Free K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 12 - Death at the Wheel by K.J. Emrick Page A

much.  He had admitted to using a “loaner” car, which could easily mean a rental car, but that was all.  That, and the emotions he obviously still had for Lindsay.  It wasn’t enough to create solid proof, though.
    “Rosie can come back with me,” she said again for emphasis, adding a smile for effect.  “I’m sure she’ll want to spend some time with her new son-in-law but that can wait, don’t you think?  Obviously they aren’t going anywhere just yet.”
    “Sure, sure,” Wilson said, looking down at his watch.  “All three of the victims from the car accident are here so that makes things easy on our end, too.”
    “Wait.  Three victims?”
    He looked at her, his eyebrows raised.  “Sure.  Lindsay and Alan Harlow are here in the ICU, but they brought the body of the driver here as well.  What was his name?”  He took out his pocket notebook and began leafing through it.
    “Jarred,” Darcy supplied before he could find the right page.  “Jarred Perrigon.  He’s here?”
    “Sure.  Down in the morgue.  The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  Kind of a procedural thing at this point, but we do have a missing driver and a death involved, so.”
    Yes, Darcy thought to herself, we do.  A missing driver, and a dead body.
    And Darcy had ways of making dead men talk.
    “Uh, Will, I need to find the ladies room,” she said, already backing down the hall.  “If you see Rosie can you tell her to meet me down at the front entrance?”
    Wilson nodded, watching her, and in his eyes she saw something very calculating.  Maybe he was trying to figure out what she was thinking.
    He wouldn’t like it if he knew.
    ***
    Darcy did not like leaving Rosie alone in the hospital knowing that Wilson was still there.  Hopefully, he would shrug off her odd behavior and just leave to go back to Misty Hollow like he said he was going to.  Everyone in town thought she was a little odd anyway.  Sometimes, that worked for her.
    The hospital’s morgue was down in the basement level, down below even the first floor where the Emergency Department was.  Most people would never even know there was a morgue in the hospital.  That’s the way St. John Camilus Hospital wanted it.  No one wanted patients thinking about death when they came here.  This was supposed to be a healthy, healing environment.  The idea of sharing the building with dead people stored in metal freezer cabinets would be enough to upset most anyone.
    Darcy wasn’t exactly freaked out by dead bodies.  She’d certainly seen enough of them, in various stages and poses of death that she was used to it by now.  What bothered her was the idea of people’s spirits sometimes being stuck with their bodies after death.  Not everyone could let go of this life as easily as they were meant to.  Unfinished business, terribly violent deaths, unspoken final words for loved ones, or lots of other things could trap a person’s life essence in the mortal coil when they were supposed to move on to the hereafter.
    Waiting in the elevator until she was alone, she quickly pushed the button marked B for basement.  Access to that level wasn’t restricted.  She’d been down there before, actually, with Jon when they were working together on a different case.  There weren’t many people down there.  Maintenance workers, sometimes, and one or two employees working in the morgue.  Unless an autopsy was in progress, and then there would be doctors and nurses, too.
    She had to take the chance.  If she could get close enough to Jarred Perrigon’s body, then maybe she could talk to his spirit.  She could have done a communication and tried to reach through to his ghost from this side of the barrier, but that took time she might not have.  Time, and an item of personal interest of the deceased which she also didn’t have.  This might be her only chance to get Jarred’s view of things first hand.
    Jon would probably kill her if he knew she was