, before nodding goodbye to Sophie and heading for the door.

TCMEO was the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office. Sophie knew because she paid attention and had picked up on all the clever little codes people used around here.

Jonah was on his way to an autopsy, and she felt a pull of sympathy for him.

He handed over his visitor’s badge. He was frowning now, and she realized her silence was becoming rude.

She also realized it was Thursday.

“It’s just dinner,” Jonah said. “It’ll probably be late, too, because I’ve got about a hundred things to do before I knock off today. I can call you when I get off, or—”

“No.”

His eyebrows went up.

“I mean,
thanks
and everything, but I can’t. Not tonight.”

He waited for an explanation, and for some reason she gave him one.

“I have a date already.”

This seemed to surprise him even more, and she felt a surge of annoyance.

“Well.” He tapped his knuckles on the counter. “Good enough. Guess I’ll see you around, then.” He glanced at the door where Ric was waiting on the other side of the
glass, then back at her. “Take care of yourself, Sophie.”

“Thanks.” She gave him her trademark smile, one hundred percent phony. “You take care, too.”

John Doe’s postmortem was already under way when Jonah and Ric arrived. The deputy medical examiner was hunched over the grayish body, poking a gloved finger around the mouth.

“Stippling above the lips,” Dr. Froehler said to his assistant. “Fouling visible as well.” The deputy ME gazed down at the burn marks left by gases that spewed from the pistol just after the trigger was pulled. He was obviously building support for the manner of death he planned to put in his report: suicide.

Jonah reached for the jar of Vicks sitting on the counter just inside the door. He swiped some gel under his nose to help with the smell before handing the jar to Ric.

“I hate this place,” Ric muttered.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Jonah stepped up to the steel table, giving himself the same vantage point he’d had this morning when he’d been in here with Jodi Kincaid and then Eric Emrick. Walter Graham had been autopsied in the suite next door, and Ric had stood in for that one.

Three autopsies in one day. It was a career record, one Jonah hoped never to repeat.

“Detectives.” Froehler glanced up and nodded.

“Doc.” Ric replaced the lid on the gel and plunked it on the counter. “The boss knock off early today?”

The deputy ME sniffed, which Jonah took for an affirmative. It was common knowledge that Froehler
was the workhorse around here, while the head ME was more of a figurehead. Even so, the man had dragged himself out of bed this morning to perform two of the four autopsies. Jonah figured he’d taken note of all the news coverage and decided he needed to look hands-on.

“Still no ID,” Jonah informed the doctor. “Any tattoos or scars that might help us out?”

“None.”

Jonah glanced at the series of X-rays lined up on the light box across the room. “How about prosthetics? Unusual dental work?”

“His bones and his teeth look normal.”

Jonah and Ric exchanged looks. By the tone of his answer, they could tell something
didn’t
look normal. But knowing Froehler, they’d have to wait around to hear what it was. This doctor was meticulous—sometimes frustratingly so—and he didn’t venture his opinion without evidence to back it up.

“What about personal effects?” Ric asked. “Anything we missed in his pockets?”

“Just the Timex wristwatch that was handed over this morning.”

“His clothes are over there,” Froehler’s assistant added. “I didn’t find anything.”

Jonah glanced at a table across the room, where some clothes had been spread out. Black Hanes T-shirt, size medium; blue jeans, size 32 X 30; socks; underwear; and a pair of size-nine Altamas in desert brown.

The boots were favored by military guys, and they—more than the shooter’s skill with a gun—had convinced Jonah that running the fingerprints through a military database might not be a total waste of time.

“How about track marks?” Ric persisted. “Evidence of drug use?”

Froehler straightened his wire-rimmed glasses but didn’t look up. “We’ll know when we get the tox screen.”

Jonah gritted his teeth. His fuse was short today, and it wasn’t just because he’d gotten up at the butt crack of dawn to come up here and watch two innocent people get sliced open. “Is there
anything
you can tell us yet? We need an ID here.”

Froehler stopped what he was doing and gave him an appraising look. “There is one thing.” He moved to the side of the body and lifted the left arm, which was lax now that rigor mortis had passed. “It’s possible he’s recently divorced.”

Jonah stepped closer and frowned down at the hand. No wedding band, but sure enough, there was a faint white line around the ring finger.

“I’ll be damned,” Ric said. “I didn’t notice the tan mark yesterday.”

“Also note the callus,” Froehler said, separating the last two fingers to show them the marks where a ring had rubbed against the skin.

Ric looked at Jonah. “So maybe his wife dumped him and he had a meltdown.”

Jonah stepped back and leaned against the counter. As motives went, it was one of the oldest around. Still, he didn’t like rushing to conclusions. Plenty of men’s marriages broke up and they didn’t all start shooting up campuses.

Jonah’s thoughts went back to the setting, the methodology, the victims. Given the planning that went into the attack, he felt sure the university was significant in some
way. Maybe his ex was taking classes there or worked there. They wouldn’t know until they got an ID.

Froehler ducked around the hanging scale and selected a scalpel off a cart filled with shiny instruments. Jonah braced himself for the Y-incision, just as Ric’s phone started to buzz.

Lucky bastard.

Ric checked the number and glanced at Jonah. “It’s Sean. Maybe we got something back from Delphi.”

He stepped out to take the call, and Jonah watched him through the window to the autopsy room. After a few minutes of listening, Ric waved him over.

But not before Jonah was hit by a wave of foul odors.

“We got a match on those prints,” Ric said as Jonah stepped into the hallway. “James Himmel, thirty-seven, of Columbus, Georgia.”

“That’s near Fort Benning. He ex-military?”

“Army had his prints on file.”

“So, what’s he doing down here?”

“No idea,” Ric said. “He’s not on staff or enrolled at the college. Sean’s running his credit cards right now, seeing if anything local pops up.”

“He married?”

“We’re checking.”

Jonah imagined some young woman moving down to Texas to start over after a bad breakup. Then he imagined her dead in a bedroom somewhere, like Charles Whitman’s wife.

If there was a secondary crime scene, they needed to find it soon.

“Detectives, you’ll want to see this.”

Jonah turned around to see Froehler’s assistant poking
his head from the door. They both hesitated. Whatever it was couldn’t be more pressing than this latest intel.

“You go,” Ric said. “I’ll get started on some calls.”

“I’ll explain to Froehler, meet you out front in ten.”

Jonah returned to the steel table, giving the doctor exactly two minutes to show him something important. A pair of bloody shears lay on the cart beside him. Christ, he’d opened the chest already.

Froehler looked up at Jonah. “I thought I saw it on X-ray and I just confirmed it.”

“Confirmed what?”

“Tumors.” Froehler nodded at the gaping chest cavity. “This man’s eaten up with cancer.”