Point No Point Read Free Page A

sentimental for her growing daughter. Meg lifted out an oval locket on a thin gold chain. “Mom, is this grandma’s locket?”
    “Yes, I thought it was time for you to have it.”
    Then Meg opened it up and looked at the two pictures that Claire had cut into the right shape to fit inside the frames. One was a photo of Steven, her father, holding Meg when she was just born. The other was Rich and Claire, hugging. Her parents. All three of them.
    As Claire watched tears fill Meg’s eyes, she guessed she had done okay.
    “Mom, this is just what I wanted, even though I didn’t know it. Thank you.” She came to her mother and gave her a big hug. Even kissed her on the head. What more could a mother ask for?
    “What I thought I wanted was a new Prius,” Meg said as she went to sit back down. “Silly me.”
    Rich pushed back from the table and said, “How ‘bout some cake? Claire, are you sticking around or do you have a date with a dead man?”
    “Nope, I asked Amy to sit in with the medical examiner. I’m done for the night.”
    All three pair of eyes turned to look at her. “Mom, for real? You’re letting someone else do something?” Meg asked, incredulous.
    Rich gave Claire a good-for-you look.
    * * *
    Medical examiner Janet Davis’ green rubber gloved finger tapped the rib cage of the opened torso as she explained, “Water gets into the lungs one of two speeds: slow or fast.”
    This was Deputy Sheriff Amy Schroeder’s first time attending an autopsy on her own. She had watched a couple with Claire Watkins and had always found them a challenge. For one thing, the morgue was a long narrow room with no windows in the basement of the hospital, which kept in the dank and a disturbing vinegary smell that she never wanted to pull too deeply into her lungs. The shallow breathing she was forced to do didn’t help her feel very comfortable.
    Amy didn’t know whether she should laugh or not at Janet’s comment. But she decided what the heck. After all, the guy was dead. She let out a small chuckle. “Wow. These technical terms. What do you mean—slow or fast?”
    “Well, if you must have technical terms,” Janet said, snapping the green rubber glove, “How about the difference between gooshing or seeping?”
    “What we want to know for starters is, was he dead when he hit the water?” Amy knew this was the first thing that Claire would ask her.
    Janet peered into the gaping chest cavity. A small woman,
    she needed to stand on her tiptoes for some of the work she did. “I would have to say, yes, from what I can gather, he was already dead. Although there is water in his lungs, I think that it seeped in during his long immersion in the lake. The technical term we use to describe this process is infiltration.”
    “It’s going to be tough to identify this guy. Any birthmarks?” Amy asked.
    “He’s got an odd mole here on his rib cage. But I’m not sure that anyone would notice it. Even his mother or wife. But then there’s the tattoo,” Janet pointed at the dark mark on his shoulder.
    “Great. A tattoo is perfect. What is it?”
    “Well, I think I know, but come here and look yourself. Tell me what you think it is.”
    Amy walked around the steel table and bent over to get a better look at the tattoo. Janet turned the light on it. The tattoo was dark. It seemed to be done in only one color, but hard to tell what color it was, blue or brown or black. Then she decided it was green. But the shape looked like an hour glass: large, then small, then large again. Suddenly the image came into focus and she saw what it was: branches, trunk, roots. “I think it’s a tree.”
    “Yeah,
that’s what I was guessing too. Unusual for a big burly guy to have a tree tattooed on his shoulder. I’ve never seen one before, but this new crop of guys getting tattooed aren’t going for the usual mermaids and eagles. I’m seeing more dragons and, believe it or not, swallows. So a tree might be perfectly