Save Her Child CJ Lyons (best novels for students txt) 📖

Luka waved her out. Once the door shut, Leah said, “Why weren’t you tougher on her? She might have seen something that gave us an idea of where Beth went.”

“No. She wouldn’t have. I’ll bet if we asked her to pick Beth out of a line-up, she wouldn’t even know what she looked like. Probably buried her head in her notes, checking off everything so she could move to her next case.”

Leah made a noise of disgruntlement that Luka sympathized with. He was used to less than helpful witnesses, but clearly she’d expected more from a fellow healthcare professional. He remembered when they’d first met and she’d been a suspect in her husband’s murder. He’d interviewed the ER staff and the consensus had been that Leah pushed her team hard, striving for excellence. The only person she was harder on was herself.

“When’d you learn how to be such a good bad cop?” he asked, hoping to joke her out of her foul mood.

“From you and Ray when you interrogated me after Ian was killed.”

He hated to tell her, but they’d taken it easy on Leah. “What’s GBS? She said the baby was being monitored for it.”

“Group B strep. A type of bacteria that can spread from the mom to the baby during birth.”

“Is it serious?” His phone buzzed. A text from Harper that Spencer’s autopsy had yielded a preliminary cause of death, asking him to call her.

“It can be. Can cause meningitis, sepsis. Most moms at risk get antibiotics before delivery to prevent it in the baby, but—”

“Beth delivered him before she could get any. So the baby needs medication?”

“No. From his chart, he looked so good that the pediatricians decided to monitor him clinically after checking cultures. If he’s doing well and the cultures don’t show any bacteria after forty-eight hours, the baby is safe to go home.”

“Which means he’s still in the danger zone.”

She nodded, her expression grim. “Technically, yes. But I’m more worried about Beth’s state of mind. The doctors and nurses would have all explained the risk to her baby, the need to monitor him. So what was so terrifying that she’d risk her baby’s life by running?”

Twenty-Four

As Harper waited for Tierney to finish his exhaustive examination of Spencer Standish’s body, she followed up with the CSU techs who were examining the SUV he died in.

“Double-check for any signs of blood or hair,” she instructed them. “He died of a head wound and with the black paint and upholstery—”

“We know how to look for blood,” the tech cut her off. “But we’ll double-check. I’ll follow up on the other samples from the garage as well.”

“Thanks. Anything from the car’s computer? It would help with calculating TOD.” If she could tell Tierney the exact time the car was turned on, compared to Standish’s carbon monoxide levels and the time his body was found, along with other variables like temperature, then she hoped he would be able to calculate a narrow window for their time of death.

“Yeah, sure. Hang on.” The sound of computer keys echoed through the line. “Let’s see. The engine was started at 8:04. Hmm, he must have been close to the car with his phone, because there’s a call showing at that exact same time—maybe he was already on the phone and it switched to the car’s Bluetooth when he got close to the car? If so, that would mean he started the car himself.”

An image formed in Harper’s mind. Standish in his garage, doors still shut, using his key fob to remotely start the car, walking toward it while speaking on his phone. But before he either got into the driver’s seat—or perhaps he had gotten inside the car but left it again—he fell, breaking his neck. An accident? Or was he attacked by whoever moved him into the driver’s seat and left him to die? Either way, there had to be a second person present, and that person’s act of abandoning Standish constituted premeditated murder. “We’re still missing his phone. Can you tell me who the call was with?”

“Yeah, it’s listed in the car’s contacts. Says he was talking to a Matthew Harper.” He paused. “Any relation?”

“How long did the call last?” Harper asked. The Reverend had been the last person to speak to Spencer before he was killed? Why hadn’t he told the police?

“Not sure. It wasn’t dialed through the car, so he might already have been connected as he got into the car and started it? Anyway, it was disconnected four seconds after the engine started.”

“Four seconds?” Long enough for someone to reach inside the SUV and grab the phone from Spencer. Had her father heard the killer?

“Does that help?”

“Yeah, thanks.” She hung up and passed the information about the timing on to Tierney.

“Fits with what I’m finding,” the medical examiner told her. “My guess is that he’d started the car, was hit on the head—or hit his head on something—and while unconscious he was placed inside the car, the engine left running. He breathed in a few minutes of exhaust, enough to raise his blood carbon monoxide to the levels we found, but not high enough for the CO to kill him before the lung failure from the cervical spinal fracture caused fatal asphyxiation. Now,” he warned her in a stern tone. “That’s a working hypothesis, only. I’ll be repeating the calculations and need to complete my microscopic examination of the tissues before I rule for certain.”

For Tierney to bend his rules and go as far as offering a hypothesis was a small miracle. One that Harper would gladly take. She turned to leave, then turned back, remembering her other case. “When do you think you’ll get to Lily Nolan?”

“Who?”

“The girl found in the alley yesterday morning.”

“Right.” He glanced at the clock—it was almost eleven—then at the corpse before him. “Perhaps tomorrow? I saw Maggie’s notes and the films; it looks pretty clear-cut. But I won’t know for sure