First Cut--A Novel by Judy Melinek

Author:Judy Melinek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Carlo San Pietro had followed through on his boast: I found a report on case SFME-0955 in my mailbox when I went for a refill of the sludge coffee that keeps the Ops Shop humming day and night. The tox was in, and, with it, the last answers about Rebecca Corchero’s death. She had 0.73 mg/liter of 6-MAM in her blood. Six-MAM is a metabolite of heroin, and 0.73 is a whole lot of it—enough to kill a seasoned addict.

Rebecca’s roommate last saw her alive at around 8:30 on the night of August 8. Melodie was certain she had turned the dead bolt on the door when she left. When she returned the next morning and discovered the body, the security gate was locked but the dead bolt wasn’t. The death scene was locked but not secure.

After Melodie left, Rebecca went to her room to surf the internet and study. At some point she ended up in the front hallway, slumped in a chair. She had a tourniquet and a sloppy injection wound on her left arm, and a used syringe on the table by her right. She was dead of enough heroin to kill a person twice her size, unless she had a high tolerance.

And I was sure Rebecca Corchero hadn’t acquired such a tolerance. On autopsy I found no old track marks and no disease or damage to the liver or any other organs. Rebecca was a healthy and athletic nursing student in the first trimester of a pregnancy. She was taking prenatal vitamins. Why had she decided all of a sudden to start a heroin habit?

She hadn’t.

Restraint injury. On her right wrist I had found two planes of injury, with abrasions and contusions that matched the lizard bracelet. There was dried blood on that bracelet, and more running down her hand. Someone had grabbed her. Someone held her arm down.

Lacerated frenulum. The tissue inside her lip was torn. That doesn’t happen by itself. Someone had clamped a hand over her mouth.

Scleral and conjunctival petechiae. Damage to the capillaries in the whites of her eyes and the insides of her eyelids, from jugular vein compression. Someone had pressed something broad and soft, maybe a pillow or cushioned forearm, across her neck.

Someone had attacked Rebecca Corchero and killed her with a hot shot of Soul Sister.

I clicked open her autopsy report. In the template box for CAUSE OF DEATH, I typed Acute mixed drug intoxication (heroin and acetylfentanyl). In the box below that, OTHER SIGNIFICANT CONDITIONS CONTRIBUTING TO DEATH, I typed Blunt force trauma with restraint.

And, finally, I pointed my cursor to the MANNER OF DEATH.

In that box I typed Homicide.

Then I sat back and watched the cursor blink.

Our investigators had called the case in as a probable accident. The police Crime Scene Unit hadn’t visited the scene. Now I was ruling the death a homicide, which meant homicide detectives had to investigate it.

“Hey, Ted,” I said. He had a bunch of reports in his hand and was heading out of his cubicle.

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