Corpus Delicti (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Book 6)

by Stephen Penner

  Nicole nodded. “Agreed. Rain City it is.” Then, remembering how the topic had started, “No homicides in Rain City last night, boss.”

  Brunelle breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”

  He turned and made his way back to his office. That was good news from Nicole. There was time still for Montero to warn Linda. But when he returned to his desk, his message light was on again.

  “Dave, it’s Chen. Linda Prescott is dead.”

  Chapter 17

  “Dead?” Brunelle asked as soon as Chen answered his phone. “How? When? What happened?”

  “Last night,” Chen answered, ignoring Brunelle’s lack of greeting. “We’re still working on the ‘what happened’ part.”

  “But Nicole just told me there were no homicides last night,” Brunelle protested.

  “It’s not a homicide,” Chen explained. “Not yet anyway. Looks like an O.D. Anonymous caller directed units to the Pacific Motel last night. Found her unresponsive in her bed, needle still in her arm.”

  “Shit,” Brunelle exhaled. “What time did they find her?”

  Chen took a moment to respond. “The 911 log says the call came in at 2259. First units arrived at 2307.”

  Double shit, Brunelle thought to himself. If he’d gone into that motel room, the cops would have found him with a dead hooker. That would have been difficult to explain.

  “She was pronounced dead on arrival at the E.R.,” Chen continued. “But cause of death is still undetermined. At least until after the autopsy. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  Brunelle was confused. He’d assumed Chen had called because Montero had forwarded him Brunelle’s message. “I thought you said it was an overdose.”

  “I said, it looked like an overdose,” Chen corrected. “But it’s pretty suspicious. She was our main witness, and now she’s dead. I’m about to head down to the M.E. for the autopsy. You should go, too.”

  “The medical examiner?” Brunelle practically choked on the words. “Uh… I don’t know, Larry. I mean…” But he didn’t know what he meant.

  Chen could hazard a guess. “You mean you don’t want to see Kat.”

  Brunelle wasn’t sure what to say. Which said it all.

  “Look, Dave,” Chen said. “I thought about what you said, and you’re right. I don’t really know how your relationship with Kat was. You guys seemed good together, and you seemed pretty damn happy for a while there. So I liked that. But whatever, it’s your business. But I still have to work with her, and so do you. This is a big deal. We’ve got one dead hooker on our hands, and now the one witness who could hold the murderer responsible is dead too. That’s suspicious. I need to be at that autopsy, and, quite frankly, so do you. So, man up, and do your damn job.”

  Brunelle was a bit stunned by the soliloquy, but then he smiled. “Okay, Larry. Fair enough. Thanks. I’ll—I’ll be there.”

  But as he hung up, the smile faded. Kat was going to be there, too.

  Chapter 18

  ‘King County Medical Examiner.’

  Brunelle frowned at the words on the sign outside the door to the M.E.’s office.

  For people who didn’t know what a ‘medical examiner’ was, the words were unremarkable.

  For people who knew ‘medical examiner’ was the new word for ‘coroner’, the words were creepy.

  For Brunelle, the words were terrifying.

  Not because of the dead bodies, but because of the live ones standing over them. One live body in particular.

  He hadn’t seen Kat for a long time. Too long, arguably. But, then again, he didn’t mind avoiding the arguments, recriminations, and guilt likely to accompany any such interaction. It was no coincidence that the latest case to consume his focus was the only one in his file cabinet that had no body. And, therefore, no autopsy. No medical examiner.

  No Kat.

  He shook his head against the thoughts invading his brain and glanced around the lobby. It was one of the least welcoming lobbies he’d ever had occasion to enter. There was no receptionist, no chairs, just a metal squawk-box by the elevator to buzz the staff who were upstairs in the examining area.

  Brunelle had hoped Chen might have waited for him in the unlobby, but no such luck. He glanced up at the institutional clock on the wall—the only thing even close to a decoration. Chen said he’d be there by 10:00. It was already 10:15. Chen wasn’t one to wait around for someone else to arrive; he was definitely upstairs already. Brunelle was going to have to go into the lion’s (or Kat’s) den alone.

  He sighed, then pressed the button on the intercom. “Hello? This is Dave Brunelle from the prosecutor’s office.” He recalled all the times he’d followed that with ‘I’m here to see Dr. Anderson’ then said, “I’m meeting Detective Larry Chen here.”

  There was a pause, then a staticky male voice replied, “Okay. Come on up.”

  The secure elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Brunelle stepped inside, pressed ‘2’, and tried not to throw up.

  When the doors opened, his unease was distracted slightly by the combination of the familiarity of his surroundings and the mental effort at recalling a place he hadn’t been to for a while. The respite was short lived, however.

  “David.”

  It was Kat, her black hair a bit longer than he’d remembered, her curves more alluring—a fist on her hip, almost as if to make sure he noticed what he’d been missing. She wore a white lab coat over her clothes, blue latex gloves on her hands, and an inscrutable expression on her face. She didn’t look happy, he could tell that much. The rest she kept hidden.

  “Kat,” he replied as he stepped off the elevator. His gaze bounced quickly off of his ex and searched the room for Chen. His buffer. He wondered if he could actually get Chen to remain physically between them at all times they were there. Not likely, though. There was no sign of the lawman. “Uh, hey.”

  Kat scoffed. “Yeah. Hey.” Then she turned and headed for the examining rooms. “Larry’s in with the body,” she called out over her shoulder. “He warned me you’d be coming. Try to keep up.”

  Brunelle nodded to himself and took a bracing breath. Well, that could have gone worse.

  Then again, he knew, there’s plenty of time for worse.

  Chen was indeed already in the waiting room. Along with the remains of Linda Prescott. The body had already been transferred from the gurney onto the metal examining table, and Kat was finishing up the external exam. She ignored Brunelle’s entrance.

  “Extensive bruising to the extremities,” she dictated into a handheld recorder, “at various stages of healing. Most appear to be several days to a week old.”

  “Hey, Larry,” Brunelle greeted the detective.

  Chen returned the greeting with a silent nod. Kat looked up at Brunelle with a disapproving eyebrow. She was dictating.

  “Right,” Brunelle responded audibly to the unspoken directive to shut up, which only extracted an even more disapproving eye roll from his ex-girlfriend.

  “No other signs of external injury,” Kat went on. Then, focusing her attention on the left arm of what used to be Linda Prescott, she addressed the reason they were all there. “Multiple injection sites, again with various stages of healing.”

  The injection sites were clearly visible, even more so in death, the scabbing almost black against the pale bluish color corpses get when the blood settles to the bottom of the body. Brunelle noted at least a half-dozen of them and decided he didn’t need to count them all to know Linda was an intravenous drug addict. That wasn’t really at issue. There was just one issue.

  “Is it a homicide?” he interrupted.

  Fuck her dictation. She could do that later.

  But Kat didn’t share his sense of priorities. “Can I finish, Mr. Brunelle?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Dr. Anderson. How much more to you need to do to determine whether she was murdered?”

  “If she had a knife sticking out of her chest, it would be pretty simple,” Kat replied cool
ly. “This is a little more subtle.”

  “She was the main witness in a murder case against her pimp, and the day her name is released, she’s found dead. That doesn’t seem very subtle to me.”

  Brunelle was vaguely aware of the fact that they were arguing about what they weren’t really arguing about.

  Kat stood up and crossed her arms. That damn hip stick out again, alluring even under the lab coat. “And you’re the expert on subtlety, is that it?”

  Brunelle pulled himself up. “I can be subtle.”

  “You can be a jackass,” Kat replied with a dismissive exhale. “Subtle isn’t making out with a teenager in the courthouse hallway.”

  Brunelle felt a blush sear his cheeks, but only half out of embarrassment. The other half was anger. “She’s not a teenager. And we didn’t make out.”

  “Fine,” Kat spat back. She wasn’t quite yelling, but her voice was definitely elevated. “Very subtle. Perfectly professional. You’re the pinnacle of polite society. How dare I question the great David Fucking Brunelle?”

  Chen finally stepped in. “Uh, guys. Can we do this later? I’d like to stick to business, if we can.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do,” Brunelle protested, as if to a teacher who’d caught him fighting on the playground. “She started it.”

  “Really, David?” Kat shook her head. “Maybe you’re the teenager.”

  Brunelle was about to say something back—or at least was trying to think of a comeback, which was irritatingly not leaping into his brain just then—but Chen interceded again.

  “Maybe he’s a prosecutor. Maybe I’m a cop. And maybe you’re a medical examiner.” He pointed to Linda. “And maybe she was murdered.”

  That was enough to suck the air out of the budding ex-lovers’ quarrel that threatened to derail the examination.

  Kat returned to her professional detachment. “It’s extremely difficult to label this a homicide, Larry.” But she still made sure to address Chen, not Brunelle. “I can tell you she died from an excess of heroin in her system, but how it got there—I don’t know, except to say that it was injected. If she was murdered, it was because somebody injected her with too much of it. And that’s beyond my ability to tell from an autopsy.”

  “But it’s possible?” Brunelle ventured. Just because she didn’t really want to talk to him didn’t mean they didn’t have things to discuss.

  “Of course it’s possible,” she replied, a bit sharply. “But that’s not what I do. I don’t deal in the possibilities. If she did have a knife in her chest, I’d say she died from sharp force trauma. But I don’t know what happened before that. That’s what you two do. Gather the other evidence to explain why the cause of death—heroin, a knife, whatever—was or wasn’t murder.”

  Brunelle frowned, but didn’t say anything. He already knew what she was telling him. The autopsy was one piece of evidence, but it never told the whole story.

  “Is there any evidence she was held down, or already high or something, so that someone could have injected her with an overdose?” That was all he could hope for, and, somehow, he still placed hope in Kat Anderson.

  But she was a scientist, not a hope-monger. “Nothing definitive. She has bruising, but she lived a rough life. There are no other injuries to suggest she was bound or anything. Maybe she was passed out. Who knows?” She looked to Chen again. “You said she was found in a motel room. I presume she was working. Maybe you could try to find out when her last trick was. I mean, if she was about to turn another trick, she probably wouldn’t be passed out.”

  Brunelle’s heart jumped. The last thing he needed was Chen poking around, trying to find Linda’s last scheduled appointment the night she died.

  “Uh, well, I guess there’s nothing more you can really do,” he said to Kat. “Except, I mean, could you maybe just list the manner of death as undetermined?”

  Kat’s eyes flared. “Undetermined? It’s not undetermined. She died of an overdose. I’ll need to wait on the full tox report to confirm, but there’s no doubt that’s what caused her death.”

  “Right, but whether it’s homicide or accident is your call,” Brunelle countered. “Can you just wait a bit before you declare it an accident? I mean, if you’re not willing to call it homicide right now, can’t you do me a favor and at least put undetermined?”

  Kat’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you a favor?” she repeated. “You want me to do you a favor?”

  Brunelle grimaced. He understood the subtext. “Um… Yes?” he said anyway.

  Chen had completely faded away, either by actual step backward or emotional insignificance—Brunelle wasn’t sure and barely noticed. His attention was consumed by the woman across from him.

  “I don’t believe this was an accident,” Brunelle said. “The marks on her arms show she was an addict. The fact that she was at that motel shows she was working that night.” That, and his own 11:00 p.m. ‘appointment.’ “That means she knew how much to give herself safely, and she had reason to stay alive that night.”

  But Kat shook her head. “That’s supposition, David, and argument. The realm of detectives and lawyers. But I’m a doctor. That’s not what I do.”

  Brunelle nodded. “I know. That’s why it’s a favor.”

  Kat surrendered the smallest of smiles, willfully forced into the corner of her reluctant mouth. But she shook her head again. “You know I can’t, David.” Brunelle grinned too, but a pained grin, and cast his eyes downward.

  Kat waited a moment, then said, “I’m sorry, David.”

  Brunelle looked up and for the first time since he’d arrived at the M.E., he looked Kat in her beautiful dark eyes. “I’m sorry too, Kat. I’m truly sorry.”

  Chapter 19

  Favors are for friends.

  Linda Prescott’s death certificate arrived a few days later and it unambiguously listed her manner of death as ‘accident.’

  Brunelle wasn’t surprised, but he allowed himself to be disappointed. Not in Kat. Just in the impact it had on his case. It would be a lot easier to stand up in front of a jury on a double murder case where he had at least one of the bodies. Instead, he was left with the same weak case.

  No, that wasn’t true. It was weaker. His one witness was gone. What had been a circumstantial case had turned into a suppositional one. He was going to have to figure out how to save it. But he knew whose fault it was. And it wasn’t Dr. Kat Anderson’s.

  “Jessica,” Brunelle almost growled when he ran into Edwards in the Pit later that day. “Well done.”

  Edwards was seated at a long table with several other attorneys. She turned from her negotiations with another prosecutor in Brunelle’s office—a newer guy in the special assault unit—and smiled up at her counterpart. “Why, thank you, Dave.” She mistook it as a friendly greeting. “I’m sure it was. What did I do so well?”

  “You had my star witness killed,” Brunelle replied grimly.

  The Pit was usually full of the background noise of a half-dozen or more conversations, people talking over each other and generally doing their best to settle cases and catch each other up on how their weekends went. But the kind of comment Brunelle has just unleashed had the ability to cut through the din and grab people’s attention. The lawyers closest to Brunelle and Edwards stopped and looked up at Brunelle looming over one of the most talented and most respected defense attorneys in the county. She cocked her head at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Linda Prescott,” Brunelle said. “She’s dead. Only hours after I gave you her name. What did you do, text the name to your guy as soon as I emailed you?”

  Edwards’ smile melted away, and her jaw set as she stood up to face Brunelle. She was at least a half-foot shorter than him, even in her heels, but her presence was more than equal to his. “I’m entitled to the names of the witnesses against my client, and I’m entitled—no, ethically required—to share that information with my client in order to provide him the best possible defense. Whatever conversations I had with
my client after that are none of your goddamn business.”

  “They’re my business if they result in my witnesses getting killed,” Brunelle insisted.

  Edwards crossed her arms. “Was she murdered?”

  Brunelle felt a nervous pang in his stomach at the question. He hadn’t failed to notice that half the room was listening intently, with the other half trying to figure out why everyone else had suddenly stopped talking. He wasn’t about to admit defeat. “It’s still being investigated.”

  Edwards’ smile returned, but this time it was cold and mocking. “So, no,” she translated.

  “She’s dead,” Brunelle repeated. “And now my case may be too.”

  “Boo-fucking-hoo for you,” Edwards scoffed. “I’m not the one who filed murder charges based on the word of a single prostitute.”

  “Her being a prostitute has nothing to do with it,” Brunelle shot back.

  But Edwards disagreed. “Of course it does. She’s a drug addict and a liar. She gets taken into custody for hooking, so she throws her pimp under the bus to get a deal. Classic impeachment.”

  “Classic knowledge,” Brunelle countered. “Who else is going to know how Brown treats his prostitutes than one of his own girls? You know as well as I do that most of the witnesses to the cases we do are no angels themselves. Pimps and drug addicts hang out with their own. Nothing good happens after two in the morning, and by then all the good people of the world are tucked away safe in their middle-class beds. I can’t pick my witnesses.”

  “No,” Edwards agreed, “but I can pick them apart. And if I don’t, I’m not doing my job.”

  “Well, no worries, Jessica. You did your job. My witness is dead.” He hesitated, not wanting to admit his next thought. But then he divulged it anyway, even if just for the dramatic effect. “And so is my case.”

  Trial lawyers were showmen at heart.

  Edwards raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?” She smelled blood. Showman’s blood.

  Brunelle felt a flash of heat at his collar. He’d given away too much. He became acutely aware of the roomful of attorneys watching him—prosecutors and defenders, allies and opponents—and knew his next response had better be measured.