I’m heading into the office,” I said. “Mullins texted me this morning saying he’ll be there about nine and wants to talk to me.”
“What do you think he has on his mind?” Max said.
“He probably wants a heads-up on how the investigation is going,” I speculated.
“Sure, well, don’t blame him. If Laurel were my daughter…” Max didn’t finish that sentence. “I’ll check in when I have news.”
“Same here,” I said.
The morgue was on the ground floor of Smith County Memorial, hidden behind an unmarked door far at the back. I’d called ahead and made sure that Doc Wiley would be there, and he was in the autopsy room working on Anna when I arrived. I glanced at the six coolers in the wall, and felt a surge of sadness when I saw Benjamin’s and Sybille’s names written on tape on two of the stainless-steel doors. At the far end, a woman’s body lay on a second autopsy table covered by an evidence sheet. I walked over and checked the name on the toe tag: Laurel Johansson.
“Looks like you haven’t gotten to Laurel yet,” I commented.
Either Doc was in a bad mood, or I sounded as if I were complaining. He pulled the scalpel out of Anna’s body, gazed over at me and gave me an annoyed frown. “I know you’re in a hurry, Clara. We all are. We all want the murders solved. But I had a tricky delivery yesterday. Almost lost the baby. I think Max explained that to you, and—”
“Sorry, Doc. Yes, Max explained,” I interrupted. “I’m just wondering where things stand.”
Doc shook his head. “Not on the best footing, I’d say. This is pretty treacherous territory.”
“Are you planning to elaborate?” I asked.
“Heck, Clara.” He looked perturbed and as angry as I felt. “When I took this job, I never thought I’d have a case like this. Two little kids. These two women. You’d think people wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Unfortunately, we can never predict what people are capable of.” I knew we shared the same feelings of betrayal; these types of killings weren’t supposed to happen, not in bucolic mountain towns. Doc glowered, and I said, “I don’t want to be abrupt, but I have to get to the station. I’m here for a quick rundown. Where are we?”
Doc gave me another peeved glare. “Toxicology samples on the children are on the way to the lab, but won’t be back for a week. I’m not expecting to find anything surprising. I think that the causes of death will be the gunshot wounds we saw at the scene,” he said. “Manner of death, of course, is homicide on both.”
I had a notebook out and wrote Doc’s findings on the children. “And Laurel? Any thoughts on her yet?”
“I’ll get to her next and call you with results later, but I looked the body over and didn’t see anything surprising there either. The cut neck is the only wound, and my guess is that the cause of her death is blood loss. I’ll send off toxicology, but, again, that’ll take a while to get back.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
Doc looked down at Anna on the table, and then he closed his eyes and shuddered. I thought when he opened them that I saw tears welling up in the corners. The case was getting to him, and at his age, he had a hard time hiding it. Maybe he was beyond the point of caring if I saw his pain. Personally, I wasn’t far behind him. Anna’s long dark hair spread out around her head, and Doc had shut her eyelids, so that if it wasn’t for the Y-incision he’d cut in her body, shoulders to the chest then straight down to her pelvis, she might have looked as if she were sleeping. “I’m doing all the usual lab tests, of course,” he said. “But I’m not expecting any surprises with Anna either. It’s clear that she had the likelihood of a long life ahead of her, until some coward pulled a trigger and shot her in the back.”
“You’re still thinking that time of death was early yesterday morning? About seven or so? About an hour before Naomi found them?” I drew a timeline starting from Sunday evening through Monday morning, when Naomi called 911. Anna had a short incision in her upper right abdomen where I figured Doc had inserted a thermometer to check her liver temp. A core organ, well protected, livers were routinely used to gauge cooling and estimate