Circle of Blood (Forensic Mystery)

do. But I want to see if you do.” Knocking the door open with his hip, Ben eased Mariah through while Cameryn and her father trailed behind. Then, like a laying on of hands, the three of them found a spot on the gurney to push. They wheeled Mariah down a long corridor past a ficus tree dropping leaves in a corner.
    “You gonna tell me?” Ben asked.
    “Come on,” her father urged, “show him what you know.”
    “Rigor mortis is caused by the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate in the muscle tissue. Basically, ATP keeps tissue soft. With death the body doesn’t generate any more ATP, so the muscles become all rigid.”
    “You’re good, girl! ’Cause that’s exactly right. So now I’ll ask you a second question.” Ben turned the gurney an abrupt right-face so it could roll down another dimly lit hallway. “When does rigor start, Cammie?”
    “Um, that depends.”
    “‘Um’ is not much of an answer,” Ben said, smiling. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked against tile as he stopped the gurney next to a drinking fountain. “Hold up, I’m dying of thirst.” As the gurney came to a halt, Mariah’s corpse bobbled, and Cameryn reflexively held out her hand to steady it.
    “So when does rigor start?” Ben asked, bending over. Outsiders would never understand the way dieners and medical examiners could drink or eat only inches away from a body.
    “In as little as ten minutes,” she replied.
    “Exactly,” he said between sips. “And how long does it last?”
    “It depends. It depends on how much a person weighs and how much fat they have, and on the temperature and how dry the air is. This isn’t an exact science. I think rigor can go for as long as seventy-two hours. And I think the body’s at its stiffest between, like, twelve and twenty-four hours.”
    Ben stood, and Cameryn noticed there was water on his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “And then what happens?”
    Cocking her head, she said, “I didn’t know there was going to be a test.”
    “I’m just doing my part,” Ben said. “I’m getting you ready for college. I heard there’s some fancy headhunter out for you.”
    Mariah’s elbow made a knot against the side of the body bag. Cameryn felt its hardness beneath her fingertips. “Once decomposition kicks in, the body reverses itself. It goes soft again as it decomposes.”
    “You get an A.” Ben nodded. “No wonder your daddy hired you.”
    “Yeah, I’m getting a little worried about my job,” Patrick interjected. “I think she’s gunning for it.”
    “Not yours,” she replied. “I’m gunning for Dr. Moore’s.”
    “You’re definitely what’s next.” Ben curled his fingers around the gurney and said, “Let’s get this girl to X-ray.”
    The casual chatting was the way people dealt with death, Cameryn knew. Like Ben and her father and Dr. Moore, she could regurgitate the facts. But as the gurney moved on the last leg of its journey, Cameryn realized the disconnect between her knowledge in her head and the feel of a human turning to stone beneath her hand. You never get used to death, she thought. Never.
    They passed a room with a spindly fern in a large clay pot painted with Hopi flute dancers. Throughout the building, cheap art hung on the walls, mostly pictures of gurgling brooks and sunrays bursting from behind clouds—she guessed those were meant to bring comfort to the bereaved.
    They arrived at X-ray, where, Cameryn knew, Mariah would be filmed through the bag by the machine’s long movable arm. “You all know you gotta stay out here,” Ben told them at the door. “I’m gonna try to get film so we can pinpoint that bullet. If we find it, we won’t have to dig around so much.” He wheeled Mariah inside, and the door clicked softly behind him.
    Patrick sagged against the wall as if the weight of the whole day had suddenly settled onto his shoulders. The fluorescent lights made his skin appear even grayer; Cameryn could see tiny threads of veins at the base of each nostril. She hadn’t remembered seeing them before. There was a redness to his eyes. Squeezing them shut, he pinched the lids with his fingers and said, “I think the day’s finally catching up to me.”
    Just then his phone rang.
    “Why don’t I go on down to the autopsy suite,” she began, but her father held up one finger to signal Cameryn to stop. “Hi, Ma,” Patrick said.
    Cameryn waited, paying close attention to their conversation.
    “We’re down