The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe Page B

she probably hadn’t eaten in three days.”
    Hazel lifted the pages of the report, noting the pathologist’s charts with the measures, the weights of Delia Chandler’s internal organs, and she thought,
It comes down to this: the body in its constituents with their poorly kept secrets.
Only a living person can refuse to tell the truth. Delia’s heart was a little smaller than average, she noted. She’d make sure not to mention that to her mother.
    “So she arranges with the killer in advance?” she said, thinking out loud. “And according to
his
instructions, she begins to fast. He arrives, prepares this anesthetic cocktail, and knocks her out. He delivers the death blow with the amatoxin, then he drains the blood from her body to remove as much trace of the poison as possible, and then slits her throat to make it look like a murder.”
    “Because it’s
not
a murder?”
    “Well, at the very least it’s not the murder it appears to be, is it? A corpse with a slit throat but the cause of death
isn’t
blood loss . . . ”
    “He tries to hide what he’s done.”
    “Maybe,” she said.
    “You think maybe this
is
an assisted suicide?”
    “No. I can’t get to that.”
    “So it
is
a murder. Whether he slits her throat or not.”
    “I know, Howard. But why kill her and
then
do her violence? Why would he want it to look like he attacked her? Maybe we come up with the profile for a psychopath and that’s what we start looking for. But he’s not a psychopath, is he? He’s something else.”
    Spere had leaned back in the chair on the other side of Hazel’s desk. He stared at the ceiling. She thought she could smell onions. “I don’t know. On one hand, no one who
isn’t
a whack job could
have done this. But on the other, he knows what he’s doing. He’s skilled enough to put her under with two powerful sedatives and then kill her with
mushroom
powder. He drains her blood, but he’s got to know he’s not covering his tracks. He knows the
Amanita
is going to turn her kidneys into raisins. So he’s in control. Maybe he
is
a doctor.” He fell silent a second and Hazel, knowing there were times it was wise to let Spere keep talking, waited him out. “Someone with an urge to kill, but he can’t do anyone who just walks into his office. He’s going to get caught that way. But he can make arrangements—”
    “—how though?”
    “I don’t know. But say he’s promised her that he can cure her, or maybe just relieve her pain, and she goes for it. She doesn’t know what belladonna is. And once she’s under, he has a romp. Maybe he doesn’t like to fight with them, or hear their screams.”
    “I don’t think so. I think she knew everything that was going to happen to her. I think she agreed.”
    “You think she agreed to
die
?”
    “She was already terminal, Howard.”
    “Yeah, but no one agrees to die like this. Unless they’re as nuts as their killer.”
    “No forced entry, no struggle, the place is immaculate. Explain any of that to me.”
    “So is this a murder or not, Hazel? At the very least, can we decide what we
think
it is?”
    “It’s a murder. It doesn’t matter what he calls it or what she thinks she’s agreed to, if she’s agreed to anything. It’s what it looks like to us. Don’t you think?”
    “Do you really care what I think, Hazel?”
    “Yes, Howard. I care. You feel better now?”
    Spere shrugged deeply—his head almost disappeared into his shirt—and pushed his way out of the chair. The effort triggered a fit of wet smoker’s cough. She was always glad when it was time to say good-bye to him. He held his hand out for the report. “I gotta make a copy of this. I’ll bring it back.”
    “Make one for Greene.” Spere shut the door behind him, and she picked up her phone. “Melanie? Tell Jack Deacon at Mayfair Grace I want to see him. I’m going to drive down there now.”
    “Got it, Inspector.”
    “Did you do your cougar homework?”
    “I