Page 8 of View from Above
“Thank you.” Mallory’s attention remained on the victim, no real warmth in her voice to signal she felt anything for the man she’d known. “The examiner who performed the autopsy filed my father’s death as a suicide, but is it possible he or she missed a similar set of hypodermic needle marks during their examination?”
Utter disbelief distorted the medical examiner’s expression beneath her face mask. “Detective Nichols, I—”
“I know what it sounds like, Doc,” he said. “Is it possible?”
Dr. Moss pulled her mask below her face and stepped away from the remains. “It’s possible, but without a body to examine, I can’t tell you what may or may not have been missed during the initial examination.” She tossed her gloves and mask into the red hazardous waste bin a few feet away. “I can tell you the examiners I oversee are some of the best in the country. There would’ve been an internal and external examination, a visit to the scene, and medical records pulled to give us context of the deceased’s life up until the incident. In short, my people do their jobs, Ms. Kotite, and they do damn fine work. I trust them. Now, if we’re finished here, I have a full day of autopsies and reports to follow up on.”
Heat worked under his collar as the medical examiner’s voice sharpened enough to penetrate, and a protectiveness he hadn’t felt in a long time reared its ugly head in Mallory’s defense.
“You performed Roland Kotite’s autopsy, Doc.” Payton didn’t move, didn’t even dare breathe. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to make her face the truth, but if there’d been a mistake in Roland Kotite’s autopsy, he needed to know. The pathologist had seen more in the past nine months than detectives like him cared to see in a lifetime. The wrath, the envy, the greed people exacted on one another took a toll on the most veteran investigators, but for someone who’d been in the middle of it, who’d lost someone close to her because of it… He couldn’t imagine the nightmares. “What’s going on? Did you forget, or are they all starting to blend together at this point?”
Dr. Moss slowed her escape to her office.
Mallory held out her hand to get him to back off and took her own step forward. “Dr. Moss, I never meant to accuse you or this office of not doing your jobs. If there’s a chance my father’s case is connected to what happened this morning, I can’t walk away. Medical examiners help families find answers when someone they love dies. I don’t believe Roland Kotite killed himself, and until I know for certain, I’ll always wonder what happened to him. I’ll never have my answers.”
Silence distorted into stretched seconds, into what felt like a minute. The hostility in Dr. Moss’s body language faded, but the shadows in her eyes only grew stronger. “I stand by my work, Ms. Kotite, but if you’d like another examination of your father’s remains, that’s within your rights. You’ll need to contact the funeral director who arranged his services and collaborate with Seattle PD for an exhumation.” The pathologist’s voice lowered an octave. “Until then, I’ll pull my original notes and voice recordings for your review and ask the lab to fast track the toxicology report for Virginia Green’s case, Detective.” Without another word, the pathologist crossed into her office and closed the door behind her.
“Thank you.” Mallory pulled her mask free from her face and balled it in one hand. “For pushing her to agree to the second examination. I know exhuming a body is probably the last thing you want to do without physical evidence proving these cases are connected.”
“Well, you were right about Virginia Green. Someone dosed her minutes before she went off that roof. Whether or not they pushed her is another question, but they were involved all the same.” He waved her off. “I’m sorry about that. Dr. Moss… She’s been going through some things since the last case we worked together.”
“Must’ve been a hell of a case.” She crossed to the double steel doors, tearing at the collar of the personal protection suit along the way. She pushed into the hallway and shed the equipment as though she couldn’t stand to be in it another second. He didn’t know what kind of attorney she’d set out to become during those formative years still under her family’s influence, but there was a difference between studying criminal cases and seeing them firsthand. Not everyone survived without a few mental scars on the way out.
“You have no idea.” Images of that last case threatened to escape the box of memories he’d buried at the back of his mind. Then again, he hadn’t ever given the damn box a chance to lock completely. Not when that case was all he could think about. Not when all he saw were the victims faces every night he closed his eyes, and sure as hell not when he’d reviewed the case for hours on end every night for the past two months. Payton stripped out of his own gear and tossed it in the hazardous bin near the lockers.
Mallory reached for her jacket at the same time he went for his. Soft skin collided against his, and he drew back as an electrical awareness shot up his arm. She fisted her jacket in one hand, not moving to put it on despite the kick of the air conditioner overhead. Her expression remained neutral. Maybe she hadn’t felt the same thing, in which case he’d probably imagined it and was a lot more tired than he originally thought. “That’s the second time your face has hardened at the mention of a case. I take it both instances are referring to the same investigation. The case you’ve been spending your nights in your car obsessing over, and the one Dr. Moss obviously hasn’t moved past.” She folded her jacket across one arm, her voice softer than a moment before. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Yes. No. Hell, he didn’t know. Payton had no reason to take her offer as anything other than an attempt to get under his skin, to manipulate him into getting what she wanted, but the part of him that’d shouldered the weight of the past few months wanted relief. Technically, the investigation had concluded. The news outlets, bloggers, and true crime podcasters had done their best to unearth the truth and put the gritty details on display for the public to consume. Seattle had seen an uprising in serial offenders, but the last case he’d worked had changed the course of his career and his life.
In reality, he didn’t have to stay quiet or keep the details of the case to himself anymore. He and the FBI had gotten their killer, but there was something the public didn’t know. Something he hadn’t told anyone. “The last case Dr. Moss and I worked together… It was a serial case, the third Seattle has seen this year alone. A killer had harvested donor organs from her victims in an attempt to put her lover back together.”
“I’ve seen the Seattle Times articles. I follow the news,” she said. “I can’t imagine having to see something like that as an investigator, let alone having to face it multiple times in the examination room.”
Payton pressed his weight into his palm against the locker to counter the compulsion to trust her, but he wasn’t sure he could bear the weight alone anymore. “But what the Times or the news didn’t report is that these serial cases are all connected.”
CHAPTER SIX
Her abnormal psychology class had failed her.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Mallory hugged her jacket to her chest. She tried to recall everything she’d learned in school, read in academic papers, and compare her own experience to Payton’s claim, but nothing lined up. She shook her head to clear the onslaught of information. “Serial killers don’t work together unless it’s for the same goal. There have been instances where the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit has linked two offenders, but those are few and far between.”
“Until now.” Payton pulled his wallet, slipped his fingers between the folds, and produced a twenty-dollar bill. He pried her dominant hand from her hold on her jacket and slapped the money into her palm.
“What is this?” The answer knotted in her stomach.
“This is what you wanted, right? To get in my head, learn my secrets and triggers and all that shit?” He tucked his wallet back into his back pocket, his attention anywhere but on her. “The information I just shared is confidential. Can’t have you spreading it around. So you’re officially my therapist. Anything I say is protected with doctor-patient confidentiality. Break that confidentiality, and the entire Seattle PD and the FBI will make sure you never see the light of day again.”
Heat flared into her neck and face. She hadn’t compelled him to share the details of his investigation. She’d been concerned, and now he was threatening her with jail time if she didn’t agree to his demands? Mallory shoved the bill into his chest and headed for the stairs. “I’m sorry. I’m not seeing any new patients right now due to personal circumstances.”
Numbing streaks shot up her calves as her heels struck a bit too hard on the way up. Asshole. She wasn’t sure where she was going or how the hell to get out of the building, but she didn’t care. If she didn’t need him to get her through the channels of exhuming her father’s body for another examination, she’d have cut her losses hours ago. Would’ve saved her a fresh set of nightmares and an upset stomach to go to sleep with tonight.
“Mallory, wait. You have to understand.” His voice echoed off the stairwell walls, closer than she’d expected.
“I do understand.” She shoved through the doors at the top of the stairs and the main floor of the hospital. Gleaming white tile, fresh air, and bright lights did nothing to counter the rage coiling inside. The burn of the vapor rub only added to the sensory overload, and Mallory swiped her hand beneath her nose to get as much of it off as she could. Damn it. He was her ride, and she didn’t have the money to call a ride share. All of her savings had gone into investigating her father’s death. She was down to the last ten dollars she’d set aside for instant ramen noodles until she started seeing clients again. She needed him. Frustration boiled up her throat, and she turned on him. “It doesn’t take a master’s degree to know you have trust issues. Particularly concerning therapists. I’m guessing something happened in your childhood, and you were forced to meet with a psychologist to confront it, but you walked away feeling worse than you did when you went in. Am I right so far?”
Two nurses and a security guard watched them from the desk down the white-washed hallway, and she reached for an ounce of control to keep her temper from getting the best of her.
Payton pulled up short, sea-blue eyes locked on her as though she were the only woman in the world. But she had a feeling being the center of this man’s attention was a very dangerous place to be. “You can’t possibly know that.”