Page 14 of Relentless
CHAPTERSIX
Rather than begin againwith Shelley White, Ethan pulled up the file on Sunil Shah. Like White, the physician had led a fairly nondescript life from the perspective of bad deeds. He had a lead foot and had racked up seven speeding tickets in the past four years. He’d also had some financial hiccups about four years into getting his practice set up. But he’d come through those within a few years and, in the two decades since, had built a stable business.
Also, like White, he had good credit and no law enforcement record. He owned two homes, one in Raleigh and one on the Outer Banks. It was on the drive between these two that he’d had the fatal accident.
Ethan pulled up the police report and perused the photos. They showed Shah’s luxury SUV crumpled against a large maple. The car was wrapped around the tree so thoroughly that the steering wheel was practically in the back seat. Tread marks marred the road, but they were short. No more than ten feet from impact.
Turning to the report, he learned that Shah had been traveling west on the two-lane road, toward his Raleigh home. For reasons unknown, between the hours of eleven and midnight, he crossed the center line and collided head-on with the tree. His estimated speed at the time of impact was sixty-five miles per hour. A minivan full of kids coming home from a party had discovered the vehicle five minutes after midnight and reported the brutal accident. Shah’s death had, mercifully, been instantaneous.
The autopsy showed no signs of drugs—legal or otherwise—or alcohol in his system. Nor did it find evidence of a sudden medical event such as a stroke or heart attack. The investigators speculated he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, but it was only speculation. With no witnesses, no evidence, and no other cars involved, they had no definitive cause.
Ethan pulled up a mapping site on his browser and typed in the addresses of Shah’s two homes. The doctor hadn’t taken the most direct route between the two, and Ethan wondered if maybe there’d been a reason that he’d chosen the long way home. Then again, depending on traffic, back roads could often be faster. Or, if not faster, at least more scenic.
But at eleven at night? On a Saturday? Not only did it seem an odd time to be leaving his weekend house, but at that time, there shouldn’t have been any traffic. And if something had happened to make him rush home, wouldn’t he have wanted to take the most direct route?
Ethan let his head fall back against the wrought iron headboard, the frame squeaking in protest. He had a lot of questions about Sunil Shah that he wanted answers to. How long had Shah been at his shore house before leaving? Had he received any texts or calls that prompted him to return to Raleigh? If not, why was he headed home on a Saturday night? Was the route his usual route?
Ethan needed time—and probably help from Sabina’s team—to put together a more complete picture. Until he had a chance to talk to Sabina in the morning, he needed to move on.
Closing the files on Shah, he entered a search for Shelley White. A few seconds later, her records popped up. Ignoring the basic background information that he already knew, he went straight to the police report filed on the incident.
Five days after Shah’s accident, Shelley’s brother stopped by her house to pick her up for lunch only to find her lying in bed, dead. The pictures showed her sheets a little rumpled, as if she’d tossed around a bit. But there were no signs of a struggle anywhere in the house. And no signs of foul play, either. The autopsy report listed massive heart failure as the cause of death.
Ethan frowned. Kara said she’d died of a heart attack, not heart failure. Were they different? And if so, how? And either way, wouldn’t a body thrash around more when such a catastrophic event occurred? Sure, her sheets were rumpled, but more as though she moved around a lot at night. Not as if her body had experienced a major trauma. Then again, he didn’t know enough of the science to know just how quickly heartfailurecould kill.
Pulling up a browser, he ran a basic internet search. For the next thirty minutes, he got lost in the rabbit hole of online information. He learned there was, indeed, a difference between a heart attack and heart failure. Blocked arteries that weakened the heart caused the former. While the latter occurred when the heart was too weak to pump blood. Which may or may not include blocked arteries. There was nothing in his reading, though, that indicated the average length of time between the start of heart failure symptoms and death. And no information about what the rest of the body experienced during heart failure.
Then he remembered Kara mentioning a scorpion sting and wondered if that could induce heart failure. Flipping back to the report, he looked for the type of scorpion venom found in White’s body. After scrolling through the pages twice, he accepted that the document didn’t specify the type. It only noted that White had a puncture site on the bottom of her foot and a small anaphylactic reaction surrounding it. As if she’d stepped on the arachnid or it had been under her sheets when she’d climbed into bed for the night.
He suppressed a shudder at those findings. He’d seen more than his share of the gnarly beasts while in the navy, and he was grateful that Mystery Lake was too cold to host any. To his mind, the creatures were an unholy alliance between a spider, a wasp, and an angry lobster.
Still, despite his dislike of the mini monsters, he needed to know more. Bracing himself for the pictures he was about to see, he opened another browser and searched for scorpions common to Texas. Not surprisingly, there were close to twenty types endemic to the state. More than he ever cared to know about. Between the dry and the heat, Texas was scorpion Eden.
He paused at that thought. Houston may be hot, but it wasn’t dry. In fact, it was known for its summer humidity.
Narrowing his search, he discovered that the Houston area had only one common type of scorpion, the striped bark scorpion. And its venom, though painful, was more akin to a bee sting than anything fatal. Anaphylaxis was always a concern. But while there’d been a small reaction around the sting site, there’d been no mention of a fatal response in Shelley White’s autopsy report.
His gaze drifted from his computer screen to the picture window overlooking the lake. Shelley had been cremated several days ago. There was no way to run more tests. But he wondered if perhaps the autopsy team had kept any samples they’d collected. If so, maybe he’d talk to Chad and Sabina about asking to have a few more tests run.
Setting aside the inconsistency, he switched back to the report and read through the remainder of the notes. Other than an allergy to a certain kind of pollen common in Houston during the spring, Shelley had been a healthy woman. There was no prior trauma to her heart, no medication in her system that could have caused such an event, and no other health issues that might have triggered the failure. In short, it didn’t sit right with him.
Neither death did.
The problem was, there was nothing specific he could point to that indicated either death was anything other than what the reports documented. He had a lot of questions about both. But those questions could have reasonable answers.
His eyes narrowed in thought.Couldwas the operative word in that sentence. All of his questionscouldhave reasonable answers. But what if they didn’t? And which ones might not?
Shifting his attention back to his computer, he opened a blank document and created a two-column table. The left column he titled “Shelley White” and the right, “Sunil Shah.”
Then underneath, he started listing all the questions he had no answers to.
* * *
Hours later, Ethan grumbled and pulled a pillow over his head to block out the sound. He’d stayed up far too late compiling a three-page list of questions, all in eight-point font. And he hadn’t had nearly enough sleep to consider waking. Unfortunately, the down of the pillow failed to drown out the noise, and the annoying knocking persisted.
“Ethan?” Kara’s voice washed over him. She was somewhere behind him, somewhere close.
Still half asleep, images of her in his bed flitted into his mind. Rationally, he knew she wasn’t there. There wasnoway he’d forget that. But still, her voice whispered softly across his skin. Like a lover’s touch.
