Free A Rip Roaring Good Time by Jeanne Glidewell Page A

cardiac arrest.
    "So why did they call you to come in if they didn't want you involved in the case?" I asked.
    "It was merely out of necessity. When Nate made the initial thoracic-abdominal incision he noticed that the cadaver's blood and body tissue were bright red," Wendy said, as if we'd all automatically know what that implied.
    Then the young dear turned morbid on us, detailing the standard autopsy procedure. After a few comments about opening the pericardial sac to determine blood type, removing and weighing organs before slicing them into sections and looking for petechiae, or tiny hemorrhages in the mucus membrane inside the eyeballs, I asked her to spare us the gruesome details and cut to the chase. I was getting ready to prepare sandwiches for everyone, and I didn't need visions of dissected eyeballs in my mind while I ate my lunch. I did change my mind about serving hard-boiled eggs with the sandwiches though.
    "Oh, sorry," Wendy said apologetically. "Force of habit, I guess. I'm used to talking things like this over with my coworkers in the lab. Anyway, bright red blood and tissue in a cadaver indicates the presence of cyanide, but it has to be verified by smell. In the county coroner's lab there are Nate, the county coroner; a deputy coroner, Max, who's retiring at the end of the year; and a few assistants like me. In the entire department, I have by far the best sense of smell when it comes to detecting and identifying specific odors such as cyanide. Some people can't smell it at all, but I can easily pick up its scent if the poison is present."
    "What does cyanide smell like?" Rip asked. He'd taken the words right out of my mouth and probably Stone's as well.
    "It has a bitter almond scent to it. Kind of smells like Andy's dirty socks, actually," Wendy explained with a smile. "So anyway, they called me in to go 'under the hood' as we say. It's a process to trap the fumes in order to verify that cyanide was in Trotter's system. Then they told me I was not allowed to be involved any further in the autopsy, as I said before. I was extremely miffed at being barred from the case."
    "I don't get it," Stone said, taking the words out of my mouth once again. "I thought his throat was sliced."
    "It was. But only after he'd been weakened by cyanide poisoning, which was also detected in the liquid residue on shards of the broken goblet he'd been drinking from. My guess is that the perpetrator didn't want Hayes to bring attention to himself by thrashing on the floor while trying to get oxygen into his lungs. Also, and most likely, to prevent the risk of Trotter not consuming enough of the poison to kill him. That might allow for help to arrive quickly enough to save his life."
    "Yeah, that wouldn't have been good," I remarked without thinking. The others looked at me for a few seconds before turning their attention back to Wendy.
    "As soon as the victim fell to the ground, the killer had to have stepped behind Hayes and sliced through the carotid artery and jugular on the left side of his neck. The right side was unaffected, indicating the killer was most likely right-handed, as were all but four people on the premises at the time of the murder. Slicing his throat in this manner would not be an altogether easy task with someone of Trotter's muscular build, but it could be achievable, particularly if the perpetrator was in a rage and had adrenalin going for him. The old 'woman lifts car off baby' type of adrenalin."
    Wendy told Stone that the chief knew Lexie had an ax to grind with his stepson. "And he believed that, due to Mom's impulsive nature, she could have easily acted out her desire for revenge in a fit of fury like I just mentioned." The news was not exactly what we all had hoped to hear.
    Rip turned to Wendy and asked her if Missouri law allowed suspects to be held for forty-eight hours without officially charging them with a crime, and Wendy replied, "Missouri law only allows a twenty-hour hold time. But I'm sure