Firebreak (Josie Gray Mysteries #4)(68)
“That’s basketball. You’re okay.”
She smiled again and decided he was right. There were no rule books in life, and even if there were, she was pretty sure her life would be indexed in the appendix under “abnormal.”
Still holding her cell phone she lifted it up for him to see. “The coroner texted. I need to get to his office.”
“No waffles and coffee in bed?”
“You lived here long enough to know me better than that.”
*
At a little after nine on Sunday morning, Josie pulled into the parking lot at the Arroyo County Jail, where Mitchell Cowan’s office was located. The jail was a brown cinder-block and brick building with a brown awning over the entrance door. Josie entered a vestibule furnished with two chairs and a framed picture of the Pledge of Allegiance. She pressed a buzzer and stated her name and a second set of doors opened into a central hub where Maria Santiago, intake officer, was sitting. The room was octagonal, with Maria located behind a desk in the center. Several doors led to different areas of the jail such as the booking room, the interrogation room, and the prisoner pods.
Josie chatted with Maria for a few minutes and was then buzzed through another set of doors, with the words COUNTY CORONER painted in black on them. She pressed an intercom button and announced her name. A moment later the door clicked and she pushed it open. The state-of-the-art jail was paid for by a Homeland Security grant that the mayor received shortly after 9/11, as was the trauma center. For such a small town, the facilities were first-rate.
Mitchell Cowan was wearing a white lab coat, a mask, and a blue surgical cap. He leaned over a body on a stainless-steel gurney, his hands pushing and pulling at something in the open abdominal cavity. Josie turned her head and stared at the wall of cabinets across the room, avoiding the body on the table.
“Chief,” he said by way of a greeting.
“Morning.”
“One moment here while I fit all this back inside. It’s a bit like trying to repack a box. Sometimes you wonder how all the pieces in the package could possibly have fit inside such a small space.”
Cowan finally covered the body and went over to the sink to wash up. Josie could smell the medicinal soap and wondered if that scent ever left his skin.
As he was drying his arms and hands he said, “I hear the negotiator’s back in town. Paying you a visit.”
Josie raised her eyebrows in response.
“You be careful with that one. He strikes me as a little on the dangerous side. You’ve got enough of that to contend with on your own.”
“How on earth did you find out about Nick being in town?”
Cowan grinned. “I had breakfast at the Hot Tamale this morning. There was a fair amount of speculation going on amongst the regulars.”
“Unbelievable.” Josie shook her head and saw that Cowan was enjoying her discomfort. “I hope you texted me about something case-related.”
Cowan lumbered across the room to pick up a stack of file folders. He motioned with his head for Josie to join him at the end of the counter where he stood.
“I received a call from the toxicology lab.” He turned and looked at her to make sure she knew what he was referring to. “The lab that the fire marshal used for the syringe?”
“Sure. What did you find out?”
“The marshal must have some pull. I’ve never had results that quick.”
“What were the results?” she asked, becoming impatient.
“The syringe was empty.”
“No trace amounts of anything?”
“Empty. The syringe has never been used.”
“Damn. The murderer planted it at the scene to make Ferris look like a drug user?”
“Maybe Ferris intended to use it and ran out of time,” Cowan said.
“But we didn’t find any drugs on the premises. And why put it under the couch?”
“To hide it?”
“Hmm.” Josie tried to imagine Ferris being stunned in the hallway and then somehow slipping the syringe under the couch. It was hard for her to imagine a scenario where that worked, unless he hid the syringe and then tangled with the murderer. But if he hid the syringe, surely he would have hid drugs along with it. “What about the bloodwork you sent off for Ferris?”
“It’ll be at least another week before we hear back from them. It’s a different lab, different test than what the fire marshal was looking for.”
“So we still have no idea on the cause of death for Ferris?”
“No,” Cowan said. “But I have confirmed the pills in the baggie you gave me from Billy Nix. One pill was Ambien. Two pills were OxyContin. Official cause of death is asphyxiation. His heart slowed to the point where he wasn’t getting enough oxygen pumped through his lungs to breathe. My guess is, he bought a baggie full of pills and swallowed as many as he could along with the alcohol until he passed out. It was a deadly combination of the pills and the alcohol. For a man his size, with a propensity to drink, he had to work at it. His blood alcohol level was point four five two, enough to put him in a coma even without the pills.”
“The idea of someone forcing pills down his throat and getting him to swallow is—”
Cowan cut her off. “Is ridiculous. He was probably so drunk by the time he finished the pills he could barely swallow. And, there were no abrasions, no bruising around his mouth or cheeks that would indicate someone was forcing pills down his throat. There were also no pills caught in his esophagus.”