Circle of Blood (Forensic Mystery) by Ferguson Alane

Author:Ferguson, Alane [Ferguson, Alane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

“CAMMIE, WHAT’S WRONG?” Justin asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Too much brain bucket, I’ll bet,” offered Ben.

Cameryn took a deep breath. “I just . . . I think I need the restroom. Excuse me.”

No one argued as she stripped off her gown, tossing her latex gloves in the garbage along with her hair covering. Behind her, she heard the murmur of voices discussing blowback on the gun’s barrel, and the nicks left inside the skull by the ricocheting bullet. The voices grew softer as the door swung in and out; with each pass she could still hear the words “hard to interpret” and “slaying” until she was too far down the hall to make them out. She thought she’d escaped, but the words trailed after her like smoke.

It wasn’t a restroom she needed—just time to think. She went as far as the lobby before dropping into an institutional chair. The chrome frame gleamed in the light, as shiny and cold as an autopsy instrument. She crossed her legs and watched her foot jiggle in the half-light until she commanded it to stop. If she was going to keep secrets, she’d have to become less transparent.

For a moment she stood, and then, with no place to go, she sat down again. The material on the chair was a rough, institutional fabric with an out-of-date, stain-hiding pattern. Cheap magazine tables bisected the rows of chairs. A copy of Field & Stream adorned one, while a House & Garden lay open on the other. A battered copy of I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing after the Death of a Loved One lay splayed on a laminate coffee table. When she leafed through it, she saw the pages were puckered; salted—she guessed, by tears. She picked up the Field & Stream, read the cover, and set it down again.

“I would have pegged you as more of a House and Garden type,” Justin said, surprising her from behind and then slipping into a chair beside her. “You know, cutting, stitching things up.” While his arms rested on chrome, his blue jeans-clad legs spread wide, unfolding as if to take up as much space as possible.

“Very funny. Actually, out of these choices I’d have to say I’m more of a Field and Stream kind of girl. My mammaw still makes us eat fish every Friday, so for a while I got into catching them. But I don’t like to clean fish,” she said, wrinkling her nose. It was amazing, she realized, the way she could flip her internal switch and hide what she was feeling. Not only from others, but from herself. “Gutting a fish—that’s where I draw the line.”

“You want to open up bodies but you’re girly about a fish. You are a mass of contradictions, Cameryn Mahoney.”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s because I have to eat the fish. No such problem with the decedents.”

He studied her a moment before saying, “If people knew what happened to their bodies after death, they wouldn’t die.

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