Free Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) by Julie Kramer

victim’s teeth had been pulled also fit that criteria, or at least had until I opened my mail.
    Cops liked to keep those skeletons quiet to weed out false confessions. And this was a fresh murder, not a cold case. They weren’t at the stage of the investigation where they’d take any evidence, real or not, just to close the file.
    “Any chance you would discuss any of this on camera? I can have a photographer here in ten minutes.”
    They declined with a terse no.
    “Well, thanks for all your help,” I said. “And since mug shots are public, I’m sure you won’t mind me keeping this.”
    I palmed the picture of Leon Paul Akume and slid it into my jacket pocket.

CHAPTER 18
    I stopped by the coffee shop outside the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office and bought a pricy coffee drink to take inside. Not for me—for Della Sax. Our paths had crossed numerous times in the name of news. I covered crime, she uncovered it.
    But I knew her weakness.
    “I’ve got a caramel cappuccino for Della,” I told the man sitting at the front desk.
    That was our code. If the chief medical examiner were available, I’d know soon enough. If not, the cappuccino would be mine. Within a minute, Della was reaching for her caffeine kickback and inviting me to follow her down the corridor.
    She wore trademark pink scrubs and dangling crystal earrings on the job, her way of bringing elegance to a steel autopsy table. I could smell a whiff of formaldehyde in the air that neither perfume nor coffee could disguise.
    Della closed the door when we reached her office, raised her cup in the air, then sipped her cappuccino with satisfaction. The office wall nearest her desk was covered with small pictures of faces with names and dates scrawled across the bottom of each. The earliest went back nearly five years. She called the montage her “murder wall”—victim photos of all the open homicides under her watch. Once a case was solved, the photo was moved into a desk file marked VICTORY .
    “How many left?” I asked.
    “Sixty-three.” She savored another taste of caramel mixed with coffee and cream. “I’m no longer optimistic about justice. I used to count on good trumping evil and one day having an empty wall where I could hang pictures of my cats and kids instead of ghosts.”
    “That’s not just on your back, Della. Chasing killers is a team sport. Cops want closure, too. But being smart isn’t always enough. Sometimes you need dumb luck. Sometimes you even need the media.”
    “I know. I know.”
    We focused our attention on the wall of faces. Most of the photos depicted victims while they were alive, clueless to their unsettled destiny. Some came from the case files, given to the police by families for identification of their loved ones. Others were cut from newspaper articles or obituaries. A few of the photos—John and Jane Does—were taken after death and hard to view without recoiling from their pale skin and vacant eyes. Two had no faces, only sparse notes on Post-its to hold their place in her makeshift homicide row. The majority were mug shots.
    Play tough; die rough.
    “If a face doesn’t come off my murder wall in the first couple weeks postmortem,” she said, “I usually end up staring at it for a long time.”
    The same photo of Leon Akume in my pocket was the last in line. I leaned over to point him out. “I was just down at the cop shop about this guy.”
    “A messy murder indeed. I had feeling that’s why you came looking for me, Riley. Your package is now in an evidence bag. Actually, two bags. One for the teeth, the other for the envelope.”
    “Like any concerned citizen, I turned what I had over to the authorities promptly and have been cooperating in their investigation.”
    She looked dubious.
    “Of course,” I continued, “now I feel invested in the outcome.” I pulled out my copy of Leon’s mug and held it next to hers. “Just like you do.” I hoped he lost his life before losing his