Free The Angel of Death by Alane Ferguson

but I was right, wasn’t I?” She remembered the detail she’d discovered, and Moore’s violent reaction over Cameryn being the one to discover it. She remembered him swelling with rage and how he’d ordered her out of the room. But she also remembered that he’d helped, too, later, when it really counted. Dr. Moore was an enigma.

    “All I’m saying is that sometimes life requires diplomacy . Moore can be an egomaniacal windbag, but he’s a great medical examiner and he’s going the extra mile with this case. Let’s not have any trouble today.”

    “Whatever you say. Boss.” She flashed him a smile, a compensatory tactic that she hoped would calm him. It seemed to work. His features softened, especially his eyes, ice-blue and ringed in laugh lines that sprayed from the corners .

    “That’s right. I’m senior management. Try not to forget it, kid.”

    “As long as I’ve got management’s ear, I’d like to put in for a raise.”

    “Solve this case and we’ll talk.”

    It felt good to be back in their rhythm, their father/ daughter banter. Even if they both knew it was forced.

    The smile on her father’s face barely covered the worry that flowed beneath it, like a stream gurgling beneath the ice. The Mahoneys knew how to keep up appearances.

    They had pulled into the back alley now, where the flat-roofed building squatted bleakly behind Mercy Medical Center. It was a structure so unremarkable it seemed impossible from its exterior to divine its real purpose— dissecting the dead and reading their entrails like the ancient oracles Mr. Oakes had told them about in class. The alleyway led to two metal doors, which rolled open when her father tapped his horn. Ben, the diener, waved his thickly muscled arms in the air, welcoming them inside. He wore faded green scrubs and running shoes spattered in what looked like dried blood. Cameryn noticed that he’d shaved his head so smooth his scalp gleamed, dark as chocolate.

    “I was hoping Ben would be on duty today,” her father said.

    The diener assisted the medical examiner in the most grisly jobs, including sewing the corpse back together after autopsy when the dissection was done. Her father told her Ben was the best diener he’d ever seen, because in all the cases he’d worked on, Ben had never once lost his composure. “Even if he’s plucking maggots from someone’s mouth, he keeps his cool,” her father once told her.

    Craning over his shoulder, Patrick backed the station wagon into the garage. After the two of them hopped out, Ben unlatched the hatch and lifted it. Then, with an expert motion, he tugged the gurney as the wheels unfolded and banged onto the cement floor. The blue body bag remained perched atop it, misshapen because of the position of Mr. Oakes’s arms and legs. It seemed as though they had bagged a prizefighter who was trying to punch his way out.

    “Hey there, Pat,” Ben said. “Cammie. Long time no see. So this vic’s got no eyeballs, eh? No wonder Moore called us in—we got us a bona fide mystery here!” Then he added, “I thought you might have had enough of us the last time, girlfriend. You a glutton for punishment?”

    “Mr. Oakes was my teacher.”

    “Your teacher, huh?” Ben’s head dipped down as he began to push the gurney. “Sorry for your loss.” He didn’t try to say anything more, didn’t parrot words to make her feel better. His “sorry,” delivered in his deep baritone, was enough.

    “Does Dr. Moore know I’m here?” She felt a flutter when she asked this.

    “Oh, yeah, the dragon master mentioned you by name,” said Ben. “The weird thing is, I think Moore has actually taken a shine to you. If the man shines on anyone besides himself, that is.”

    Ben and her father moved the gurney up a concrete ramp, and with his backside Ben hit the door so that it swung open.

    “What do you mean ‘shine’?” Cameryn asked as she fell in step with them. She had to walk double-time to