Captured in Death, page 10
They worked around each other in the kitchen, making separate meals. Zachary might go for the childhood favorite, but it wasn’t high on Kenzie’s list.
“So he was shot?” Zachary asked, introducing the subject of the autopsy.
Kenzie smiled and nodded. That much Zachary knew already. “Yes, .22 caliber. We got the bullet for ballistics. That’s about all of the hard evidence that we have at this point. We’ll see if anything shows up in any other tests. We’re checking for DNA, in case the victim and the shooter had close contact. But there was no sign that he had been in a fight, so I’m not confident he got close enough to touch or scratch the gunman.”
“But it was fired from close by?”
“No skin charring that I could see, so not a contact wound. But I would still guess that it was pretty close.”
“Anything else at the scene?”
“Well, we don’t have the murder scene. Only a dump site. The police are checking the dumpster for anything that might be related.”
“Lucky them.”
Kenzie nodded. “At least I get a morgue with good exhaust fans for the autopsy. I’m afraid they don’t get the same for the garbage dive.”
“At least it isn’t one hundred degrees out.”
“There’s that. I still don’t imagine they’ll be too happy about it. Dirty, smelly business. Especially when you have a corpse marinating on top of everything. But if the gun or anything else is in the bin, they need to find it.”
“You don’t have any other trace evidence or avenues of investigation?”
“I’ll go through the clothes with a fine-toothed comb tomorrow. You never know, we might find hairs, fingerprints, who knows what.”
“Yeah. You never know. It might be right there under your nose.”
They ate their dinner without ceremony. Kenzie didn’t want to take any longer than she had to, knowing they both wanted to get home as soon as possible after the hospital visit. When they signed in at the hospital to visit Rhys, they found Vera there. Kenzie shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew that Vera spent a lot of time at the hospital with Rhys. He didn’t likely have anyone else visiting him. But she had imagined that they would have Rhys to themselves again and be able to update him on the John Doe.
Rhys was in the visitor area at a table with Vera. He jumped to his feet when he saw Zachary and Kenzie coming. He immediately shook hands with Zachary, clasping tightly and slapping him on the shoulder. He looked at Kenzie and leaned in for a hug. Kenzie put her arms around his shoulders and squeezed him tightly before releasing him.
“Hey, Rhys, how are you doing?”
He was recovering from his ordeal, his eyes looking less hollow than they had. His mood seemed lighter. Maybe they had him on a new medication. Or maybe it was not having to look at that oppressive image on his phone any longer. It must have bothered him to have to keep looking at the picture as it was forwarded to him repeatedly. She assumed he had logged in to all his social networks on the new phone. Hopefully, everyone had seen the picture and grown bored with it, and it was no longer making its rounds.
“Vera,” Zachary greeted, and put his hand out to shake. Vera gave him a smile that still seemed a little forced, but she took his hand and then clasped it with her other hand so that his was sandwiched between both of hers.
“Hello, Zachary, Kenzie. It’s nice of you to come see Rhys.”
“I hope we’re not interrupting,” Kenzie ventured, giving Vera the opportunity to tell them that it was not a good time and they should leave.
“No, no. We run out of things to say after a while.”
Rhys laughed silently at this, drawing a chuckle out of Zachary. Vera patted her hair, looking embarrassed.
“Well, of course, that’s never stopped us before,” she said good-humoredly.
They all sat back down around the table. Kenzie saw that Rhys had his phone in his pocket and was glad they were letting him hold on to it, at least while he had a visitor there, so that he could communicate more easily.
“You’re looking better,” Zachary commented, looking Rhys over. “You’re feeling a bit better?”
Rhys nodded his agreement. He looked at Kenzie and raised his brows. Kenzie understood that he wanted to know how she had fared on investigating the picture of the John Doe, but wasn’t sure she wanted to jump directly into the subject, especially with Vera there. She glanced over at Vera, wondering if she had any thoughts of going home now that Rhys had other visitors. She would probably be going home anyway so that she could go to bed.
“Rhys will be coming home soon,” Vera contributed. “It will be nice to have him back again. It has been hard having him away for so long.” She patted Rhys’s arm affectionately. He put his hand over hers briefly.
“That’s great news. I’m glad you’re doing so much better,” Kenzie told Rhys.
He gave a small smile and nodded. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and navigated to his messaging app. Her own phone buzzed and displayed a picture of Snoopy lying on top of his red doghouse, looking happy and comfortable. Home.
“Will it be hard to get caught up with school?”
Rhys rolled his eyes at this. He slumped in his seat and let his head fall back in mock exhaustion.
“He’ll probably need some help,” Vera said, “but we’ll get him back on track.”
“That’s good.”
“We met a couple of your friends,” Zachary told Rhys.
Rhys turned his face to Zachary, raising his brows in inquiry.
“Hugh and Ayla,” Zachary told him. “We were asking them when that picture had started circulating around the school.”
“They seem nice,” Kenzie contributed.
Rhys nodded his agreement. He didn’t seem overwhelmingly positive about Zachary and Kenzie having met his friends. Maybe he hadn’t thought that they would need to go to his friends when making inquiries about the dead man. Maybe he had thought that Kenzie would just be able to go to the morgue and look through unclaimed bodies to find the man and give Rhys a rundown on who he was and what had happened to him. Or that she would be able to tell him that the body had been claimed and he was back with his people, at rest. Maybe the killer had already been caught and was behind bars. All of that would be good and would let him know that everything was okay without ever having to talk to anyone at the school.
He raised his brows at Kenzie, wanting to know what she had found out.
Kenzie looked at Vera, but she wasn’t leaving.
“So, we looked into the picture you got on your phone,” Kenzie started awkwardly. “That’s why we were talking to your friends and some of the other kids at the school. When I looked into recent deaths, I couldn’t find anything that matched the picture. No one was even sure whether it was local or recent. A lot of people thought that it might have been a prank.”
Rhys’s jaw set, and he shook his head adamantly.
“No, I know it was real,” Kenzie agreed. “I just ran into some opposition with people not believing it.”
He nodded, and, after a moment, pointed at his own chest. Kenzie studied him, trying to interpret the gesture. “Did you run into that too? Where people didn’t believe it was a legitimate picture? That it was just some kind of joke or hoax?”
He nodded. Kenzie wondered who he had shown it to. Had it just been in discussions with friends, or had he gone to someone at the school and tried to convince them to look into it? Maybe to the school resource officer? If he had, word had not gotten back to the principal. Lakes had never seen the picture before Kenzie had shown it to her. Or at least, not that she was admitting. But would she admit it if she realized that it was the picture that caused Rhys’s breakdown? She wouldn’t want to admit that she hadn’t taken Rhys seriously or that she had ignored something that she knew was circulating among the student body.
Kenzie nodded her understanding. “So I ran into the same thing, even though I’m an adult and work with the medical examiner. Someone who knows a thing or two about dead bodies.”
Hopefully, it would make Rhys feel better to know that it hadn’t just been him. It hadn’t been just because he was a kid, or a minority, or had communication difficulties. Even Kenzie, the expert, had run into the same challenges.
She shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable in the hard seat that was clearly not designed with comfort in mind.
“I did get the police to open an investigation into the picture,” Kenzie told Rhys. “Not a homicide investigation, but an investigation into phone harassment, the picture being circulated around the school to upset people. It was the only thing he could do without a body or even a missing person report on the victim.”
“I’m sure it was just a kid’s prank,” Vera said. “Why would anyone be passing around pictures of a real dead body? That’s just… inappropriate.”
Rhys shook his head, frown lines between his brows.
Kenzie put her hand on Rhys’s arm to try to keep his attention on her. “Then today, they found the body.”
21
What?” Vera’s voice was weak. This was not what she had wanted to hear.
“No one could even confirm until today that this was even a real person or a real death,” Kenzie said. “Even though it looked real, it’s true that it could have been some kind of makeup job or Photoshop manipulation. They can do a lot of things to make it look realistic. But as Rhys thought, it wasn’t just a hoax. It wasn’t just a meme being passed around school to disgust or upset people.”
Rhys nodded his agreement. His eyes were riveted on Kenzie.
“But it was real,” Kenzie said. “All of it. The man, the bullet wound in his head. A picture being taken of him after his death. I had him on my table this afternoon.”
She could see Rhys breathing heavily.
“Are you okay, Rhys? Is this too much?”
He made a calming gesture with his hands.
“You’re okay?”
A nod.
“You’re sure? If it’s making you feel extra anxious or panicky, you could get a sedative or spend some time talking to your therapist.”
He moved his hands in a horizontal line. No.
Kenzie held his gaze for a moment to make sure that he wasn’t getting too upset. He nodded encouragingly.
“The police have opened a homicide file now. I did the autopsy this afternoon. As much as I could do with the shape the body was in.”
She probably shouldn’t go into too much detail about the state of the man’s remains.
“They will be trying to identify him. Now that we have some data, his DNA and fingerprints, hopefully, they will be able to figure out who he is, and we will be one step closer to finding out what happened to him.”
Rhys nodded.
“I’m sorry that it took so long for the body to be found,” Kenzie said. “It might have been easier on you if they had been able to confirm right away that he was deceased and opened an investigation into it. Knowing that it was circulating the school would have informed their investigation, helped them to sort out the origin of the photo sooner.”
He cocked his head, questioning.
“They don’t know who took the picture or started it circulating yet,” Kenzie told him. “But they’re working on it. It will be a higher priority now that it is a homicide rather than just phone harassment.”
Rhys tapped something into his phone, and Kenzie looked down at hers when it buzzed. It was a gif of a spinning globe. Kenzie let Zachary see it and tried to think of what Rhys was trying to say. Zachary pursed his lips.
“Where did you find it?” he suggested.
They both looked at Rhys, who nodded and pointed to Zachary to confirm the question.
“It had been left in a dumpster,” Kenzie told him. “One that wasn’t emptied regularly. So it was longer than it should have been before someone found it.”
Rhys pinched his nose.
“Oh, yes,” Kenzie agreed with a laugh. “It was not a pleasant experience for the police, I’ll tell you that.”
He pointed to Kenzie, eyebrows up.
“Or to me. Well, no, but I’ve got good ventilation in the morgue, so it wasn’t too bad. And I’m used to it to a certain degree. My job stinks.”
They all chuckled over this.
“Well,” Vera’s huff clearly indicated she was attempting to change the subject. “I’m glad that Rhys can finally put his mind at ease about this whole situation. I don’t know what happened or how that picture ended up on his phone, but now that he knows it is being taken care of, he can put it out of his mind and look to the future. What we need to focus on now is Rhys getting out of here soon and the outpatient treatment he will be following. The hospital has recommended a couple of therapists.”
“Good,” Zachary approved. He looked at Rhys. “I really didn’t want to be in therapy, but it has helped me a lot. And it has helped Kenzie and me; we’ve done couple’s therapy to help with that. You might want to do some family therapy with Vera as well as individual therapy. It could help you to communicate better.”
Rhys rolled his eyes.
“I know it’s not fun,” Zachary emphasized. “I know you don’t feel like doing it. But it does make a difference.”
Rhys made a motion to his back, which Kenzie assumed was a reference to the past and the therapy he had done previously.
“Even if you had a bunch of therapy in the past,” Zachary said. “It can still be useful.”
Rhys shrugged.
“You’re lucky they’re going to fund the therapy,” Vera told Rhys. “So we can afford it. We can afford to get someone good, not just whoever we can get with my benefits.”
Kenzie looked at Vera, her throat tightening. “Who is funding it?” she asked, even though, of course, it was none of her business.
“The anonymous donor,” Vera said. “The one who was paying for the experimental therapy at Persons. They said that since it didn’t work out, since he reacted to the drug, they would fund something else. Whatever therapy we chose.”
Kenzie happened to know who the anonymous donor was. The Kirsch family foundation. She was irritated to learn that they were still funding Rhys without even telling her about it. After the last debacle, she thought they were going to tell her whenever they did something that impacted her family and close friends. They had kept the experimental treatment a secret from her because of a potential conflict of interest, but there was no reason to keep the ongoing funding from her. Unless they thought she would be upset about it for some reason.
If they were letting Vera and Rhys choose what kind of therapy they thought would be best instead of funneling Rhys into a particular program, which Kenzie had told Vera was too risky, then the only reason she had to be angry about it was because they were doing it behind her back. Again.
She shook her head. Vera stared at her, frowning, trying to figure out what Kenzie was expressing her disapproval of.
“You just said he needed therapy. Why would you be opposed to an anonymous donor funding it?”
“Sorry,” Kenzie said, trying to lighten her voice. “I was just thinking of something else. I didn’t mean to scowl at you.” She pasted a smile on her face. “That’s great. I’m glad that money will not be a deterrent and you can get Rhys whatever treatment the two of you decide is best.”
“It won’t be that drug therapy,” Vera told her in a tentative voice.
“No, I know that. I think it would be too risky after what happened the first time. Even if they lowered the dose, he might still react to it, and we don’t want to do what could be irreparable damage.”
Vera nodded her agreement, looking relieved.
Vera had been pretty insistent about Persons and their therapy before. She had stood up to Kenzie and ended up being wrong. She was probably worried that Kenzie would think she was making a bad choice again and didn’t want to draw her disappointment.
“Will you be glad to be out of here and back at school?” Kenzie asked, turning her attention back to Rhys.
He made a face and shook his head.
“You don’t want to go back to school?”
He nodded.
“You’ll be glad to see your friends again, won’t you? That will be nice.”
He nodded, but didn’t seem too excited about it. Kenzie remembered Hugh saying they were just school friends and didn’t see each other outside of school. And Ayla didn’t seem that close to him, even though Hugh suggested they talk to her. If those were Rhys’s two best friends, and he didn’t even see them outside of school hours, she could see why he wasn’t too excited about going back to see them. He might be lonely at the hospital, but he would be lonely at home with just Vera to keep him company and lonely at school with just one or two friends to hang out with.
“Did you ever think of getting into one of the clubs?” Zachary asked.
Rhys looked at him and widened his eyes. What clubs?
Zachary shrugged. “I don’t know. I always thought being in the photography or yearbook club would be fun. I couldn’t ever be in any clubs or extracurricular activities, but I thought those might be cool. You wouldn’t have to talk a lot for them.”
Rhys nodded, but didn’t look that interested. Maybe he wasn’t interested in photography or they didn’t have a photography club. Kenzie didn’t know what Rhys was interested in.
“If there are any clubs you are interested in, we could help out with them,” Kenzie said. “If there is some equipment you need to buy.”
Vera looked at Rhys, but he just shook his head and didn’t indicate any interest. “I think our Rhys is just a homebody,” she said. “That’s where he wants to be the most.”
22
Sorry I couldn’t get down yesterday to watch the autopsy,” Campbell told Kenzie when he arrived at her desk. “I meant to get down for it, but too much was happening. A bunch of noise upstairs about other issues, and then finding a DB in the dumpster that somehow the medical examiner knew about before the police did kind of set some people’s nerves on edge. As much as I explain that I can’t be walking around to all the dumpsters in town looking for new bodies, they don’t seem to understand that it is all just up to chance.”
