Shawna Goodall had been working at the coroner’s office for nearly fifteen years, and she’d seen a lot in that time. Plenty of bodies coming in and out through the swinging doors, sliding in and out of the cold boxes on the wall, getting cut open and stitched back up again. There were some murder victims—not as many as a bigger city might see, but maybe that was something to be thankful for. And although Shawna had been around long enough that death had become a normal part of her day, just more of the usual between the time that she punched in and punched out again, there were times when it got interesting.
Like now.
Shawna was standing outside Prep Room 2, wanting to open the door and head in to grab the reports she’d typed up the day before and then forgotten—she’d been in attendance for the initial examination of the victim they’d brought in, riding bitch is what they called it, which meant she hadn’t done anything herself, only witnessed it and took notes. She thought it was a waste of time, having to double up like that, but there’d been funny … things happening to some of the bodies coming in, and the new rule had sprung up. So she’d perched on a stool while Mo had worked, typing in everything she heard. It wasn’t a full autopsy—that would come later, after the body had been properly identified. Some of it was boring—like the color of the victim’s eyes, the texture of her skin, the placement of different moles and birthmarks. But other things were more interesting. Like this: the woman’s teeth had been mostly broken and shattered from being tossed around in the river, but two of them had made it, molars near the back of the mouth, and Mo had taken X-rays and a mold to include in the record, to be used for comparison against dental records for identification purposes. Standard procedure.
“Two or three hard hits in this same spot would’ve done it,” Mo said. She was bent over the head wound, poking around with her gloved hands and forceps. “She was hit from behind with—” Mo paused, and straightened up. Dropped something she’d snagged out of the wound onto a metal pie pan. It clinked as it landed. Shawna leaned forward, looking. It was a small chunk of metal, gleaming dully in the bright overhead lights.
“Chrome?”
“Looks like it,” Mo had said. “Plating that came off the—the head of a golf club, maybe? The wound is about the right size for a nine iron. We’ll have to run some tests, see what we can find.”
It was all in the report, and Shawna had meant to file it the night before but had forgotten. She’d been in a hurry to get home—she had a new recipe in the Crock-Pot and she didn’t want it to burn, and her shows were on. So she’d meant to sneak back in first thing and snag the report, hoping no one would realize it was a little late, but there were people in there already. Shawna quickly retreated around a corner when the door started to open, just out of sight but able to hear everything that was happening.
A man came out first, talking into his phone. A cop, she realized. There were always plenty of them around here, too; she’d gotten used to the way they spoke and moved, the way they were always watching, their eyes shifting back and forth. But mostly she’d gotten used to how scary they were, how these cops sometimes seemed dead themselves, nothing but a shell with a badge, especially when they worked murder cases.
The door opened again, and closed, and now there were two cops in the hall, the man and a woman.
“Judge Ramirez issued a search warrant for his house,” the male detective said. “It’s about damn time. I told him to either shit or get off the pot, looks like he took my advice. I’ll meet a team over at his house and get them started, then come back.”
“All right. I’ll take Evans back to the station and get him to answer a few questions.”
The two of them walked away from the room, talking about things that didn’t make a lot of sense to Shawna—someone named Janice and an old case file and a map and Wisconsin, of all places. When they finally turned a corner Shawna came out, thinking that the room was empty and it was safe to go in, but then she heard a muffled voice and paused with her fingers wrapped around the doorknob. There was a man still inside, she thought, and he was weeping. Shawna had seen and heard plenty of tears in this place over the years, it was nothing new, but maybe this wasn’t crying at all, maybe it was—laughter? She leaned closer. Yes, the man was definitely laughing, hysterical and giddy, a loud donkey bray that turned into a high-pitched pig squeal at the tail end. That sound made her think of women in old black-and-white movies, when they were so frightened they crammed most of a fist into their mouth, when their eyes were rolling around in their skulls like loose marbles. It was a laugh, but it was also frightened, the sound a person makes when there is no other option, when the choices are to cry or scream or laugh, and the latter seems like the safest bet, although it’s ultimately the worst.
“Can I help you?” Shawna jumped and screamed at the voice behind her—the female cop had come back and was looking at her with an unreadable expression. “Hear anything interesting?”
“He’s—he’s laughing,” Shawna stuttered, stepping away from the door. First chance she got, she planned on hightailing it away from this room, out from under this cop’s dark frown. A deep vertical line had appeared between her eyebrows, and Shawna didn’t think that was a good sign. Not for anyone, but especially not for the guy in Prep Room 2.
The cop didn’t tell Shawna to leave, or to stay put. She didn’t say anything at all, just walked right back into the room without warning and left the door open behind her. Shawna could see partway into the room—the cop’s back and a slice of the clean white tile floor and the woman on the table and the man. His shoulders were slumped and he looked defeated.
“You see something funny in here, Mr. Evans?” the cop said. She folded her hands across her chest and glared—if this woman had pulled her over on the road, Shawna probably would’ve wet her drawers. But she had a good view of the laughing guy’s face through the open door, and he seemed unimpressed. Like he’d come up against far scarier women than this one.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “You brought me all the way down here and this isn’t even my wife.”
“Who is it, then?” the cop asked.
He laughed again, a scoffing sound that reminded her of a rubber-soled shoe against linoleum.
“Her name’s Riley Tipton,” he said. “She worked for me. I was going to—” His voice caught thickly. “I was going to leave my wife for her.”
There was a pause. The cop seemed to be considering what to say next, and the guy stood still beside the dead woman on the table, his hands down by his side. He swallowed thickly, his throat convulsing. All of them, all three of them, were waiting to see what would happen next, Shawna thought. See who would speak first. Like it was a game.
“I didn’t kill Riley,” he finally said. “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you think.”
“Then who did?” the cop asked.
“It was Marie,” the man said. He laughed again, sharp and painful, and Shawna thought she saw the flat gleam of moisture in his eyes. “Marie must’ve found out about me and Riley, and she killed her.”
The cop paused.
“Your wife?” she said doubtfully. “You’re saying Marie did this?”
“Yes.”
“How would she have done that? Your wife fell off a cliff.”
The man laughed again, and this time he didn’t stop.