The Dying Breath (13 page)

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Authors: Alane Ferguson

BOOK: The Dying Breath
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Raising her chin, she said, “You should never have involved Dr. Moore. Stay out of my business.”
Justin jerked his fingers through his hair and spun to the side. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Okay. You won’t listen to me because at seventeen you have all the answers. You know what? Maybe you
are
too young.”
The wind had polished the top crust of snow so that it looked crystalline, as though diamond powder had been tossed across, pale blue in the waning light. Were the police out there, listening? Well, if they were, she didn’t care, because there was nothing more to say.
Maybe you
are
too young.
Each word was a slap. He’d pushed her and she’d pushed back hard, and now their words were out there, curling up in the winter air like smoke. She waited for him to take it back but he just looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read, and then she could feel tears threatening to spill into her eyes. There was no way she would let him see those. Without another word she turned, threading her way back down the shoveled path. She heard Justin follow her, his boots scuffing, his breath coming in short bursts, and then he walked past her. There was the slam of his car door and a muted squeal as his tires spun out against the snow.
Swallowing back her emotion, she opened the back door. The inside warmth seemed strangely oppressive.
“Cammie, what has happened?” her mammaw cried, brushing her hands against her Valentine apron.
“Nothing,” Cameryn answered, hurrying by. Mammaw, reading Cameryn’s expression, knew enough to leave her alone.
She jerked off her coat. How had it all gone so wrong? She had overreacted; she had always had a temper that she tried to keep under wraps, but this time it had all bubbled up, and now she’d made a mess of things. And yet, Justin had been wrong, too. His male ego made him think Kyle couldn’t touch him, but she knew better. She’d weighed the risks and made a decision and Justin didn’t honor it. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, Cameryn threw her boots into the closet. Her BlackBerry hummed in her pocket and she rubbed her face with the palm of her hand. Was it Justin calling to apologize? Or worse.
The number, though, was one she recognized. It belonged to Dr. Moore.
“Hello?” she said. Clearing her throat, she tried to take the waver out. “Dr. Moore?”
“Hello, Miss Mahoney,” Dr. Moore said. “I trust things are going well for you?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes. You remember I asked you to come down tomorrow? I’m afraid there’s been a change in plans.”
Cameryn’s heart fell. So, Justin had ruined it for her, after all. But before she could begin to form her argument, Dr. Moore said, “If you’re up for it, I’d like you to come down right now. I wouldn’t ask but it’s important.”
“Is this about Brent Safer and Joseph Stein? About the jelly in the lungs?”
“Yes, and no. There is something I need you to see.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Cameryn stammered.
“I don’t want to say more over the phone,” he said, and she immediately understood he was being vague for the benefit of the police. “But let me say this: the case just got a lot bigger.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the game has changed.”
It took her a moment to form the words. “What’s this about?”
“You. I’ll expect you and your father within the hour.”
Chapter Ten
“CAMMIE, HONEY, IT’S
time to wake up. We’re here.”
“What?” Cameryn struggled to sit up from the front seat of the station wagon. “Dad, why did you let me sleep?”
“It’s good for you—you were up all night.”
“But—what time is it?”
“Five thirty. I have to admit I’m feeling robbed. I was fully prepared for a father-daughter chat, but you were so quiet at first I thought I should leave you be. Then I realized you were out. Well, sleep’s the best thing, anyway.”
She remembered only a little—the trees whizzing by, dark green against the snow, until it had all blurred as she’d given in to sleep. “Yeah, well, I seem to be zoning out a lot lately. Sorry.” Stretching her arms over her head as far as she could, Cameryn quickly realized they were already stopped outside the plain red brick Medical Examiner’s Building. The station wagon’s engine clacked and wheezed as they waited in front of the metal garage door. The building’s flat roof supported a thick layer of snow. Icicles hung off the gutter in a row that looked like jagged glass. Her father tapped the horn, a signal for Ben to open up.
The side of her cheek felt numb and there was a kink in her neck. As she shook off the grogginess of sleep she felt the sensation of her heart dropping through her, resting like a stone in the bottom of her belly. Justin. The fight.
Her father tapped the horn again and a moment later the door began to roll into the ceiling, revealing Ben’s legs dressed in blood-splattered green scrubs. He waved them in.
“Man, your engine sounds bad,” Ben said as Cameryn and her father got out of the station wagon. “You better get your hearse in for a tune-up.”
“I know, I know, it’s just that it’s getting harder and harder to find parts for a car this old.” Patrick patted the car’s hood fondly. “But it just keeps on going. And you can’t fit a body into any old car—these station wagons were almost made for the job. So where are we heading, Ben, to the office or the morgue?”
Ben looked uncomfortable. His hand tugged at his collar as he said, “Well, here’s the thing. You know how I do all the dirty work around here? Moore asked me to ask you if it’s okay if he talks to your girl all by himself—just for a minute. He wants her to go to his office.”
Her father looked stunned. “Why would he want to do that? I’m the coroner.”
Ben shrugged. “Moore says it’s a personal matter between him and Cammie. Hey, don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger.”
She could tell that her father was about to say no. Leaning back on his heels, he hooked his thumbs into his jacket pockets and frowned, but Ben said in his pleasing, mellow voice, “Dr. Moore wants you and me to go on to Histology. It’s just for a little while.”
Cameryn tried to tamp down the irritation that surged inside her. It was happening all over again. Other people, male people, were talking about her and making decisions for her. “I’ll go talk to Dr. Moore,” she said to her father. Then she turned to Ben. “By the way, I’m old enough to answer for myself. Eighteen in just a few days, remember? I’ll meet up with you guys in Histology.”
Her words seemed to balloon out into the very corners of the garage. Ben looked nervously from Cameryn to Patrick, then back again. Finally, her father said, “I guess it’s been decided.”
“All right then, Miss Almost-Legal,” Ben answered, looking relieved. “You know the way, right?”
“First door past the autopsy suite.”
She could feel their eyes on her as she walked up the concrete ramp. They didn’t follow right away. As she opened the door she stole a quick glimpse and saw her father’s hands moving through the air, although he spoke so softly she couldn’t make out the words. Ben merely shook his head from side to side.
Down the hallways she went, stopping only briefly to let Amber know she was there to see Dr. Moore. Eyeing her up and down, Amber waved Cameryn through, and soon Cameryn found herself knocking on a gray metal door that had a plastic nameplate stamped DR. JOSEPH MOORE, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST.
“Come in.”
The door creaked on its hinges as Cameryn stepped inside. “You asked to see me, Dr. Moore?”
“I did. Sit down, Miss Mahoney,” he said, and motioned her to a brown chair with metal legs. “And shut the door.”
His office was small, claustrophobically so. Dr. Moore sat hunched at his desk poring over an open file, his reading glasses resting on the tip of his bulbous nose. “One moment,” he said as his finger glided down the page.
“Sure. Take your time.”
He nodded and continued reading. The desk was buried beneath neatly stacked folders whose pages bristled with multicolored tabs. Two bookshelves took up what little floor space was left, and three more were bracketed to the walls. Each was filled with medical books and forensic journals, arranged according to height. One solitary shelf had been dedicated to plastic models of various organs: a red- and blue-veined heart sat next to a plastic eye with a removable lens.
Directly to her right hung a painting of a meadow that looked different from the cheap art that lined the hallway walls. In this painting, grasses bent beneath an unseen wind while flowers nodded on the ends of long stalks. But the flowers weren’t the star of the scene. Colors in the painting consisted mainly of various hues of green mixed with yellows and browns. In extremely small, unobtrusive letters she made out the name
Moore
etched in the bottom corner.
He shut the folder and looked up at her, his hands folding together so that his fingers intertwined.
“This is yours?” she asked.
“Yes. I like to paint. But I’ve always seen things differently than most. My wife prodded me to put flowers in my meadow, but I personally like the grasses. The grasses and the leaves are what I find beautiful.”
“The leaves?”
“Yes. In my opinion the buds get all the glory, but it’s the leaves that keep the plant alive. Rather like forensics. The surgeons on high are the roses of the medical world, but we who choose forensics make the bloom possible. Sit,” he said again, and this time she sank into the brown chair.
“I’m not sure I understand . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. Just the musings of an old man. We have other things to discuss today.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. She’d never seen him without his glasses before. The skin around his eyes was riddled with fine wrinkles, like the cracks in a Ming vase. He was minus his white lab coat, another first. His cotton shirt was a blue checkered pattern that he’d buttoned up almost to his collar, which was crisp with starch. “Well, Miss Mahoney, here you are. And here I am. And I don’t quite know where to begin.”
This, too, was odd. Dr. Moore, so caustic and abrupt, had always charged forth, never at a loss for words or purpose. Cameryn tried to swallow back the nervousness she was beginning to feel. She unzipped her parka and hung it on the back of the chair carefully, making sure it was centered. “You said the case involved me. The Safer case,” she prompted.
“Yes. But before I get into the technicalities I feel I should give you a reason. One thing builds upon the other, you see. I need you to . . . understand . . . why I’m prepared to breach ethics. I’ve never done that, not in forty-one years in this macabre business. But I’m ready to do it now.”
She felt her eyes go wide. Something was definitely wrong. “Dr. Moore—”
“I see a bit of myself in you, Miss Mahoney. The same fire, the same passion, your willingness to fight.” He picked up the file he’d been reading, then inexplicably set it down. “Do you remember that first day when I met you?” He wasn’t talking to her, exactly. His words seemed to be aimed at the file. “I’m afraid I was a bit hard on you then. But your father said you had a gift, a gift for forensics. Patrick was right and I was wrong.”
“You’ve taught me a lot, Dr. Moore.”
“Have I? I’d like to think what we do is important.”
“If it weren’t for people like you and me then the dead would die without any kind of voice. You’re the one who told me that.”
“Precisely.” He nodded and looked at her with unwavering eyes. “All this time I’ve worked with death, around death, through death, I’ve never stopped to think about the thing itself. The fact of the matter is . . .” His voiced trailed off.
“What is it, Dr. Moore?”
Dr. Moore’s jowly head bowed and his eyebrows rose as he said in a flat, emotionless voice, “I have cancer, Miss Mahoney. So death has finally and inevitably come knocking, but this time it’s on my own door.”
Cameryn sat frozen while
cancer
spiraled through the air as if it were a nebula. She breathed the word in and exhaled it and the word kept unwinding into the corners of the room. “What kind?” she asked softly.
“Renal cell carcinoma. Kidney. It’s in my left kidney.” He sounded as though he were recounting statistics on a report. “I’ve not shared this yet with my staff so I’m asking you to keep this in confidence. Will you?”
“Yes.” She paused. “How bad is it?”
“Clinically, my doctor hopes it’s contained to stage two. Pathologically, well, I’ll have the final answer after my surgery, which is scheduled for next week. So you see, time has become a priority for me.”
“I’m—I’m so sorry.”
“Well, so am I, but there it is. I’m not dead yet,” he said, with a bit of his old bite. “However, what I said about time didn’t concern me. It concerns you.” He pushed the file to the edge of the desk and this time Cameryn could see his fingers tremble every so slightly. “Your young man came here and asked me to convince you to drop your involvement in the Kyle O’Neil case.”

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