Cam - 03 - The Moonpool Read Free Page B

Otherwise, off they go to the state pathology guys.”
    “Okay, face-to-face, then.” I’ve seen a cop’s share of dead people, but since it was Allie, I felt obligated to do this in person, so to speak. Price seemed to understand. He went back to the desk and asked for the viewing room, and then we waited some more until the morgue attendant came to get us.
    I made the identification, trying to ignore the stark fact that one of my colleagues was gone. Allie Gardner had never been a beautiful woman, but hers was a familiar and trusted face, and I was grateful not to have to look at the butchery of a pathology examination. She had died with a surprised look on her face, which wasn’t that unusual in my experience, although her mouth looked redder than it should have. I verbalized the ID, and Price nodded to the stone-faced attendant, who rolled the gurney back to the cold storage area.
    We went back out to the administrative offices to meet with one of the hospital’s pathologists, who had performed a brief preliminary exam. He was a large black man, late fifties, wearing spotted scrubs and drying his hands on a huge wad of paper towels. His scrubs smelled of preservative fluids and other things best left unmentioned. He introduced himself to Bernie and acknowledged me with a brief nod.
    “Based on what I saw of her throat, I think she was poisoned,” he announced. “We’re definitely going to want an autopsy on this one.”
    I stared at him in disbelief, and even Price seemed to be surprised.
Poison?
    The doctor pitched the sodden wad of paper towels into a biohazard trash can. “Only thing I’ve seen like it was a case where a really angry woman poured a can of drain cleaner down her boyfriend’s throat while he was sleeping. Sodium hydroxide. I didn’t scope her, but they won’t have to. I’m guessing there’s severe esophageal burning as well as damage to the stomach lining. I’m talking chemical burns here, not fire.”
    “You mean, like acid?” Price asked.
    “I don’t have a clue right now as to what it was. I didn’t smell what I smelled with the Drano case, for what that’s worth.”
    “Any signs that she was
forced
to drink poison?” I asked.
    “And you are, again?” the doctor said, looking for some kind of ID badge on my shirt besides the visitor’s tag.
    “He’s with me,” Price said, leaving it at that.
    “O-o-kay,” the pathologist said with a shrug. “No, there was no bruising of the face or lips, and no evident indication of restraint. But an autopsy may contradict that. My job is to see if I can determine an obvious cause of death. If not, she goes upstate. We’ll transport tonight, get results back in a couple of days if they’re not overloaded up there.”
    Price took me back downtown, where I retrieved my Suburban and went to check in at the riverside Hilton. Allie’s car had been towed away from the gas station, and I didn’t think it would be worth my while to go see a convenience storebathroom. I decided to call an old friend who had moved to Wilmington, former park ranger and current college professor Mary Ellen Goode. First I had to find her number, so I called the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, known locally as the U, and tried to get her office number. I’d forgotten how much academics, for all their fervently professed individualism, love their bureaucracy. I think I could have driven out there and asked any passing student quicker than it took for a succession of politically correct office persons to finally, grudgingly, part with a phone number and an extension. Which got me voice mail, naturally, but it was Mary Ellen’s lovely voice and it was good to hear. She called back a half hour later.
    “Cam,” she said. “What a nice surprise. Are we in danger?”
    I chuckled at that. We had met in the Great Smokies National Park during the cat dancers case, and again when I’d helped her sort out an especially nasty assault on one of the park’s