Danger Returns in Pairs (Shawn Danger Mysteries Book 2) by Post Nina

Author:Post, Nina [Post, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Nina Post, LLC
Published: 2015-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Shawn adjusted to the chemical smell and winced when he saw Jasper supine on the table. The audio system piped Civil War-era piano into the examining room, lending the lab a strangely dichotomous feel of the modern twenty-first century medical facility and the late nineteenth century, when you poured whiskey over a bullet wound and hoped for the best. He could picture himself in a saloon after the end of the Civil War at the same time as he stood in the white and stainless steel lab.

Shawn put his case folder, the most recent investigative reports, the official crime scene photos (his and the DI's), and the wound charts on a counter by the door. How shitty that Jasper was up on that gurney, not even forty years old. How shitty that his old friend died under circumstances that reunited them as part of a murder investigation.

The pathologist, a shortish, average-sized man with side-parted brown hair, greeted Shawn with a ready, broad smile, face creasing around the eyes and mouth. "Hello! You must be Detective Shawn Danger!" He said Shawn's name like a game show announcer. ""I don't think we've met. I'm Dr. Hathaway, like Henry Hathaway, the director of True Grit, Call Northside 777, et cetera, et cetera. No relation, unfortunately. Oh, to have Rooster Cogburn's embroidered suede vest!"

Shawn smiled. "I'd wear it every day."

"Me too!" The pathologist rolled his eyes and cast a skeptical sideways glance at Shawn. "Well, my assistant Ron called in sick with what he called "caffeine intoxication" and "nervous exhaustion," so I'm on my own today. Lots to do."

Shawn donned the paper smock, shoe covers, and gloves. He wouldn't put on the face mask unless he needed to look closely at something, which he hoped he didn't have to do. "Now, as for the gentleman on the table, I'll start my external examination. He has already been weighed and measured."

The pathologist pressed the record button on his recording device and listed Jasper's hair color, eye size, muscle stiffness, facial hair, age, and scars. He noted an old crescent-shaped scar on Jasper's right butt cheek and a smaller scar on Jasper's palm.

Shawn remembered how Jasper got that scar. He and Darcy were hiding behind the bushes, waiting for Jasper to come out of his house after supper. Darcy was making him laugh so hard that his sides hurt and he had to wipe tears from his eyes. She was naturally skilled at making up a ridiculous situation for whatever they were looking at and was probably doing that. Shawn had stopped laughing when they heard a crash and glass breaking and a wail. They waited in tense silence then watched with gaping mouths as a bloodied Jasper was hauled out to the rusted old station wagon.

Jasper told Shawn the next day that his parents had a fight, which broke a mason jar on the floor. When he interfered, his dad pushed him and he fell on a shard of the jar. "That's from a

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