LITMIR.BIZ

       EIGHT

      Shad’s emissaries arrive at Drew’s medical lab before I do. But they’re not cops, as I expected; they’re sheriff’s deputies. I can tell by the big yellow star on the door of the white cruiser parked outside. This tells me that in the investigation of Drew Elliott, the district attorney has chosen to align himself with the fat man in the cowboy hat who walked by my car a few minutes ago, rather than with the chief of police, who by any standard of common sense should be handling this matter.

      Drew practices in a suite of offices maintained by Natchez Doctors’ Hospital, which is located behind the cluster of primary care clinics that feed patients to the main facility. The front door of Drew’s office is unlocked. I enter to find his waiting room dark. There’s light in the corridor beyond it, but the door to the hall is locked. After I bang loudly, a young woman’s face appears behind the receptionist’s window. She waves, then buzzes me into the corridor.

      Drew’s lab is right across the hall, a brightly lit rectangle containing centrifuges, microscopes, and expensive blood chemistry machines. Against the far wall, a blue phlebotomist’s chair stands beside a white refrigerator. Drew himself is reclining in the chair, one shirtsleeve rolled up past his elbow.

      I step in and find two deputies standing with their backs to the wall opposite Drew. They look uncomfortable. I recognize one of them. Tom Jackson was the top detective at the police department until the sheriff hired him away, which wasn’t hard to do. The county pays cops about five thousand a year more than the city does. Jackson is as tall as Drew, and his handlebar mustache gives him the look of a cowboy in a Frederic Remington painting. He gives me a friendly nod, but his partner—a short, black-haired man with pasty skin—doesn’t even acknowledge me.

      “Tom,” says Drew, “this is Penn Cage, a buddy of mine.”

      “I know Penn,” Jackson says in a deep voice.

      Both deputies must know why I’m here, but Drew seems to want to preserve the illusion of a friendly get-together. He nods past me, and I turn to see the white-uniformed woman who let me in. She’s in her midthirties, with short brown hair and a heart-shaped face distinguished by intelligent brown eyes.

      “Penn, this is Susan Salter, my med tech.”

      “Nice to meet you, Susan.”

      She manages a slight nod; she looks the least comfortable of us all.

      “Well,” says Drew, “let’s get this over with.”

      Susan takes a long white box from a cabinet and looks at the deputies. “You said four tubes?”

      “That’s what our evidence technician told us,” says Tom Jackson. “I guess they want to make sure they don’t have to ask for more blood later.”

      Susan removes four vacuum tubes with purple stoppers from the box and lays them flat on one arm of the chair. Then she straps a Velcro tourniquet around Drew’s left biceps and slaps his antecubital vein three times. A vein like a rigid blue pipe stands up at the place where Drew’s arm muscles insert at the inner elbow. Susan pushes the stopper end of one of the tubes into a Vacutainer syringe, then with a single deft motion pricks the needle into Drew’s vein and presses the stopper of the tube down onto the rear of the needle with her thumb.

      A fountain of dark blood begins filling the tube, sucked inward by the vacuum inside it. The short deputy looks away.

      “I need to use the restroom,” he mumbles.

      “Down the hall to your right,” says Drew.

      The deputy disappears. As Susan replaces the full tube with an empty one, I realize her hands are shaking. She’s playing out a scene she couldn’t possibly have imagined an hour ago. How much has Drew told her? I wonder.

      “Tom?” I say, taking advantage of the other deputy’s absence. “What do you figure the time of death was?”

      Jackson looks warily at me. “You don’t know?”

      “The D.A. wouldn’t tell me.”

      He sighs and shakes his head. “People are acting mighty squirrelly about this case. I’d like to help you out, though.”

      “Will you?”

      “Well … we know the girl didn’t leave the school until three. The fishermen say they found her about six-twenty.”

      “What did the body temperature tell you?”

      Jackson glances uncomfortably at the door. “I don’t know about all that. I heard they’re not sure how long she was in the water.”

      “Best guess?”

      The short deputy walks through the door, looks at Jackson, and smiles. It seems a strange thing to do, but it shuts Jackson up.

      When the four tubes lie full of blood on a table and the tourniquet has been removed from Drew’s arm, Tom steps forward with a plastic evidence bag and holds it open. Susan drops the tubes inside. Drew shakes his head, looking more than anything like an innocent man doing his best to humor overzealous cops.

      “That it, guys?”

      Jackson nods. “That’s it, Doc. Sorry to bother you with this.”

      “How long do you think it will take to get the DNA results?” I ask.

      “Usually takes a month, at least,” Tom replies. “They’ll probably rush this, considering the situation. But two and a half weeks is the fastest I’ve ever seen. Out of New Orleans, anyway.”

      This

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