Free The Circle of Blood by Alane Ferguson

kill herself, I mean. Maybe she didn’t want to be found.”

    “Maybe,” Patrick agreed.

    The lack of identification, Cameryn realized, had been her one incredible stroke of good fortune. Mariah had ditched Hannah’s wallet before they’d searched her remains, which meant that Mariah must have tossed the wallet somewhere—in a trash can, maybe. The backpack had been strangely empty, too, another point Justin had commented on. Cameryn hadn’t cared about anything except that luck, for now, was on her side.

    Her father turned on to Park Drive, which ended at Mercy Medical Center and the small parking lot of the medical examiner’s building.

    “And . . . here we are,” Patrick announced. “It’s late.” He pulled around behind the hospital to a small red-brick building dwarfed by the towering center. The poor stepchild of the hospital, the Colorado State Medical Examiner Building looked unassuming and plain, almost windowless, in the shape of a rectangular box. “I can’t believe this is my second trip down here in one day,” Patrick said, backing the station wagon close to a metal door. “You know, Cammie, sometimes I hate this job. How about the pep talk—tell me why we’re even doing this.”

    “We do it for the dead, remember? They tell us their stories and we figure out what happened to them and why. Our job is important. We give families the answers they need.”

    He glanced at her. “If you say so.”

    “I do.”

    He tapped the horn twice, and a heavy metal door rolled upward. Ben, the diener, waved them inside the garage. A black man with arms as thick as her father’s thighs, Ben was in charge of the morgue’s most gruesome jobs. As he assisted Dr. Moore throughout the autopsies, it was Ben’s job to x-ray and prepare the decedent, which might include plucking maggots from someone’s mouth or breaking the rigor in bodies already stiffened up. At the very end of the procedure, Ben would crudely stitch the "Y” incision, then carefully wash the body before covering it with a white shroud. Despite the grisly nature of his work, Ben usually had a smile on his face. Tonight, though, was different. He looked uncharacteristically serious.

    “We’ve already got a lot of interest on this case,” Ben said by way of greeting. “Police from all over have been calling, trying to see if this here’s their lost girl—I got one all the way from Maine. Makes you wonder how many strawberry-blonde teenagers have gone missing. Hello, Cammie,” he said.

    “Hi,” she replied, giving him a tiny wave.

    “I got to tell you Moore’s a bit on the crotchety side, it being past hours and all. But he doesn’t want to wait until Monday to do her, either, since people are yelling at him from every which way. Which means he decided to go ahead and undertake a nighttime chop. Makes for a very long day. His mood reflects that. So, are you all ready?”

    He directed the question to Cameryn. Nodding, she went to the back of their station wagon and pulled up the hatch. “Let’s get her out,” she replied.

    “All right then, on the count of three,” Ben commanded, and soon Mariah’s body got pulled onto the ME’s own gurney. Even through the blue vinyl, Cameryn could tell that Mariah’s body had turned even harder, like a loaf of bread left out to dry.

    Cameryn said, “She’s in full rigor. I think it got accelerated because she’s so small.”

    “All right, girl genius, I can feel it, too. But can you tell me what that means?” Ben asked, a twinkle in his dark eyes. “Word has it, you’re about to get some sort of scholarship. So tell me what you know.” He began to push the gurney up the ramp, his shoulder straining against the thin green cotton of his scrubs. The blood vessels in his arms stood out from beneath his skin as he pushed the gurney to the door. “Are you going to tell me? ”

    “Why?” she said, trotting to keep up. “You already know this stuff.”

    “I know I do. But