A Teeny Bit of Trouble by Michael Lee West Page B

when he found the thing in her head. But he was just getting even with me for messing up his trip.”
    Coop’s knee went still. “What thing in her head?”
    “A subdural hematoma. That’s a blood clot inside the skull. A slow leak. Like she’d been struck in the back of the head and a vein bled slowly. Or she could’ve fallen. It wasn’t a serious injury. It wouldn’t have been fatal. Even the coroner said so.”
    “Did the police notice that your wife had a head wound?” Red asked. “They should have seen it at the crime scene.”
    “Haven’t you heard a word I said? The injury was inside her brain. No scalp laceration No blood. Just a hematoma inside her skull. How this adds up to murder is beyond me.” Lester spoke in a flat and emotionless voice, but a pulse throbbed in his neck. “If she’d had a broken hyoid bone, then I could understand the coroner’s paranoia. But she just had a head injury.”
    Red gripped the sides of the chair, his fingers sinking into the plush velvet. “I’m confused. If the coroner suspected homicide, why did he release the body?”
    “Nobody has said the word homicide , okay? The coroner just said her death looked suspicious.”
    “But he still let you take her body out of the morgue?” Red asked.
    “There is no morgue. He works out of a room in Sweeney Hospital. I showed up this afternoon with the funeral home people. The coroner was gone. Nobody was there. So the guys from Eikenberry put Barb in the hearse. I didn’t know anything was wrong until an hour ago. My cell phone rang. It was the coroner. He wanted me to return Barb’s body. He wanted an expert to examine her. I told him to stick a golf club up his rear end, that it was too late. Barb had already been embalmed.”
    Red slumped in his chair. “Sheesh.”
    “It’s not my fault that Sweeny doesn’t have a proper place to do autopsies,” Lester said. “If the coroner had wanted to keep Barb, then he should have locked that room. Or maybe he should have hired an assistant. But no, Dr. Bigshot was more worried about missing his connecting flight in Charlotte. Apparently he was at a travel agency when I showed up at the morgue. Then he went to dinner. He wasn’t worried about Barb. He was stuffing himself with steak and baked potatoes, or whatever people eat in Sweeney.”
    “Have the police been notified?” Coop asked.
    “About what? A bump on the head? The coroner’s mistake? The embalming?” Lester spread his arms. “I don’t know what they know. But I’m not a dumbass. I’ve talked to my personal attorney.”
    “And?”
    “He said, ‘The hay is in the barn.’ That’s Bonaventure-speak for it’s too late to call in a forensic pathologist. You should know this, Mr. O’Malley. After Barb’s body left the morgue, it was contaminated with all kinds of DNA. The funeral home driver. The embalmer. The lady who fixes dead people’s hair and makeup. If an expert came to the funeral home right this minute, it wouldn’t matter. The embalming procedure destroyed evidence. If the expert found something—a stray hair or fiber—the evidence would probably be dismissed by a judge.”
    “You seem to know a lot about forensics,” Red said.
    Lester gave him a chilling stare. “I’m just repeating what my attorney said.”
    “You need to let the state ME decide what he wants to do,” Coop said.
    “Mr. O’Malley, my wife was capable of anything. She was a bipolar drug addict.”
    “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t murdered,” Coop said.
    “She wasn’t. I’m tired of discussing this.” Lester glanced at his watch. “What’s keeping that child? Teeny, go fetch her. I need to get home. My friends will be bringing cakes and casseroles. I need to be there. I shouldn’t make people wait.”
    Red sat up straight. “Mr. Philpot, why did your wife wait a decade to question her daughter’s paternity?”
    “She was just being Barbish.” Lester twisted his wedding ring, gold with tiny diamond