Killer Physique Read online

  “Oh? Okay. I don’t really want to make another trek out to the morgue, but if she’s got something that’s—”

  “Not the morgue,” he told her.

  “What? Where then?”

  “The pier.”

  “The pier? Why? There’s not another crime scene, is there?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. She called me on my cell, told me to meet her at the pier and to bring you. She also said not to tell anybody about it.”

  Savannah was totally taken aback. Since when did the totally open and honest Dr. Liu play cloak-and-dagger games?

  “Did she say why it’s a big secret?” Savannah asked, as she strapped on her weapon holster, inserted her Beretta, and reached for her purse.

  “Nope.”

  “And you didn’t ask her?”

  He grabbed his bomber jacket out of the closet. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she sounded like she was in a mood. And not a good mood, if you know what I mean.”

  He opened the door and held it as she passed through.

  But she couldn’t let it drop. “It’s just plum not like you,” she insisted, “not to ask. You’re the one person on the planet who’s even more nosy than I am.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But if you really have to know—the one person I’m even more afraid of than Eileen is Dr. Liu.” He took a deep breath, and Savannah could swear that she saw him shudder a little. “I’m afraid of her even on a good day,” he added, as though confessing some deep, dark character flaw. “Let alone when she’s having a bad one.”

  Chapter 9

  Most of Savannah’s memories of trips to the town pier were happy ones—including her last visit with Dirk, when they had been reproved by the old fisherman for their public display of affection.

  Built in 1842, the San Carmelita pier was the second-largest one in California. And it was Savannah’s favorite, mostly because of the lack of typical tourist attractions. The pier was home to only one modest seafood restaurant, a tiny bait-and-tackle shop, and a bicycle-rental kiosk.

  There were no tacky souvenir stores, palm readers, kite vendors, or ice cream shops. In the pier’s heyday, it had serviced giant steamships. But now it was a simple and peaceful haven for those who wanted to catch a fresh fish for dinner. And a nice place to make out with your new husband, if there were no crotchety fishermen around to object.

  At least once a week Savannah would come down to the pier for a long walk and allow the fresh sea air to blow through her hair and carry her troubles away—at least for a few minutes. The sounds of the gulls, crying out to each other as they swooped and dove overhead, and the music of children’s laughter as they played on the swings and slides on the sand below were a soothing balm to her soul.

  As far as she was concerned, a day that included a visit to the pier was almost always a good day.

  But today . . . today she wasn’t so sure.

  A secret audience with the county’s medical examiner didn’t sound like a fun time. Over the years, Savannah had formed the opinion that—other than those having to do with Christmas presents and surprise birthdays—the word “secret” was usually spelled “t-r-o-u-b-l-e.”

  This trip, Savannah had insisted on driving her Mustang. Beautifully restored years ago by Waycross, the bright red 1969 ’Stang was her baby, her pride and joy.

  She could take only so much riding around in Dirk’s Buick before she had to mention that far nicer transportation was available to them.

  That always went over well.

  Along with her insistence that she, not he, drive.

  Therefore, he was in a semipouting mood when she pulled into the parking lot near the pier and cut the ignition.

  “I don’t see her anywhere,” she said, a little too cheerfully, as she looked up the beach, then down.

  He simply grunted and got out of the car.

  She followed him, slipped her arm through his, and nudged him. “Why so grumpy?” she asked. “I’ve been driving us around for years. It’s never been a big deal.”

  “It’s kinda a big deal,” he said. “After all, we’re married now.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It’s got to do with everything. I’m your husband. Wives let husbands drive their cars. I mean, California’s a community property state. That means the Mustang’s kinda half mine.”

  She stopped in mid-stride and stared up at him, mouth open, for a long time. Finally, she found her voice. “Git outta here. No way. If we followed your logic I’d own half of that old jalopy of yours.”

  He brightened hopefully. “That’s right! Half of the Buick is yours and half of the Mustang’s mine. Fifty-fifty.”

  “No, no, no. You get one hundred percent of your Buick. I get one hundred percent of my Mustang. And that’s fifty-fifty.”

  He grumbled under his breath but reached for her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I think your math is a little faulty there, gal.”

  She chuckled. “And if you think that a measly marriage certificate entitles you to any part of the Red Pony . . . then your cornbread just ain’t quite baked in the middle.”

  As they mounted the steps leading up to the pier, Savannah spotted Dr. Liu about halfway down the dock. And had Savannah not been looking for the coroner, she probably wouldn’t have recognized her at first glance.

  Gone was the overtly sexy attire—the ultra-high heels, the short skirt or the tight pants. Jennifer Liu was wearing a simple pair of jeans, a white tee-shirt, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Oversized sunglasses hid nearly half of her pretty face, and her long, black hair was pulled into a ponytail.

  She was walking slowly away from them toward the end of the pier, her head down, her hands thrust into her jeans.

  “Wow,” Savannah said, “she really is in a bad mood. Looks like she just lost her best friend.”

  “No kidding,” he replied. “Wonder what’s up.”

  “Maybe it’s bad news about the case. Maybe she found out it was homicide, after all.”

  “Since when would something like that bother Dr. Liu? If there’s anybody who’s used to all that blood and guts and murder crap, it’s her. A ruling of homicide never bothered her before.”

  “That’s true. Oh, well, we’ll be finding out soon enough.”

  By the time they had caught up to the doctor, all three were at the far end of the pier. She was standing with her hands on the railing, staring out at the horizon, where thick storm clouds had gathered, obscuring the distant islands and staining the sea a dark indigo.

  Savannah shivered, feeling a slight chill that had little to do with the brisk ocean breeze.

  “Hey there,” she said, as they approached the coroner. “Fancy meeting you out here, instead of back there at the old coal mine.”

  Dr. Liu turned to face them. She glanced around and, seeing no one else nearby, she took off her sunglasses. Her eyes looked troubled as they locked with Savannah’s.

  “I’m meeting you here,” she began, “because, well, I’m not really meeting you. Got it?”

  “Are you saying,” Dirk replied, “this little impromptu rendezvous never happened?”

  “Something like that.”

  “No problem,” he said. “You got it.”

  “What’s up?” Savannah asked.

  Dr. Liu leaned back against the railing as though she were exhausted. Savannah registered the fact because she couldn’t recall a time when she had ever seen the doctor weary. Savannah had always thought of her as a person with boundless energy.

  “It’s this autopsy,” she replied. “I’ve never had one like this before.”

  “Like what?” Savannah asked.

  “Like one that has me totally stumped.” She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “I have at least half a dozen parties breathing down my neck, pushing me for an answer, and I have nothing to tell them. I’ve finished the autopsy, we got the lab results back in record time, and still, I h
ave absolutely no idea what killed Jason Tyrone.”

  She turned to Dirk and poked him in the chest with her forefinger. “And if you tell anybody what I just said, I will get you. I mean it. I’m a medical examiner, and you don’t mess with a medical examiner, because they know fifty ways to kill you and get away with it.”

  “A lot like a CSI lab tech,” he mumbled, reaching down and gently moving her pointing finger aside. “I hear ya. Don’t worry about it. On your bad side is the last place I wanna be, believe me.”

  Savannah thought of what he had said back at the house about being afraid of Dr. Liu, and she nearly laughed. But she sensed that the coroner wasn’t in the mood for humor of any kind right now.

  “I thought you said he died of brain hypoxia,” Savannah offered, trying to help.

  “He stopped breathing, and his brain died of oxygen deprivation, that’s true. But I can’t find one reason why he would stop breathing. And there has to be a reason. There has to be one, and dammit, I can’t find it.”

  Dr. Liu turned to face the ocean once again, her elbows on the railing. Savannah and then Dirk did the same, taking similar positions on either side of her.

  Savannah looked down at the turbulent waters that were crashing against the barnacle-encrusted pilings below. She sensed the same kind of agitation in the spirit of the woman standing next to her and felt bad for her longtime friend.

  Dr. Jennifer Liu was an amazing coroner. Everyone knew it, including the good doctor, and she took great pride in her well-earned reputation.

  “Doesn’t that happen once in a while?” Savannah asked. “Aren’t there cases, from time to time, that nobody can solve?”

  “It doesn’t happen to me!” Dr. Liu shot back, her dark eyes flashing. “Not to me!”

  “There’s a first time for everything. Maybe your luck just ran out,” Dirk said gently. He reached over and put a comforting hand on her wrist, but she shook it off and folded her arms across her chest.

  “It’s got nothing at all to do with luck. It has to do with hard work and dedication and the fact that I’m damned good at what I do.”

  “Of course you are,” Savannah told her. “You’ve always done an awesome job for the people of this county. If this case is a problem for you, it would be for anybody.”

  She paused, letting her words soak in for a moment before she continued. “Tell us what you’ve got and—”

  “—and the two of you are going to figure it out, when I can’t figure it out myself?”

  “No-o-o,” Savannah said, forcing herself to sound patient, whether she felt it or not. “Of course the two of us won’t be able to figure it out, if you can’t. But maybe while you’re explaining it all to us, you might think of something you haven’t before.”

  To Savannah’s surprise, Dr. Liu’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, you guys. I know I’m out of line. You’re just trying to help, and I appreciate it, whether I’m acting like it or not.”

  Once again Dirk reached over and put his hand on her arm. And this time she didn’t brush it away. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo,” he said. “It’s a difficult case, all the way around. And we’re all running on little or no sleep, so we’re entitled to be a little out of sorts.”

  Savannah patted her on the back. “Tell us what you do have.”

  Dr. Liu drew a deep, shuddering breath, and the negative emotions seemed to slide off her face and were replaced with a stoic, neutral expression.

  Savannah watched and felt encouraged. The doc was in “professional mode” now. And that was a great improvement—as Savannah knew, all too well, from personal experience.

  When your emotions were too high, you couldn’t think. And a situation like this required clear, rational thought.

  “Jason Tyrone was basically a healthy young man,” Dr. Liu began. “Other than the things I showed you—some minor cell damage to the heart and the liver—there were no remarkable pathologies. Nothing was really all that wrong with him.”

  “Then what’s your ruling going to be?” Savannah asked.

  “Officially, I’m determining the manner of death to be accidental. The cause of death: cardiovascular complications as a cumulative result of lethal polypharmacia.”

  Savannah ran the words through her head, but couldn’t make sense of what she’d heard. “What’s polly-farm . . . whatever you said?”

  “Heart damage from too many years of taking too many drugs—anabolic steroids, diuretics, painkillers.”

  “Could it have been another kind of drug overdose?” Dirk asked. “The usual suspects, like cocaine, heroine, meth . . . something like that?”

  “The blood work was all negative for recreational drugs. But like I said before, he had plenty of prescription and over-the-counter drugs in his system. His stomach showed some damage, probably due to heavy NSAID painkiller usage. It isn’t that uncommon with someone who works out and pushes their body to the extreme the way he did.”

  Dirk nodded. “All that weight lifting—he was bound to have some aches and pains.”

  “He also had some carisoprodol in a system,” Dr. Liu said.

  “What’s that?” Dirk wanted to know.

  “A muscle relaxant,” she replied. “Doctors prescribe it sometimes when a patient complains of muscle spasms and soreness. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, and at that dosage, certainly not lethal.”

  “What about those pain patches that were on his nightstand?” Savannah suggested.

  “You mean the Lido-Morphone?”

  Savannah nodded.

  “Yes,” the doctor said, “that showed up in the blood work, too. But like everything else, the quantities fell within the normal range. There wasn’t one single red flag.”

  “Could it have been an overdose of steroids?” Savannah asked. “Like maybe he just took too many all at one time.”

  Dr. Liu shook her head. “Like I told you before, overdosing on anabolic steroids isn’t that common. Which is not to say that they aren’t dangerous. But the damage they do is usually more insidious and occurs over a period of time. I’m sure people have died as a result of abusing steroids. But frankly, they’re more likely to be murdered or commit suicide while in the throes of what’s commonly called ’roid rage.”

  Savannah stared out into the turbulent water, considering everything she’d just been told. She could certainly see why Dr. Liu was frustrated. When she thought of Jason Tyrone—a seemingly perfect physical specimen—just dropping dead for no apparent reason, her own sense of justice cried out in indignation.

  It just wasn’t fair!

  Of course, she had learned the lesson many times over that life was far from fair. But she had never learned how to accept the fact with grace.

  When bad things happened to seemingly good people—and other life lessons had taught her to always insert that “seemingly” qualifier—she couldn’t help herself; she got angry. And if there appeared to be no avenue to justice, or even a rational explanation for the tragedy, she got royally mad.

  “This would bother me anyway,” Dr. Liu was saying, “no matter how famous the deceased might or might not be. But it doesn’t help having everybody from the SCPD to the governor’s office breathing down my neck, demanding answers.”

  “Frankly, it riles me somethin’ fierce,” Savannah said, “when they make a way bigger fuss over celebrities than regular folks.”

  Dirk added, “Me too. When did you ever get blood work back that quick?”

  “Never. Not once in my career. It’s usually days, even weeks. Never hours.”

  Dirk ran his hand over his face, and it occurred to Savannah that it had been a long time since she had seen him look so weary. And she knew it was more than just the missed night of sleep.

  She knew that he, like she, wanted to do the right thing by their friends. And besides the more personal reasons, both she and Dirk had a fierce sense of justice. They would chase a bad guy to Hades—and had more than once—rather than let him get away with some na
sty crime.

  But she also knew this case had come at a bad time. Dirk was feeling a lot of pressure over meeting his biological parents for the first time. Far more, she was sure, than he was even saying.

  She determined, then and there, to get him home and in bed as soon as possible. They were both in desperate need of an extended time in Slumberland.

  “This is going to ruin that kid’s reputation forever,” Dirk said. “Last night he was king of the world, superhero to millions and all that. But as soon as your report gets out, he’ll just be a fool who killed himself by doping.”

  Dr. Liu whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “Dammit, Coulter. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Believe me, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  Savannah turned to Dr. Liu. “What can we do? How can we help?”

  The coroner thought her answer over carefully. Finally, she said, “I had to release the body to the funeral home. There’s nothing more I can do at this point. Now it’s up to you.”

  “Okay,” Dirk said. “I’m not making any guarantees that we’re going to come up with anything better than what you have.”

  “But we’ll try,” Savannah quickly added. “We’ll do our best.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dr. Liu reached out, laced her right arm through Dirk’s and placed her left hand on Savannah’s. “If you think this was a murder—and I know you do, because I do, too—then investigate it as a homicide. See what you can uncover.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Savannah told her. “Try not to feel so bad about it. You’ve done your best.”

  “You just let us take it from here,” Dirk said. “And we will keep you posted all the way.”

  “Thank you, Dirk,” she said, as she gave Savannah’s hand a companionable squeeze. “I wish I could help you more. I’m ashamed that I can’t. And if somebody killed that beautiful young man, and they get away with it, because of my incompetence . . . I’m telling you, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.”

  Chapter 10

  By the time Savannah and Dirk returned to the forensics lab, Savannah was in the mood to commit homicide herself.