A Madness of Sunshine

Anahera knew this news wasn’t hers to tell. And Matilda wasn’t ready to handle an avalanche of sympathy. “He’s still a cop, Josie,” she said instead of answering the implied question. “He doesn’t share everything.”

“And here I thought you were going to be my new source of fresh gossip.” Josie’s voice continued to tremble.

“Take a breath,” Anahera said gently. “Another. One more.”

When Josie could finally speak again without breaking, she said, “The good news is, I can’t think of anyone else in town who really ­fits… what do they call it? The victim profile, that’s it. All those years of watching crime shows have finally come in handy.”

Anahera tracked a fantail as the small bird with its showy tail hopped from branch to branch. “That’s good.”

“No,” Josie cried, “it’s not good! It means that you’re the only possible target in Golden Cove.”

54

Will walked through the familiar corridors that led to the forensic mortuary. It was always cold here, as if all the death that passed through had permanently stained the building.

He met no one on his journey; hardly surprising when the world outside was fading to darkness. But he knew Ankita would be waiting. Pushing through another set of doors, he clenched his gut, and went to enter the room where his friend and colleague probably had Miriama on a cold metal slab.

The door opened from the other side.

“Will.” Ankita was still wearing her scrubs, though she’d removed her gloves and apron, and the smell that clung to her was of death gone to rot. “Perfect ­timing—­I just finished the postmortem.” The harsh fluorescent lighting caused an appearance of pallor even in the dark brown of her skin. “Come on, we’ll talk in my office.”

Will had no desire to see Miriama cut open. Not that laughing girl who’d brought him cake and told him she’d be back in a couple of days with another piece to tempt him.

He followed Ankita down the hall.

Once inside her office, she went to the coffee carafe on a side table, touched her hand to it. “I need to give a certain forensic tech a raise.” She poured two mugs. “We can go outside if the smell’s bothering you.”

It coated the insides of Will’s nose by now, the rot and the loss. “No, let’s talk here.” Miriama deserved the respect and Will had smelled death before, survived it. At least it wasn’t the smell of burned flesh.

His stomach turned.

Placing one mug on his side of the desk, Ankita carried hers around and sank into the battered black leather of her chair. Will took off his jacket before he sat down in the visitor chair.

In front of him, Ankita’s desk was as meticulously organized as always. Her compulsively neat nature was partly what made her such a good pathologist. Ankita never accepted anything at face value. With her, Will could be certain every suspicious bruise would be examined with a critical eye, every indication of a toxic substance analyzed.

She would do Miriama justice.

“How was the drive?”

Will shrugged. “Rain,” he said. “You know what it does to otherwise sane drivers.”

“Yes, I caught a bit of that on the way in, too.” Putting down her coffee after taking a long drink, the pathologist leaned her forearms on the desk. “You know the problem with a body that’s been submerged in water. Added to that, there was a significant delay before I had her on my table.”

“Did you manage to find anything?”

“The water did so much damage to your girl that there wasn’t a lot for me to find. The bruises, cuts, abrasions, the chunks missing from her flesh, it can all be explained by the waves crashing the body against rocks, and by animal predation.”

Will would never forget Miriama’s body lying on the beach, her beauty eradicated by the ­sea—­and by the person who’d put her there. “Bones?”

“Badly shattered. Her face looks like a cracked eggshell.” Ankita pushed across an X-­ray that, when Will held it up to the light, told a violent story. “Impossible to determine if it happened ­peri-­ or postmortem.” Putting down the pen she’d picked up, she leaned back in her chair. “But, I’m suspicious about a pattern of fractures and breaks along the ­left-­hand side of her body.”

“As if she fell or was thrown against a hard surface on that side?”

Ankita nodded. “If someone threw her from the cliffs and onto the rocks below, and she landed this way”—­the pathologist used the flat of her hand to demonstrate the ­angle—­“it could conceivably have caused the pattern.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “I wish I could tell you more, but with the body being in the sea that long, it makes things difficult. I’m going to send the details through to one of my colleagues who has more experience with ocean damage, get a second opinion. The rest of what I’m about to tell you is pure conjecture based on over a decade of experience and my gut.”

Will put the X-­ray back on her desk, a sudden cold invading his blood. “She drowned,” he said quietly, all the while hoping Ankita would tell him he was wrong.

But she nodded. “I’m going to do a diatom test, but even if it comes back positive, I won’t officially be able to call it a drowning. Still, all the broken bones aside, that’s how I think she died.”

“Tell me you have something else.” Because both a fall and a drowning could be explained away as accidental, but Miriama simply wouldn’t have made that kind of a mistake.

“Your victim was pregnant. Three months, give or take.”

Will sat motionless for a long minute before reaching forward to put his coffee on the desk between them. “You’re sure?”

“The decomposition hadn’t quite destroyed her uterus.” Ankita picked up the pen again, clicking and unclicking it. “I’m certain.”

“Do you have enough biological material to do a paternity test?”

“If you bring me a sample from the probable father or fathers, I can try to get the testing done for you. But, no guarantees.”

Leaning back, Will did the math. Three months. That put Miriama’s pregnancy right on the borderline. He’d check her journal, confirm the exact date she’d broken it off with Vincent, then line it up with when she and Dominic had first been ­intimate—­not a conversation he was looking forward to having.

It was possible Miriama had had another lover in between the two men with whom she’d had a relationship, but Will had to start with the known potentials. As it stood, her pregnancy gave both men a powerful motive.

Vincent had vowed his love for Miriama, but when push came to shove, he’d chosen ambition. Miriama getting pregnant would’ve ruined the ­picture-­perfect life he’d spent years creating, all of it aimed toward one goal. Especially if she’d refused to get rid of the baby.

If, on the other hand, it had been Dominic’s baby, the young doctor would’ve had no reason to be angry at Miriama. A little shocked, yes, but in the end, the child would’ve tied him and Miriama even closer together. And, according to her journal, he’d already shown a willingness to be a father.