Surgeon – Chapter Twenty-Five

NOT EDITED

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wednesday: January 15, 2020

3:00 AM; CLINSTONE UNIVERSITY, DORM ROOM 202

Bo squatted down beside the twin bed in the dorm, tilting his camera for a better picture of the victim’s face. In the hall, he heard the victim’s roommate let out a quiet sob.

“It’s okay, Miss Roth. Take your time,” Jacob said softly.

“My classes don’t start until noon today, so I was out late,” Helen Roth said.

“Were you drinking?”

“Umm…”

“I’m not here to arrest you, Miss Roth.”

“Yeah, I was… Yes,” Helen whispered.

“And your roommate, did she go out?” Jacob asked.

“No. She stayed in. Homework. She was getting ready for bed when I left around ten.”

Bo frowned, snapping another quick picture of the victim’s face. Paula Gold, eighteen years old, O-negative blood type, eyebrows and nearly a square inch of skin around each brow removed. Number ten surgical knife. Bo rose to his feet, leaning over to snap a picture of the puncture mark on Paula’s inner arm. Sixteen gauge needle. Bo assumed two pints of blood had been removed, like usual. He’d confirm to the best of his ability with the autopsy.

Leaning down, Bo took a picture of the mark on Paula’s neck. Twenty-six gauge Hypodermic needle. Half inch long. Etorphine.

The hand on his shoulder caused him to stiffen as he slowly straightened himself back out. He turned around, coming face to face with Carter. Bo frowned, wrapping a hand around the lens of his camera before pressing it against his chest. “I wasn’t aware Jake had called you.”

“Oh, he’s ‘Jake’ now?” Carter asked.

Bo lifted a shoulder. “He asked me to call him Jake, so I did.”

“Ah.”

Bo cleared his throat, shoving his free hand into his pocket. Why do normal people stand like this again? It’s uncomfortable as Hell. “Did Jake call you?”

“Hell no. I heard it on the scanner.”

“And… do you enjoy obeying orders from your partner? From your boss?” Bo asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“It’s nothing to me. I’m just curious.”

“Curious, my ass. You just like to be in everyone’s business. You’re a nosey little gossip.”

Bo offered a smile. “Detective Lehmann, in case you need a refresher, you and Miss Tanner are the ones who read through my notebooks in order to be in my business and gossip about me and the inner workings of my brain, not the other way around. If anyone is doing any snooping within another person’s business, I assure you it isn’t me.”

“Lehmann, I don’t believe you were signed off to enter this crime scene,” Jacob said as he stepped into the dorm.

“Legally, your presence here without being signed in does make you an official suspect,” Bo said.

“Oh, shut up, Austen. Jesus.”

“Oh, shut up, Lehmann,” Jacob mocked, tucking his notepad into the pocket of his suit jacket. “Protocol says Bo’s right. Get your ass out of here. It’s my case, and your presence is contaminating it.”

“Hanging around this kid has turned you into a real ass,” Carter said.

“Only two years younger than you, Detective Lehmann,” Bo said, though he knew it was pointless.

“And if you think I have turned into an ass, you need to look in a mirror, Lehmann,” Jacob said. “If anyone in this whole situation has turned me crueler, it’s you, not Bo. So get outta here so he can work.”

After Caleb left, Bo cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Jacob flashed his usual charming smile. Even at three in the morning, it easily brightened his whole face. “You betcha. So, walk me through, Mister Austen. You’re the genius.”

5:30 AM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, MORGUE

Jacob crossed the room, setting a cup of coffee in front of Bo. “Here. Thought you could use a refill.”

Bo smiled. “Thank you, Jake.” He cleared his throat, pulling off his gloves and tossing them into the trash. He washed his hands before sitting down in his usual chair, pulling the cup closer to himself. With a short sigh, he took a sip. He yawned, holding the back of his hand to his mouth.

“Am I boring you, Mister Austen?” Jake asked.

Bo laughed. “No.” He shook his head. “They took three pints from, umm….”

“Paula.”

“Yeah. Paula,” Bo repeated. “She’s Natalie’s blood type, so I don’t have a reasoning for the extra blood. She could’ve lost more blood than anticipated the first time around, or…” He shook his head, fighting back another yawn. “Or they’re planning on doing the rest of the surgeries in one go so they don’t have to keep waiting to have her ‘fixed’.”

Jacob’s brow furrowed. “You okay, Bo?”

Bo nodded. “Just tired. Haven’t been sleeping much.” He chuckled. “I think I was getting more sleep than this when I was trying to track down Kathy and Dallas.”

“Maybe you should go home and get some sleep before our shift actually starts,” Jacob said.

Bo waved a hand. “I’m good. Besides, I’ve got a bad feeling about today. If you want my honest assumption, this isn’t going to be the only dead girl we find before midnight.”

12:15 PM; CLINSTONE CEMETERY

Bo squatted down beside Tess Brown’s headstone, laying a bouquet of flowers on her grave. “I hope you like the headstone I picked out for you. I made sure it matched the ones on your parents’ graves. I had them bury you next to your mother. From what I’ve seen and heard, you were… close with her,” he said softly.

He hadn’t wanted her to sit in the morgue, hadn’t wanted her to go unclaimed. Tess Brown deserved more than to be cremated in a few weeks, thrown in with all the other unclaimed ashes, and tossed into the river or an ocean at the end of the year. Hell, she deserved to still be alive, but he couldn’t change that. The only thing he had been able to change was how they honored her death.

So he had filled out the paperwork yesterday to claim the body, and they had buried her that morning without a funeral service.

“I put flowers on some other graves too. It, uh, it was in your honor. Your mother, father, and your boyfriend. If there is an afterlife, Miss Brown, I hope you find them all, now that you’ve been laid to rest.” He frowned as his phone buzzed in his pocket. “I’m so sorry, Miss Brown. This is very rude of me,” he said, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “Work always calls when I’m trying to be respectful,” he murmured.

He rose to his feet and walked away from the grave before finally answering his phone. “Austen.”

“Hey. Where are you?” Jacob asked. “I went down to the lab, and you weren’t there.”

“Lunchbreak,” Bo said.

“You went out for lunch?”

Bo looked back at Tess Brown’s headstone. “More or less. What’s up?”

“New scene,” Jacob said. “Marion and Mike Johnson.”

“Marion? That name hasn’t even been on the US charts since the 1980s. How old was she? Late thirties, early forties?” Bo asked.

“Thirty-nine. Mike, the husband, was forty,” Jacob said quietly. “Sorry, do you just keep name facts on the ready for when someone dies?” 

“I mean, umm… depends on the name?”

“I doubt that.”

Jacob was right. It very much did not depend on the name. The name Marion had peaked in the 1910s. Two thousand one hundred and eighty-seven babies named Marion per every one million babies. Mike peaked in the 1960s. Jacob peaked in the 1990s.

Why are you still pretending you’re not you around him? You are full of useless information, and he doesn’t have a problem with it! Stop lying to the only guy who’s on your side.

Bo cleared his throat. “I’ll meet you at the station in a few. I just have to finish something real quick, okay?”

“Sure, Bo. I’ll text you the address. See you in a few.”

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