Page 3 of Gemini
Leslie on the other hand…yeah, right.
I closed out of the chat and shoved my phone into my backpack. This was not helping my mental state.
Moving on and forgetting was what I needed to do. If I got another text, I would block the number and be done with it.
I took out my Thai and turned back to my computer. I pretended to look through emails before I cracked and pulled up a file named “Heart of a Killer”.
I’d read through Eve’s story twice now. And still couldn’t believe it wasn’t a work of fiction. What started as her thesis on her family’s killer turned into a story about experiments and child abuse. Every time I got to the end though, when she talked about the others—about the twins especially—I had a hard time continuing.
It didn’t keep the nightmares at bay and didn’t help me to forget, but it helped me see everything in a different perspective. To try and understand like she did.
Too bad it didn’t make the anger and fear go away. Not completely.
CHAPTER TWO
The clock hit nine as I entered the medical examiner’s office through the back and made for the locker room. It was empty as I shrugged off my clothes and put on my scrubs. I could smell the lingering scent of decay and bleach. There were voices echoing down the hall as I covered my hair and glared at myself in the locker mirror.
“Today is going to be good. You’re not going to have an anxiety attack. You were a two-time homecoming queen and runner-up valedictorian, and that has to count for something, dammit. So, get your head in the game.” I smacked the locker shut.
Snapping on my medical mask, I headed for the elevator and down to the morgue.
I could already feel the anxiety creeping its way up as the elevator took me down to the basement. Good thing I had an extra xannie in my bag for later. I shifted on my feet, my left knee stiff a bit. Man, I was going to have to take it slow today. Good thing Jana didn’t mind me taking more than my usual break if I had to.
As the elevator door opened and I came to the wide door of the morgue, I nearly jumped out of my skin, almost knocking into Cameron.
“Yo, Lena.” The hulking mass of a man nodded his head at me in greeting. There was a small stain of blood on his apron. His eyes lit up behind his goggles. “You good?”
“You know it,” I said, slipping around him.
“Sweet. We got a fresh batch already this morning.”
“I figured.” I went over to the counter, passed the dozens of little square doors housing those fresh batches of bodies Cameron was talking about. Washing my hands in the sink, I snapped on a pair of gloves.
“Jana wants occupants four through eleven tagged and weighed. I’m working with four now.”
“Got it.”
“Be careful of eight when you handle them,” he stated as he went over to one table with a corpse under a sheet. “That one’s going straight to the autopsy suite. A couple of pieces came off just transferring them. Jana said she wants you for that one when the body is ready.”
I could only guess why pieces were falling off, though if it was going to autopsy, it wasn’t the usual poor soul discovered in their tub a week later with the flesh falling off the bone. Those always made me feel bad.
“Accident or murder?”
“My bet is murder.”
I clicked my tongue. “You always bet murder.”
He shrugged. “In this city, it usually is.”
I went over to door five and opened it. Cold air spewed out along with that earthy scent of the dead. Pulling the body out, I had Cameron help me carefully transfer it to a metal bed and move it over to one side with an exam light and a scale.
Number five was an older woman with her tongue and cheek missing. According to the police, she’d been found dead in her home that way. An examination later determined her cats had gotten hungry. Not a great way to go but something told me she would have been glad that her cats were taken care of at least while she was gone.
Mrs. Soo was examined, tagged, weighed, and ready to be released an hour later. By then my damn knee was aching. I took a small break, popping a gabapentin in the bathroom before moving on to number six.
A boy. Seventeen years old.
According to the autopsy records, it was determined the poor kid got caught in a gang fight and was stabbed to death.
