1st to Die (Women's Murder Club 1)

At that hour, it didn’t take me more than ten minutes to get to the morgue. I parked in the circular area outside the coroner’s entrance reserved for official vehicles. I rushed in, my hair uncombed, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans.

The guard buzzed me in and let me through. He was expecting me. Claire met me at the entrance to the lab.

“Okay,” I said, “my expectations are high.”

She didn’t answer. Only pressed me up against the door of the lab, without a word of greeting or explanation.

“We’re back at the Hyatt,” she started in. “Murder number one. David Brandt is about to open the door.

“Pretend you’re the groom,” she said, placing her hand on my shoulder and gently easing me into place, “and I’ll be the killer. I surprise you as you open the door, and stab — right-handed, not that it makes any difference now.”

She thrust her fist into the space under my left breast. “So you fall, and that’s where we find you, later, at the scene.”

I nodded, letting her know that I was following along so far.

“So what do we find around you?” she asked, wide eyed.

I made a mental picture of the scene. “Champagne bottle, tuxedo jacket.”

“True, but that’s not where I’m headed.”

“Blood…a lot of blood.”

“Closer. Remember, he died of a cardiac, electromechanical collapse. We simply assumed he was scared to death.”

I stood up, gazed down at the floor. Then suddenly I saw it as if I were there with the body.

“Urine.”

“Right!” exclaimed Claire. “We find a small residue of urine. On his shoes, on the floor. About six cubic centimeters’ worth, that I was able to save. It seemed logical that it belonged to the groom — voiding is a natural response to sudden fear, or death. But I was thinking last night, there were traces of urine in Cleveland, too. And here, back at the Hyatt, I never even had it tested. Why would I? I always assumed it was from David Brandt.

“But if you were here, crumpled on the floor, and I was the killer standing above you, and the pee was here,” she said, pointing to the floor around me, “who the hell’s urine would it be?”

Our eyes locked in one of those shining moments of epiphany. “The killer’s,” I said.

Claire smiled at her bright student. “The annals of forensic medicine are rich with examples of murderers ‘getting off’ when they kill, so peeing isn’t so farfetched. Your nerves would be on end. And good old compulsive me, obsessive down to the last detail, refrigerates it in a vial, never knowing what for. And the thing that makes this all come together is, urine can be tested.”

“Tested? For what?”

“For sex, Lindsay. Urine can reveal sex.”

“Jesus, Claire.” I was stunned.

She took me into the lab to a counter with two microscopes, some chemicals in bottles, and a device I recognized from college chemistry classes as a centrifuge.

“There aren’t any flashing gender signs in urine, but there are things to look for. First, I took a sample and spun it down in the centrifuge with this KOH stain, which is something we can use to isolate impurities in blood cultures.” She motioned for me to look in the first scope.

“See… these tiny, filamentlike branches with little clusters of cells like grapes. Candida albicans.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Yeast cells, honey. This urine’s laced with high deposits of yeast. Boys don’t get them.”

I started to smile, but before I could even reply, she dragged me on. “Then I put the other sample under the scope and brought it up three thousand mag. Check this out.”

I lowered myself over the scope and squinted in.

“You see those dark, crescent-shaped cells swimming around?” Claire asked.