Murder in Revelation (The Doyle & Acton Mystery Series Book 12) by Anne Cleeland

Author:Anne Cleeland [Cleeland, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

The Coroner’s team began preparing the body for transport to the morgue, and as they turned away from the doorway, Acton said to Doyle, “I’d like to question the charge nurse, if you don’t mind, with you to listen-in.”

“Aye, that. And sooner rather than later—he looks shook. Let’s hope he’s willin’ to spill before he thinks the better of it, and calls in a solicitor.”

“Yes,” Acton agreed.

Doyle grimaced. “It’s hard to imagine, that you’d want to cover for the kind of person who’d hold someone down and terrorize them before they died. It’s crackin’ evil, is what it is.”

But Acton tilted his head. “Did you notice the burns, though?”

Since obviously Acton had noticed something, she frowned, trying to remember the details. “They weren’t very big. Cigarette, I thought?”

He nodded. “Perhaps, but I saw no ashes in the room, and it seems unlikely the killers would remove such evidence, considering they left the corpse behind. It was a flameless device, perhaps, and brought along for this very reason—to apply to the victim. Yet the burns weren’t very large, and were few in number. It leads me to believe the intent was to gain information, rather than to torture for torture’s sake.”

She thought this over, and could see what he meant. “But if Dr. James was a fellow-villain, why would they do this to her? Mayhap she’d turned coat, and they wanted her to tell them who she’d squeaked to.”

“A strong possibility,” he agreed. “Although she hadn’t spoken to the police, so it appears their fears were unjustified.”

But—on reflection—this theory didn’t make a lot of sense to Doyle, either. “Then why on earth would they kill her on-site, and then leave her here, for us to find? Why not take her somewhere to torture at their leisure, and then dispose of the body? Leavin’ her here only throws a light on their murky doin’s at the clinic.”

“That is true,” he agreed in a neutral tone.

He knows something, she thought crossly; something he’s not telling me, wretched man. It’s a crackin’ wonder I haven’t applied a cigarette or two, myself.

They came to the lobby area, where the charge nurse sat in one of the waiting-room chairs, a bit white about the lips, as he looked up at their approach.

“Do we read him the caution?” Doyle asked Acton in a low voice.

“Not as yet,” Acton replied. “I’d like you to get a sense, first.”

She nodded, as it was an unfortunate truism in police work that as soon as you reminded a suspect he’d the right to counsel, he tended to think this a very good idea. Since this man was a witness, though, it made it a bit easier, and no caution need be read until his answers started to show that he might be incriminating himself.

Acton introduced them, and then sat down beside the nurse, which was what an interrogator tended to do when he wanted to appear sympathetic, and not at all like an interrogator. “I am so sorry,” he began. “A terrible tragedy.

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