Just when Brian thought his day couldn’t get any worse, the powers that be proved him wrong.
Tess readied the second body they’d received from a police raid that morning for the postmortem as Dr. Hansen dictated the last of his findings on the previous one into his recorder. Nothing like a busy day at the coroner’s office to put her thoughts of Agent Brian Malone on the back burner. In addition to the three drug dealers that needed processing, they had two unattended deaths, two victims from a car accident, and a thirty-two-year-old patient from a local hospital who died of cardiac arrest from unknown causes. Dr. Hansen was handling the drug dealers, while Dr. Winiecke and Dr. Mendez were assigned to perform the other autopsies with their respective assistants.
From what Patty had told Tess, a DEA agent and a local deputy had been shot during the raid, but both were expected to survive. Thank God. She always cringed when she heard an LEO had been hurt or killed in the line of duty, and not just from the Dare County area. It was a kick in the gut when any member of law enforcement around the world died while on the job. Maybe Brian had been right—she did feel like the men and women in blue were family. Especially the ones she saw regularly. Tess just prayed she would never have to assist during an autopsy on one of them. Although it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been present for a post-mortem on someone she knew.
About a year after she started working with Dr. Hansen, a guy from her high school class had committed suicide. Even though she hadn’t seen Erik Milford in years, it still upset her. Dr. Hansen had paused his external examination after noticing a few tears rolling down Tess’s cheeks. He’d instructed her to swap assignments with Clark, who’d been the other assistant that day. Afterward, the head coroner told her that, in the future, she should let him know if she was acquainted with a decedent so he could assign the case to another ME/assistant team. Dr. Hansen preferred not to perform an autopsy on someone he knew personally and didn’t expect her or any of his staff to do so either, unless there were no alternatives—which did happen on rare occasions.
Before she dropped Andy off at his school that morning, Tess reminded him to take the afternoon bus as he normally did, then go to the Carbones’ house for an hour until she could join him. A contractor would stop by Tess and Andy’s house during the day and meet her there after her shift ended to give an estimate on the extensive repairs needed. Tess wasn’t naive, though. She had two more contractors who would do the same thing later that week, before she decided which one to go with.
One of the first things she’d learned after her parents died was how dumb many plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and other service people thought young women were. They tended to inflate their prices, thinking their female clients wouldn’t know any better. Thankfully, Tess had been smart enough to consult with her male neighbors before having any work done on the house or her car. The first few times she’d needed to hire someone, she’d been approached with estimates that had been five to ten times more than what the jobs should’ve cost. After that, she created a fictional husband with whom she had to consult before signing anything, allegedly, when he got home in the evening. Of course, her “betrothed” had really been Frank Carbone or Al Reynolds, whom she checked with before agreeing to any work that needed to be done.
Tess hadn’t been ready to take on all the responsibilities that came with owning a house and raising a teenager, but thanks to those who stood by her, she learned quickly. Budgets, property taxes, utilities, repairs, school registration, parent/teacher conferences, and everything else she had never given a second thought about while their parents had been alive were, suddenly, at the top of her list of things to worry about. Up until the tree had landed on top of their house, everything else had paled in comparison.
“Okay, Tess, let’s start on number two.” Dr. Hansen stepped up to the autopsy table, pulling on a new pair of latex gloves. “Any word on the two officers shot?”
“I don’t know the extent of their injuries, but last I heard, they’ll both survive.”
“Good. I hate it when members of law enforcement end up as our guests here. Did I ever tell you my father was an FBI agent, stationed in D.C.?”
Tess readied the scalpel he would request in a few moments, after dictating his external findings on the decedent into the microphone attached to his scrub shirt. “No, I don’t think you ever did, Doctor.”
“Yup. My brother followed in Dad’s footsteps—he’s with the FBI in Dallas. Me? I took after our mother, sort of. She’s a research physician.”
It wasn’t often Hansen gave his assistant a glimpse into his private life. While the man talked about history, current events, books, movies, and everything else under the sun, except for politics and religion, he rarely discussed his background or his life outside the morgue. As far as Tess knew, he was single, never married, with no children, but she’d learned all that from Patty a few years ago. Heck, until two seconds ago, she hadn’t known he had any siblings. The doctor wasn’t unfriendly—he just kept his personal life, well, personal.
“Really? What field?”
“Cancer. Both my grandmothers died of it—one from ovarian, and the other from glioblastoma.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “It is what it is, Tess. We all have to die of something someday, right? While my mother searches for a way to help the living from behind her microscope, I try to do the same right here. Maybe, between the two of us, we’ll come up with some answers one day. Maybe, someday, you’ll be the one finding the answers.”
Tess had a feeling this was no longer a conversation about Hansen’s family. He confirmed it a moment later when he asked, “So, when are you going back to med school?”
“Hopefully, after Andy starts college.”
“Whitemore?”
She held out a specimen jar she knew he’d ask for in a moment. “Yes. It doesn’t make sense to apply anywhere else when that’s such an easy commute.”
“Mm-hmm. I see. Well, I spoke to a friend of mine the other day. Maybe you recognize his name—Dr. Mark Finkelstein?”
Her eyes widened. “Dr. Finkelstein? As in the dean of the Whitmore School of Medicine? That Dr. Finkelstein?”
“The one and the same. We went to med school together. Anyway, I was talking to him the other day, and he mentioned a little-known grant available to students interested in forensics. Asked if I knew of anybody willing to apply, but there’s a bit of a catch. The student must be recommended by a board-certified medical examiner—who’s in good standing—to be eligible. Now, here I am, a board-certified medical examiner—I think I’m in good standing with said board. So, I thought to myself, hmm... who do I know who might qualify and wants to go to Whitmore?”
Tess was dumbfounded, standing over a dead body, gaping at her boss, and praying she wasn’t dreaming. The corners of his mouth pulled up into a wide grin behind the plastic shield protecting his face from body fluids. “Nod your head, Tess, if you want me to get you the paperwork and write a glowing letter of recommendation.”
“I—I… um...” She finally got her neck muscles working, even if her mouth wasn’t yet, and nodded. It was unbelievable. She hadn’t been sure how she would manage financially if both she and Andy were in higher education at the same time. The money from their parents’ life insurance policies and the settlement from the lawsuit would probably cover four years of school for both of them—but there wouldn’t be much left afterward. A grant was a huge deal and would help her tremendously. “Y-yes, Dr. Hansen. Oh my! I don’t know how to thank you!”
“Just become the best medical examiner I know you can be.” He gestured to the corpse between them. “Now, shall we get back to work?”
Chapter Eleven
Behind the closed bedroom door, Andy turned on his computer and waited for it to boot up so he could log in. Yeah, he had two finals on Thursday and Friday, then four more crammed into next week, but he knew the material by heart for his first exams, so there was no need to study anymore tonight. He would ace both, of that he had no doubt.
Once the computer was up and running, he clicked on the browser and headed for the hacker chat room. While he scrolled through the day’s posts and replies, his phone chimed with a text.