The Price of Innocence by Lisa Black

Author:Lisa Black [Black, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural
ISBN: 9780727882912
Google: lXJsmwEACAAJ
Amazon: 0727882910
Barnesnoble: 0727882910
Goodreads: 17707240
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

There are no secrets in a government bureaucracy and certainly not around doctors. ‘What are you smirking about?’ Christine demanded before Theresa even reached the elevator. ‘You look like a really tired cat who caught the canary. Or the cat who caught another cat. What’s up?’

‘I’m punchy. Pulling an all-nighter at my age produces a state of euphoria as my body, denied sleep and food, turns on itself to find a new source of energy.’

‘Smart aleck. I have something interesting on your cop.’

‘Marty Davis?’ Theresa started up the steps, and Christine followed. The elevator took too long.

‘We have another dead cop around here? Step into my office. Want some coffee?’

Theresa giggled like a hyena until Christine rescinded the offer. The young doctor’s office had once been a supply closet and still resembled one, except for the shelf of heavy books and the scattering of knives, disabled guns and less common fare like brass knuckles and a ninja throwing star.

‘Do you want my chair?’

Theresa knew she must look really bad. Usually she had to perch on a surplus ammo can. She leaned against the wall and insisted, ‘No, I’m fine.’

‘The tox report on Marty Davis,’ Christine began.

‘He had crystal meth in him?’

‘What? No, no drugs at all. A touch of alcohol, probably left over from the night before – unsurprising given the condition of his liver. No, we found poison.’

Theresa stared. Perhaps ‘punchy’ described her condition after all.

‘I had Oliver run everything we could – because the brain cells had some funny damage that couldn’t have come from the gunshot, because the victim was a cop, and because I like giving Oliver orders – and the GC/Mass Spec found ricin.’

‘Ricin? Someone poisoned this cop with ricin and then shot him?’ Theresa found the ammo can and sank down to its uncomfortable top. ‘I don’t get this. This guy was nobody – I mean, nobody like the rest of us are nobody. He went to work and drank beer with his friends and that was about it. He didn’t carry a stainless steel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist or vacation in Biarritz. Some ex-con with a bad temper shooting him, that I can see. Poisoned like a Russian spy, that I can’t.’

‘I hear you. But the GC/Mass Spec doesn’t lie. Neither does Oliver. He may be a pain in the ass, but he’s a truthful one.’

Theresa stared at the cabinets under Christine’s desk, without seeing the yellowed cartoons taped to them or even the funny magnet signs. She stared so long that the doctor stretched out a foot and kicked her shin, gently. ‘Don’t you want to hear the rest?’

‘There’s more? You’re going to tell me someone smothered him, too, or maybe garroted the body when we weren’t looking?’

‘Calm yourself. Being the astute and thorough physician that I am, I then asked myself, how did this guy get ricin in his system? It didn’t kill him, after all, the gunshot did. Perhaps he’d chewed a castor bean or otherwise ingested it earlier, and it had made him sick but he’d recovered by the time you saw him.

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