“No problem,” I tell him. “My record as an adult is clean.” He arches his eyebrows questioningly at me, and I give him a sheepish smile. “I might have acted out a little when I was younger, but those are juvie records, and they’re sealed. Besides, I didn’t kill anyone or anything awful like that. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you there were times when I was tempted.”
Bob clears his throat and says, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”
I get up, walk over to my briefcase, and take out a pen. “Where do I sign?” I say with a smile, waggling the pen in my hand.
“The forms are at the police station. But don’t get ahead of me here. I have one more request.”
I give him an exasperated look. “You seem mighty determined to make an omelet for someone who isn’t holding any eggs. I could take that laptop and walk away.”
“You could,” Bob concedes, nodding. “But you won’t.” He grins at me, and there’s a smugness to it, telling me he knows he’s got me hooked.
I should be annoyed, maybe even outraged. But I’m not, at least not yet. “Okay, what’s your final demand?” I say in an exaggeratedly overwrought tone.
“You meet me at the gym every morning but Sundays for two weeks.”
Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming.
“After the two weeks, I won’t hold you to it,” Bob goes on. “I’ve been looking for a workout partner for a long time. Mattie did it with me back when I first joined, but she quit a long time ago. Something about the demands of motherhood and her youngest kid trying to destroy the universe, or some such.” He waves away the objection with his hand. “Anyway, the gym lets members bring a guest for free for two weeks. After that if you want to come you have to pay for a membership. But it’s not a lot of money, just twenty bucks a month. And the place is open twenty-four hours a day, so you shouldn’t have any trouble fitting it into your schedule. I don’t, and my schedule is often crazy.”
I consider his offer. He’s basically blackmailing me into working out with him, and that rubs me the wrong way, but I want to work on Toby Cochran’s case, and I know this is going to be a prerequisite for him letting me do that. And all he’s asked me to do is meet him there, not do any kind of workout or exercise. It’s a potential out for me, and I tuck it into a back pocket in my brain. On the positive side, I do like Bob and wouldn’t mind a chance to get to know him better, and a little exercise would probably do me some good.
“Okay, Bob, you have yourself a deal.”
We shake on it, and I smile even though a tiny niggle of fear nags at my brain.
My exercise regimen for the past several years has consisted of the occasional dog walk, some mall shopping, and basic housecleaning. The rational side of my brain warns me that this gym thing sounds like a big mouthful to be biting off, and then the less rational, cliché-ridden side chants, Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And then I figure, what the heck. If it kills me, at least I know there will be someone close by to investigate my death.
Chapter Fourteen
P.J. returns with Roscoe as Bob and I are packing up the laptop and preparing to head for the police station. I realize I’m so excited about my new arrangement with Bob that I momentarily forgot about P.J. and my dog.
“Are you going out again?” P.J. asks as I slip on my jacket. She wiggles her eyebrows and tilts her head toward Bob, who fortunately is facing the opposite way and doesn’t see any of this.
“I have some work to do,” I tell P.J. “Bob is going to help me with it.”
“What kind of work?” In addition to being cute, energetic, and friendly, P.J. is also nosy.
“It’s confidential stuff,” I say with authority, hoping to deter any further inquiries.
P.J. shrugs this off with apparent indifference, though I suspect she is feigning it. “Okay, see you later.” With that, she shows herself out.
“Two cars again?” I ask Bob. “Or can we start the ride-along?”
“Let’s do two cars for now, at least until we get the paperwork done,” he says. “Follow me and I’ll badge you into the private parking lot behind the station.”
I do as I’m told, parking in what amounts to a giant cage behind the police station. The lot is surrounded by a high chain-link fence with a rolling electronic gate that allows people with the proper badges to get in. I park a few spaces away from Bob, the closest opening there is, and follow him wordlessly to a door at the back of the big brick building. Here he punches in a code on a panel and I hear a faint buzz. He grabs the knob, opens the door, and waves me in.
I haven’t been in this part of the station before, but I can tell right away that we’re in a break room. In some regards, it looks like break rooms everywhere. There is a large table at the center of the room surrounded by a motley collection of mismatched chairs, a refrigerator against one wall, and two areas of countertops with overhead cabinetry. One of the countertops sports a sink and a coffeepot; the other a microwave oven. The general setup is nearly identical to a staff break room at the hospital that I frequently use, but that’s where the similarities end. This break room has crumbs scattered on every surface, dried spills on the counters, coffee mug and glass rings on the tabletop, and several ripped cartons or food wrappers scattered about on the counters and floor. The sole trash can in the room is overflowing. The door to the microwave is hanging open, and the inside of the appliance looks like someone detonated a nuclear food bomb in it.
My fingers are literally itching as I survey the room, my mind urging me to jump in and clean before I do anything else. I recognize the urge for what it is—my fun brand of insanity—and try to quell it. There are much more urgent needs to tend to first, but the compulsion to start cleaning is so strong that I’m not sure I can resist it.
“What’s wrong?” Bob asks, eyeing me with concern. “You look like you’re about to throw up or something. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but this room looks like it threw up,” I tell him, surveying it all in disgust. “Doesn’t anyone around here clean up after themselves?”
Bob looks around the room in puzzlement, as if he’s seeing it for the first time. This tells me he’s used to the clutter and filth, and I can’t help but wonder what his house looks like. I can’t get serious about a man who’s a slob.
Bob says, “I guess it is kind of a mess, isn’t it?”
“You think?” I ask rhetorically, dripping sarcasm.
He looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t spend any time in here,” he says. “I walk through it a lot, but I don’t stop or sit here. When I eat, I do it either at my desk or out somewhere. I guess I never paid much attention to it.”
Obviously, he doesn’t give it much stock now, either, because he exits the room without further comment, assuming I’ll follow. With one last, longing itch of a look at the mess, I do just that.
We end up in a long hallway that I recognize from my previous trip, but instead of entering the conference room I was in before, Bob leads me into an office that contains three desks. I’m relieved to see that all three desks are relatively neat and organized. Bob points to the closest desk and says, “That’s Steve Hurley’s. The one in the corner over there is Junior Feller’s. He’s a detective who does mostly vice stuff, though he helps out with death investigations at times.”
He pulls out the chair at what I discern by process of elimination is his desk and drops into it. I look around for a free chair nearby to sit in, but there isn’t one. I consider stealing the one at Junior Feller’s desk, but decide to stand instead, at least for now. Bob starts tapping away on his keyboard while I stand there awkwardly staring at the bare walls and shifting my briefcase, which contains Toby’s laptop, from one hand to the other.
After a moment, a printer on top of a small side table starts spewing out paper. “That’s the ride-along agreement,” Bob says with a nod toward the printer. “Read it over and sign it. As for your background check, it looks
like we have a recent one from a few months ago and everything came back okay, so I think we’re good to go. Unless you’ve robbed a bank or killed someone recently.”
I know he’s attempting to make a joke, but I’m too stymied by the fact that he found a background check on me. “Why would the police have run a background check on me before today?”
“We do them for the hospital.”
That calms me. The hospital requires criminal background checks on their employees every few years, and I remember that I had to sign a release a few months ago so they could run one.
“You can sit in the break room if you want to read that,” Bob says. “I need to take care of something else, but it shouldn’t take long. Give me ten minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
I retrieve the papers from the printer and head back to the break room. I find a roll of paper towels and some spray cleaning solution beneath the sink and use them to clean the tabletop. I wipe down a chair, too, which is covered with crumbs and blotches of sticky residue. Once it’s all dry, I set my briefcase on the table and settle in with the papers to read.
It’s a standard release form except for the fact that it lists more than the usual sorts of casualties one might expect to encounter on your average day—things like gunshots, explosions, high-speed chases, and, oddly enough, nuclear radiation. It seems like overkill to me, and I’m surprised they didn’t include a zombie or space alien invasion in the document. The last part of the form is essentially a confidentiality agreement, swearing me to silence and/or ignorance of anyone or anything I observe or encounter during my ride-along. This is no big deal, since confidentiality is a normal obligation and assumption for my day-to-day job.
I sign the form, push it aside, and then survey the rest of the room. Where to start?
I make the mistake of walking over to the refrigerator and opening it. Inside I find a biohazard lab of bacterial specimens growing in a variety of containers. Another quick search under the sink reveals a box of trash bags, and after removing one, I start emptying the refrigerator.
Bob finds me some twenty minutes later up to my elbows in the fridge with a sponge, paper towels, and cleaning spray. He stares at me for a moment, blinking, and then says, “What are you doing?”
“Trying to prevent any deaths in your department,” I say, scowling. “Have you looked inside this thing recently? It should be included as a risk on that ride-along waiver I just signed.”
Bob shakes his head, looking both bemused and amused.
“It was disgusting. I’m surprised the CDC hasn’t been here to shut you down.” I nod toward the trash bag I’ve filled, which is near the back door, neatly tied off. Two others are beside it, a culmination of the overflowing bag that was in the trash receptacle and the loose items strewn around the room. “Those need to go outside to wherever the nearest trash bin is.”
Bob looks at the bags, then back at me, scratching his head. I’ve finished my cleaning of the fridge, and as I step back to admire my handiwork, he walks over to the table and tosses a manila folder onto its surface. “Are we going to research the case or clean the break room?” he asks, checking to see if I’ve signed my life and all liability away on the form he gave me earlier. Apparently satisfied, he rolls it up and tucks it in his pocket.
I shut the refrigerator door and look around the rest of the room, hands on my hips. “Can you at least take those bags out to a dumpster or something?” I ask, nodding toward the collection. “Some of the stuff that came out of here looked aggressive enough to take over the city.”
“Yeah, okay.” He isn’t facing me when he says this, but I’m certain he’s rolling his eyes. I can hear it in his voice.
As soon as he moves toward the door, I head for one of the countertops with my paper towels and cleaning spray. By the time Bob returns from his garbage expedition, I’ve cleaned off both counters and sprayed the inside of the microwave. The debris in the microwave will need to soak awhile so the stuff will loosen up. I walk over to the table and take a seat. Bob settles into the chair on my right, still eyeing me with that combination of confused, amused curiosity.
I reach for the file folder and pull it to me. Bob leans back in his chair, hands folded in his lap, watching me. Glued or taped to the inside of the folder cover is a picture of Toby, one of the ones I saw on the bookcase at the top of the stairs at Sharon’s house. The first document inside the folder is the medical examiner’s report. It’s several pages long and includes some narrative, some diagrams, a few photos, and some test results. Some of the anatomical terminology is a bit above my pay grade, but I understand enough of it to parse out the general meanings.
The gist of it all is that, after an anonymous call to 911, Toby Cochran was found in an abandoned building in town that is known to be a hangout for druggies. When police responded to the scene, they found Toby already cold and with early signs of lividity—otherwise known as livor mortis or the settling of blood after death, a term I’ve heard used before in the ER—indicating he’d been dead for some time. As a result, no resuscitation attempts were made. There was some drug paraphernalia nearby, and a syringe with a needle attached was found in Toby’s arm, the needle tip embedded in the cephalic vein in the left antecubital fossa. Fortunately, an accompanying picture translates this for me, showing the needle puncturing the inside portion of Toby’s left elbow.
The door to the break room opens then, and a woman officer walks in. She is short for a police officer, I think—maybe five four—but is also muscularly built. She has curly, shoulder-length, dark hair and lively hazel-colored eyes.
“Hey, Brenda,” Bob says.
“Hi,” she counters, giving me a questioning look.
I’m about to introduce myself when Bob beats me to it. “This is Hildy Schneider. She’s a social worker up at the hospital and she’s going to be doing a ride-along with me. Hildy, this is Officer Brenda Joiner.”
I recognize the name as that of the officer Sharon said she had dealt with.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Brenda says, extending a hand. After our grips part, she looks around the room. “Someone finally cleaned up in here,” she says with an appreciative tone. “I was going to try to get to it today if I had time.”
“That would be courtesy of our guest here,” Bob says, nodding toward me.
“Very considerate of you,” Brenda says, walking toward the refrigerator and opening the door. “Holy crap!” She stares at the inside of the fridge for a few seconds and then turns that stare toward me. “Did you do this, too?”
I nod.
Brenda gives Bob a pointed look. “She’s a keeper. Put her in cuffs if you have to, but don’t let her get away.”
I know she’s joking, but I find the look Bob gives me afterward a bit unsettling. And titillating.
Brenda removes a canned energy drink from the fridge and pops it open while letting the fridge door close. She takes a long swallow, lets out a satisfied “aah” when she’s done, and says, “See ya. Gotta go tame the wild ones.” She extends her drink hand to me in a cheers gesture, and I acknowledge it with a nod and a smile. With that, she exits out the back door.
“I like her,” I say.
“I think it’s a safe bet that she likes you, too, after what you did to our break room,” Bob says with a smile.
I turn my attention back to the autopsy report, skipping to the back pages and the summary conclusion. The findings are consistent with an overdose that resulted in respiratory arrest followed by cardiac arrest. Toby had no injuries or other health issues, and there was only the one puncture mark found on his body. An addendum tells me that Toby tested positive for both heroin and fentanyl, the drug Bob had said is often used to extend both the dosing of heroin and the sellers’ pockets. I already knew this, in part because of news reports, but also because of the spate of overdoses many communities, including Sorenson, are now seeing. The number of overdoses that have rolled into our ER has doubled during the past year or so.
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br /> “I can see why Mattie Winston was bothered by this boy’s death,” I say to Bob. “His first time shooting up and he ODs and dies?” It’s a point I’ve made before, but I can’t help making it again.
Bob shrugs, looking mildly perturbed. “Tragic, but it happens, particularly with this fentanyl-laced stuff.” He says this with the tired, rote tone of someone explaining something to a child for the umpteenth time. What he doesn’t realize is that this fact is an annoying nuisance in my brain, something I can’t ignore. My mind clings to it with the same tenacity Roscoe shows when I play tug-of-war with him using his favorite tug rope.
I flip back and look at some of the photos in the ME’s file. The one of Toby’s arm stops me, something about it niggling at my brain. “I assume you guys fingerprinted Toby, and the paraphernalia found in and around him?”
Bob nods. “There was a partial from Toby’s thumb on the end of the syringe plunger, and partials from two of his other fingers on the syringe barrel. None of the other paraphernalia had any clear, usable prints.”
I study the other junk found around Toby’s body in the pictures: a candy wrapper, a bottle cap, a small piece of foil, several beer and soda cans, and what looks like part of a blanket. “Not even partial prints?” I ask. Bob shakes his head. “That seems odd, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe, but ‘odd’ doesn’t prove anything.”
“It also seems odd that Toby’s prints would be clear rather than smudged if this was his first time shooting up, don’t you think?”
I half expect Bob to get irritated with my questions, but he just shrugs again.
I close my eyes for a moment and imagine myself doing what Toby did. I see myself picking up the syringe in my right hand, jabbing it into a vein in my left arm, and then pushing the plunger that sent that deadly liquid . . . Then it hits me.
“You said you found his thumbprint on the end of the syringe, on the end of the plunger?”
Bob nods, and his eyes narrow. He shifts in his seat, as if he’s uncomfortable.
“But no thumbprint on the barrel of the syringe?”
Needled to Death Page 11
