Page 39 of A Rose of Steel
“Fine,” I said, letting my voice get louder as she moved farther away from me. “Just no more talking once you get back.”
I took the scalpel in hand and ran my hand over his chest. I cleared my throat and spoke loudly into the mic. “Male. Caucasian. Six feet, three inches tall. Two hundred twenty pounds. All tattoos, scars and identifying marks will be documented photographically.”
I bent over the body ready to make my thoracoabdominal Y-shaped incision, but before I did, I turned to make sure Auntie wasn’t in earshot, then turned back and looked at the young football player and almost husband and father. “Okay, Bumper Hackett,” I said. “If youcantalk, now’s the time.”
Chapter Nineteen
During the autopsy, Bumper didn’t say one word, and, to my surprise, neither did my zany auntie. She later told me she was so fascinated and proud to watch me work that she’d been flabbergasted.
“Well what did you learn?” she asked as we stood at the sink and washed our hands. She hadn’t done anything to dirty hers, but she was enjoying the moment. “Was he murdered?”
“I think so,” I said and nodded. I dried my hands as I walked over to the desk and sat down, she trailed behind me. “I don’t like to give anything definite until I get a toxicology report in my hands.” I threw the paper towel into the trash. Picking up the sheet of paper that I needed to fill out to have the samples taken to the lab, I waved it at her.
“How long will that take?” she said, sitting in the chair across from me, she pointed at the paper.
“That’s according to what it is, but probably not more than a couple of days.” I started checking off boxes, a rote activity for me. “I’ll scan this request and then email it in. They’ll have them tonight, then we’ll get the results whenever they get to it.”
“We don’t have to wait until then to start investigating, do we?”
“No. We can go with what we know now.”
“Which is?”
I looked up from my paperwork, tapping the pen on the desk. “Well...” I thought about her question. “I don’t think it was a fast-acting poison,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because of my observations of him on the day he died, and because of the pulmonary edema I found,” I said. “Plus, we know that Bumper didn’t take anything while he was at the house.”
“Nothing other than his inhaler,” she said.
“That’s what I think killed him.”
“What?” she asked. “You do?”
“Yep. I think it was poison in the inhaler.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Are you going to test the inhaler?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“That’s a good question, Auntie,” I said. “I don’t know where it is. Do you know what happened to it?”
“No.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said.
“Someone must have picked it up,” I said.
“Maybe that’s the someone who put the poison in it.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” I said. “We need to try and figure out what happened to it.”
Auntie shrugged. “We’ll ask.”
