The Lure of the Lie: A Modern Detective Anthology (*On Hold*)

8 Deep

The medical examiner and most of the techs had all gone home for the evening by the time I arrived at the lab. Luckily, my credentials and my badge were enough to get me through security without any external help and I found a tech familiar enough with the case to retrieve the files for me. I sat down at the nearest desk I could find, one inside a U-shape of other desks where in the center were examination tables, beakers, chemicals, monitors and anything else a proper scientist might need to conduct their examinations. I spread the contents of the file out before me, ordering them by lab reports, field examinations, chemical analysis, etc.

I stared at the tox screen for some time before moving on to the medical examiner's official report. It read like any coroner's report I had encountered before but there were additional details written by someone who seemed familiar with the work that homicide investigators were doing. The official report was there, encased professionally in the standard form required by the state, but Dr. Portia Warner had added her own notes as well, illuminating notes. She'd recorded nearly every observation she'd made, including the rate of decomposition and her own hypothesis of how far Chelsea Lucas may have floated before washing ashore as well as any freshwater plant and animal life she may have encountered along the way. Her report was interspersed not only with her own notes but with references to other lab reports as well. I had never seen such a detailed autopsy and I spent a few hours just reading through all of her notes and cross checking them with whatever else was in the file I'd been given.

I read the lab work done on everything from the victim herself to the river water collected for sample at the scene and the dirt she'd washed up onto, searching for anything that might indicate why a healthy sixteen year old girl might suffer a sudden onset of pulmonary edema. I wasn't the only one who'd asked that same question. It had been written and rewritten at least a dozen different ways in Dr. Warner's report and echoed by the work of her voracious lab techs. I had to admit they'd been thorough. It took most of the night to sift through the various reports, screenings, and examinations that Dr. Warner and her team had conducted.

As dawn broke and sunlight started to stream in through the windows, I began to feel less and less hopeful about the possibility of my stumbling onto something they had missed. I was pouring over the tox screen for the fourth time when the first of the techs entered the lab for their morning shift.

"Dr. McKinnon?" someone asked and I glanced up to see a young man I did not recognize.

"Do I know you?" I replied.

"Ah, right. You probably don't remember me. I was on the scene the day that they discovered Chelsea Lucas' body on the shore of the Potomac," he said.

"You ran the report that identified her," I recalled and he smiled and nodded.

"You remember. I'm Will Emerson. What are you doing here?"

I held up the file in explanation.

"Ah," he responded with a nod. "Checking to see if we missed anything."

"It's nothing personal," I assured him. "I do have a PhD in Chemistry so I thought it couldn't hurt to take a look."

"Right. A Doctor of Psychology and a Doctor of Chemistry. If you don't mind my asking, how did you manage that? Those two disciplines are vastly different."

"Actually, much of human behavior can be quantified as simple chemicals interacting in the brain," I answered. He smiled at the over simplicity. "Or I suppose I just like school far more than I should."

He snorted a laugh at that.

"Dr. McKinnon? What are you doing here?" someone else asked and I looked up to see Erica Daniels, the tech from the crime scene, entering the lab and looking me over with as much scrutiny as her partner had.