Lisa Black: Evidence of Murder

She told him, “You pissed me off.”

She slipped into the thinly cushioned seat next to her mother just as the lights in the auditorium dimmed after the intermission.

“You didn’t miss her. There are four acts before her and her friends.”

“Good.”

Agnes turned, studied her daughter’s face in the illumination of the stage floodlights. “You look flushed.”

“I ran from the parking lot.”

“Uh-huh. But you’re okay?” The curtain opened, revealing two boys with acoustic guitars.

“I’m great,” she assured her mother.

The woman in front of them turned around, but not to admonish the chatting. “Hi, Theresa. Haven’t seen you since-geesh, I think it was the science fair.”

“I’ve been around.”

The boys burst into a scratchy rendition of a country-western classic. One of their parents, several rows over, did not want to wait for the final chord and began to clap. Theresa settled back into her seat and listened to the boys sing about regret. She would have liked to close her eyes and tune out for a while, but who knew, Rachael might date one of these kids in the next year or two, so she’d better pay attention.

Thank you, Jillian, for teaching me that the price of carelessness might be too high.

And that every woman is a princess in someone’s eyes.

Chris Cavanaugh straightened up from the railing outside the Pier W restaurant and glanced a bit nervously at the fishy, slushy water thirty feet below. A biting wind sent his hair awry, but of course this slight imperfection only increased his charm. “Can we go in now? It’s freezing out here.”

“No, it’s not. It’s breaking up,” Theresa told him.

“The water?”

“The winter.”

“How do you figure that? My ears are about to snap off and it’s snowing even as we speak.”

Straining her eyes to the east she could see the barest tip of the Edgewater Marina, where she and Drew had skimmed along the ice, and resisted the urge to shiver from more than the cold. She brushed off the flakes now littering her nose, both literally and figuratively. “Yeah, but your nostrils don’t stick together when you breathe in anymore. Come on, you’re a Cleveland boy. You can’t feel that?”

“I’m past the point of feeling much of anything.”

“You’re kind of wimpy for a special response team guy, you know that?”

“Hey!”

“You got cool gadgets, though, I’ll give you that.”

“Glad the camera and the router could help you out.”

She nodded, still facing the wind. “I might not have needed them if I had been a little more thorough at the start. By the time I finally got suspicious, Evan had already begun destroying the evidence. He left the duffel bag in a Dumpster downtown, Jerry told us. When we searched the apartment the second time, he had flushed the sleeping pills and melted the bottle in the microwave. I should have kept my mouth shut in Stone’s office. I kept tipping him off.”

“Well, you got him. But hey”-Chris turned her to face him-“don’t do that again. Not like that. I would never have lent you that equipment if I had thought you were going to-it could so easily have-”

“Ended badly.”

He tilted her chin up to face him, thought better of it, and settled for grasping her shoulders. “Some risks aren’t worth taking.”

“Come inside. Then see if you still feel the same way.”

“Finally!”

“I hope you don’t mind,” she told him as they bustled into the warm restaurant. “I invited someone else to join us.”

He saw them instantly. “Let me guess.”

Nicholas Cannon sat at a corner table, holding Cara in his arms. The baby’s fists pumped through the air above her, encircling and wrinkling what appeared to be an expensive silk tie, but the man didn’t seem to care. A younger couple sat with him, leaning in from each side, apparently egging the infant on.

Theresa explained before they made their way to the table. “Cannon had no idea Cara was his daughter. Jillian had broken off their affair before she knew she was pregnant, and when he saw her again, she had married. He never saw the baby, never asked her age, and just assumed she belonged to Evan.”

“Who’s that with him?”

“His son and daughter-in-law. As it turns out, they’ve been trying to conceive for years and have been on a waiting list for an adoption for the past two. Since Nicholas is Cara’s next of kin, he can allow them to legally adopt her. No waiting, no fostering.”

Chris stepped aside to let a waitress by and watched the family for a moment. “He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to give her up. Well, shall we?”

He held out an elbow, and she slipped her arm through it. “Sure. Oh, by the way-”

“What?”

“You’re buying, right?”

First of all, I have to thank Medical Examiner’s Investigator Brett Harding, who gave me the method of murder while chatting over an autopsy one day.

Dr. Andrew Wolfe, who helped me, as before, to get the exact chemistry right. My nephew, Brian, who gave me some hints about the murky world of venture capital. Another nephew, Alex, who is my resident reference on video games. Sharon Wildwind, who is both a critique partner and one of my medical references. Leslie Budewitz, for legal information. And my husband, Russ, a walking reference library of all things mechanical and historical.

And, of course, I’d like to thank my personal miracle worker, Elaine Koster, and Stephanie of the Elaine Koster Literary Agency.

American Institute of Physics. “The New Virtual Reality: Human-Interface Engineers Create Virtual-Reality Experience by Letting Users Walk in Rotating Sphere.” Science Daily, April 1, 2006, www.sciencedaily.com.

Harding, Brett E., MBA, and Barbara C. Wolf, M.D. “Case Report of Suicide by Inhalation of Nitrogen Gas.” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 29 (2008): 235-37.

Herz, J. C. Joystick Nation. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1997.

King, Brad, and John Borland. Dungeons and Dreamers . New York: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003.

Spitz, Werner U., MD. Medicolegal Investigation of Death, 3d ed. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1993.

LISA BLACK is a latent fingerprint examiner in Florida and a former forensic scientist for the Cleveland coroner’s office. She is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and has testified in more than forty-five homicide trials. This is her second Theresa MacLean novel.

WWW.LISA-BLACK.COM