Nightshade Cases

Chapter 3

INT. - SILVER CITY MORGUE - MORNING

While she knew her job disgusted the majority of people who asked what she did for a living, Dr. Rachel Hunter rather enjoyed the peace and solitude of the morgue in the early morning. She purposely took the odd shifts, the ones where murder and accidental deaths were most likely to come across her slab. Not because she considered herself a particularly morbid or hateful person who lived for death. But, because walking, talking, breathing people sometimes made her uncomfortable. It had been that way for the majority of her life.

And the fact Mummy hated so very much telling her socialite friends what Ray did for a living.

That was enough to keep her in the morgue. As if she needed encouragement. Ray bent over the swollen, pale corpse, scalpel already set aside, bone saw and rib separator in place, exposing the lungs and heart of her patient. She still referred to them as patients, though her subjects were dead by the time she saw them. She'd spent too many years working the ER, in training to be a surgeon, to change her terminology now. Ray was well aware some of the other medical examiners used more vulgar words to call out the dead. Her precise British, upper-crust upbringing disallowed such frivolity.

Besides, she rather enjoyed their company.

"Now, then, my darling," she said over the gaping cavity of the dead man, his bulging belly fair warning of what she was about to find. Ray knew without cutting, without scans and X-Rays and tests of his blood for the chemical evidence needed exactly what killed Jacob Harner, age 57. She didn't even need to take into account his excessive weight or the whitened tissue making up the vast proportion of his heart, a clear sign of dead cells. Nor, as she lifted her scalpel once again, carefully excising into the heart's muscle, did she need to uncover the clot in his left coronary artery, nor the yellowish clog of atherosclerosis trapping the knot of hardened blood. No amount of clinging plaque could tell her what she already knew, known the moment she stepped up to Jacob's body on her slab to begin her initial observations.

And yet, she did her due diligence, extracting the clot with tweezers, placing it carefully into a glass container for analysis. The family insisted on a full forensic autopsy, and had the money to make sure it happened. Ray could have saved them the small fortune it likely cost to fast-track the procedure, the small library or charity they probably financed to place Jacob Harner in front of three other bodies waiting for her attention. She carefully freed the heart from the chest cavity and placed it in her scale, noting the weight, the severe damage the massive heart attack caused, all while wondering if there was something wrong with her.

She always wondered, even after all these years. Since the first time she asked, innocent at six years old, what was wrong with Alfred's head. Mummy's second husband died three days later of an aneurysm. And Mummy insisted, dressed in black with a lacy veil pulled over her face at his funeral, Ray stop telling everyone she knew he was going to die.

Ray leaned back with a sigh, brow tight at the memory as she set the heart aside. She learned to keep her mouth shut from then on, no matter what she saw in passing strangers, the feelings and fears she harbored for those she knew had something horribly wrong with them. It drove her first to drink too much, then to retreat. By the time she was eighteen, Ray was certain she wouldn't ever be able to live with what she knew.

"Heart attack?" Robert Ling, her assistant, popped his head around the corner of the computer monitor where he logged his findings from another case. His dark eyes seemed bottomless behind the lenses of his trendy glasses, short, black hair spiked over his forehead.

"Correct." Ray shook off her past, addressing him. "As we both suspected."

Robert grinned, perfect white teeth sparkling in the bright lights, reminding Ray of a toothpaste commercial as the small, handsome Asian assistant rubbed his hands together.

"We're too damned smart for our own good."

Some days, she agreed with him.

"Shall I log it?" So eager. Ray loved that about him.

"You may have the honor." She half bowed with a grandiose wave of her scalpel, like some gore-splattered conductor. "Proceed."

Robert's grin widened. "You let me have all the fun."

Just that moment of lightheartedness lifted Ray's mood. She returned her attention to the autopsy while Robert hummed the tail-end of a show tune chorus ending in a falsetto finish. She knew what killed Jacob, but orders were orders and a full forensic workup meant exactly that. His slippery, tar-smeared lungs were next on her list.

"Can you say heart attack was a shocker?" Robert went back to his key tapping while Ray shrugged with two blackened chunks of meat in her hands. Not all cases were this clear cut, at least not to someone without her particular talents. While she might not be able to explain how she knew, knowing what she was looking for made her job much easier. Ray's "hunches" led to solved investigations more often than not. Something she should be proud of, but it freaked her out, if she was completely honest with herself.

It was only the death of her beloved grandfather to a stroke she couldn't prevent that pulled Ray out of her depression over her ability. Mummy had been furious when Ray decided to go to medical school in Boston. Followed her all the way from London. But, Ray's escape into college was the breath of fresh air she'd been looking for.

The lungs hit the pan with a meaty smack that made the chain rattle. That was the most frustrating part to Ray, the reason she gave up caring for the living. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, when she "saw" the source of someone's death, it was already too late. There was nothing she could do to save them. Which meant her dream of being a doctor, of rescuing those whose fate she witnessed so clearly before it happened, only led to more darkness, more stress.

If it hadn't been for Kinsey and Gerri, Ray knew she wouldn't have made it past her first degree. Four years with two of the most amazing and understanding friends she could ever ask for gave her the strength to go on, even when they went their separate ways. It was enough for Ray, as she finished medical school and finally understood there was nothing she could do for the patients she desperately wanted to save, to think of Gerri and Kinsey. They were stronger than her, far stronger. They had no idea, she'd become so good at showing the world the face of a professional. But without them, Ray was sure her life would have been over, by her own hand.

Joseph's liver slumped in her grip, grotesquely enlarged, marbled with fat. Ray's gorge rose briefly, if only for a moment. She'd considered becoming a vegetarian, but she loved meat too much. Still, there were times like this, holding the engorged internal organs of the dead, she almost changed her mind.

An internship in the medical examiner's office in Chicago changed everything. Ray suddenly found her place, her peace. And found a use for the weird ability she had, one she never, ever told anyone about. The dead gave up their secrets to her easily, almost as though waiting for her and, within a very short period of time, Ray had her own morgue, her own team.

But Chicago meant Mummy, and her fourth husband. The chance to relocate, to move to Silver City, was too good to pass up. Ray accepted the offer immediately, packed up and left without telling her mother where she was going. So far, so good, though Ray guessed Mummy would follow her eventually.

She always did.

Thing was, Ray wasn't all that worried about it. Especially since she looked up from the dead body of a middle-aged man that day in the park and into Gerri's startled eyes. The reunion had been heartfelt, full of joy for Ray, even more so when she discovered only a few days later Kinsey was also in Silver City.

Reunited. Ray felt as though a part of her, long lost, came home to her.

She set aside her scalpel to record some notes, mind barely with the body in front of her. Instead, it took her to the shore of the lake, to the night Joe Mutch died, to the creature that pulled the old detective's remains into the water-

She shuddered from the memory, leaning against the slab a moment, breathing slowly through her mouth to catch her breath. Ray knew there was something odd about her, but that night was the first time she considered she might not be the only freak in the room.

It hurt her, more than she'd admit to Gerri, that her detective friend refused to talk about it. Gerri's rejection of that night felt like a rejection of Ray, even though Gerri had no idea Ray was a freak. Irrational, yes. But she just couldn't help feeling that way. Like the first time her mother caught her, at thirteen, kissing the new maid. The day Mummy slapped Ray and told her she was dirty and disgusting for being gay.

Ray felt something wet on her cheek, wiping at it with the back of her glove. She was shocked to discover a tear escaped her eye. She hardened herself immediately. Ray hadn't cried over the stupidity of her mother in years. Being here in Silver City, with the girls, seemed to trigger the past like nothing else. And though Ray was thrilled to be reunited with them, this was a side effect she wasn't expecting.

"Bollocks," she whispered to herself.

"You okay, Ray?" Robert peeked again, his round cheeks bunched as he frowned. He was half out of his chair when she waved him off with a forced laugh.

"Something in my eye. Get back to work, you slacker, before I fire you."

He hesitated, but couldn't resist a comeback. That was Robert. "I don't work for you, bossy pants."

Ray smiled at him, blinking to dispel her tears. "I'm fine. I promise."

So protective. She wondered where that instinct came from in him. She hadn't thought herself particularly special to him when she first came to the lab. But, for some reason, Robert had immediately claimed her as "his" medical examiner and refused to work with anyone else. Not that Ray minded. The two seemed to think alike, and there were times Robert saved her from blurting a cause of death she shouldn't have known before autopsy by suggesting the idea himself.

They'd only been working together a short time, but she already relied on him. And appreciated his dedication to her wellbeing.

If only she could tell him about her ability. There had never been anyone she could confide in. At least Kinsey was on her side when it came to the "weird", as Gerri called it. The death of Dr. Edward Gant left all of them with more questions than answers and, though Ray hadn't witnessed his passing, she'd been in charge of his autopsy. At least, she had the body in her possession long enough Ray could tell something wasn't right before her boss took the case away from her.

His death was reported as a heart attack, much like Joseph on her slab. But Ray knew the truth. Edward Gant passed away from massive cranial trauma, the likes of which she'd never seen before. As though something dug into the middle of his brain and exploded.

Ray might have been a scientist, but the remains of whatever killed Dr. Gant still burned in her memory, the feeling of something totally foreign, organic, left behind in the mess of his brain matter. She couldn't deny what her odd ability showed her. She'd shared her fears with Kinsey who told her she was certain she witnessed something odd in his eyes moments before his collapse.

Without the body to examine thoroughly, the case handled by the head examiner personally, Ray was without proof of "weird". And Gerri refused to talk about anything she couldn't prove.

The phone rang, Robert's fake British accent breaking the silence and making her smile. "Morgue. She's just finishing up. Address?" He met Ray's eyes with a mouthed word. Gerri. "She's on her way."

Ray shed her gloves, stepping back from the body. "Can you finish?"

Robert was already on his way to her, holding out a slip of paper with an address on it, nose wrinkling as he looked up at her. "Murder waits for no one," he said with a wink. "And, dare I say, neither does Detective Meyers."

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