The Carbon Murder(17)
“The FDA investigates drugs, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but not the street kind; that would be DEA. Are you thinking of the ex-boyfriend?”
I nodded. “Or that the people supposedly coming after MC are into drugs.”
“Or the FDA number is completely unrelated. Another case entirely that Martin was working on.”
“Or Wayne Gallen hired the PI to follow MC around.” He was still “at-large” so to speak, in that no one had seen him since he was released from the RPD on Tuesday night. Too confusing right now. “What else do we know?”
Matt skipped over the “we,” having adjusted beautifully to my status as his almost-partner. “Two blood types, one hers. So it’s possible we’re looking for a wounded killer. Stands to reason, as a PI she would have a firearm and some training in self-defense, and probably got in a shot or two. The word is out at hospitals and clinics.”
“Is Berger handling the case?”
Matt twisted his wrist in a half-and-half motion. “For now, but you can bet Houston PD will be all over this, and the FDA, too, if she was connected to them at all.”
“But it’s our jurisdiction, isn’t it, if she was murdered here?”
“Yes and no. If they think she was killed while on a job out of Houston, they’re going to want in on it. Lots of places, cops and PIs work together. She wasn’t just an ordinary citizen touring Revere.”
“Maybe she was. On vacation, I mean.” Not that I believed it.
“You don’t believe that,” Matt said. My soul mate.
“Someone should find out who hired her and why.” Gloria, the master detective.
Matt nodded. “For now Berger is working this, and I can probably get on board by tomorrow.”
I frowned.
“What?” he asked. “I’m not going to sit around here and wait.”
I’d gotten used to equating DOAs with consulting contracts for me, formal or informal. It was taking less and less time to move from “a person has been murdered” to “let’s solve this puzzle.” I wasn’t sure this was a good thing, but if there was a chance that Nina Martin was linked to any of the Galiganis, I’d have to put off examining my conscience until after I investigated.
I looked at Matt and smiled. “Well, I’m going to not wait with you.”
CHAPTER SIX
MC wanted to stay in bed forever. She’d slept badly, waking up often, each time fighting back tears at the image of the young woman’s body on the morgue table.
MC had liked Mary Roderick, or Nina Martin, or whatever her real name was. She was older than MC’s other students, and seemed to really connect with her. She’d told MC her birth name was Maria Rodriguez, that she’d changed it to Roderick to sound more American, even though she loved her Mexican family and sent them money whenever she could. MC thought of Mary/ Maria/Nina’s familiar Houston Oilers cap, barely covering her wild, jet-black hair, and how her sparkling dark eyes brought life to the old, badly maintained classroom at Houston Poly.
The police had asked MC to make a secondary ID, since her name was on the Galigani Mortuary card. MC had wanted to go down there anyway. She had to be sure it was really Mary. Maria. Nina. They were saying that the woman must have enrolled in MC’s class as part of an undercover job, that she was a private detective, and maybe even worked for the FDA. Very unsettling, when you thought you’d been close to someone, to find out you didn’t even know who they really were. Like with Jake, she thought, in some ways.
MC flipped over onto her back and blew out a breath so harsh it hurt her cheeks. I’m a Galigani, she told herself. I grew up around dead bodies; I am not freaked out by death. An image came to her mind—her father in the prep room downstairs, inserting thin brass wires into the jaws of an old man, to bring his teeth together; shaping his mouth with cotton into a slight smile. She’d been fascinated watching him, not frightened at all.
She’d gotten used to the sound of the hearse in the middle of the night, and the nasty odors that her mother tried valiantly to cover up. I couldn’t have hated them too much, MC thought, since I chose a field with its own pukey smells. She remembered sneaking down to the prep room whenever she could while her father was working on a body. She’d watch him cutting, sewing, stuffing, painting, and weighing things she couldn’t identify at the time.
But none of those bodies was real to her. She realized later that her parents deliberately kept her from the basement when she’d known the deceased.
This woman, Nina Martin, had been her student, or at least pretended to be her student, and was way too young to die.