Circle of Blood (Forensic Mystery)

could do.
    With her head bowed, she threaded her way through the throng of tourists. “Hey, Cammie, aren’t you staying for the dogsleds?” a voice cried, but she didn’t respond, too lost in her thoughts even to look up.
    Turning north on Eleventh, she thought how different this problem was from the mysteries she faced in the autopsy room. If it were a body, she would have been fully prepared to peel back the skin and look inside, removing organs, slicing them open in her search for answers. But this was her mother. The mind and its thoughts were intangible, her sharp autopsy knives useless. The dead are so much simpler than the living, she decided.
    Realizing she hadn’t had a thing to eat or drink all day long, she bought a hot chocolate from a vendor and gulped it down. She needed to be alone, away from the prying eyes of her father and grandmother, so she set her path for the library, one block up on Reese Street. Lit from within, Silverton’s public library glowed yellow, its light reflecting on snow in rectangular patches. After kicking the snow off her boots, Cameryn made her way up the cement steps.
    A small brick building, the library had been built with funds from Andrew Carnegie in 1906. The metal letters over the door were distinct, although the U in the word PUBLIC was shaped instead like a V. Beyond the small antechamber was a second door, this one inset with windowpanes and topped by a glass transom.
    A tiny bell jingled as Cameryn stepped inside. Just as she had hoped, no one was there except the librarian, who stood behind a heavy wooden counter. “Cameryn Mahoney, I thought you’d be at the festivities!” Jackie Kerwin exclaimed. Dark-eyed and slender, Jackie was an outdoorswoman who would hike to the top of Kendall Mountain and then, while there, read an entire book. Like many in Silverton, Jackie was a marriage of opposites.
    “I’ve got a paper due and I thought I’d get a head start,” Cameryn lied. “I just need the Internet.”
    “Well, aren’t you the dedicated student. You’ve certainly come at the right time.” Jackie swept her arm toward the empty room, palm up. “You’ve got no competition today. I was about to do inventory in the back, so”—she looked at Cameryn—“unless you need help . . .”
    “No,” Cameryn answered, relieved she would be completely alone. “I’ll be fine.”
    “Good. Just give a holler if you need me.” With that, Jackie disappeared into a back room.
    The interior of the library had been decorated like a home. Thick oriental rugs were tossed about on polished wooden floors, while padded rocking chairs filled every corner. A small fir tree decorated with paper snowflakes blinked lights near the front door. In the window Jackie had placed a Hanukkah menorah. Dried lavender and pinecones, in honor of Winter Solstice, stood next to a Kwanzaa unity cup. Cameryn detected the smell of cinnamon, from the candles, maybe.
    But it was the computers she wanted. Two sat atop a long wooden desk, cursors blinking. She headed toward the bright blue screens and, after a backward glance, sat down on one of the swivel chairs. Part of her wanted to get the facts about her mother, while another part of her was against the idea. In the end, the scientific part won out. It was best to know what she was dealing with.
    Concentrating, she tried to remember the name of the drug her mother had said she used. As she shut her eyes, she rewound the conversation in her mind. Tregetol. Wasn’t that what her mother had mentioned? She hesitated only a moment before typing Tregetol into the search bar, chewing her fingernail as she stared at the screen. The message Did you mean Tegretol ? popped onto it. When she hit that word, hundreds of sites appeared.
    Tegretol was the brand name of carbamazepine, a drug used to treat mania and bipolar disorders. Although she’d heard of mood disorders before, Cameryn had no idea what a diagnosis could mean, and so she carefully typed Mood Disorders . This time a tsunami of information washed upon the screen. She scrolled past Mental Illness Ranked Second in Terms of Causing Disability to the Diagnose Yourself link. From there, she found the MyTherapy Features , clicking onto Mood Disorders. Following that trail, she found Bipolar Disorder and Tegretol. Leaning close to the screen, she read:
    Bipolar Disorder is a psychiatric condition defined by extreme, often inappropriate and sometimes unpredictable moods. These moods can occur