The Dying Breath

by Ferguson, Alane

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgements

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2009 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Alane Ferguson, 2009

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Ferguson, Alane.

  The dying breath : a forensic mystery / by Alane Ferguson. p. cm.

  Summary: When her ex-boyfriend starts stalking her, seventeen-year-old Cameryn must use her knowledge of forensic sciences to protect herself.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16272-9

  [1. Stalking—Fiction. 2. Forensic sciences—Fiction. 3. Coroners—Fiction.

  4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F3547Dy 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009002170

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Brent Safer, who gave me Ireland, and his beautiful wife, Kathy, my true SL!

  Chapter One

  “THERE’S NO WAY I can let you in that house with the remains,” Sheriff Jacobs told Cameryn. A small man, the sheriff leaned his hip against the porch’s wooden railing, his expression obscured by the sun’s reflection on his glasses. He took a long drag from his cigarette, sending a plume into the frigid February air, then lazily flicked the ashes onto the snow-encrusted bushes below. “Sorry to smoke in front of you—I wouldn’t do it ’cept it cuts the smell. There’s not another odor in this world like the stench of a decaying human and I, for one, can’t stand it.” Another drag, and then, “And I’d appreciate it if you stopped rolling your eyes at me, Cameryn Mahoney. I know you’re assistant to the coroner, but you’re only seventeen and your father, the real coroner, ain’t here yet, which means I’m the one in charge. We’re not breaking in until Pat gets here.”

  “Except you’re not listening. We don’t have to break anything!” Cameryn protested.

  The sheriff cut her off. “Dream on. Leather Ed keeps this dump locked up tighter than a drum.” Jacobs waved his cigarette toward the metal bars that wept trails of orange rust onto the home’s weathered siding. “Bars on the windows, deadbolts on the doors, all to protect stuff that isn’t even worth stealing. Soon as my deputy gets here he’ll bust us in, and then we’ll go inside, together, to see what’s what. Afterwards you can take your pictures of the dead.” He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, taking a long drag. “You know, I’ll never understand why a pretty girl like you . . .” His voice trailed off, but Cameryn no longer listened because her mind was focused on other things.

  The answer, she knew, was in the door itself. She peeled off her thick coat and dropped it next to a pile of trash Leather Ed had stacked against the siding, a stack that had grown to a height of almost three feet. Squatting, she examined the dog-door flap, darkened to black from years of grime. Leather Ed owned an emaciated German shepherd that had already been removed by a worried neighbor, a man who had called the police, who had, in turn, called the coroner’s office, who’d sent a text to her. Death had its protocol.

  Studying the frame around the dog door, Cameryn mentally took its dimensions; then with a tentative swipe she kicked the weathered plastic. The panel swung back and forth like a metronome, revealing a patch of dirty floor and a crumpled edge of a paper plate. Difficult, yes, but she could clear it, with or without Jacobs’s consent. She got on her knees and began to back in feet first, her hair falling into her face in a dark curtain. It was a tight fit. As she moved she tried not to picture the filthy linoleum her jeans would scrape against or notice the fresh wave of odor that wound around her like a pungent scarf. The metal lip of the dog door dug into her backside and she was just tilting onto her hip when she felt hands yanking her beneath her armpits. The sheriff pulled her to her feet with so much force she almost cried out.

  “Are you crazy?” Jacobs’s expression was the same one everyone in Silverton wore whenever they looked at her now. Lines of worry, and inside that, real fear. “Your father would skin me alive if I let you out of my sight.” His hand sliced through the air as he talked over her protests. “No, Cameryn, not even for a single moment. No, no, no!”

  “Come on, I only want to go a few feet inside so I can unlock the door—that’s all!” she cried. “Let me do my job, Sheriff. I’m not an infant.”

  “No, what you are is a target.” Leaning close, Jacobs dropped his cigarette onto the porch. With a slow, sure motion, he ground the stub beneath the heel of his boot. “No one knows what’s in that house. Probably nothing but the body of the town eccentric. But the fact is, Kyle O’Neil’s got you in his crosshairs and right now you’re on my watch. I’m not taking any chances.” He paused for a moment, for effect, Cameryn guessed, but she wouldn’t let him see how his words had hit home. The verbal punch to her heart—she had learned to take the hit without flinching where outsiders could see. She forced her eyes to meet his, which were cold and wintry gray. Raising her chin, she said, “That’s ridiculous. Kyle’s gone.”

  “How do you know that?” Jacobs tapped his finger to his temple. “Huh? Use that famous brain of yours. There ain’t no body.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. I know everyone in town is saying that psycho got lost in those mountains and froze hisself to death, and I hope to the good Lord they’re right. Maybe come spring we find his sorry carcass frozen in some creek. But you need to think about this: if that boy had enough smarts to kill his
teacher, he’s smart enough to keep hisself alive, even in February.” He jabbed his forefinger at Cameryn. “Until we find him, I say you’re in danger, which means you’re staying right here by my side. Understand?”

  There was nothing to say. Looking past him, she focused on a hermit thrush perched on the rim of a toppled bird feeder, its claws as fine as thread. It was a trick she’d begun to master, a mental dodge she used when people insisted on pressing themselves into her life: stare at something else, concentrate on the detail of the thing. Let their words pass over like water.

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes,” Jacobs told her. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna call my deputy. He shoulda been here by now.” Jacobs stomped down the rickety porch steps and turned his back toward her, one finger screwed into his ear while he pressed the phone into the other.

  Cameryn was aware of the cold creeping through her too-thin shirt, grateful that it cooled the heat of her frustration. Overhead, above a mountain peak, the palest moon shimmered, a golden coin floating in a blue water sky. In the past, her beloved mountains had felt protective. Now, they’d become walls. Walls that echoed the word that had come to define her.

  Target.

  It was the perfect word for what she’d become. She was no longer Cameryn Mahoney, senior at Silverton High, straight-A student, science geek, and forensic guru. When she walked the hallways at school whispers followed, marking her new identity: The Victim. The Hunted. Prey.

  She had almost loved him once. Kyle O’Neil, the boy who, with terrible precision, had tried to kill her. Before the police arrived he’d vanished into the mountains, and Cameryn had believed the FBI when they announced he’d been spotted in Mexico. And yet, as Silverton glittered beneath strings of Christmas lights, Cameryn had received a message on her bedroom computer. I see you. Come out and play. Move your curtain and look out. By the trees. I’m waiting.

  She’d pulled back her curtain. There, illuminated by moonlight, stood Kyle. Even in the half-light she’d recognized his muscled frame, his square jaw, the yellow hair glinting like dandelion fluff, his legs thick as tree trunks rooted into the ground. His face had been too deep in shadow for her to make out his eyes, but she could see the curve of the mouth. He was smiling.

  Kyle raised his hand, touching his heart with his fist before extending his open palm toward her. Horror flooded her as he faded back into a stand of pine. It was only then she realized she was screaming.

  And once again Kyle O’Neil had vanished. It was the second time he’d threatened her life. This time, though, the town’s reaction had been different. Aware that she’d been twice menaced, Silverton had pulled together for Cameryn’s protection, and she felt as though she were an insect caught in a web. It was as if she would suffocate in the silk cocoon of good intentions.

  Now she watched as Sheriff Jacobs paced across Leather Ed’s yard, his boots cleaving snow. “Yes, Justin, Cammie’s with me.” He stole a glance at Cameryn before twisting away. “Quit worrying . . . she won’t do nothing without my say-so. I’ve got it under control.”

  At that moment Cameryn felt something click in her head. She won’t do nothing without my say-so. Maybe if she took back the power in her life again, people would stop looking at her like the victim she was more conclusively becoming every minute. And she knew exactly what she had to do.

  She looked at the door, her nerves tingling. Throwing a quick glance in the sheriff’s direction, she backed to the dog door and dropped to her knees again, this time pushing fast, scraping her vertebrae against the metal frame with so much force she knew she would have a bruise down her backbone. She didn’t care. Once inside, she rocked back on her knees, exhilarated as she steadied the swinging flap with her hand. For the first time in a long while she’d done something on her own, and the independence was electrifying.

  It was dim inside. As Cameryn unfolded herself, she brushed off the front of her jeans, taking a moment to allow her eyes to adjust. The kitchen countertops were piled with plates and paper cups. A coffeepot, so stained the white plastic had turned to sepia, tipped drunkenly on a broken base. Although she’d never been inside the house, Cameryn had waited on Leather Ed many times at the Grand, and the interior of the home was exactly what she expected. A mess.

  She drew in a breath and tried not to taste the stench of death that almost overpowered her. So far, Jacobs hadn’t sensed her absence, which would give her time to open the door in triumph. It is better to beg forgiveness than ask permission was a phrase her friend Lyric had taught her. But when she reached her hand to unlock the deadbolt she realized there was nothing to turn. The face of the brass deadbolt was smooth and flat; a keyhole yawned where the knob should have been. Staring, she tried to compute the dichotomy. How could a bolt need two keys? The outside of a lock demanded a key, but the inside lock should require only a turn of a handle. This side of the deadbolt was blank.

  “Cammie!” She heard the sheriff curse and the heavy stomp of his boots on the porch. He pounded the door so hard it sounded like a sonic boom. “Are you in there?”

  “Yes,” she called back. “I told you I could fit.”

  Swearing, and then, “Come out of there right now—that’s an order!”

  Cameryn ignored this. “I was going to unlock the door but there’s just a keyhole on this side,” she cried, loud enough for him to hear. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s because Leather Ed was paranoid. He used double key deadbolts to make sure nobody could break into his house. You have to have the key to get out.”

  “So where is it?”

  A pause, and then, “Where’s what?”

  “The key.”

  “I—he—Leather Ed kept them on his self.” Smacking the door again, he cried, “Okay, you’ve proved your point, you’re a very resourceful and independent girl—”

  “Woman,” Cameryn said. She bit the edge of her lip.

  “Woman. Now come out of there.”

  “No.”

  She said it so softly she knew he couldn’t hear her through the door. Doing something on her own was critical in a way she couldn’t define. The protective bubble-wrap needed to be ripped away. As she formed a plan in her mind, Cameryn felt more like herself than she had in weeks. It seemed as though she were finally shaking off the fog of sleep. Her mind was humming again.

  The sheriff pounded wood, his thumps coming as rapidly as blows from a jackhammer. “Get yourself back through that doggy door right now!”

  Cameryn stood close to the door, her palm resting on the cool wood. “Listen, I’m going to find Leather Ed and get the keys. Then I’ll open the door. It’s the most logical thing to do. So just chill.”

  “Cameryn Mahoney!” Jacobs roared, and Cameryn knew enough to jump back. The sheriff reached his arm through the dog door shoulder deep, cursing in frustration as his hand grabbed nothing but air. There was no way he could fit through the opening. He knew it, too.

  Cameryn tuned out the pounding, concentrating instead on what she might find in the next room. Though the dim half-light she moved forward, the smell thickening with every step. Cupping her hand over her nose, Cameryn walked into a room filled with trash, with only a tiny rabbit trail, a foot wide, winding between mounds of newspapers and old magazines.

  So, Leather Ed, this is your living room. A recliner had been shoved against a battered sofa covered with an afghan. Both were empty. The television had been left on but there was no sound. The weatherman pointed to different points on a map, his mouth moving silently as the light blinked against the walls.

  Strange, she thought as she took in the disarray. What a weird, sad man. She remembered waiting on Leather Ed at the Grand right before Christmas, when she and the cook had surreptitiously watched him muttering to himself. Cameryn had noticed the way the cowhide conformed to his body until it became a kind of shell. The smell of unwashed flesh engulfed him, and his gray hair sprang from his head in a kind of tangled wire. Like everyone else her age, she’d st
eered clear of the man. Now, inhaling the distinctive odor that told her Leather Ed was most surely dead, she felt ashamed of herself. Maybe the town overwhelmed you, just like it’s overwhelming me, she thought. Were you trying to escape us? But even as she thought it she knew it wasn’t true. He’d walked among them, but he’d been invisible. The town was trying to escape him.

  She moved on.

  The smell was more intense by the staircase. Blinking, she looked up into the dark that stretched above her. The stair creaked beneath her foot when she took a tentative step, her hand gliding on the wooden railing as she began her ascent.

  Sheriff Jacobs’s cries were muted now and easier to ignore. From this distance the sheriff’s rapping sounded like a pencil tapping against a desk as she stepped into the upper hallway. And then there was another sound, a voice that made her chest tighten. It was louder than Sheriff Jacobs’s. More urgent. Angrier.

  “Cammie, it’s me, Justin. You’ve got to stop this right now! It’s not safe!”

  She groaned. As protective as her father and Sheriff Jacobs had been, Justin, Silverton’s deputy, had been worse. Still, she was committed to her path. Let them yell. All would be forgiven when she got those keys.

  A door was on her right, cracked open less than an inch. Cautious, she pushed against it. Hinges squeaked loudly as the door swung open and she registered a stench strong enough to taste. Pulling her shirt over her nose, she breathed through the cotton, grateful for this barest protection.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Shadows seemed to float against the wall like underwater creatures. Through the murky light she strained to see. Her fingers found the switch plate and she flipped it on. And there, propped in a chair by the bed, was the bloated corpse of Leather Ed, a book clutched in his hands. Body fluid had seeped onto the pages, covering the lines of print in an eerie watercolor. His feet, still encased in worn boots, were planted on the floor while his leathers, distended from decomposition, shone in the light. But it was his face that made Cameryn’s mind freeze. Every bit of flesh was gone from his eyes down to his neck. His teeth, white and gleaming, grinned at her from a stripped skull. His jawbone had been wiped clean.