Heart Stop

by Radclyffe

  Olivia grimaced. “I was unhappy at the time, but I was young and naïve. So no—sympathy is not required.”

  “Okay. Good. I wouldn’t have meant it.” The tightness in Jay’s chest relaxed a little. “Thank you.”

  Olivia shook her head. “Conversations with you have a way of wandering into strange territory. We would be wise to return to business.”

  “Are you always wise?”

  “Not always. Witness my recent admission.” She knew better, but for a moment Olivia gave in to the utter fascination of watching the unbridled emotions play across Jay’s face. Flashes of anger, possessiveness, humor, and desire—directed at her and so intense, so addicting. So very, very dangerous. She hadn’t thought herself susceptible to that kind of intense attention again, but she’d been wrong. Right at that moment, Jay reminded her far too much of Marcos—or perhaps what she was remembering was her own attraction to the attention. She had learned that lesson once and did not intend to repeat it. “We should get to work.”

  “Right,” Jay said thickly, her brain blazing with a wash of adrenaline and hormones. “Do you mind if I get another cup of coffee?”

  Olivia sat back. “Of course not. Go ahead.”

  Jay pushed up so fast her right leg nearly buckled. She grabbed her cane with a curse.

  “Are you all right?” Olivia rose.

  “Fine,” Jay said between clenched teeth. Fine, except for the ripping pain in her knee and the fire tearing through the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with her injuries. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  *

  Once outside, Jay took a few deep breaths of cold morning air. What the hell had she just done? If there hadn’t been a desk between them, she would have been all over Olivia. She could almost taste her right now. Like one of those fucking exotic flowers that had started the whole damn conversation. She wanted to kiss her. She wanted to unbutton her and expose the mystery underneath the careful exterior. She wanted her. And she had about five minutes to douse her libido and get her head back in the game. The other game—the one she actually knew how to play.

  “Great,” she muttered. “Brilliant move, Reynolds.”

  “You know you’re mumbling to yourself, right?” Ali said.

  Jay jumped. Ali wore scrubs and a white lab coat with Trauma Chief stitched above the pocket.

  “Hey,” Jay said. “Where you headed?”

  “Rounds at the VA. You getting coffee?”

  “Yeah.” Jay got in line with Ali. “You staffing there this month?”

  “Yep.” Ali ordered two coffees and handed one to Jay. “How are things at the ME’s?”

  “They’re letting me work on cases, so that’s good. Otherwise, too soon to tell.” Especially considering I just tried to put the move on the assistant chief.

  “You’re starting pretty early.” Ali moved away from the line, cracked her coffee, and took a sip. “Ah. Better.”

  “Olivia keeps surgeon’s hours.”

  “She keeping you busy for real?”

  “Busy enough.” Jay kept her expression blank. She sure as hell did not want Ali to get wind of her obsession with the assistant ME, especially not when her sister would know by the end of the day.

  Ali grinned. “Good. Don’t want you getting slow and lazy.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Listen—I have to go, but I’ll call you about dinner soon.”

  “Sure.” Jay waved and hustled back inside as fast as her leg would carry her. Olivia’s door was ajar, and she slipped through and returned to her chair. “Thanks.”

  “You did a good job with this field report.” Olivia handed Jay a copy of the report as if they’d been discussing it all along, no hint of discomfort or concern in her voice. “The next question is, how do you interpret what’s in here?”

  Jay struggled to get her mind in gear—in work gear, at least. Fortunately, the problem interested her. “While I was dictating the initial findings, it reminded me of doing the initial H and P.”

  “Excellent analogy.” Olivia’s smile was like a reward. “When a new patient presents in the ER, for example, you’d follow an established and reliable routine—you’d ascertain the patient’s problem in their own words, elicit the history pertinent to that problem, review their medical history for associated or potentially causative problems, examine their family history for similar problems, and once all that information gathering had been completed, you’d perform a physical examination. How do things differ for us?”

  Jay liked problems. She liked solving them mentally as well as physically. She wouldn’t have become a surgeon if she didn’t want to treat a problem directly by applying what she knew in tandem with her intrinsic technical skills. She didn’t want to prescribe a drug or provide an opinion so someone else could deliver treatment. She wanted to be the one to fix the problem, and the first step in treatment was understanding the disease. Death was the final common denominator, after all. Captivated by where Olivia was going, she sat forward. She liked games too, and Olivia was challenging her to play. “First problem, the patient can’t provide any kind of information. So no history, at least.”

  Olivia held up a finger. “Are you sure? Think about that for a minute. What did you know from looking at that girl yesterday before you touched her, before anyone told you anything. What did her body tell you?”

  Jay blew out a breath. “I knew her general state of health, at least in the sense that she wasn’t visibly malnourished or chronically ill in some way—no jaundice, unusual skin lesions, or hair loss. I could tell in rough terms how long she’d been dead. Certainly not for a week. Her clothes were expensive, probably off the rack, but still designer.” She laughed. “I’m not exactly a clotheshorse.”

  “You dress to suit.”

  For a second, Jay’s brain misfired again. Dress to suit what? The job, her personality, her sexuality? Did Olivia notice anything personal about her? Did she like what she saw? Jay grabbed the reins and tugged her runaway thoughts back into line. “Uh—anyhow, I get what you’re saying. There were things, or at least impressions, that I got from looking at her. But observations aren’t the same as facts, right? I thought the whole point of what we do is that only the facts mattered.”

  “If only the facts mattered, then almost anyone could do the job.” Olivia’s eyes took on a predatory glint and Jay recognized the alpha wolf hiding behind the reserve. “A reasonably informed layman could take what was known and fit it into some kind of algorithm and come up with an answer. That’s not what we do. We go where the facts lead us, but we also interpret evidence, which may not be clearly factual. Does that make sense?”

  Jay nodded. “That’s a thin line to walk.”

  Olivia smiled. “Exactly. And that’s why experience matters. And discipline. And that tunnel vision you’re so worried about. I’d far rather have someone who focuses narrowly than someone who wanders off following a pretty hypothesis. We don’t get paid to hypothesize. We get paid to apply expertise and specific knowledge to identifiable problems.”

  “Okay. What do we know?” Jay glanced down at her copy of the field report, reviewing the observations she’d made. She looked at the other information that didn’t have specifically to do with the deceased herself. A picture formed in her mind, a scenario. She glanced at Olivia. “We know she didn’t die there.”

  “How?”

  “She was moved, and from all reports, no one moved her. The lividity indicates she was on her back for at least an hour before she was left on her side.”

  “Yes, unless there was someone else on scene before any officials arrived,” Olivia said. “In which case we would have to reevaluate our conclusions.”

  “The best interpretation of the evidence right now is that someone moved her intentionally.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we’re drawing conclusions,” Jay said, “working outward from the facts that we know, rather than eliminating from a list of potential possibilities, which is how
traditionally one makes a diagnosis.”

  “Exactly. The mind-set is different.”

  “It’s gonna take me a while to make that adjustment.”

  Olivia shrugged. “Of course it is. All your training teaches you to approach a problem by considering the potential causes of a particular constellation of signs and symptoms. But that’s true for everyone in this field. You’re not behind.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Jay muttered.

  Olivia glanced at her watch. “Are you ready to put some more facts together?”

  “Definitely.”

  “By the time the police officer arrives, we’ll have the external exam almost done. If she shows up.”

  “But we don’t wait.”

  Olivia met her gaze, the spark glinting again. “No. We don’t wait.”

  Jay had been totally wrong about her first impression of Olivia. She was anything but cool. Heart pounding, Jay rose, steady this time. “So let’s go.”

  *

  “Where you going, babe?” Dell said as she pulled on her jeans and slicked back hair still wet from the shower.

  “The morgue.” Sandy gave her the once-over. “You might want to put a shirt on, stud.”

  Dell shot her a raised eyebrow. “Why to both?”

  Sandy wrapped her arms around Dell’s waist and kissed her, purring lightly at the press of Dell’s breasts against hers. “Because I have to go to work. Because you look hot. Because last night was hours ago and I’m ready again.”

  Dell grinned and kissed her. “So I’ll see you tonight, and maybe we’ll have a repeat.”

  “Maybe?”

  “For sure.” Dell nuzzled her neck. “You’re going to get a damp spot on your shirt.”

  “You could try drying off once in a while instead of air drying,” Sandy said, exaggerating her sigh. “Although you do look hot.”

  “Now you know why I hate to dry off.”

  Sandy squeezed her ass and backed away. “You should still put a shirt on because I don’t want to be thinking about your naked body where I’m going.”

  “True.” Dell pulled on a T-shirt. “What are you doing at the morgue anyhow? Shouldn’t that be homicide’s turf?”

  “Usually, but this looks like an OD, and if that’s what the ME’s calling it, it’ll be accidental and not homicide.”

  Dell stuffed in her shirttail and slid her holster onto her belt. “So why is it yours?”

  “It’s not the death as much as how she got that way. There was a weird drug bag with her body. Might be something new. That’s what we’re looking into.”

  “Huh. Okay. You’ll be on the streets later tracking it down?”

  “Yeah.” Sandy sat on the sofa and zipped her ankle-high boots. “Asking around, trying to find out if there’s a source for this stuff, or, who knows, maybe it was a one-off.”

  “Yeah, what are the chances of that,” Dell muttered.

  “You’re right. That’s what we’re worried about too.”

  “Okay.” Dell kissed the top of her head and grabbed her leather jacket. “Text me when you can, okay?”

  Sandy slipped her badge into her bag and her gun into the special inner pocket. “I will, you too.”

  *

  Twenty-five minutes later, Sandy jumped off the subway in West Philadelphia and hurried the two blocks to the ME’s office. Seven thirty. Right on time. She’d actually never been to the morgue before and had to ask someone in the hall how to find where the autopsies were done when she got inside. She took the elevator to the basement, of course, because where else would you put it, and followed the signs along a surprisingly well-lit generic institutional hallway to the morgue. When she got there and peered into the little room marked No Entrance, she wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  A woman in a lab coat and casual street clothes asked in passing, “Help you?”

  “Officer Sullivan, PPD. I’m supposed to be observing an autopsy?”

  The tech pointed to the door to the little room. “You want to go right through there. Just slip on booties and one of those green gowns from the stack by the inner door. You can hang your jacket on a peg right inside there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have fun.”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Sandy wasn’t squeamish, and she’d seen plenty of DBs before. She did as she was instructed and, once she’d gotten the gown tied up and the booties on, opened the inner door. A bright light on a swivel arm illuminated the table closest to her, and women in scrubs stood on either side of it. All she could make out of the body were the legs. She cleared her throat.

  The woman nearest her looked over her shoulder. Early thirties, blond hair, green eyes. The one across from her, about the same height and age but broader in the shoulders, gray eyes, dark hair visible around the edges of her surgical cap.

  “I’m Officer Sullivan. Looking for Dr. Price.”

  The blonde nodded. “Right on time, Officer. If you’d like to come over here, we’ve just completed the external examination and are about to start the internal.” Dr. Price looked at the other woman. “Go ahead, Dr. Reynolds.”

  Sandy got as close as she needed to see what they were doing. She recognized the victim from the day before, although she looked different on the table, more dead, if that were even possible. It looked like her hair had been washed and was a lustrous blond even now. That seemed wrong somehow, as if beauty belonged to the living. She looked young. Her breasts were full, her abdomen slightly rounded, her legs toned. This was not a street girl. Even the young ones tended to be stringy—a lot of walking, not a lot of optimal nutrition—and usually plenty of scars. This girl looked like she’d just stepped out of the sorority house. Sandy’s stomach tightened. How long would it take a missing student to be missed?

  “Do you have an ID yet?” Dr. Price said.

  “Nothing yet. DMV didn’t turn up anything. Neither did missing persons. We ought to have results from CODIS and the national databases late morning.”

  “We have dental X-rays if you need them. A scan showed no other fractures that might have been of value in identifying her.”

  “What about DNA?” Sandy asked.

  “Your CSU people bagged her hands, so your lab will run anything under her nails along with whatever else they found externally on her person, but that will take days at least.”

  “Thanks. Anything interesting turn up so far?” Sandy asked.

  “She’s pretty much as you see.” The dark-haired doctor—Reynolds, the other one had called her—spoke for the first time. “Well-nourished female, estimated age twenty, no external wounds, no evidence of a struggle that we could see.”

  As they talked, the dark-haired doctor made an incision angled across the girl’s chest from her shoulders to her breastbone, skirting her breasts. Sandy had a quick thought it was a violation of a beautiful body, and then the filters clicked in. Not a girl, not a young woman, but the victim. She hadn’t forgotten that the dead girl was someone’s daughter or someone’s sister or someone’s lover, but that wasn’t how she needed to think of her. She was also someone’s victim, at least she might be, and it was Sandy’s job to find out if she was, then who.

  “Track marks?” Sandy asked.

  “None.”

  “Then whatever it was she took, she snorted or ingested it.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Price said, looking at her with a speculative expression of appreciation.

  Sandy smiled inwardly. She knew how she came off: young, blond, and potentially naïve. She couldn’t change her age, but she was more seasoned than cops with twice as much experience and two decades on her. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered to her was information that she needed. “How long for tox?”

  “We should have something for you tomorrow,” Dr. Price said, “unless we get a backlog, which can happen.”

  Sandy laughed. “Yeah, I know how that is.”

  Over the next hour, she watched them remove organs, weigh things, and pretty much find nothing ot
her than what they already suspected.

  “Dr. Reynolds,” Dr. Price said when they appeared to be finished, “would you dictate the post, please.”

  “Sure.”

  Price walked to a big hamper by the door, stripped off her gown, removed her gloves and booties, and tossed things in various receptacles. “At this point, there appears to be no evidence of external trauma or significant disease. The tox will tell us more.”

  “So this is likely accidental?” Sandy deposited her gown and booties in the same bins.

  “We’ll know when we get the results of the tox,” Dr. Price said.

  Sandy mentally rolled her eyes. Sometimes, these lab types were really anal. But then, that’s what they were supposed to be. “Okay, will you call me as soon as you hear something?”

  “I’ll do that.” Dr. Price walked Sandy out to the hall. “What can you tell me about this new drug you’re worried about?”

  “I don’t know too much about it.” Sandy pulled her jacket on. “We’re not even sure that’s what this is all about. Our lab will be analyzing the contents of the glassine envelope found by the body today.”

  “Then it seems we’ll need to share our findings. You’ll call me on that?”

  “I’ll ask our chief CSI—her name is Flanagan—to call you with whatever she gets.”

  “That would be good. I appreciate it.”

  “I’ll let you know on the ID too.”

  “Then it appears we’ve gone as far as we can for her. For the time being.”

  Sandy glanced back through the windows where the other doctor was covering the body. “I’ve still got some avenues to investigate.”

  The doctor cocked her head. “Literally, I’m assuming.”

  Huh. Sharp as well as hot. Sandy held out her hand. “Thanks, Dr. Price.”

  “Sandy, isn’t it?” The doctor took her hand.

  “That’s right.”

  “Call me Olivia.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jay didn’t get performance anxiety, at least not since she was forced to recite a poem in second grade on Parents’ Day, and her mother was in the audience. That was pretty terrifying, especially because Ali and Vic were five years ahead of her and nowhere around. She couldn’t remember too many times in her life when they hadn’t been around to support her—they’d been her cheering squad in intramural soccer, her sounding board when she was figuring out she liked girls the way most of her friends liked boys, and her mentors and toughest critics in college and med school. She wondered who she’d be today if it hadn’t been for them. Maybe she wouldn’t be standing up at this podium in front of an audience of people she didn’t know, except for the woman in the pristine lab coat standing in the center aisle, one hip resting lightly against the end seat in the first row, asking her questions.