Outlier: One mistake can destroy everything. Read Free

money or credit cards had been taken from her purse.
     
    When the time was right, they’d ask Sean to double check. Maybe there was something hidden that only he had known about and somebody else had discovered, but that was doubtful. Sheryl didn’t make much, so she couldn’t have had much. Neither did Sean. His family didn’t have money; his dad had just retired and was drawing a meager pension.
     
    As far as they could tell, if somebody had done this, it must have been somebody who knew her. Knew her well enough to have a key or be let in. Which would make solving this easy, but getting killed by somebody you knew was bad news. Especially in a town this small. Everybody would know. What would that do to Sean? Ronald doubted Sean would be able to function.
     
    “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Dr. Nguyen, the coroner, said. “No blunt trauma. No cuts, no bruises. It’s as if everything was somehow forced out through any exit that could be found. Which doesn’t make sense.”
     
    “Explain,” Ronald said.
     
    “Well, if somebody’s got a history of hypertension, they may get an aneurysm. That’s when a blood vessel in the brain just pops. But in ninety percent of the cases, that is all internal bleeding. That’s why in some cases, somebody suffering a stroke will appear to be drunk. There’s nothing on the outside that makes it look like anything is medically wrong.
     
    “But this is something I have never even read about before. I don’t even think there’s anything in the literature about this. I don’t mean to be crude or disrespectful, but it’s as if her intracranial pressure suddenly increased by a very significant amount, and the pressure simply crushed her arteries, as well as forcing some of her, uh, brain matter externally.”
     
    They were all silent for a few minutes staring at the autopsy report. They were sitting around the small desk in his coroner’s office, adjacent to the autopsy room. Nobody dared go in to look at her.
     
    “So,” Greg began, staring at one of Dr. Nguyen’s completed Sudoku puzzles and not sure how to continue, “you’re saying her brain just…what…popped?”
     
    Both Officer Greg Lyons and Chief Hernandez looked up. “I mean, that’s what…” Greg stammered.
     
    “Yeah, that’s about it. I have absolutely no explanation as to how or why,” Dr. Nguyen said. “Let me call around, find out if anything similar to this has ever happened before. If so, there will be a record and some sort of causal factor. But at this point, with her medical history,” he opened her file and read her information for the tenth time that morning, “I simply do not have an explanation for this.”
     
    “What do we tell Sean?” Greg asked.
     
    “Tell me about what?” Sean asked, standing a few feet outside the doorway. He looked through the window into the autopsy room and saw the white sheet draped over her. He turned his head to the left and looked into the office.
     
    “I thought you were staying in Rockport,” Greg said, not sure how he’d respond. They’d taken her to San Antonio. A town the size of Rockport simply didn’t have enough money in the budget for a coroner.
     
    “Sean,” Ronald began, “I don’t know how to say this. But it appears she died of natural causes. There are no signs of trauma, no forced entry, and nothing’s missing from her home.”
     
    Sean let that sink in. He’d spent all last night planning out every detail of the investigation. He knew how he’d approach Alan. He knew who he would question, in what order, and what questions he’d ask. He’d lain awake all last night mentally going through a list of suspects. Anybody who had anything at all to do with Sheryl would be questioned by the FBI, under his supervision.
     
    He’d already come up with his explanation to Ronald for why he should work the case. He’d thought up every objection Ron would come up with, and he’d then come up with a dozen ways to overcome